A Sorry Tale.

Here's a lesson in the pitfalls of procrastination.

From the day I started this blog, I'd saved up an amusing little story. Here's the set-up: My wife Red (god, how she loves being called that) and I know a couple - J and C - who'd planned for months to take a week-long trip to Paris. They arranged it so that J's frequent flyer miles would cover the flights for both of them, and he did everything he needed to do at work to be able to take the time off. Meanwhile, C arranged the childcare for their four kids -- no easy task, considering that three of them were at two different schools, and the youngest was only a couple of years old.

They did it, though, and on the day of their flight to France, they left early for the airport, so they could relax and have a pre-boarding cocktail. And so they did, sipping their drinks and talking about how they looked forward to spending some time together, just the two of them, in the City of Light.

When the time came to board, they gathered their things and headed toward the gate. They'd checked almost all of their bags, so they anticipated an easy trip through security, but guess what they discovered -- C's passport had expired a year earlier. Disaster, right? I mean, ugly-public-argument-level disaster. But no. J, being a kind, loving and romantic husband and all that sort of thing, basically said, "That's okay, honey. We'll find something else to do." With that, they left the airport and drove to Paris, Kentucky.

Now, the joke: Last summer, my wife suggested we go to Paris (France, that is) to visit friends. I wasn't totally on board at first, mostly because of the expense, but Red found a direct flight that I could cover with my frequent flier miles. Once that sunk in, I started getting excited about the idea. She didn't have a passport, though, and I kept reminding her about our friends, just to set up the punch line, which was that if we got to that day and she didn't have her passport, I'd be off to Paris on my own; I wouldn't be speaking to her for about a week anyway, so I might as well be in Europe.

The problem: She got her passport and killed the joke, and now we're going to Paris. What a buzzkill.