Minimally Exceptional

In trilogies, each chapter plays a specific role in the entire story. The first one is good and grabs your interest, the second one can vary – sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s mediocre – and should expand on what you’ve learned in the first chapter, perhaps introducing new elements or story arcs. The third is, naturally, the conclusion.

In any good trilogy, the third chapter should totally blow the doors off of the series. I’m going to start by spoiling the ending of this one first, and then telling the story:

On October 4th, 2008, Laura and I are getting married!

Let’s backtrack a little bit now to the Virginia trip.

We arrived in Virginia on Friday, and after landing, picking up the rental car, and heading to the hotel, we sat with Laura’s aunt for lunch. I had already been dealing with the insurance company a lot at this point, with several calls going back and forth between me and the various offices of state farm. My cell phone rang while we were eating, and I recognized the number immediately – I couldn’t get up and leave (that would be suspicious) but I couldn’t exactly take the phone call right there either. I talked to the person on the phone and answered their questions in very general yes/no answers, and was able to pass it off as a call to the insurance company to Laura and her aunt.

In reality, it was the jeweler calling to tell me the the engagement ring I ordered had arrived and I could come get it anytime.

A few days later, Laura winds up having a project at work that involves her staying at work until later in the evening. I talked to her boss, and he said he’d do what he could to keep her there longer so I could pick up the ring without her knowing. Ring picked up, no problems.

The final piece I needed was some free time the next weekend so that I could talk to Laura’s dad about proposing. Laura didn’t have any paid time off, and we were going to be off on Friday the 17th for our trip to Indiana, so with some convincing form Laura’s boss, she decided to work on the Sunday before to make up some of the time. That was just the window I needed – so I talked to her dad, and everything was set.

So all I needed to do was make it 5 days without blowing it. In that five days, my car was getting repaired from the accident in July, so I was driving a rental. Those days were filled with calls to the insurance company – two companies, actually: one for the accident, and one for insuring the ring. They’re both equally worthless, though. I called the car insurance place once or twice a day about the rental that they agreed to pay for. Everyone I talked to there told me that they would authorize the rental car, yet no one ever did it once we got of the phone. I rented and returned the car and the payment still hadn’t been authorized. Finally after calling them and bitching about it, they authorized the rental. Even though I had rented and returned the car already and been in contact with the rental place, a day later the rental car place called me and wanted to know when I was going to pick up the rental car that State Farm was providing. Idiots.

At the same time, I was dealing with our insurance company about insuring the engagement ring – top secret G-14 classified, of course. So I’m on-and-off the phone with David again, still recently frustrated about steering me wrong on the car insurance thing. He tells me that it’s no problem, fax him the appraisal, he’ll take care of it and add it to my folks’ homeowners insurance. I didn’t really want to do that – I wanted to insure the ring independently and not have it tied to my folks homeowners, but he said it would save me some money, so great.

I fax him the appraisal the next morning (thursday), and call his assistant to confirm that they have received it OK – we were leaving that night and it absolutely had to be insured before we left in case of theft/loss/whatever. I had some questions for her that she needed to run by David, so she said he would call me back. I wound up having a bunch of stuff to do during the day, so David and I wound up playing phone tag for a good part of the day.

Well ultimately, I found out from David that the ring wasn’t really covered because I was giving it to someone who doesn’t live with me. WHAT? I called him back and left him a message expressing my frustration, as this was twice in two weeks that he had completely misled me. So now I have this expensive ring that isn’t insured at all because david fucked me up – again – and I have to leave to go to indiana with the ring, where I will have to leave it alone in the room for at least a day. Great. At this point my dad was a little pissed at david too, and so called him and explained to him how much he’s disappointed us lately, and that we’d be looking for other insurance companies that were more reliable.

David agreed to insure the ring on our homeowners for two weeks or so, until Laura’s dad has a chance to add it to his homeowners insurance, so long as we didn’t ‘officially’ say that I gave Laura the ring until that time. Nothing like a little fraud to go with our engagement.

I have to admit that I’ve been intentionally torturing Laura with the engagement ring. For a couple of months now, I’d flip-flop between ‘I have the ring – really – it’s hidden in the house’ and ‘I can’t afford a wedding and a house – pick one.’ At one point she admitted that she was concerned I was never going to propose – which was exactly what I wanted. Laura knew what ring she was going to get – she has had it picked out for quite a while. The only thing I had was the suprise and the timing, so I really had to keep it under wraps.

So on Saturday morning, her birthday, we were in the hotel in Indiana in between DMB shows. I woke up early and ordered brakfast in bed while she was asleep, and when it came, I set the ring box on the breakfast tray by her food to see when she would notice it. She notices it, and just like that, we’re getting married. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – Laura is generally who I talk to about pretty much everything, and for months I have been plotting and planning, hiding it from her and not really talking about it.

‘Now that you know – We have so much to talk about. You have no idea. In Virginia, when the insurance company kept calling? That was the jewler telling me the ring was ready.’

‘Really?’

‘And the weekend that Jerry really wanted you to work on Sunday? Jerry was in on that, so I could talk to your dad. And the day you had to stay late rewiring the server room? I picked up the ring that night. And Patrick? He knew about it. In fact, months ago in February when he wanted to go ring shopping for him and Bernard? Yeah, I did that.’

‘Son of a bitch.’

Suddenly we have tons of people to call and planning to do. We spent that morning calling family members and friends (most of whom knew to some extent, especially our friend Patrick, who was my co-conspirator on this from the beginning.)

We went to see DMB again that night (one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time, but naturally the boards bitched about the setlist) and then we came home on Sunday, and had to go visit the various parents / grandparents / aunts / uncles in a sunday night lightning round to show off the ring and tell everyone.

Finally, we came home. I feel like there’s so much more to talk about, but that’s really it. We just came home, and the planning started.