I've been grocery shopping five times in the last three days, and stashing a lot of those groceries in odd places. I've been phone calling stores and not finding anyone there to speak English. I've been e-mailing a lot of people, some of whom I don't know, and inviting them here. I've been baking and then washing the dishes to hide it. I had to tell people to NOT let him know that they knew, because if he knew that they knew something they wouldn't ordinarily know, he'd know that I'd have told them, so he'd have suspected something was up. I fabricated a shopping trip where John couldn't go and an excuse why he couldn't just stay home but had to hang out elsewhere. I had everyone park up the hill so he wouldn't see any cars, and then had to make sure *he* didn't wind up parking up there.

And then -- as he was getting here, he saw T&G on their way down from the hill.

Still, until he saw them, he hadn't suspected anything.

As usual for anything I organize, turnout was pretty low, but once again, I'm content with the quality if not the quantity.

The sushi turned out pretty well, in spite of the fact that I didn't quite know what I was doing. It was a good thing I didn't try to *make* it all, though -- I just bought and prepared stuff, and we each made our own. (Each of John's birthdays while I've known him have involved sushi somehow, usually just us going out with his mom.) My roll consisted of rice and nori, nothing else. Yum!

So, yeah. It was good. John's happy, and that's the bestest. (: