It's official. At 5:13 pm on Saturday 10-Nov-01, I got down on my knee and Tracey accepted my Marriage Proposal.

It was a beautiful day at the Renaissance Festival in Magnolia, an hour north of Houston. Tracey was wearing a lovely garland wreath. We had our clasped hands cast in a wax sculpture. We ate, drank, and made merry! We walked around a lot, and enjoyed a number of performances. We had our Tarot Cards read to see what the future has to hold. The Reader was reasonably accurate, but way off when he said I was uncertain about commitments and wouldn't make a decision until next year! As many of you know, I'd been making plans for this event for quite a while now.

There was an outdoor wedding chapel, where we listened to the harp music and watched the entrance march for one of the ceremonies. Then we lingered in the Rose Garden at dusk, enjoying the ambiance, smooching until there was sufficient privacy, and I got up the courage to finally "Do It". We sat on a bench surrounded by flowers, I took her hand, slipped to my knee, and made a fair presentation (only choked on a few words) of the speech I had rehearsed every time she went to the bathroom that day.

Several other innuendos, if you're still reading this far. We had gone to the festival the previous weekend (escorting Doug on his first official Date), and I had anticipated doing it then. However, half way through the day, my back popped out of whack and locked up. We had to get a wheel chair to get me out of the park. Lots of Ice, and the appropriate chiropractic pop that evening, and all was fine - that seems to happen once or twice every year for the past decade. So, since we didn't get to enjoy all of the festival, we made plans to return the next weekend. Since its such a long drive, we were also going to try driving up Friday evening and camping in Sam Houston State Park. But that plan got loused up when we didn't get our camping registration paid on time, and they sold out. So then Tracey wasn't sure she wanted to go up there again -- but I persuaded her, and I think she is now very happy that we did!

A Spring ceremony is what we have in mind, but obviously there are lots of details and logistics to get worked out in the next few months. First order of business is a Ring. I wanted to have a gift in hand, and tried shopping on my own -- but ultimately whimped out when it came time to make a final selection, and decided it would be better to have her help pick out what she likes. So we are going to go to the Diamond Wholesaler as soon as possible this week.

OK, thats all for now . . . Life is good today, but I still gotta do some work here at the office. It looks like I'll be making my annual trek to Norway over Thanksgiving week, returning early December, and my customers here in Houston have a long list of things to do before I leave.

23 Jul 2003 04:07 PM

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