Ok, first off, I apologize for the lack of information from me. I mean, pictures are worth a thousand words, but they lack...detail. So, here's some details about the engagement that I'm sure you all want to know.

I'd been thinking about how to propose; where, when, public or private, etc., and I realized I was going about it all the wrong way. So, first I sat down and thought through a purpose statement. I mean, what was I trying to do that was different from just giving her a ring, and why was I trying to do something different? So, upon reflection, I decided that my purpose was for her to know that I love her a lot, and I would show her by surprising her with an unexpected event that she would know took planning and sneaking and scheming. So, that done, I began scheming in earnest.

I decided that I would propose outside, somewhere in nature. We're both fairly outdoorsy people, and I figured it would work well to prepare some place in advance for the surprise. So, I began going out to the woods in my spare time. There was no place that I'd been to that I thought would work well, some place that had a lookout of some kind, was near a road so I could drive in stuff, but was still fairly remote, and had a good view. So, I just started adventuring. I drove out on crazy windy, snow-covered roads (which was frightening in my tiny, bald-tire'd car), and whenever I saw a trail branching off from the road, I'd get out of the car and take the trail for a ways, just to see where it went. Most of the time, I was unimpressed, so I'd hike back and keep driving. The only maps I had for where I was driving were driving maps; I didn't have any hiking maps, which made it even more of an adventure. At the end of all my adventuring, I had driven a few hundred miles (about 300km), but I had found the perfect spot. It was a concrete lookout on the top of a mountain, about 3-stories tall, and about a 15 minute hike from a parking lot. Since it was January, it was pretty deserted, and there was snownd ice on everything. Now all I had to do was figure out what to do with the place.

I decided that I would decorate by putting up Christmas lights, wrapped in tulle, around the railing. This meant that I would need Christmas lights, tulle, and also a power source. So, I talked to a friend who runs CAJ (Mr. Willson), and told him my plans. He told me he would lend me the lights the school uses at Christmas time, as long as I didn't mind that they were absolute crap, and he would look into finding a generator for me to use. The lights were, in fact, absolute crap, and it took me about 4 hours of pulling lights out, switching sockets, and testing the strands, to hobble together enough to cover what I figured was the length of the railing. The problem with doing a surprise engagement is that, assuming you are fairly good friends with the person you are planning on proposing to, they know what you're doing about 98% of the time. As this was the case with Nelle and I, all of the scheming, work, and implementation had to happen when she thought I was asleep. Which means I stayed up till like 3am working on the dumb lights. And tulle-ing them was no picknick either. I got 14 meters of tulle, and had to quarter it lengthwise to use it. Cutting 14 meters of tulle in half, and cutting those halves in half, took a fair amount of time that I wish I had been sleeping. The generator to run the lights was found, and fixed up a bit, and ended up running pretty well. Everything was falling into place. The church here owns an amp that runs off a rechargeable motorcycle battery, so I figured I'd bring that up there too so we could have carefully chosen music playing at the right moment.

The next hurdle was how and when to get back to the place to do the decorations. It is a public building, in the middle of a park, so I figured I'd go up on Friday night and do it then, as Nelle and I were planning on hiking on Saturday (the hike had been planned for about 2 weeks). There were a few problems- 1. there was a concert at the school Friday night that would probably go pretty late, and 2. it was a lot of work to do by myself. I also wanted to have a surprise engagement party at her aunt's house, but I couldn't pass out the invites until the end of the concert late Friday night, or else all the kids would have given away the secret. In the end, I asked 2 HS guys if they wanted to spend the night helping me set up for my engagement in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. They, of course, were thrilled. I then told Nelle that I had made a commitment to look after some guys on Friday night, so we couldn't do our usual Friday-night-date. Because my car was in the shop getting serviced (shakken...what a perfect time...) we were borrowing Nelle's aunt's car, which is big and strong and 4WD, which is good for driving in ice and snow, to drive out on our hike. This also worked well to get Nelle in the house for the surprise party afterwards, as we had to return the car. Wheels within wheels...

As a quick aside, may I just say that getting engaged really, really sucks. Being engaged, now that's awesome. But I honestly hated the fact that I had to lie to Nelle, point blank lie to her face, in order to pull this off. Lying and deception are not things that I think are the basis for a good relationship. Not only that, but the one person that I would tell everything to is the one person that I can say nothing to about the thing that is consuming my life and all my spare time. I'm fairly good at lying (unfortunate result of my high school days), but I almost blew it so many times just because we always talk about how we spent our time that day. And I frantically doing about a jillion things at once, almost driving off the road on ice, having hilarious conversations with her relatives about our imminent engagement, all of which I couldn't talk to her about. I actually started typing letters to her during this time, cuz I hated that I couldn't talk to her about it.

At any rate, I gave the invitations to a trusted few, with instructions not to pass them out until after the concert. I drove Nelle directly home after the concert, as it was raining, apologized for having booked myself with the guys, drove back and got the guys, went home and loaded all the stuff up in the car, and headed out at about 11:30pm. We got up to the building at about 1:30am, and set up until about 3am. We got home at about 6am, I slept from about 6:30 to 8:00, and got up to go out hiking with Nelle. I had been averaging about 3 hours of sleep every night since Monday night. Yikes.

