Ron's Little Life Update - July 2006

A little Big Life Update this time out.

Why so soon?

Liz and I are engaged! Woo-hoo indeed!

We just passed our 2-year anniversary, and I still thought Liz was the greatest thing since CDs, so I thought it was time to ask her, you know, the Big Question. How to do it, though?

I still hadn't decided how to do it when I got an unprompted email from Liz's best friend, Beth. Beth was bugging her persistently about getting engaged, and told Liz that she'd need to know what kind of ring she'd want. So Liz played along, and one day at work, the two of them looked online at the Tiffany's website to do some fantasy-ring shopping. Afterwards, and unbeknownst to Liz, she wrote to me that Liz especially liked a particular model of ring, just so I know. Nice of her to pass that on - something I can use!

So I now knew what to get, but how to do it was still perplexing. Should I get her a ring at Tiffany's in New York when we visit later this summer? No, she'll be expecting that. Should I take her to a fancy restaurant and hide the ring in her dessert? No way - what a cliche!

Instead, I went with the most direct, and least obvious, plan I could think of. I bought the ring at the Tiffany's in Edina, MN (about a mile from my house), had them wrap it up in the awesome little blue box, and brought it over to Liz's. She got off work at 8 PM that night, and I was waiting for her at home. So far, no big deal - I meet her at her place after work all the time. After a little while, I told her that I got her a birthday present a little early (two weeks, to be precise), and would she want it now? Of course, the answer would be Sure! (Neither she nor I have any self control, so I knew she'd want to open it now.)

So I handed her the little blue box, and told her I'd gotten her a little something. She unwrapped it very carefully (they don't use tape when they wrap these things, so removing the wrapping doesn't ruin the box), and then her eyes got really big for about a second. She asked "Are you serious?" once or twice, then started crying. A lot. Really, an unbelievable amount of crying.

I told her that I should probably do this properly, and got down on one knee (in her kitchen, mind you), and asked her if she'd marry me. She nodded yes, because she couldn't say anything, what with the crying and all that. Oh yeah... I did good.

Liz told me later that she was completely, 100% surprised. She confessed that she expected me to do something in New York, but she never suspected that I'd ask her out of the blue two weeks before her birthday.

And to further throw off the scent so she wouldn't suspect, I bought the ring and asked her on the very day that I got my new driveway. (It looks really fabulous! The driveway, that is.) So one diamond ring + one asphalt driveway = the most expensive day ever: Thursday, July 6, 2006.

The next day, Liz was off on Friday, and she met me at work for lunch, where we went out with a bunch of my co-workers for Indian food. It's a good thing she was off on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, because she was giggly the whole weekend. She's still not quite right, and it's really funny to watch her staring at her left hand while waiting at red lights. Ooh - sparkly! I did real good.

We haven't worked out the logistics of what comes next. The obvious question that everyone asks is if we picked a date, but I was lucky just to get this far, let alone plan anything else. So no, no date picked yet. We're pretty sure we don't want a traditional caterer/florist/photographer/DJ/band-type wedding - I think a little ceremony on a beach somewhere is more our style. (Hawaii? Italy? How does one plan such a thing?) Details to follow - I have much to investigate.

So there you go. Gonna be hard to top THIS one...

Ron and Liz