Last night Paul texts me while I'm at work: "Hey, I have a present for you."

"What? What is it? Is it your dick in a box?"

Apparently it wasn't.

After work I call. He's at archery, but promises to pick me up after dropping off Donut and his new squeeze.

He picks me up a little while later.

"So I got a present for you. You have to guess what it is, though."

"So this is like a game of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Present?"

"Yeah," he said, grinning. "Pretty much."

I thought about it for a few moments. "Is it your dick in a box?"

Apparently it still wasn't.

I guessed a number of things, but got no closer to figuring out what it was. The best I got was: "It has metal components."

I gave up and decided to just wait until he actually *gave* it to me.

It was in a blue box, with Christmas trees on it. I should have teased him about using old Christmas wrapping, but admittedly I was just too excited. I love presents!

I ripped off the top of the box. It was...

Headphones. A peculiar gift. I already had a pair of headphones, which Paul had also bought me, but admittedly they weren't very good.

"Headphones!" I say, and pull them out of the box.

But no, my friends, that was just the appetizer. There was a second plastic package underneath, though smaller.

An mp3 player!

I mean, it's no iPod, but fuck, I'm not complaining!

"An mp3 player!" I exclaim. He totally got major Good Boyfriend points.

"Yeah," he said. "I saw it and thought of you, 'cause, for christ's sake, you still listen to a discman!" (I've never seen the point of getting an mp3 player because my discman works just fine.)

The headphones are much better quality than the pair I have now. Even listening to my discman with them, the sound quality was ten times better. (I had my discman with me, because I'd been listening to the soundtrack to the Full Monty, the musical I mean. Ground Zero is doing it this year, and I'm really excited!)

Paul showed me how to load songs onto it so I raided his music. Unfortunately, he's quite addicted to the 80's, and I'm really not, so I gleaned the good songs. He has such a weird collection of music. (It could be a LOT worse, though. Seriously. As it is, I don't hate any of his music. But there's definitely music out there that'll put me into a murderous rage...Stupid ska...)

But anyway. *dances* I haaaave and mp3 plaaaaayer...

Before&After