Yes...he's the one with that birthmark...

So, the surprise for John went off without a hitch... Well, OK, maybe a small hitch. (What the heck is a hitch, anyway?)

Here was the plan. Rachel and I were going to show up for John's class at FRCC and convince him to let class out early so that we could see Mikhail Gorbachev (Nobel Peace Price Winner, President of the former Soviet Union. Yes...he's the one with that birthmark...), who was speaking at CSU. We collaborated with his wife, Paula, so that we knew his schedule would be clear after class. He knew some kind of big secret was coming up and the week was filled with frustrated emails from him trying figure out what the plan was. I replied to most of these with something along the lines of "We've got it taken care of. Just go about your normal schedule. Trust us." This didn't assuage his fears, for some reason...

The plan went very well. He was very surprised to see Rachel and me in his class. At first, it didn't even dawn on him that we weren't supposed to be there. He said he just noticed a couple extra bodies in the room and thought nothing of it. But then he saw who those bodies were. "OH GREAT," was all he could manage when he saw us. He introduced us to the class and I asked him what it would take for him to let the class out early as I handed him the ticket to see Gorby. He was very excited, but (here's the only small hitch) some of his students had mentioned the speech tonight, so he figured it out before we got there. We sat through his lecture and I remembered why I liked him so much as a teacher. He even made the Renaissance interesting! Rachel and I agreed that it was weird to hear him lecture again, though. We both kept thinking things like I hang out with this guy on a regular basis and I've seen this professor in a swimsuit. On the flip side, at one point, he stopped his lecture and said "God, it's weird to have you guys in class again." I say weird, but I mean weird in a good way. I've had a string of bad professors recently and it was very refreshing to listen to a good one again.

After the class, of course, we listened to Gorbachev speak. To our surprise, even the governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, was there. He introduced Gorby. He gave a very interesting speech about Perestroika and what the world was like since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Perestroika. His translator, John pointed out, has been translating for him since he became President in 1985. He paid tribute to Ronald Reagan and the Pope. All in all, it was a very interesting speech. The arena was packed and we were stuck in the nose-bleed section. Thank God for Jumbo-Vision!

After the speech, we went to dinner at Woody's, a great pizza place, and BSed for about an hour. This kind of night was exactly what we all kneaded (HAHA, get it?! Kneaded...just like pizza dough! ....... Sorry.)

Tomorrow's Friday! WOOHOO! I get to get all kinds of stuff done on Saturday, then on Sunday, I really have to get to school work! I have a ton.

Sorry to bore all of you with this. If you made it this far, give yourself a thousand TobyPoints, each redeemable for $1. But hurry! They expired as soon as you started reading this blog!