The Rest Of The Story

Zoinks!

Besides getting engaged, there was a lot of other cool things going on this weekend that I want to fill all ya'll in on.  But due to other things going on, I won't be able to stretch it out like I would normally.

Thursday – Cora got into town at 5 o'clock and I picked her up at the airport and we ate at a place call "The Chicago Brauhaus" for a little bit of Octoberfest.  If you've never been, this place is authentic German.  The band up on stage isn't faking those accents, and neither is the waitress that reminds you of your grandma.  Yummy meal (meat loaf for her and beef short ribs for me) and then back home.

Friday – We got moving about 11:30 and after a few stops, headed down state for my college homecoming.  It rained off and on the whole trip, but Seattle girl Cora was always looking out of the windows, marveling at how far she could see in all directions.  There were no hills or mountains on the horizon, just flat mid-western farm land.

On the way down, we were going to be passing within about 5 miles of Sass's house, so we stopped in.  I had only met her once before, about 8 months ago.  But since I would suspect that hardly a day goes by that I don't have at least 3 or 4 communication touch points with the gal, she's no stranger.  I brought her Victoria's Secret gift card from the TIWT contest I had a while back, and it came in this cool origami box that folds up like a rose or something.

We hung out with Sass, her husband "J", their kids, and a random neighbor kid for a while, before J's mom got their kids, random boy was put out into the cold, and we took off for some good Mexican food, great conversation, and a visit with the Shandy Chemist. 4 hours was not enough time for this double date, but we had to get moving, get checked into our hotel, and meet up with the other degenerates Mac Alumni at Bahan's.

It was a Mac Blast.

My good friend and lurker of this blog, Beth was there.  She left her husband John at home (some spouse don't get the "Mac Family" thing), but shared (only) a beer with our other friend John.

Cora met up with Gwen and our friend Laura.  At this point, both of them knew that I was going to pop the question on Saturday, but God love 'em, neither of the drunken fools spilled the beans. We eventually left the party to rest up for the big day the next day.

Saturday – We got up, went to the parade, and met up with a ton of people, including my very good friend, Annette, and her husband. After the parade, we wandered around campus a bit, I showed Cora the spot where I was dubbed, "Scope" and we found Gwen and picked up our crew for the "campus" tour.

After the proposal, Cora and I snuck off (we did that a lot) to make out phone calls.  After that, we hit the tailgating section of the football game, where I returned a Bible that a friend of mine had borrowed from Gwen's cousin 21 – 22 years ago, back when we were in school.

She was pretty excited to get it back, but also a lot little drunk.  After the game, we went back to the hotel to "take a nap" and actually ended up sleeping for about an hour and a half.  We met up with sometime commenter "Ellie Mae", her husband, and another friend, her husband and two kids at Leo's for pizza.  This was the place we always ordered from in college.  At the time, it offered a 2 topping large with a free 1 topping small for $8 delivered.  Cora and I had the "taco pizza".  A thin crispy crust sausage pizza.  After baking, it is covered in lettuce, tomato, cheese, and crumpled up Doritos.  I grew up with pizza like this, but it was Cora's first time. She seemed to like it.

We split the rest of the evening between Doc's and Don's, mostly hanging with the fabulous Gwen and her purse full of glow in the dark super balls.  (Her story, not mine.)

But, as a newly engaged couple, we called it an early night, (11:30pm) and went back to the motel to crash.

Sunday – For Cora, this was a very long travel day.  We drove from my college to my parent's house, with a stop (slow down) along the way as we passed the farm where I grew up.  On the plus side, there were people living there.  On the down side, they had put in an above ground pool, but one of the sides was collapsed in, the garage looked like it was covered in mold, and there were a ton of redneck, bondo and mix-n-match quarter panel cars in the drive.  Sad, but that broke the spell for me.

At my parent's house, we had lunch, and Cora got to meet my sister, brother-in-law, 23 year old niece and her boyfriend, 21 year old nephew and his girlfriend, and get better acquainted with my parents.  We only stayed about 2 hours before I needed to hustle her about 150 miles to the airport.  As I was leaving, I told my nephew and my niece's boyfriend that if they needed a jeweler, I could hook them up.  The blood rushed from their faces.

The normal sad drive to the airport was actually filled with fewer sad moments, as we started seriously talking about the logistics of who would move, where the wedding would be, where we may have additional receptions to make things easier on folks who can / won't travel, etc.  (More details to follow as we firm things up.)  But, eventually, we got to the airport.  We had time for some goodbye kissing in the car, and just before security before I had to watch my fiancée disappear into the crowd.

And thus ended one of the most memorable, important, eventful weekends of my life.  While saying goodbye was sad, the fact that this wasn't going to be our lives forever softened the blow a little for me.

That, and the countdown to my flight out for Thanksgiving.

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I seriously want to thank each and every one of you for sharing your heartfelt best wishes with us.  This has been an amazing adventure ride that we have been on, and it's not over.  Thank you for helping to make it even more special. - Eric

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And don't forget to get me your B(.)(.)B shots.  We are still at $15.  (2 named, 2 anonymous, and 1 bra only)

I know a couple of you sounded interested, so let's get that $50 for Susan G. Komen for The Cure.

And if you're reading this, that includes you, Momma Sass :-)

More tomorrow.