Anniversary

Andrea is an amazing girl. She's patient with me. She's extremely generous and thoughtful. She's intelligent - a perfect mixture of nerdy, dorky, geeky, and just plain smart. She's fantastically beautiful, but it's hard to catch on camera unless she's unaware that her picture is being taken. She's got a great sense of humor. She's a bit crazy, but so am I... we like to keep things interesting. I am automatically happy when I am around her, and her smile seems to brighten a few shades when she's around me. We have excellent verbal and non-verbal communication skills - we often revert to a primitive system of grunts and noises when people aren't around. She can handle (just barely) the massive amount of affection I give her. After a year, I feel I know all of her quirks and she's aware of all of mine. And after a year, I can count the number of arguments we've had on the hand of a bad shop teacher.

To make our anniversary special I decided to cook her a nice dinner at home from scratch. I asked her what she wanted. She said, "fettuccine alfredo with garlic bread." I asked her what she wanted for dessert and she replied, "chocolate strawberry cheesecake." I told her that I was going to cook us dinner from scratch and she said both of those recipes were difficult and I told her, "I like a challenge!" So, I cooked us dinner. Everything was fantastic! Apparently, I am a really good cook! After dinner, we exchanged anniversary gifts.

She had gotten me a very nice telescope! I told her a long time ago that I've always wanted one. I even took her to an event that happens every Friday at Mansfield Dam called the "Austin Dam Astronomers". But for whatever reason, I just never bought one for myself. She remembered this and did all the research and found a very nice one for me!

I have been very happy in this relationship. I couldn't imagine anyone more suitable for me. I love Andrea very, very much. She knows this. I knew I was going to marry her. In fact, I had told her that I was going to marry her. We had discussed the all the important issues: living together (my house or hers?), future children (they're gonna be really hairy), finances (who gets to be the lucky one who stays home to raise the kids and doesn't have to work?), etc. These discussions were exciting! Only one more thing had to be done...

Yesterday evening, after dinner, I gave Andrea a ring. It had been in plain view in the display cabinet with my rock collection throughout dinner. After she gave me my gift, I got up, opened the ring box, and turned on one of the cabinet lights to light it up. She got up, walked over to it and asked, "Is that for THIS finger!?" "Yup", I replied and smiled. I asked her to marry me, and she said yes!

I'm engaged!

(You can see pictures of the ring if you follow the link at the top right to my Flickr account.)