After I ran the Birmingham marathon on Valentine's Day 2010, I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands, especially on Saturday mornings when I had been doing my long training runs. Fortunately, living in the dorm where the school cafeteria was meant that there were usually interesting, hungry people hanging around waiting for a meal, eating a meal, or happily chatting after a meal.Saturday morning brunch conversations quickly became my favorite substitutes for those grueling long runs, and Doug became my favorite brunch conversation companion.
I remember one particular conversation that went on into the afternoon, about the nature of free will and differences in religious viewpoints about it. Doug lent me his copy of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and we ended up watching a movie in the dorm commons room. Our movie-watching became a routine, and this is what began to cause speculation among the girls who lived in my dorm about the nature of my relationship with "Mr. Puett." I denied any interest of the sort. Doug is younger than I am, and I just never considered him as a potential romantic partner.
I think the first time I realized that I really might fancy him was watching Kristin Lavransdatter a Norwegian movie so melodramatic and over-acted, we found it hilarious. I hadn't laughed that hard in a very long time, and it became a kind of running joke.
During spring break evenings, with all the kids gone, we got together with a couple of the other dorm parent teachers for dinner and movies. Doug and another teacher and I went for a hike at Fiery Gizzard, and we had some really nice talks while we hiked. I knew that I could get to be very close friends with this person, but I still wasn't sure. So I asked some friends for advice.
If I remember correctly, Carrie said, "Go for it, you can train him!" and Tracie said, "You only live once!"
...so I gave myself permission to like him. And I did.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
How we met... and became friends.
It's fun to remember how we met and became friends before we ever considered dating. It was late summer 2009, and I'd been working at The Webb School as alumni relations director for not quite a year.
Mr. Puett was a new teacher that year, and we officially met at the welcome party. There were only two new teachers that year, and word travels fast at a small school, so I knew that this particular new teacher was from Portland, had recently graduated from Cornell, and would be teaching algebra and World Cultures. When I met him I remember thinking that Mr. Puett seemed like a very nice and interesting young teacher and that the kids were going to enjoy having him in class. I also remember that somehow I knew quickly that he was Catholic, and that he enjoyed wine tasting, and that I generally enjoyed talking to him.
At Webb, living on campus means that we work in the dorms as "dorm parents" to the kids. It's a rewarding (and eventually exhausting) job. The new teacher and I didn't really see each other all that much: he was teaching and I was always working, or traveling, or at fund-raising events, or training for the marathon. I wasn't in grad school yet, but I was planning to apply in the spring and it was a very busy semester!
Webb's boarding community is like a large extended family, so you always have a general idea of what everyone else is doing. I remember knowing that the nice, quiet new teacher got a coonhound puppy and named him "Sigi" after a character in a viking saga. Sure enough, "Mr. Puett" was a favorite for some of the girls in my dorm as a math tutor and World Cultures teacher. I started to notice that at lunch and dinner and weekend brunch the new teacher would usually choose a seat next to me, and I knew that I really enjoyed our conversations about increasingly random and esoteric topics. It seemed like we could always make each other smile. Every now and then our paths would cross as we walked across campus, and we'd stop and talk. It was really nice to feel like there was someone like-minded to talk to.
As time went on, we just became friends. He said he was starting to miss school of his own, and I recommended that he look at the local college. He kinda scoffed that MTSU would never have a night class he wanted to take, but sure enough, they had a graduate level class on Chaucer, and so I got to tease him a little about being pretentious and he got to take a graduate class in the spring. We had excellent brunch conversations that kept us at the table for hours, especially after I finished training for my marathon, before I started studying for the GMAT, when I had lots of free time on my hands. Eventually we started watching movies together in the dorm commons, often joined by the kids, who started to speculate about our romantic potential.
So it was the girls, my "dorm-daughters," who started to push me to date Mr. Puett. They tried every possible tactic to convince me that he was great boyfriend material. All along I laughed and insisted that we were just friends. But I was starting to realize how much I looked forward to seeing him and talking to him and spending time together.
Mr. Puett was a new teacher that year, and we officially met at the welcome party. There were only two new teachers that year, and word travels fast at a small school, so I knew that this particular new teacher was from Portland, had recently graduated from Cornell, and would be teaching algebra and World Cultures. When I met him I remember thinking that Mr. Puett seemed like a very nice and interesting young teacher and that the kids were going to enjoy having him in class. I also remember that somehow I knew quickly that he was Catholic, and that he enjoyed wine tasting, and that I generally enjoyed talking to him.
At Webb, living on campus means that we work in the dorms as "dorm parents" to the kids. It's a rewarding (and eventually exhausting) job. The new teacher and I didn't really see each other all that much: he was teaching and I was always working, or traveling, or at fund-raising events, or training for the marathon. I wasn't in grad school yet, but I was planning to apply in the spring and it was a very busy semester!
