I'm happy to announced that Rachel and I are engaged to be married. I proposed Saturday in the Marin Headlands and Rachel said yes and we are wonderfully happy about the whole thing.

The longer version is that Rachel had to work Saturday morning, after she got home we had some lunch and she passed out on the couch. I packed a backpack with some snacks and drinks while she slept. I woke her up, and we took Chufi on his first exploratory walk in his harness out on our deck. (Quite the successfully trip out for him.) Despite it getting on in the afternoon and Rachel being super tired I talked her into going out to the Headlands (which is really just a few minutes away from our place in sausalito.) We tried to go to the lighthouse, but it turns out to only be open a total of 9 hours a week. We drove along to Rodeo beach, parked, and walked up and down the beach in the intensely bright sun. We moved the car down to the far lot where the surfers all park (and the restrooms are located) and despite some grumblings started hiking along the coastal trail there. We made it away and set out our picnic blanket and sat our selves down with the Pacific in front of us and coastal scrub and grass and little flowers all around.

We enjoyed our snacks and chatted and admired nature. Which was all well and good - but I was having a hard time getting Rachel to look away from me long enough to get the ring out and get to one knee. I tried getting her to roll down the grassy hill we were on since it would be a funny kind of thing we would do. That almost worked, she just scooted up the hill a little bit and rolled once and no opportunity presented itself. I was pushing for a bigger roll, but apparently there were spittle bugs all around our little grassy spot on the hill. Sensing an opportunity I tried to get our favorite entomologist to find one. She did get up started up the hill away from me, so I pull the ring box out of my pocket and just managed to get it open before she started turning around. Not being quite ready or at one knee and hoping she would quickly get back to the bug hung I stuck the ring behind my back and asked about the spittle bugs. No additional spittle bugs had been found but she started in on what was behind my back, and my clever reply of 'nothing' wasn't believed. However I took charge and pointed out some birds off behind her and in the time it took her to turn and look for the birds and say something to the effect of 'what are you talking about, there aren't any birds over there' I had managed to open the ring box and drop to one knee and when she turned around I proposed. She said yes, and thus we start the adventure!

For you ring afficanados, the engagement ring is a platinum band with channel cut diamonds and a bezel set piece of black Australian opal from Lightning Ridge, lots of color in the stone. It took quite a while to work out the ring as my basic restrictions from years of being together were: No big diamond, no gold, and no idea what the ringsize is. I worked out the kind of opal Rachel likes, but picking out the opal was still hard, they all look different, and I have a hard enough time buying things when I have total knowledge of a product. Eventually after a might search I found one that was great. Working out the ring size of someone who doesn't wear rings on a regular basis was pretty tricky too, I ended up a tiny bit big, but easy enough to get it sized down.

I think the best reaction award goes to my Mom who did a happy freakout, than ran off and in a flash had grabbed a sealed card that was addressed to us. We opened it to discover it was a congraluations on getting engaged card - dated 2005 - that she had been saving for us since then. Classic.