A few weeks later, “I thought that for your birthday we would do something just the two of us, like going away for the weekend. I found a nice B&B in the Berkshires.” I agree, easily convinced by the promise of a whirlpool tub in the bathroom at the inn. We take a few days off work and plan a long weekend together. I’m now thoroughly convinced that he is not planning on proposing, but was expecting some piece of jewelry to placate me, as it were.

The morning we are meant to leave, he goes out to pick up the rental car and to run a few birthday errands. The hours drag by until he returns bearing a large wicker basket, which I’m told not to open. A bit later I’m allowed to peep inside the basket and see three wrapped boxes: one the size of a rubik’s cube, one the size of a shoe box, and one long, rectangular box. “Well, that cube is certainly too large to be a ring. Maybe he got me a bracelet instead.” We add a bottle of wine and one of scotch to the basket, along with a stack of DVDs, and pack it into the car.

Driving west, he mentions several times that if I want, we can always cut the weekend short. I dismiss it every time, not understanding why he keeps bringing it up. The narrow roads are messy from recent snowfall, and it takes us several hours to reach North Adams.

The Porches is a gorgeous, cozy inn comprised of several brightly-colored houses on River Street, just a short walk from Mass MOCA. We have a one-bedroom suite in the red house, which contains a sitting room with couch and desk, a bedroom with feather covers and pillows, and a beautiful bathroom. There is slight disappointment when we learn that the inn doesn’t have a restaurant or room service, squelching my dream of pancakes in bed on my birthday.

Breakfast arrives the next morning in tin lunchpails instead. A thermos of coffee, glass bottles of juice and milk, and a croissant with butter and jam. We eat in the cushy feather bed, watching Futurama on DVD. It’s February 10, 2008, my thirtieth birthday.

“After this episode, why don’t you open your gifts? Start with the small square one.”

I go to the bathroom to wash jam and crumbs off my hands, then lift the lid on the basket. “The little one isn’t in here.” “OK, well, open your card first, then we’ll look for it.”

The card simply says, “I love you … Always.”

He pulls his right hand out from under the pillow, a red and gold box open to reveal a ring. “Lizzy, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

“Yes. Really? Yes.”

Then several quiet minutes of hugs, kisses, and staring at the ring. The other two gifts are opened to reveal a bottle of Cartier-label champagne and a pair of champagne flutes. I pull the cork and champagne spills down the side of the bottle. Rushing to the bathroom, I start to put my hand under the tap and then pull back, some instinctual reaction to not get the ring wet. “It’s platinum. I think it’ll be ok,” he laughs from the other room.

“Did you tell anyone that you were going to propose?” “Well, Mom and my brothers. And Allen and Reid. And Tacita and Catherine went shopping with me. And Cara. And then Kim because I got nervous on Thursday night and needed another opinion on the ring.”

“I didn’t ask your parents, though, because I thought you would want to tell them yourself.” The offers to leave early suddenly make sense. “We should drive to Connecticut tomorrow and tell them in person!” “Do you want to call anyone now?” “No, I want to tell my parents first.” “Um, I’m actually a little surprised that you aren’t freaking out and calling everyone right now.”

The ring is miles too big, so I cut a length of yarn from my knitting and wrap it around and around the band. It’s snowing again. We cancel the birthday dinner plans and order in pizza, drinking with it the bottle of Hitching Post and a few glasses of scotch.

He tells me that he panicked at the last minute and was worried the ring was gone. “I had the three packages gift wrapped at the paper store. Suddenly I was convinced that the woman had slipped it out of the box, even though I was watching her the whole time. I unwrapped it while you were in the bathroom, because I thought it would be horrible if you opened it and it was empty.” The paper and ribbons were stuffed under his side of the bed.

We leave for Connecticut early on Monday morning, after buying a pair of coffee mugs in the gift shop as a memento. Walking into the deli, Mom is surprised to see us. “I thought you were going to say you eloped, and I would have been so mad,” she tells us later. “We decided to come show you my birthday present,” I say, pulling my hand from my coat pocket. “Oh, Lizzy.” Her voice is softer than I would have expected as well. “Fran, come over here.” “Hey, well it’s about time! Congratulations you two! Did I tell you Doug’s mom died?” and Dad’s back on to other topics like a TV remote on the fritz. Mom pops into excited mode, and starts introducing us to her store friends. Our engagement announcement goes on the chalkboard beside the front door.

