I had the ring in the car when I picked up the Sabra last night, but the moment just wasn't right to do it.

Tonight was the night.

One of our first "dates" involved a rather long walk down Wisconsin Ave. At one point, we stopped at a church to sit on the step and rest for a bit. Before I knew it, we were talking about weddings and what we liked and didn't like in the weddings we'd been to, and what we would want and wouldn't want in our own weddings. Since then, we'd always joked that we should get engaged on those steps.

As fate would have it, the church lies just south of the Metro station we use to get to the gym. So, I'd been trying to see how I could manage it to walk past the church on our way back to the Metro, but we always seemed to switch sides before we'd get to the church.

Tonight, however, was different.

After our workouts, we took showers and changed clothes. Before I left the men's dressing room, I took the ring out of the box and put it in my pocket. These are relatively new pants, but I was convinced that I would suddenly and spontaneously get a hole in the pocket and lose the ring before we got to the church.

As we headed to the Metro, I kept us on the correct side of the street (the lights were also on our side and they were green most of the way so we didn't need to switch sides). When we got to the church, I asked the Sabra if she wanted to sit for a minute "for fun and old-time's sake." She said sure, and we sat.

I tried to steer the conversation toward the topic of marriage, but it just wasn't working too well. I was nervous, and I think she knew what was coming and was nervous too. I had already made a big deal that I wanted to go out to dinner, so after my stuttering to try to start the conversation, the Sabra said she was cold and hungry and wanted to get moving (she did have goose-bumps).

We went to Neisha, a Thai place in Tenley Town. I broached the subject again. This time I said, "what do you think? Can you see yourself with a ring?" and I took my ring off, and put it on her finger with the shank up so it looked like a wedding band. She said she didn't know. I pulled out the real ring and said, "well, what about with this one?" and put it on her finger.

She was a bit dumbfounded for a minute and then realized that this was it, I was really proposing. She was so happy, she almost cried. She didn't, but she did get up and hug and kiss me.

I think it was a very nice way to propose, but it wasn't the way I had it in my head. That's fine. We're both happy. Also, since it wasn't the official engagement ring, I still have a second opportunity to "officially" propose.

I played hookie from work today, and I went out to lunch with Shining Starr9. We talked about how the Sabra and I are seriously talking about getting married in January. I told her that I didn't have a ring yet, so I couldn't propose because I don't want to do it without a ring.

She suggested that I buy a "promise ring." I wasn't so sure, but I thought I'd give it a try. So, we dropped her car off and headed over to the mall. It was PG Plaza (or the Mall at Prince Georges as they prefer to be called now). We looked at some nice stuff, but it was more than I wanted to spend. Please don't misunderstand, I'm happy to spend as much as I need to, but since this isn't the engagement ring, I just wanted something nice to do what needs to be done.

So, after excluding anything out of my price range, I didn't find anything nice. We ended up at Macy's, and I did a panic purchase. I bought a ring that looked really nice at the moment, but as I looked at it and looked at it, I came to realize that I didn't like it at all.

I headed over to Montgomery Mall, which has a different class of clientele. I went into Helzberg and found a really nice ring that had the Sabra written all over it. I returned the ring to Macy's without even thinking about it, and bought the one at Helzberg.

Now I need to give it to her...