All The Juicy Details

For those of you wanting to know the how and when of my recent engagement (Yeah!), here is the vital information.

Friday, October 14, 2005. 7:30 PM

Brad and I make our way down to Fall for Greenville - a fall festival that stretches the entire length of Main St. and showcases the restaurants and businesses of Greenville. Our first priority: food. We're both starving. The trick is to find something we both want as quickly as possible. There's just so much to choose from.

We rather quickly decide on some Japanese teriaki chicken and rice. We get rather substantial portions (usually these tents give the smallest amounts conceivable) and try to find somewhere to sit and eat. Brad says over his shoulder, "Follow me."

We head towards the Plaza Bergamo - a concrete square area on Main St. with tables and behind which is a grassy area with benches under a long, vine-covered arbor on the left side. He heads towards these benches. He asks me which one is "our" bench. You see, we sat on one on our first date and had our first kiss on the same bench. I tell him it is the third one down.

We sit on the bench and begin to eat. I can't for the life of me understand WHY we are sitting here because it's very windy and chilly and he's shivering so bad he can barely eat his rice. But, sit here we do.

After we finish, we sit for a moment and Brad says to me, "I think your phone's ringing." I listen and hear nothing. "Nope," I say.

We wait a few minutes just sitting together. (I'm still confused as to why, but I'm not complaining)

"I really think your phone is ringing," he repeats.

I check my phone. It hadn't rang, but there was a beep because a picture message was showing as having arrived.

I think this is odd as Brad is the only who sends me pictures messages, and he's sitting right beside me. I open my phone and wait for the picture file to open. The title of the picture is "Honey?"

The picture I see is Brad and Blue (his dog) together. Brad is holding an object in his hand.

Before I realize what the object in his hand is, Brad gets down on one knee in front of me and holds out an object in his hand.

I stare kinda stupidly at the object while holding my opened phone in one of my hands. As I hear the words, "Heather Von Kamp, will you marry me?" I realize what the object is. It's a ring box with a very sparkly thing in it.

I almost drop the phone and my empty hand goes to my mouth. My eyes tear up and I start to chockingly cry. It takes me about a minute before I finally gasp out, "Yes."

Brad smiles. He takes out the ring (white gold band, round diamond), puts it on my finger, and kisses me while still kneeling on the ground.

When I start breathing normally again and can think a clear thought, I review the picture on the phone better and realize that Brad had taken the picture at the very spot we were at. At the bottom Brad had typed, "Will you marry us?" but I hadn't scrolled down far enough to see it before Brad actually proposed. (He kinda jumped the gun, but it was so cute=)

After we talked for a few minutes and I called my parents (who had known for two weeks and never let on), we went back to the festival and joined some friends of ours who knew it was coming and we celebrated long into the night.

Brad said forever ago that he really wanted to surprise me with the proposal. He couldn't have picked a more surprising time. I was totally not expecting it. I had told him not to propose in a big crowd of people. Well, Fall for Greenville draws in 20,000 to Greenville, so I naturally didn't think he'd do it then. Technically, though, he kept to my demands by proposing in a secluded spot away from the 20,000 people, but close enough so we could join them and I could be super excited around them all.

That, my friends, is my proposal. Wasn't it wonderful? (Sigh)

Going to the chapel

I'm getting married!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Coming: September 2006

Academic Atrophy

My scholarly muscles are being tested for the first time in years, and I feel every strain. The muscle memory is still intact, thankfully, but my return to academia is slow. I've forgotten what it's like to really prep for a paper - and the prep I'm doing now is the biggest of my life (for my PhD dissertation). I have to write a fairly decent proposal to be accepted into a program. It's a steep mountain, and if I'm not qualified for the task, I'll not be climbing and my time in Scotland will remain restricted to my dreams.

I'm in training after some time off, and I'm finding the return more difficult than I anticipated. Not only are my brain muscles working overtime, but my nerves are quaking too.

If this stress doesn't at least equate to some calorie burn, it will be a complete waste of time.

Nostalgia

I'm a very simple person at heart. I don't want very many things. I want a house, a family, and food on the table. I want enough money to provide for my someday children. That's it. I don't have to have a really nice house or a fancy car or tons of things to clutter my home. I don't need the latest and greatest technological advances. I just want a good, peaceful, uncomplicated life.

I'm very much wishing life was like it was in the early 1800s. People lived primarily on farms where they created their own food from crops and cattle. I would welcome the simplicity of waking up every day to spend most of the day working in the fields or cooking. I would gladly spend my evenings quietly in front of a good fire sewing or reading or playing with my children. I would like to live in a time when cash money wasn't such an essential and careers weren't really in existence let alone so cutthroat. I would love to return to an era when morals, decency, compassion and neighborhood togetherness were not archaic terms.

I'm tired of our cash cow society. I'd rather go over to my neighbor's and say, "I've got some canned peaches to trade for some wheat. Sound fair?" rather than picking out the cheapest wheat flour amidst the plenty at Wal-Mart.

Yeah, I'd hate the disease and poor medical help back then, but if I didn't know any differently, I suppose it wouldn't bother me. Medicine would be my only concern about going back in time.

Sorry for my rant. I'm just tired of life being so complex 24-7.

Ah, Rain

I'm not usually a rain fan. I like bright, sunny days with few clouds and no haze. I strongly dislike gloomy, pale-gray days without any sun at all. These days make me feel depressed.

Today, I am thrilled to look out my window and see that it's pouring.

The month of September was a long, hot (85-95 every day), no-rain month. Everything has turned brown and crispy. Leaves weren't changing colors as much as drying up and just falling off. Even with the persistent sun, my view was depressing.

Personally, the month of September has also been a dry month spiritually. Hopes and dreams and efforts have been burnt by the blazing heat of disappointment. I need a soaking wash of fulfilled desires. I need refreshing.

Now, the rain is falling nice and steady outside, quenching the thirst of parched land.

I'm hoping merciful drops from Heaven will soon quench my thirst, too.