Have you ever had a truly pleasant surprise?

Please share if you have.

For me, I was cleaning under the couch, and I found my lost car key (the backup one) that I thought I permanently lost.

I just don’t know where I put it. It’s been missing for six months. These keys can run up to $500 to be replaced.

Yourself? Anything randomly good happen to you recently?

Usually money that I’ve misplaced.

I'm a janitor and I thought to myself, what if the next garbage can I empty has money in it? Guess what? It did! Happened again that very same week. Hasn't happened since. Seems like a confirmation of something. Maybe that there is some hidden meaning behind everything. But I don't really know. Just a very odd and pleasant circumstance.

I have another story which I've shared on here many times before. But it truly is unbelievable.

@DEVILinIRON: Lol, it almost sounds like you're picking up dead drops.

What's the unbelievable story? We need to know!

After the death of our former dog, I thought my mom was going to buy a dog, but she came home with two dogs. It was a pleasant surprise. I loved both of them within a few days. I love dogs and cats. Birds, fish, hamsters, rats and lizards are not my cup of tea.

Just now, I thought I was going to have 5 days of vacation in February but it turns out I'll have 12 I should have taken last year. Sweet!

About a year ago, I burnt a bunch of bridges at work and became a pariah at my office. My senior manager despised me for screwing over her colleague and close friend, and the only people who would talk to me were my former trainees, whom I'd just been thrown back into the lion's den with. I was lovesick, broke, burnt out and totally miserable.

During those days, I used to daydream about being in a very specific - but wholly unrealistic - position, from which I envisaged a narrow sliver of opportunity to fix all my problems at once.

Now here I find myself, this weekend, pissed off and with a match in hand, stood at the end of a very similar bridge, and it's just occurred to me that somehow I'm in exactly that ridiculously improbable position I "wished" for a year ago.

So yes, It's a huge surprise that I'm here, but it's a little bittersweet, because I think I'm too late to fix the biggest of those problems.

For my current, hr found me and contacted me. I didn't apply.

I was happy because I didn't like the job I had at the moment.

I'm kind of freaked out right now. It's just hit me that my alternative (again, unlikely) option is also one I dreamt up as a potential route to solving that bigger problem, and I hadn't even realised.

I've done nothing, consciously at least, to land myself in this position. Or nothing rational rather. I did do something most rational people would scoff at.

Okay, I am truly pleasantly surprised then. 😲

Why, sure. Once again couldn't hurt I suppose.

So I had just graduated from college. My dad offered to pay for part of a trip to the EU which was just getting used to the new currency. We started in Germany, took the train through the Netherlands, France and then Spain. In Barcelona, it happened to be Christmas time, and so we decided to see the very first Lord of the Rings movie, which would be a guaranteed spectacle at the least. So we decided to sit in the middle of the theater and after a few minutes of conversing, a couple sat down right in front of us. WTF, I thought to myself. "Flora!," I exclaimed. My best friend's little sister, who I hadn't seen in years, was here in this particular theater, Barcelona, Spain, in the EU, across the Atlantic ocean and from the Midwestern United States. Needless to say it was definitely a pleasant surprise, which we celebrated the following New Year's Eve at the beach, drinking a little wine and smoking a little bit of some of that strange stuff. A great time indeed.

Last I heard she hasn't been doing well and is sick most the time. I'd say that New Year might have been the last time we really hung out. What are the chances, tho?

@DEVILinIRON: That's really cool! Life is full of those little surprises, and it keeps us on our toes.

Twice related to work.

Last promotion, my nearest leader didn't know the actual offer I was getting, she read through it after I had read it, noted that something was off and had me a new offer a day or two later. Nothing major, just the baseline for my bonus was lower than it should be. Secondly, we didn't really have any chance to discuss the yearly wage adjustment/rise in 2023, there were some significant delays in getting the general deal between the company and the unions. However within the wiggle room she was given, she set mine up as much as she could.

I went in to the Wawa, and saw they had brought back the lobster bisque! That was a pleasant surprise.

I received an out-of-cycle promotion last October. I had no clue it was coming. I was asked to meet in a conference room and I started out a little concerned. My boss was acting very serious and then he shared the pay letter on the conference room screen.

My weight loss had more or less plateaued for a week or two, hover +/- a couple pounds of one weight.

Got on the scale today and saw I had lost six pounds. Back on the wagon, baby!

had the same key situation occur like a week ago. couldn't find the spare for like a year, was insisting my wife must have misplaced it ( because of course it's her fault ).

anyway, had a heavy snow and went out to snowblow the driveway and put my old ski coat on that i ususally use and lo and behold the keys were in the pocket, probably from the last time I cleared the driveway last winter.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