Amy and Alex's Bogus Journey

We got engaged!

Yeah.  This totally happened yesterday.  And Amy didn’t see it coming! It was great!  Amy had been working insanely stressful (and questionably legal) night hours in the pediatric ICU all week, and this was her first weekend off of the month.  For months, I told her to keep the weekend open so we could rent a uhaul and pick up an old couch from my parents (a great way to spend a free weekend, right?)  In the days before I told her that plans fell through and instead, our friend Ciara had invited us for drinks and lunch at the University of Wisconsin Union Terrace at noon.  Keep in mind, Amy’s been working nights and noon feels like midnight for her…. so when I INSISTED we head for drinks at noon, she reluctantly agreed.

When we arrived at the terrace I got a text from Ciara that everthing was set…because we weren’t going to get lunch… I was about bloooow amy’s mind.  Last year, after we’d been dating a month or two we walked up the lakeshore path after an afternoon at the Union Terrace.  We came across a little wooden deck that overlooked lake Mendota and on the outer edge of the wood railing, I carved our initials with a key.  In that time, I made sure we never went back to visit that site…. I had plans for it! 

So, I pretended that Ciara’s text was her saying she was running late.  As we sat at one of the terrace tables I tried (and failed) to act casual and said, “Hey…. why don’t we take a walk and see if our initials on that railing are still there?”  Amy thought it was a weird, random request, but she went with the flow, like she always does.  So we started walked up the path and I did everything in my power to appear that I was not freaking out on the inside.  As we neared the deck, I could see a string quartet loitering at the periphery.  Amy thought it was kind of strange, but I just said, “Well, I don’t think their playing yet,” and we headed to the railing.  Once we walked past the string quartet, they immediately went to their music stands and were ready to play.

As Amy looked over the railing, she saw (in addition to the initials I carved over a year ago) the new carving…

When she turned around, I was down on one knee and the string quartet (the amazing Quartessence) was playing their custom made arrangment of our favorite song, “Space Age Love Song,” by A Flock of Seagulls.

And it was awesome.

Oh yeah, she said yes!

Home Again

Whew!  Well, Amy and I made it back in one piece and Greenie…. that beautiful barf-colored bastard, drove like a dream.  As I pulled in to work today, the “maintenance required” light clicked on.  3 weeks after his last tune up, he’s already due for his 5,000 mile maintenance.  This was the mother of all road trips.

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