What nerds do on their night off...

Maybe a year ago, I asked my soulmate what his favorite store in all the world was. I mean men aren't ones for shopping, but there must be some store where he could forget the time and heck, forget the day of the week once he began roaming its delightful aisles of splendor. After a little thought he guessed maybe Office Max would be his shopping haven. Sure I could see that. Especially if he found himself in the pen aisle.
Today he changed his mind without even visiting the store. It's called Latitudes: The Map and Travel Store on Excelsior Blvd in St Louis Park. We found it online and when he saw the wall maps of the world displayed in his favorite projections (the Robinson, the Winkel, and the Eckert IV), he knew he was in love. As we continued to scroll down the page, we came across an item that not only made Jon drool, but leap in ecstasy! It was a 600-piece puzzle of the world where the puzzle pieces were the actual shapes of the countries! It included all 192 countries, all 50 states of the US, all 13 provinces and territories of Canada, PLUS fun facts about the world!!! I hadn't seen him that giddy since he brought home a book written in ancient Saxon with a preface in Latin which he'd gotten at the Linguistics Department book give-away.
"Please can I have it now? I want it now! I can't wait! Let's go get it! I've wanted this all my life!" he grabbed my arm as he continued to jump up and down and drag me toward the door. It was like Christmas morning!! So while he drove a friend to the Doctor's office, I drove down to Jon's new favorite store and bought the puzzle. We then spent the next 3 hours trying to decifer whether this yellow piece belonged to Antarctica or Russia, this green piece belonged to China or Brazil, and whether this orange piece was part of Australia's border or Greenland's. Little by little we pieced together all the tiny Oceania islands, the unfamiliar central African countries, and the ambiguous shapes of the great oceans. When we finally looked up it was 8:30 and we hadn't eaten dinner. We stood back from our masterpiece with a great satifsying sigh and kissed. It was Saturday night and we had conquered the world, piece by piece! I wonder what we'll do Sunday...