My wife is insanely hard to shop for. Actually, let me clarify that... she's hard for ME to shop for. She tends to like things like shoes and jackets and bracelets, basically stuff that's alien to me. Every few years there'll be a birthday or Christmas where she wants something like a camera or an iPod and I'm fine, but otherwise it's like throwing darts at a big target that says "I hope you saved the receipt."

This Christmas was one of the bracelet years, and I wasn't looking forward to it, to say the least. And then a miracle happened.

Years ago, back when the Lord of the Rings films were coming out, my wife developed a rather robust Legolas crush. It was completely juvenile and ridiculous (unlike MY completely realistic Eowyn crush), but it did serve as good inspiration for strips like this one:

I originally thought her little obsession would fade once the hoopla of the movies ended, but no such luck. Even now, if one of the kids puts on a LOTR DVD, my wife will drop whatever she's doing and run into the family room to watch her dream elf prance lightly across the snow of Caradhras or shoot arrows at orcs from a mile away.

Anyway, this past summer my syndicate was contacted by Orlando Bloom's people and they wanted me to sign some reprints of the various OB strips I'd done so he could have them framed. Naturally, that seemed like the least I could do (especially given a certain book title), and I was happy to oblige.

And then I had an idea. Would it be possible? Doable? Dare I ask?... I did. And this is what I gave my wife this year:

(In case you can't read it, it says "Keeta (my wife's nickname), if you ever get tired of Bill, give me a call! Orlando Bloom")

Let's just say it went over very, very, very well. This may even make up for that surge protector/power strip I got her once. Thank you, Orlando! You are my nominee for coolest person on Earth for 2009!