Surprise!

My sweetie is sneaky. Very sneaky.

We got engaged last week, Friday.

Sure, we'd talked about it. I knew it was coming. But not then. Not Friday. Friday was supposed to be a belated birthday dinner. A romantic, just-the-two-of-us dinner, yes, but a birthday dinner. Because, on my actual birthday, I like to go out to dinner with friends, so he takes me out for the romantic dinner after my birthday. He did it last year, and we didn't get engaged. He said, the whole week leading up to the dinner that it was a birthday dinner, and I shouldn't expect anything, you know, out of the ordinary. He has said this before, before other events (Christmas, New Year's, my actual birthday, Valentine's Day), and we have not gotten engaged, so I figured he meant it.

Little did I know that months of telling me not to expect anything were simply laying the groundwork for me to...not expect anything.

It turns out he bought the ring weeks ago (as it happens, the day before my real birthday). He told his sister. He told my friend Brian, who was going to be visiting me this weekend. Brian said later that he avoided talkng to me for weeks because he couldnt't trust himself not to say anything.

My sweetie, though, was cool as a cucumber. I had no idea. And here I thought I could read him like a book.

Maybe I should rethink what this means for the years ahead :-).

Here is what I consider our official engagement pic, taken by Brian in Chinatown on Chinese New Year (hence the confetti):

See me waving my (btw, utterly gorgeous) ring? :-)

By way of warning: I expect there will be very little knitting content on this blog for some months to come!