The Proposal

For those of you who haven't heard yet, I am now an engaged man! As of October 17th, 2005 one Katie McLarty has agreed to pursue a life-long commitment with me. As you might guess, we are both pretty excited about this and anxious about getting all the wedding details in place. For those of you who haven't really been involved in the whole wedding culture/industry I will simply say this: you would never think planning a ceremony like this would take so many months but it does. I promise you, it really does. Case in point, Katie and I are still working on the list of things that we need to be thinking about and planning; I guess you could say we're in the meta-planning stage.

As far as ceremony specifics go, we're aiming for April 1st (to hit spring break to accommodate my family's educationally-restricted time-off) in Mutual, OK. Nothing is set in stone and probably won't be until sometime towards the end of November. Keep your browsers pointed here for the latest details on this front.

The proposal itself was somewhat of an ordeal. The ring, after five or six weeks of effort, was finally ready on Oct. 14th. I was quite excited to be able to see the completed work and was thrilled with the results; Burnell's is the place to go if you ask my opinion. Phil, the craftsman who constructed the ring, did a fantastic job and the service there was excellent. Compared to the other places I visited, my experience at Burnell's was far and away the best. I can't recommend them enough.

Some good friends of mine were actually in town that weekend I picked it up and one of them, Lisa, went out with Katie for coffee that next morning (Saturday). Now, I made no specific requests to Lisa for information but Sunday afternoon while Katie was out with her protege from Youth Horizons I was eager to pump her for any information she might have. Specifically, I had a bit of a dilemma and I was hoping that she could provide some insight. I wanted to propose at the beginning of a free weekend so as to give Katie plenty of time to simply enjoy the event and do that girl-emotion thing. The problem: we didn't have a free weekend for three more weeks. Do I wait those weeks (which I maintain to this day that I could have) or do I try to bump it up earlier to end her anticipation/agony? Lisa said she could see the advantages of both but was convinced that any day now would also be just fine. I figured if it really didn't matter, it would probably be better to get on this sooner than later so, yeah, let's do it soon.

Like tomorrow night.

After taking a good hour or so to mentally adjust, throw out all my wonderful elaborate proposal schemes, and think through what I needed to do, I realized that I, uhmmm, still needed to talk with her parents. I grabbed my phone and called, figuring that the Sunday afternoon football would ensure that her dad was home. Twenty, thirty, forty rings later I remembered that her parents had caller ID and that they probably didn't recognize my number. Which meant that I needed to steal Katie's phone to make this call. Tricky.

It actually ended up being pretty simple. Katie came home from roller-skating with her protege just a wee bit worn out. Being the sensitive, caring, and manipulative person that I am, I encouraged this feeling of exhaustion in her and suggested she take a short nap. No, we'll take care of dinner. Here let me come tuck you into bed. NO!, leave your purse there on the table, we can clean up later. After a few minutes of getting her settled in I ran back into the living room, swiped her phone from her purse, and was making the call.

THE Call. Man, this was probably the most nerve-racking ten minutes of my life. I didn't know what to expect and rather than exchanging pleasantries I jumped right in with my question. "HithisisTrevorandIwaswonderingifIcouldmarryyourdaughter?"

Silence.

Bad silence? Good silence? Couldn't tell.

"Wow."

"You do realize that this is for life, right?"

After that things were much better. The conversation wrapped up shortly and I was over at her place carefully and exactly re-depositing the phone in her purse.

So now all I had to do was actually get her on a date. We had been planning for some time to visit a nearby observatory (Lake Afton) and the weather was wonderful that weekend (~80 'F, clear skies) so I called her the next day and suggested we head out that evening. The one catch, Katie already had plans to spend the evening hanging out with her roommate, Jen. She was trying to cancel but wasn't sure it was going to work out. I checked in after work and still no word from Jen. I suggested we give her another half-hour and if she didn't show we just head on out.

The. Longest. Half. Hour. Of. My. Life.

The moment of truth came and went and still no sign of Jen. Feeling we had made due diligence we headed for the door when in walks Jen. I could have cried. We were THIS close and had we moved 30 seconds earlier we would have been free and clear. Now all was ruined, ruined!

Katie was able to explain the situation to Jen and she kindly agreed to let us go. As quickly as possible, I shoved us out the door. We grabbed some dinner on the way out and made it to the observatory just in time for the sunset. Unfortunately, Kansas is flat and there were a few tree a long-ways off that blocked the view. Sigh. Regardless, I pulled out the blankets and we laid down to enjoy the dimming of the sky and the slow arrival of the stars.

We had a great time talking about, well, just about everything. What she thought of my friends who had been in town. How work had been going lately. How things had been going with us lately. Remembering how our romance got started. Remembering good and bad times in the past. I was intentionally steering the conversation to the point of making my intentions known when I realized that I would feel VERY awkward if I proposed to her while laying down. So, moments before asking I got UP (not the traditional down) on two knees and was able to deliver the question.

Without hardly any pause and the tears bursting through the last remnants of months of carefully constructed emotional barriers she answered "Yes". And then she cried. A very long time (by guy's standards). I was able to continue a proud family tradition of proposing while star-gazing in the dark (set by my dear brother Trent) but between the full moon and a flashlight I brought, she was able to actually see the ring. We got around to that after she was done crying. It took a little while.

That was two weeks ago and I'm sure you'll be happy to know we're still engaged. (Thank you, thank you. I knew I could hold it together for at least two weeks.) Still working on the planning stuff, still stressing a bit about all that we have to do over the coming months, still enjoying the simple joys of being in love. Its times like these where I begin to understand the appeal of elopement. Regardless, as things develop we'll keep you posted.

The Yard

Many, many LeTourneau engineering students have learned to despise Lowe's. We were often in need of parts for projects and one of the few places to get hardware was Lowe's. The problem we often experienced was something a fellow student of mine coined as "pop hardware". At Lowes', you can't buy pieces very easily, you can really only buy kits (which is what I'm assuming most people in home improvement love about it, thus "pop hardware.") More often than not, though, we just needed the pieces. Actually, it was usually just a piece, just one little knob, gear, rod or tube. Usually economic restraints prohibited us from purchasing the kit so a less than ideal replacement was found or the part was ordered out of a specialty catalog. This last solution was far from ideal: $0.25 for the part, $3.00 for shipping, five days down the toilet. It was just so....frustrating. We just need this little thing, this little nothing. Why is it so hard to get a hold of such a simple object?

As I have continued my tinkering hobby projects post-college I have continued to run into the same problem. No luck at Lowe's or Home Depot, Joann's Craft and Fabric could sometimes help out, and every once in a while I'd get lucky at the R/C or model rocketry store.

Today, this all ends; I have found The Yard.

The Yard is everything Lowe's is not. Its a surplus, used, new, scrap everything store that would make a killing from LeTourneau students if it were located in Longview. If you are a do-it-yourself kind of person then this is THE place you need to be going for your next project. A few of my personal favorites I found today during my first peruse through the establishment:

-Insulated jump-suits
-Ammunition cases (not just those old metal tins, either)
-Socket sets sold by the pound!
-LARGE DC motors
-Everything you could possibly use on a lathe (I'm not joking even a little bit).
-Plexiglass
-Dental picks

It's Wichita's version of American Science and Surplus (without the science). Its a craft store for guys. Its four acres of potential.

Its a dream come true for me.