She Said Yes!

Well, this is the best way to start a blog that I can think of. Meredith and I got engaged on Friday night! Things didn't go according to my not-so-perfect plan, but fortunately for me it was "good enough!"

My plan was to sit down with her and play a game of Gin on her living room floor (a recent common occurrence for us), and have her draw a card that said "I love you! Follow the music!" right at the same moment that her favorite song, "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters, began to crescendo on my iPod hooked up to speakers in the dining room. I was to synchronize all of this by inserting a 3-minute silent track on my iPod, and by using a 3-minute sand timer to let me know when to let her draw the card.

2 problems with this plan: I had tested the sequence of tracks on my iPod earlier in the day, and after listening to about 1 minute of the 3-minute silent track, I got bored and clicked the "next track" button to Everlong. Unfortunately, this impatience made me miss the fact that after 2 minutes of total silence, the speaker system shuts itself off. I had also placed the sand timer in a spot where I was getting a lot of refraction from the light behind it, so I could only tell when it was getting low, but I couldn't tell when it ran out of sand completely.

So there I was, hemming and hawing, stalling for time, thinking to myself that the song was going to start playing anytime. So after what turned out to be 5 minutes (instead of 3), I finally had her draw the card (which gave her Gin also, by the way). I then excused myself to the other room to find to my chagrin that the music turned itself off. So, I restarted it and sprinted back into the living room. She heard the music, and after about 30 seconds, my proposal plan continued.

She walked into the dining room to see the speakers and a sign that said, "Don't Turn Around." (No, not an Ace of Bass reference.) I used this opportunity to sneak up behind her, retrieve the ring that was hidden behind her kitchen trash can, and get down on one knee. I then clicked the Next Track button on my remote, and a computer-generated voice said, "Okay Meredith, turn around." She then walked toward me and my outstretched hands, right onto the very spot where I saw her for the very first time nearly 3 years ago.

The proposal itself was fairly personal, so I won't share the words with everyone here, but here's the other problem with my plan: In the kitchen I had set up my digital camera, which also takes short movies with sound. I started taking the movie at the same time that I started the 3-minute silent track on my iPod. I had tested the camera earlier to make sure it could take a 5-minute movie, which was all that I thought I needed (3 minutes of silence, then a 2-minute proposal). Unfortunately, with the extra delay of 2-3 minutes, the camera ran out of memory at 7 minutes and 57 seconds, which was the EXACT moment that I was opening the box and about to say, "Meredith Lynn W....will you marry me?" The camera even made a beeping noise to let me know while I was proposing that we weren't ever going to get to see her say yes. :( So all we have is a poorly lit, barely audible movie that shows everything but me popping the question and Meredith saying yes.

But the important thing is that she DID say yes!

-Tom