The Mild Fiancée and I thoroughly enjoyed our time in New York, but all good things must come to an end. Ultimately, that meant we had to fly home. Oh, and what a day it would be.
Now, I'm going to tell this story differently than I usually do (you'll see why in a little bit). So, I'll start with what the intended plan was. We wanted to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and have a nice evening at home. Also, I wanted to propose to the then-Mild Girlfriend somewhere in the course of all that. I've been thinking about it for a little while, and it seemed like a good time. Alas, the best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew.
Somehow, we managed to have the screwiest day of travel on precisely the day we were planning on coming back. First of all, we got waved through to the priority part of the security check, for no apparent reason. I was actually concerned that we were going to get patted down, but it was actually the opposite. They let us waltz right through and skip something like fifty people in line. Just because.
They then opened up a new line for the X-ray machines, and a few of us got to jump to the front of THAT line. We didn't have to take anything off, including our shoes. It was the simplest way I've ever seen that process handled, and we got to partake out of sheer luck. Amazingly, it took us something like five minutes to go from entering the security line to exiting out from the X-ray machines.
Of course, we paid for our good luck with a delayed flight. Worse yet, that delayed flight caused us to miss our connection, and the next flight out was seven hours later. So much for all of our plans. We had to cancel reservations, and have dinner in the airport. All in all, though, we were in a pretty good mood and neither of us was particularly stressed. It was if we both unconsciously decided that the best way to deal with this was to roll with the punches.
In the end, we had a much different dinner than intended, and we got home much, much later than we expected. However, the proposal still happened (and she said yes), and it all ended up being a very happy day indeed.
The best part of this all, though, was that we wanted to let everyone know. After calling our parents and showing them the ring, we had to let all of ours friends know. I chose to retell the whole travel story in an email, and throw in a non-sequitur that we'd gotten engaged at the end. It was a long email, to the point where you had to scroll to see the entire contents. It had all sorts of detail in it about the actual day of travel, but precious little about the actual engagement. The point was to throw in the bit about being engaged at the end, as a punch line, if you will. Essentially, I was after, "oh yeah, after all that happened, we got engaged. Surprise!"
Some people agreed with my sense of humor, and they loved it. I heard, "that was hilarious" and "man, I sure hope everyone reads to the end of that." Other people ... not so much. My two favorite complaints were "I want my two minutes back! None of that had ANYTHING to do with the actual engagement. You owe me details!" and "I blame you for that long and meandering email, that had nothing to do with the engagement" (want to guess where this post's title came from?).
I told the Mild Fiancée about this, and she laughed. The best part, though, was that she also sent out a email to her friends. Do you remember those SAT word correlation problems? Yeah, her email was to short what my email was to long. I think she covered it all in like four sentences. It was concise and to the point. When I saw it, I couldn't help but laugh. The contrast with my long and meandering explanation was far too stark.
Think long and hard about getting engaged, kids. You want to make sure you have the announcement all planned out, lest you get accused of meandering.
Now, I'm going to tell this story differently than I usually do (you'll see why in a little bit). So, I'll start with what the intended plan was. We wanted to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and have a nice evening at home. Also, I wanted to propose to the then-Mild Girlfriend somewhere in the course of all that. I've been thinking about it for a little while, and it seemed like a good time. Alas, the best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew.
Somehow, we managed to have the screwiest day of travel on precisely the day we were planning on coming back. First of all, we got waved through to the priority part of the security check, for no apparent reason. I was actually concerned that we were going to get patted down, but it was actually the opposite. They let us waltz right through and skip something like fifty people in line. Just because.
They then opened up a new line for the X-ray machines, and a few of us got to jump to the front of THAT line. We didn't have to take anything off, including our shoes. It was the simplest way I've ever seen that process handled, and we got to partake out of sheer luck. Amazingly, it took us something like five minutes to go from entering the security line to exiting out from the X-ray machines.
Of course, we paid for our good luck with a delayed flight. Worse yet, that delayed flight caused us to miss our connection, and the next flight out was seven hours later. So much for all of our plans. We had to cancel reservations, and have dinner in the airport. All in all, though, we were in a pretty good mood and neither of us was particularly stressed. It was if we both unconsciously decided that the best way to deal with this was to roll with the punches.
In the end, we had a much different dinner than intended, and we got home much, much later than we expected. However, the proposal still happened (and she said yes), and it all ended up being a very happy day indeed.
The best part of this all, though, was that we wanted to let everyone know. After calling our parents and showing them the ring, we had to let all of ours friends know. I chose to retell the whole travel story in an email, and throw in a non-sequitur that we'd gotten engaged at the end. It was a long email, to the point where you had to scroll to see the entire contents. It had all sorts of detail in it about the actual day of travel, but precious little about the actual engagement. The point was to throw in the bit about being engaged at the end, as a punch line, if you will. Essentially, I was after, "oh yeah, after all that happened, we got engaged. Surprise!"
Some people agreed with my sense of humor, and they loved it. I heard, "that was hilarious" and "man, I sure hope everyone reads to the end of that." Other people ... not so much. My two favorite complaints were "I want my two minutes back! None of that had ANYTHING to do with the actual engagement. You owe me details!" and "I blame you for that long and meandering email, that had nothing to do with the engagement" (want to guess where this post's title came from?).
I told the Mild Fiancée about this, and she laughed. The best part, though, was that she also sent out a email to her friends. Do you remember those SAT word correlation problems? Yeah, her email was to short what my email was to long. I think she covered it all in like four sentences. It was concise and to the point. When I saw it, I couldn't help but laugh. The contrast with my long and meandering explanation was far too stark.
Think long and hard about getting engaged, kids. You want to make sure you have the announcement all planned out, lest you get accused of meandering.
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