A Nerd's Proposal

I got out of the car, and then helped her out. I was a bit nervous as we walked towards the restaurant, arm in arm. She reached her arm around me, edging her hand close to my inner left breast pocket. Uh oh! I stiffened my arm and blocked a potential revelation on her part. Safe for now (so I thought, anyway).

We walked into the restaurant and took a booth. It was New Year's Day, and not really that full. I had wanted a more significant location, but my first choice place was closed that day... drat! After some idle chat and ordering our meal, I figured it was now or never... or at least now or some other day. I wanted to do it now, so I took out my phone.

"I found this really cool Will and Grace app!" Her Christmas present was the Will and Grace box set. She was a big fan, so I figured a Will and Grace app would be interesting to her.

"Check it out, it's pretty cool. Click through that splash screen." I reached down into my inner coat pocket and grabbed the box. I opened it and waited.

She clicked through, selected a season and episode. She hit the item to play the episode, and after a brief pause, "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" from the Jersey Boys musical started playing. That's our special song, so I figured it was a good pick. I pulled up the box and held it out as she looked at a graphic with a couple hearts with the words "Will you marry me?"

Each moment that passed after that was stretched out like an eternity. She finally looked up and simply said "yes." That's it! I'm now engaged. She's the most wonderful woman in the world, and now I get to share my life with her.

Now that you know how it went down, let me tell you what went wrong. I settled on the day a few weeks before, while I was at my parent's house for Christmas vacation. I realized my Android phone would be the perfect way for me to pop the question... I could write a customized little app just for her! Google images proved useful for the "Will you marry me" graphic. It was a snap to rip our song from my CD musical recording. The hardest part was gathering all the content for all the Will and Grace episodes. Episode names was all I needed, but I had to take them from IMDB and convert them into Java strings. It was time consuming, but once all the content was set up, the Java app itself was a snap.

I guess that was what went well. The blunders came closer to the day. First came when I was asking her for dinner on the first. "Let's have dinner New Year's Day to ring in the new year!" Whoops. Very bad choice of words, especially since we picked the ring together... she knew it was coming, just not when. Why the hell did I say THAT??? She was of course suspicious, but I assured her it was just for dinner... I totally hadn't meant to give her a hint so early, but what's done is done.

We decided on the perfect place for dinner. Our 6 month anniversary had been at a nice fondu place. Perfect! I called them up, hoping to make a reservation, but alas! They are closed on the first! I expressed my disappointment to her... perhaps too emphatically. We agreed on another place. Not ideal, but I was determined to do this on the first.

New Year's Eve was at her parent's place. It was a lot of fun, and we were all packed to head over to Sacramento, which was our destination. I spilled some drink or something on my pants and all I had to spare was my nice clothes prepared for dinner. She suggested I change, and when she saw I only had nice clothes, she looked at me odd "we are dressing up for dinner?" I gave an excuse that it was New Year's... while wishing I had planned this a little better. All my effort went into the program to propose, why hadn't I worked out these details a little better? I'm not exactly good at thinking ahead and planning things well. If I could do it all over again, you can bet I would figure it out a lot better, but in the end it's the marriage that excites me more than the proposal.

With all those hints, she knew it was coming. In fact, she confessed she was reaching around while we were walking in because she wanted to test my inner pocket for the box. Sneaky! She saw me fiddling under the table when I passed her the phone, and thought "this is it." Thankfully, my application fooled her enough to second guess her inclination, so I salvaged a bit of a surprise.

I'm almost embarrassed to post to the world how unromantic my proposal was, but I think all the blunders made it memorable in it's own right... and it's very much me. I focused on the part I liked most, the programming, and assumed the rest would just go smoothly... because... you know, I had wrote a PROGRAM to PROPOSE! ON MY PHONE! I'm now just excited to become a part of her wonderful family, and know that I can spend the rest of my life trying to make her as happy as she makes me.