The News!
As most of my loyal blog readers know by now, Todd and I got engaged last Wednesday night! We are excited of course, and I'm doing a good job of reeling myself in now and reminding myself that planning a wedding shouldn't take over my life (it took me a couple of days to get through the initial panic of "what do I do?!" to get to this point, admittedly). It's all about getting married rather than the wedding day, which, while it should be fun, isn't the main event.

So how did it happen? Well, Tuesday was our three year anniversary since our first date (the blog entry can be found for it dated November 7, 2004--I would have linked to the specific entry, but it was proving to be challenging). We ended up going out for our fancy dinner on Wednesday since I had already had book club scheduled on Tuesday (I do love my book club). Todd made reservations at Marche on Randolph Street, and (lucky us!), Wednesday is their night of their Prix Fixe deal. Marche was fun and yummy and looked like it bought decorations off the set of Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge." (see more about Marche at the end of this entry)

We had a great relaxing dinner and then headed back to Todd's place where we were going to relax and watch a DVRed episode of "30 Rock." As we were about to walk into his door, I was yammering away in the hallway, and Todd paused and stated "I got you a present." Next thing I know, he was on one knee with a box in his outstretched hand. People, I was flabbergasted. Flabbergasted, but thrilled. While I knew that we would eventually get engaged, I figured that it would be early next year or something. It was then that I found out that Todd's been planning this for months now, researched and found the ring on his own, and even called my parents last week for permission. He did an excellent job of picking a ring and keeping it a secret, although he did confess that in the elevator from the garage up to his place he had to concentrate on "acting like [him]self."

So: yay! I'm constantly distracted by the awesomeness of my ring; I've never been a jewelry kind of girl, but I'm lerving the shininess. And of course, I'm so happy to make it official with the best dude ever.

Note: Y'all, RUN to Marche for their Prix Fixe deals! It's 28 bucks total and you get any appetizer, main course, and dessert you want off of the menu. I chose the steak as my main dish and that, alongside my french onion soup and my bittersweet chocolate cake flanked with mint chip (with fresh mint leave tastiness) would have normally set me back $51. My steak dinner alone normally costs more than the price of the prix fixe meal! I'm overcome by value and it was all super delicious. Go, go, go!

Struck
So I recently sent Robin a bunch of my favorite "This American Life" episodes, because I know that he's going to be putting in long hours when he's opening another branch of Kuai, and he'll want something to entertain him either at the restaurant or driving back and forth to the restaurant. He called tonight to give me feedback on some of the episodes that he's listened to so far, and one of them includes one of my absolute favorite acts: an oral reading of the short story "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story" by Russell Banks. I remember when I first heard that story when it aired I was dumbstruck. It is such amazing writing and reverberates with sadness.

Robin told me that he found the full short story online (the reading is slightly abridged on the show), so I googled it immediately and found it here. I suspect that it's even more powerful when you hear the most excellent reading of it on the show, so you can find that here. Get ready to pay attention for awhile, though, because the entire reading is 42 minutes.

Annie in the city
Annie came to town this weekend! Her family comes from Chicago originally, so she didn't need to do any sightseeing. This meant it was a very relaxed weekend, and lots of popping off at our leisure to do whatever suited us. The best kind of vacation, methinks.

The weekend revolved around prioritizing the kinds of cuisine that Annie can't obtain in her current city of Gainesville, so we had: Thai, Chicago hot dogs, Mexican, Mediterranean, dim sum, and heavy metal burgers at Kuma's Korner (which, incidentally, was just featured on "Check Please" this past weekend, so even though we got there before 5 pm on Sunday, there was still a wait). We did quite well for ourselves.

Now we're launching into a busy week: lots of assessments, meetings to schedule, and report cards to be done and distributed. This is the last five day week for a while, though, since next week is Veteran's Day, and then the week after that is Thanksgiving. Sweeeet!