We have a favorite spot at the San Diego Wild Animal Park up in the more forest/garden section that's less highly traveled than the rest of the park. It's a little nook with a bench in the shade in a little grove of pine trees by a creek and a little waterfall. We'd gone to the Wild Animal Park in the morning on Saturday, September 23, 2000. We're members of the San Diego Zoo/Wild Animal Park and we visit them fairly often, so this was business as usual. We went on the monorail, saw the bird show, and generally did the same stuff we always do. Eventually we wandered up to that spot we like, and we stood there for a few minutes in silence, just enjoying the breeze and the afternoon and the sour sweetness of the lemonade flavored icee we were sharing. David handed the icee back over to me, and hanging on the spoon was a beautiful silver ring with moons and star shapes cut into it. I looked up at him, and he looked into my eyes and said 'Will you marry me?'

My heart _stopped_ (for just a second. or that's what it felt like). I got this huge grin on my face and babbled some approximation of 'yes, I'd love to, I'd like nothing better' -- you get the idea. And we hugged and smooched and grinned goofily at each other.

He explained that the silver ring was just temporary, since he had no idea what kind of ring I would want (this might have something to do with the fact that in the two years we'd been together, he'd never seen me wear a ring). So we went ring shopping and I got to pick out exactly what I wanted. Since I'm not used to wearing jewelry (I think that I'm missing the X chromosome gene for that somehow) I didn't want a ring that had anything sticking up that I'd have to worry about getting caught on things, getting in the way of gymnastics or kayaking or anything. So my ring has 12 ideal cut diamonds that total 1/4 carat channel-set in a platinum band. I just *LOVE* it.

This is so exciting! I'm getting married!