After an hour of visiting, we return to Boston and to the Cartier store to have the ring resized. It hurt having to give the ring away for four days. As someone who never felt like an engagement ring would be necessary, I had become impossibly attached to it overnight. This amazing beautiful thing on my hand, all because I was lucky enough for him to love me.

Rarely a day goes by that we don’t have this conversation: “Maybe you didn’t hear, but I’m marrying this terrific guy.” “Oh really? He must be pretty lucky.”

He is lucky, and I am lucky. And I hope we continue to feel so lucky year after year.

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

And away we go.

1. I can’t stand reaching into a bag of ground coffee. When the grounds are too low to reach, I cut off the top of the bag or dump the remaining coffee into a cannister or mason jar.

2. I hate horror movies, but went on first dates to Se7en and Hannibal. I feel nauseous just thinking about this. The relationships were short-lived.

3. I never skipped a class until my junior year of college (American Literature).

4. I studied Spanish for six years and Italian for two and can now speak a near-useless mixture of both. I cannot speak French.

5. I have met four of my favorite authors in person: Julia Child and Jacques Pepin (together at a book signing), Bailey White, and Garret Keizer. The one I would most like to meet is Howard Frank Mosher.

6. I love doing the dishes.

7. I am an lousy speller. Words I have looked up in the course of writing this post: cannister, nauseous, accidentally, unconfident (* not actually a word).

I am tagging the following, if they are so compelled to participate:

• @stuntbox
• @jungshadow
• @bcompton
• @brilliantcrank
• @meetar
• Tori
• Vaguely Unpleasant

Bonus final fact: I hate that I can’t use Unix command-line commands within the Wordpress text field. Ctrl-A, I love you.

That little number hanging out there just really irks me. I primarily use the web interface for Twitter, only occasionally switching to Twitteriffic for high-traffic times (debate, anyone?), so I see that count all the time.

A few weeks ago, @beep tweeted a Lifehacker post on killing the “Election2008″ twitter bar by adding a filter to Adblock Plus. This morning it finally occurred to me that the same method can be used to hide the DM count that irritates me so. Because it uses Adblock, this will only work in Firefox:

1. if you don’t have Adblock Plus installed, get it by searching the Add-ons (under the “Tools” menu
2. open Adblock Preferences and click the “Add filter…” button
3. use this text as the filter: twitter.com#span(id=message_count)
4. Click OK to close Preferences

Reload Twitter and:

Boosh.

* this is a direct quote from the NTD website.

Related: NationMaster: hundreds of compilations of world statistics. I can see myself spending way too much time here.

Dave, you were totally Airwolf; tell The Velvet Marauder I said “hi.”

In a campaign that has deteriorated into a series of articles where Candidate A responds to Candidate B’s remarks about what Candidate A said yesterday, I’m not surprised that this issue slipped under my radar. And in fact I don’t have anything to say on it that you wouldn’t expect from an Obamaniac like myself.

Instead, I want to highlight a single comment of the 315 at time of writing. It’s well-written and reasonable - a rare thing on the political blogs these days - but even more it is a reminder that these candidates are not just debating issues. They are debating issues that affect people. It won’t change Clinton’s life worth a damn whether we have a trade deal with Colombia or not; she can afford to laugh. But James from Wichita might not have a job come next year, and that is no bloody joke.

April 10th, 2008 8:14 pm ET
I do not think this is a laughing matter. The people in the midwest are losing their jobs because of these trade deals so here is my plea…

My Plea to Pennsylvanians

As a Pennsylvanian you have the unique opportunity to save the Democratic Party from more bleeding and giving us the BEST chance to win the White House this Fall.

As much as many folks feel that Hillary is a strong candidate it is time to think about winning. Dragging this contest out, contrary to what some think, will not help our party or the final nominee. It will cause deeper and more severe wounds as the battle is more and more divisive.

As an Obama supporter, I am going to attempt to refrain from pointing out Hillary’s weaknesses and start talking about the issues we care about most… the economy, heath care, Iraq, etc. As long as Hillary hangs on with such a tiny chance of winning, we will be talking about snips and snipes; the Mark Penns, out of context quotes, Bills latest contradiction, and other general non-productive points.

To truly get to contrasting what John McCain has to offer with the promise of great things from Democrats, we need to consolidate our efforts.

I hope that Pennsylvanians will take the opportunity the vote for Obama so we can get on with the General and beat McCain in the Fall.

James, Wichita, KS