The Best Christmas Present EVER

Once upon a time I used to work at a political media firm in Old Town, Alexandria. By the end of my tenure there I pretty much hated my job and my boss....but my co-workers wound up being some of the greatest friends I have in DC.

[In the picture above from L to R - Chris, me, Amy - who never worked with me but is now the wife of the guy next to her, Rob, who I did work with!]

I haven't seen them in awhile, so I arranged a little get together last night at Murphy's (amazing Irish pub), which used to be our standard after-work hangout. I got there around 6:45 but they were still at the office (drinking beer) so I went up there to meet them and saw the office for the first time since I left. It was strange. It's been almost two years but nothing has changed. My desk is still empty and a post-it I wrote on is still stuck to it. It's weird how it seems like two years is such a long time and I expected everything to be different but it was exactly the same.

Anyway, we ended up staying at Murphy's until pretty late at night. It was a lot of fun to catch up with all of them and Rob's wife Amy came (they just got married a few months ago!) so I got to see her as well. At one point during the night, Rob whips out this manilla envelope and he was like "Oh... here's a long overdue Christmas present that we've been meaning to give you." So I open up the package and inside I find a professional photograph of my dog, Scrappy! That's right - they took Scrappy to a studio and got her a glamour shot!

A little backstory: Rob and Amy love dogs and at one point I think Amy was trying to convince Rob to get a puppy. When I found this out, I immediately offered up Scrappy as a test puppy and said that if they ever wanted to dogsit to see if they could handle having a dog at home they were more than welcome! So Scrappy has stayed at their house a few times... once even for 10 days. So, obviously, at some point they got her photo done and didn't tell me so they could give me the picture for Christmas! AWESOME.

Seriously, this might be one of the best Christmas gifts I've ever gotten. Ever. I especially love the "Treasured Images" watermark in the lower righthand corner. Priceless.

I can't wait to show my grandmother... she will be so impressed that all of my friends love Scrappy so much they are willing to throw away money on professional photo shoots!