Anticipation

I love surprises.

I love to surprise others. Hiding Christmas and Birthday gifts is one of my favorite pastimes. Tricking my wife into not expecting her surprise 30th Birthday party (when she had explicitly asked for one) is one of the high points of this career.

I love being pleasantly surprised. A new facet of my children, a new book, a new movie, a new episode of a good TV program, a new restaurant recommended by friends, these things pull me along and outward.

This is from Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, where after a year's flight they're about to go down onto the planet's surface for the first time:

. . . it suddenly occurred to her that everyone was happy -- they were in the last moment of their anticipation, an anticipation that had lain in their hearts for half a lifetime, or ever since childhood -- and now it had blossomed beneath them like a child's crayon drawing . . . it loomed before them in all its immense potential: tabula rasa, blank slate. . . . Anything was possible, anything could happen. . . . It occurred to her that they might never be so happy again. Beauty was the promise of happiness, not happiness itself; and the anticipated world was often more rich than anything real.

And, as it turns out, what I really love is anticipation. The thought of how that food is going to taste at the new restaurant, what new talent one of the boys will display, the look on their face when they open the present, the new twist on a good story. I love it all.

So today is a good day. I'm 6 episodes in to the first season of Lost, and it's awesome. Why didn't someone say something? Just kidding. (Note that comments are disabled; no spoilers, please.) It's killing me to just watch one episode per night. But that keeps the anticipation very high, and it's working. (Here's a meme: when did you first realize that Lost was not only very good, but different? Want mine? 3rd episode, at the end, when Sawyer is crying.)

We're going out tonight for dinner and a movie, either X-Men 3 or M:I 3. I've avoided reading too much about either, so the anticipation is high. And we're going to a new restaurant. Well, new for me at least; my wife has been before and likes it. She says I'll like it, and she knows me best, so she's probably right. I can't wait.

And today, less than 30 days away from the end of our third realtor contract (we're not renewing after this one; it's too hard), today we get 3 calls. Three different people are coming to look at the house this weekend. At least two have seen it before. One could make an offer (our first in 10 months). There could be a bidding war.

Anything is possible, anything could happen.