Surprise!

I was standing at a collegue's desk, looking at a spreadsheet with her, when the little Outlook notification box popped up on her screen. You know, the one where it gives you a little preview of the message so that you can decide where on the scale of Comparative Importance that email falls and either open it, ignore it, or delete it right away? Weeeellll, the subject line on the email was "Katze's Shower".

Kristi quickly clicked it off the screen, and I acted all nonchalant, as though I hadn't even noticed the little box RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HER SCREEN with my name on it.

In the car on the way home from work, I told Ash that I thought I'd spoiled a surprise. He piped up, "Yeah, it's on Friday."

"What?! How do you know about it?"

"Oh, I'm invited."*

So then, today walked into my manager's cube and he had a card right on the middle of his desk. A card with a big white wedding dress on it. He grabbed a file folder and jammed the card inside it, very non-nonchalantly. And he got the most stricken look on his face. Again, I acted like I hadn't actually noticed his strange behavior, asked the question that had brought me to his cube to begin with, and went back to my cube, where I laughed silently until my stomach hurt. It was just too cute and funny, especially because he spoiled the last surprise party that they threw for me-- sort of.

See, the morning after my swearing in ceremony at the Federal Court, I was sitting at my desk, eating a chocolate donut and reading email when he wandered over and started talking to me and my former cube neighbor and at one point in the conversation, he made a joking remark that I just thought I was special because I got a chocolate ca-- donut. CHOCOLATE DONUT. And I just looked at him all bug eyed because it was a very, very strange thing to say, especially because he got all red in the face. But then, Mike is a very awkward person sometimes, one of those people who says things that probably sounded funnier in his head, or tries to get in on a running joke just a few minutes after it loses its hilarity. So I didn't think about it too much. Later that afternoon, Angela came into my cube aisle and asked us to come over to the common area in our department for a quick meeting. I picked up a pad of paper and a pen and wandered the couple of aisles over to the common area where I stood talking to someone for at least a minute before I even noticed the chocolate cake with "Congratulations Katze!" in sparkly white letters.

I was floored. And touched! I certainly wasn't expecting any sort of a party-- though in retrospect, I probably should have, because we celebrate everything in our department. It's a fun-lovin' group. In fact, I think I probably work for the best department in the company, overall. Sure, there are some people I like more than others, but for the most part, the group is fairly supportive and cooperative.**

So anyway, I hadn't actually expected them to throw me a shower. It really just didn't enter my mind. But again, I guess I should have known that they would, because not only do we celebrate everything, we've thrown a couple of baby showers since I started. No one in the department has gotten married since I started, but we've had two babies born so far and a third is on the way about 5 or 6 weeks after my wedding. And now that I know but am pretending not to know, I had a very funny day. I kept overhearing snippets of conversation with my name in it and once I witnessed another little email popup while I was helping someone with a termination clause. I hope I've been a convincing actress because I certainly don't want to spoil their fun by ruining the surprise.

*Have I mentioned that Ash is temping at the company where I work for a few weeks? He's in a different department, but as it turns out, on the same floor. It's kind of cool and kind of weird at the same time. I bet it will feel really strange again when his temp assignment is over or he gets a permanent position.
**It's also overwhelmingly female. We only have five men out of a total of twenty four employees. I wonder if that has anything to do with the positive atmosphere? But then again, large groups of women can be far more competitive and cutthroat, so maybe it's just a lucky fluke.