We're engaged!

Here's the story:

Wednesday night, Mike was having trouble with his phone, and needed to go to the Verizon store to get it fixed. So, he planned to be home late Thursday.

Thursday morning, Mike wakes me up, and is talking crazy talk about taking a weekend trip to New York, even though he didn't have the ring (which I KNEW was coming). Thursday, day, my office-mate tells me that our research group is hosting tea, and we need to go shopping for snacks, and we are all going to go at 6 pm. I email Mike to tell him I will be home late. While I am at my guitar lesson, my office-mate calls me to say we will not be hosting tea, and we don't need to go shopping, and I can go home. So, I go home, ON TIME.

When I get home, i take the laundry downstairs, and I run into my landlord, who is here supervising renovations upstairs (we are about to have neighbors). So, I am busy trying to talk him into letting me have a cat, when I hear the car pull into the driveway. I go out to greet Mike. He is sitting in the car listening to the radio. When he finally turns his head and sees me, he jumps a little bit. He gets out of the car, carrying a bag that I think must be from the Verizon store, when he went to get his phone fixed. He continues acting a little nervous and jumpy. And then, it hits me: blue isn't Verizon's color. CAUGHT!!

So, I could have been engaged Thursday, at my option. But, I declined. I may be petty, but I wanted to have a longer story than "so I caught your father bringing the ring home and so he proposed."

Friday night, we were watching television. Mike likes to lay on me when we watch tv, and I don't really dig it that much. I was trying to play on my computer, when Mike says "Honey, I'm going to do something because I love you." And I thought "Oh, what?" And I looked up, and he pressed the "Buy" button for Rent on the video-on-demand. Awwwww. I had wanted to see Rent when it came out, and it had been the subject of much teasing : "Mike, if you're not careful, we're going to go see RENT!" So, that he voluntarily put himself on the block like that (and he didn't hate it, after all), was very sweet.

So Saturday, there was no trip to New York (thank goodness!). But we did get out in the beautiful weather (we went for a reasonably extensive walk), and we made a little trip to Best Buy, where Mike bought me my birthday gift a little early... (only a month..) : The Sims, Open For Business. He also bought himself a game: I think it is something like Command and Conquer.

Mike's plan for the BIG EVENT was to make dinner for me. There was some debate about whether I should take myself shopping, to get out of the house, while he made his preparations. I said I didn't want to spend an hour travelling each way, and it would make the timing so tricky, so we decided that I would play Sims instead. So, Mike headed out to get groceries. While i was helping my landlord with his computer, Mike came back. He started banging around downstairs, and so on. When I came back to the apartment, I walked through the kitchen with my eyes closed, straight to the room where my computer lives, to play Sims. I asked Mike for a Dr. Pepper (so I wouldn't have to go back in the kitchen and see his secret preparations). And he put it in a wine glass for me. Awwww. Then he brought me an appetizer : a little plate with smoked salmon, cheese, crackers, and a rose. AWWWWWW.

So then, he was doing things in the kitchen while I was playing Sims. (By the way, he was wearing his suit, and I had changed into my red dress.) I guess he put the water for the pasta on to boil, and then, he came in to see me. He offered to rub my feet (WHOO HOO!), and while he was at it, he said "Gee, I wish I had the ring right now." Then, he thought about it for a little bit. "I'll be right back." So, he went and he got the ring, and then he proposed. :-)

The menu was steak, shrimp and pasta. There was some uncertainty about how much butter to use for the shrimp, and how long to cook the steak (these were ridiculously thick steaks). But we got through it, without too much interference from me.

Sunday, we went whale watching. I have wanted to do this for some time, and I was very excited. I was worried that we were only going to get to see like ONE whale from like 100 feet away, and it would be a big waste of money, but Mike was more optimistic. We thought the boat left at 10:30, but we left early just in case. We made it onto the 10:00 boat by the skin of our teeth! The boat had three levels: enclosed cabins on the lower two levels, and a third level that was open. On the lowest level, there were two places for observation, which jutted away from the main cabin, and were enclosed with hand-rails.

It was an hour before they started talking about seeing whales. It was hard to make out : there was some mist from the whales' blow holes off in the distance. We saw one whale come to the surface a couple hundred yards away. I was happy, but I was thinking "I hope that's not as good as it gets". We went on, and as we got closer to some activity, Mike and I went out on the observation areas, with the crowds of people. There were dolphins everywhere (Barbie would have been so happy). It was amazing. They were ten feet away from the boat, criss-crossing in front of the bow. We went after places where there were sea gulls gathering -- they said that this was a good indication of where whales were feeding. We came acorss a pair of humpback whales that were feeding. I swear, they came up with their mouths open like twenty feet away from the boat, and you could see the bumps along their necks. There was lots of tail action (when they dive deep, they flip their tails up in the air to push themselves down). It was pretty exciting to see the whales so close. I didn't get any pictures (Sorry!). I forgot my camera, and it would have been hard to get pictures anyway, because everything happened so fast.

So then we went to Legal Sea Food for lunch, where I whisked the check out of Mike's hand. (Ha ha!). Then, we came home and took a nice nap.

The End.


So, here is what you have been waiting for: pictures of me, Mike, and the RING:



The center stone on the ring is 87 points, and the two side stones are about 25. There are five little diamond flakes on each side.



I am already rather attached to the ring. Like, I took it off to show to my office-mate, and I felt kinda funny!

So now, Mike and I are engaged. We are thinking late April, early May. My sister wants us to do it May 12th. (She graduates from college the week before). I will have to do some looking around at venues, before we can say for sure when things are going to happen. But we will keep you posted!