So, Nelle none the wiser, we went hiking. It was a beautiful winter day, snow on the ground, frost all over the ground suddenly caving when we stepped on it. We went bushwhacking for a few hours, thought we were lost, then suddenly found ourselves. We sang hymns at the top of our lungs, bickered over nothing, had good conversations about the uncertainty of life. All this time I was trying really hard not to grin constantly. I mean, she had no idea that this would be the day that she was getting engaged.

We got back from the hike earlier than I intended, so we killed some time at a local noodle shop, sharing a tempura soba. I told her that I had talked to my dad, and he told me about a really cool lookout on some mountian that we should visit if we were out in the woods with a car. I had told Nelle that we should go, so we headed out to “look” for it. Even with the hour or so we killed eating, we were still going to get up there well before dark, which was not good. I decided that we would get lost—the roads out there were all very tiny, windey, unmarked roads, so it wouldn't be unlikely that we'd get lost. In the end we did actually get lost, but not by design or intention. We really did genuinely get lost, which I thought was hilarious. Nelle didn't mind, but she didn't know why I thought it was so funny. I think, in retrospect, it was the sleep deprivation laughing, which was dangerous. Fortunately for me, I am apparently somewhat bizarre anyways sometimes, so she just shrugged it off.

Getting lost had cost us more time than I intended, so we ended up getting to the mountain about an hour after dark, which was not good. Remember, I had a surprise party planned, which means that people were all going to show up at a certain time, so I had to get back by then. Which, of course, we didn't. The entire way up, Nelle was acutally driving (illegally...), and I was fumbling with the map, “trying to figure out where this crazy thing my dad told me about was”. We finally got there, and I told Nelle that I had actually been up here when I was a kid, just like my dad said! There was some hiking involved, and I needed to cover the fact that I knew where we were going. As we got closer and closer, I got more and more nervous (actually, I'm getting nervous all over again just retelling the story), and just when we could see the building ahead, I told her that I really, really had to poo. I'd been building this up for a while—she'd brought a mug of espresso coffee that we'd been drinking all day, and I told her that it had finally worked it's majic on me, and I needed to go. The woods behind us were totally clear, since it was winter and there was snow everywere, so I told her that I was going ahead a ways to poo on the other side of the building where she couldn't see. This was my great escape. I had to get ahead of her and start the generator, and pull the amp out and get it all set up on the top—both the generator and amp had been stored there from the night before. I set up the amp, then ran back down to start the generator. This was the moment of truth. I knew that if anything were to go wrong, this would be it, and it would blow the whole thing. So, I sat down to start the generator. It has a pull-cord, like a lawn-mower, and no matter how many times I yanked that thing, it just would not start. To make matters worse, if I let the cord back in too fast, it would vibrate going back in, which made a really loud, high-pitched sound that was audible for about 100km in every direction. After about 5 minutes of alternately swearing and praying, it reluctantly started, though it didn't sound that great. I ran back down to Nelle, who was freaked out. I told her that I'd been pooping and I heard someone in the building, so I snuck over and saw someone starting a generator. I speculated that perhaps there was some sort of powered weather machinery in the building. She bought it, but she was still freaked out.

It was perfect. It was totally dark, and I had “accidentally” forgotten our flashlights, although in reality, I had mine with me in my bag. I just didn't' want her to be able to see the stuff on the railings, or the amp. We got up on the top level, and I set my digicam up on a ledge, the video function running. Nelle walks to the railing, and you can hear her say “what is this? Hey, there's tulle on this!” and at that moment I plugged in the lights and the entire place lit up, and she stopped talking words that made sense. I had a poem memorized, by E. E. Cummings, one of her favorite poets (“I love you much (most beautiful darling)”, in case you're interested), which I'd been reciting to myself over and over, all day long, but at that exact moment, I totally and completely blanked, and I just knelt there, looking up at her. I had to pull the paper out of my pocket as a prompt, then I did ok. So, I stumbled through the poem, asked her if she would do me the honor of being my wife, and allow me the honor of being her husband. She did manage to say yes, and I put the ring on her finger. Then, we stood, and kissed our first kiss. (sigh) I am a romance MACHINE!

The story's not quite over yet. As we were standing there, hugging and (cough) whatnot, the generator coughed once, raced, then died. Turns out we had run it too long the night before while setting up, and it was totally out of gas! We had a good laugh about it, and headed home, both exhausted. She was driving again, and said something to the effect of “My apartment had better not be full of people when I get home!” which I assured her, it wasn't. We went to return the car, however, and about 25 kids came out of the back room to hug and congratulate us. We hung out with them for a while, told the story that you have just read, and eventually went to our homes.

In spite of the fact that this story is about 2 pages too long, there are about a thousand funny/interesting details that I have left out, like how I had to push my car out of her parking lot for fear of waking her up, how I “accidentally” overslept so we late for our hike late, how she “broke” the news that we were planning on getting married to her cousin, who was in fact helping me plan for the engagement, not to mention all the conversations that I had in secret with people, coaching them to say certain things when me and Nelle came by later to ask about something, etc. My purpose in proposing was accomplished—Nelle had no idea that I'd been working on this stuff into the wee hours of the morning, she had no idea that I had a custom designed ring for her, and, most importantly, until about 1 second before I plugged in the lights, she had no idea what was happening. And she was thrilled that I'd done all of it for her, and she felt loved.

Sometime I'll post some stuff about how I feel about getting married to Nelle, how I never prayed for guidance regarding marrying her, how I feel like a victim of circumstance more than anything, but that'll have to wait for some other time. For now, I have my actual job to get back to!