That pretty much sums up the basics.
Read on if you're interested in (cue Paul Harvey) the rest of the story....
This weekend, totally unknown to Eva-Lynn, I flew out to Portland to pop the Big Question. Bear with me for a second.... for the proposal to make much sense, you'll need a super-quick intro to how we met....
Eva-Lynn and I had been in a couple classes together, but we really started to get to know each other in the fall of '06, while we were both working for the Science Outreach program at GFU. One of the main things I did was take the StarLab around to local elementary schools. The StarLab is a huge, inflatable planetarium that I would set up in the school gymnasium and give astronomy presentations in.
So... not only was the StarLab one of the main ways Val and I got to know each other, but it is clearly the ultimate romantic proposal spot for two science nerds such as ourselves. (Sparkling artificial stars, slowly spinning across an inky-black nylon sky...)
Saturday morning, with the help of many people (tons of thanks to Dwight Kimberly, the Starrs, the Shuckerows, and Eva-Lynn's parents!!!), I was able to pick up the StarLab and get it set up at Eva-Lynn's mom's school (her mom is an elementary school principal).
Her parents lured her there on some pretense... and as she walked into the room, she stopped, got very confused, then blushed bright red as she realized what might be going on. Her reaction as she crawled in and heard "our song" is priceless:
.....aaaaand, that's about enough. The rest is private. ;)
As you can see, I had a bottle of sparkling cider, and also a couple wineglasses... but no bottle opener. Oops.
She even helped clean up after her own proposal. What a girl!
Me, bagging myself a wife.
Us watching the video that's posted above... she liked it. :)
We spent the rest of the day revisiting many of the places we went on our first few dates. For example, Date #2 was a visit to OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry...
...aka, "Nerd Heaven."
On Date #2, we also saw Superman Returns at the Omnimax. Here, Val superbly transforms the Ocean Film Festival poster into something much more... Super.
At Powells (a massive bookstore in Portland), Val bought a Christian romance novel entitled A Bride Most Begrudging. I purchased a book with the much more creative title GENOME.
For my birthday last year, Val and her parents gave me tickets to the Treasures of Ancient Egypt display at the Portland Art Museum.... and then she came down with a migraine at the last minute. Since the tickets were non-refundable and non-exchangeable (lame!), we went in anyway... and she ended up running to the bathroom to puke about eight times. To make it up to her, I got us tickets to the 3D Center of Art and Photography. It was actually pretty cool... and I'm pretty sure the $7.00 I spent was nearly equivalent to whatever the other tickets cost. :)
Enjoying some Thai sweet tea at the Bangkok Palace.... "Notice anything different about me?"
"On my hand??? On my FINGER?!!??!"
Both halves of the ring were actually her great-grandmother's... the engagement ring section can be linked to its matching wedding band. If you think that the finger looks unusually hairy for a girl, it's because it's actually my left pinky.
The finale of the evening was a visit to the Rose Garden stadium... where our very first date had been. When I decided to fly home and propose this weekend, I checked who was playing that evening... and it turned out to be the Blue Man Group!!!! SO awesome! Their show was absolutely spectacular:
If you look at the bottom left and right, you can see a couple of the Blue Men pounding away on some drums, resulting in sprays of what looked like colored paint (but what we decided was probably just lit-up water). Anyway, it was incredibly awesome, and also very funny.
Our best imitation of a photo we took....
....the last time we were there at a concert, on our first date. Man, we were a lot less pasty-white in mid-fall than we are in mid-winter...
And, finally, we grabbed Frosties on the way home, in honor of the time we got free ones by showing up at the Wendy's drive-through right at closing time. Sometimes the best things in life are free....
And that's our story.... hope you enjoyed it! There are a bunch more photos here, if you want to check them out. Sorry this all wasn't posted sooner... the only downside to spending a spectacular weekend with a the coolest girl on earth is that when you get back, you still have to do all the homework that you should have been doing all weekend. ;)