Webb's boarding community is like a large extended family, so you always have a general idea of what everyone else is doing. I remember knowing that the nice, quiet new teacher got a coonhound puppy and named him "Sigi" after a character in a viking saga. Sure enough, "Mr. Puett" was a favorite for some of the girls in my dorm as a math tutor and World Cultures teacher. I started to notice that at lunch and dinner and weekend brunch the new teacher would usually choose a seat next to me, and I knew that I really enjoyed our conversations about increasingly random and esoteric topics. It seemed like we could always make each other smile. Every now and then our paths would cross as we walked across campus, and we'd stop and talk. It was really nice to feel like there was someone like-minded to talk to.
As time went on, we just became friends. He said he was starting to miss school of his own, and I recommended that he look at the local college. He kinda scoffed that MTSU would never have a night class he wanted to take, but sure enough, they had a graduate level class on Chaucer, and so I got to tease him a little about being pretentious and he got to take a graduate class in the spring. We had excellent brunch conversations that kept us at the table for hours, especially after I finished training for my marathon, before I started studying for the GMAT, when I had lots of free time on my hands. Eventually we started watching movies together in the dorm commons, often joined by the kids, who started to speculate about our romantic potential.
So it was the girls, my "dorm-daughters," who started to push me to date Mr. Puett. They tried every possible tactic to convince me that he was great boyfriend material. All along I laughed and insisted that we were just friends. But I was starting to realize how much I looked forward to seeing him and talking to him and spending time together.
The Proposal, pt. I (The Ring)
I probably first started seriously considering proposing when we went on our road trip last summer. We started off in Nashville, drove up the West Coast to Portland and then drove back.
But the summer ended and I was off to New York City. The first few months of being away were enough to convince me that I really did love this woman and never wanted to leave her again. So I started thinking about buying a ring...
But since I was on a graduate student budget (basically $0/month income), I had to be creative. I admittedly thought about getting a used ring, or very small or synthetic diamonds, but none of those options seemed to be right for Sandi at all. As I searched and searched, I noticed that there were a certain class of rings, deep in the obscure parts of Etsy.com handmade crafts section that were as unique as Sandi is: they were colored diamonds, usually rose-cut, and not the transparent, sparkly diamonds that most people are used to. I really liked the idea, but wasn't exactly sure of myself. So I asked Nayla, a friend of mine from Cornell, to go to a unique jewelry store in Brooklyn that sold highly artistic and unique rings. I told her that I was only thinking about getting a birthday present for Sandi, and was still a bit nervous about the idea of admitting that I was thinking about buying a diamond. But eventually, Nayla got it out of me that I was thinking about getting a diamond ring and she affirmed my suspicion that to certain Sandi-like people, a unique colorful diamond is preferable over a small or fake white one. I trusted Nayla's sense of taste in this matter.
Since the Brooklyn store was overly expensive and had very small rings, I decided that I was going to find my own stone, especially since I was in one of the world-wide centers of the diamond trade. After searching through the diamond district, I couldn't find anything that was even close to the unique grey diamond that I was imagining. Also, I went on Sukkot, a Jewish holiday, which was kinda a mistake because many of the diamond stores are Jewish. Over half of the stores were closed. I talked to a real diamond person and since I knew the price points, knew that there was no way that I was going to get something real for anything reasonable at all, and the fake diamonds (I liked Moissonite the best) were reasonably priced but not that exciting. Dismayed, I turned to the internet. Eventually, I found the one website that carried what I was interested in. Unfortunately, gem wholesalers tend not to be open to the public. So basically I insinuated that I was an art student at Columbia and needed a diamond for a piece that I was working on... Technically, I was in the school of *Arts and Sciences*... so not that large of a fib. He even wanted proof that I was a student, so I sent over a proof of enrollment and a picture of my drivers license and reluctantly, he let me in to see his diamonds.
I spent a good half an hour in a tiny dark office above the diamond district looking at dozens of very tiny diamonds. There were only a couple that were in the size I wanted (De Beers did a good enough job in their marketing to convince me that I am not really a man if my diamond is less than 1 kt) but eventually I decided that I would go with the grey medium sized diamond. There was a larger very dark one and an incredible orange diamond, but the lighter grey felt right. After I paid, the merchant held it up to the sunny window and exclaimed about its luminance and claimed it was worth twice what I paid for it. I felt good with my slightly shiny grey diamond (at a manly 1.1 kt), and he wished me luck on my project (heehee) as I left.
Now was time to search for somebody to put it all together. Combing through the etsy site for different custom jewelers, I finally found Val Kasinskas's shop and her home page.
After seeing the quality of her work and noticing that she is also from Portland, I decided that she was the perfect one to put it all together. I told her that I wanted a good, white metal and she chose Palladium, which is in the same family as Platinum but much lighter, and I told her that I wanted an earthy, hand-made texture to the ring and bezel, and she put it all together. Sandi calls the texture tree bark, which is pretty much perfect for us and our Northwest forest-y tendencies.
After a good 6 weeks of emails and nervous obsession on my part, Val finally came up with a ring:
So now I had a ring, somehow, after making a hundred tiny decisions to get to that point. And I was getting ready to finally make the gift.
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