Engaging Conversation

A few weeks ago, Goat and I trekked to Columbus, Ohio to see Tom Waits perform at the historic Ohio Theater. While we were there, we got to see his friend Jerm, who has been living in the city for a bundle of years working as a doctor. Jerm recently got engaged to a woman who he met while on a rotation in a hospital in the infectious diseases wing. If you can fall in love with someone over the beds of people dying of horrid wasting diseases, you really have got a good thing there. She is a very cool woman and we had a great time visiting with them and surviving a huge bachelorette party doing shots of tequila in the hotel bar. Ugh.

Of course, the show was surreal and astounding, as a Tom Waits show always is. It is impossible to describe, so I won't even try.

On our drive home the next day, Goat and I decided that we would stop at all the antique shops that we zipped past the day before on our trip down. We wandered and found some treasures (like the collection of Camp Snoopy glasses)and kept an eye out for an engagement ring. Over the last few months, Goat and I have been talking about getting hitched and while I'm not too traditional, I did have two rules. One, do not propose to me without a ring. Two, that ring has to be pretty special since it will be one of the only pieces of jewelry that Goat will have to buy me. I'm not a jewelry person, I don't even have my ears pierced and I tend to find suitable jewelry for myself in the plumbing section of most hardware stores. So the engagement ring has to be something else.

I love art deco a lot and I quickly found that art deco engagement ring replicas can run many thousands of dollars. Eek! Our friend who is a jeweler told us that good deals can be found on antique engagement rings at estate sales and antique stores. So Goat and I were on a casual lookout. Our last stop before home was at Jeffery's Antique Gallery in Northwest Ohio, and within 3 minutes of arriving, I found a ring that I loved. I walked into the 38,000 square foot building featuring 250 vendors and find the engagement ring of my dreams in three minutes. Goat and I combed the rest of the antique mall for another two and a half hours and didn't find another ring that was anywhere close to being as cool. We did find an old Kiss album though. After talking to our jeweler friend over the phone, describing the ring and discussing rock swapping options, we got the ring.

Goat and I walked out to the car, passing the ring back and forth and talking about getting it sized and how fun it will be to show it to our jeweler friend and see what he thinks. How a square diamond would look good in place of the round one in the setting and how the sapphires on the sides were so cool. Goat suddenly stopped walking and asked for the ring. Then, he proposed in the middle of the parking lot and we held up traffic as I said yes and we smooched and giggled. He thought it was cruel to buy me such a beautiful ring that I loved so much and then not let me wear it. Plus, he knew I was going to say yes.

Fortunately, right next to my ring in the showcase was a man's ring, the only piece of men's jewelery in the showcase. It was a beautiful silver ring with turquoise and a wheat pattern that matched the wheat pattern on my ring. We bought the ring, just liking the pattern and the stones and it looked great on Goat's hand. So I used that ring to propose to him (I never really understood why men didn't get an engagement ring) and he said yes.

So, there it is. A little story about the engagement that Goat and I got into a few weeks back. Wedding to follow in June 2009.