By now we both knew we wanted to get married which meant the next step was engagement!  We did some ring shopping, so she knew it was coming, but I wanted to surprise her with the actual proposal.  I originally wanted to ask her on our three month anniversary but just couldn't get everything together in time so I decided to push it back a couple of weeks until after our visiting guests left, plus I figured it might be more unexpected that way.

I remembered when I was picking up a digital print from Target to have framed for her birthday that you could have custom hardcover books created with whatever photos and text you wanted.  So I thought it might be nice to create one with the story of our life together so far in it.  I spent several days picking out pictures from the last three months, along with snippets of actual text messages we'd sent each other, and reworking it over and over until I was satisfied.

I'd seen online that you could order real roses dipped in silver or gold so I went to a local jewelry store to see if they carried such things.  They didn't but they did have a silver rose that opened up to reveal a ring - even better I thought!

Next, I had to decide how to put it all together.  I wanted to do the actual proposing at her house and ask her sisters to help with the setup, but wasn't sure what to do beforehand.  My first thought was for us to take a trip to Lake Tahoe, where we'd had a great evening once before, or possibly to Santa Cruz, which she loves, but she'd had a long week so I decided to figure out something closer to home.  I met with her youngest sister, Hana, on Wednesday to do some plotting and shopping and she suggested having a spa date together which I thought was a great idea after her exhausting week so I made reservations for Saturday afternoon.

Saturday arrived - the big day!  I met Hana earlier in the afternoon to give her the ring, a picture I'd had framed, and three dozen white and red roses, then went to pick up Kim at her house.  We headed to the day spa and were pampered for two-and-a-half hours with a foot bath, long massage, and facials.  That was a first for me (I'm still sore after that massage!) but it was nice and we both really enjoyed it.  The only thing I hadn't taken into account when I made the reservation was that we wouldn't really look our best after all that cleaning, scrubbing, and rubbing.  Oh well, there's no going back now!

We got prettied up as best we could and headed to dinner at Spataro's in downtown Sac.  Meanwhile, Kim's two sisters, Hana & Chun-ok, her mom, and her niece were over at her house setting everything up.  After dinner I'd planned on taking an evening stroll along the Sacramento River, but got a few panicky texts from Chun-ok saying Hana was sick and they had to leave so I needed to come home now before the house burned down from all the candles they'd lit.  So I made some excuse and we headed home, surreptiously texting updates as to our location to Chun-ok as we got closer and closer.

Made it home and pulled in the garage.  I opened the door into the house and you could just see some flickering lights around the corner.  Kyong-ok came in concerned, wondering why there were lights on and what was up.  As she rounded the corner though, she stopped in her tracks and kept saying "Kent, oh my gosh!  Kent, oh my gosh!" and just stared at the scene before her, illuminated by over one hundred candles.  She had me feel her pulse, which was racing, and after a few more minutes of staring I suggested we actually walk into the house.    (I must say that the Kim girls did an outstanding job setting everything up!  I gave them the supplies and a general idea of what I wanted but they really knocked it out of the park on execution!)

A trail of rose petals led to the couch.  There were candles on the window sills, kitchen table, countertops, island, shelves, pretty much every flat surface.  On the island they'd created a giant heart of candles and on the table had spelled out "K + K" in candles.  The mantle above the fireplace was covered in flowery white garland with a silver candle and framed photo of us.  But the pièce de résistance was the coffee table beneath the mantle and in front of the couch.  Two tall candles flanked a bud vase containing a single silver rose and a huge heart-shaped bed of white & red rose petals with a present atop it, wrapped in white paper and silver ribbon.

We sat down on the couch and a she opened the present.  Inside was the book I'd created, "Kyong-ok & Kent - The story so far..."  We read through it, remembering old text messages, looking at pictures, and reminiscing together.  Finally, she turned to the last page which read "Kyong-ok Kim, will you marry me?"  So I got down on one knee, plucked the rose from the bud vase, opened it up, removed the ring, and asked her again.  I believe her response was "Kent, a thousand times yes!"

After lots of smiling, hugging, and maybe a bit of kissing, we broke out our phones to share the happy news with family & friends.  It seemed only fitting that we did most of it by texting. 


More pictures of the entire setup here.
Pictures of the engagement ring and wedding band here.


You can view the photo album story of our life by following this link but I believe you'll need to create a free account at Wal-Mart.





Here's a short video clip of the engagement proposal setup.

Our first trip to the Bay Area really solidified things between us.  Sure, there were still lingering questions and wonderings in both our minds, but we were feeling amazingly good about things, especially considering the short few weeks we'd been together.  Wow, was it really not even a month yet?

Over Labor Day we were going to do something special but Kyong-ok got a last minute invite to go to Hawaii with her bosses which was hard to pass up!  It sucked being apart, but in some ways was good for us, as it again only made us miss each other all the more.  We texted like crazy, of course, and talked on the phone a few times.  A couple phone calls still stand out in my mind.:  The first was when she called me while walking a beautiful beach alone, wishing I was there.  The second, it was nighttime and I could hear music from the hotel bar playing in the background as she sat near the water, alone once again.  It was a sweet reunion. 

September 4, 2008
We continued to see each other every day we were both in town and finally the one month anniversary of our first date arrived.  I did some research online for outstanding restaurants and discovered Mulvaney's B&L in midtown Sacramento.  I made reservations for that evening and had a dozen yellow roses (her favorite) sent to her at work which completely embarrassed her, I'm sure.  Dinner was as amazing as I'd hoped, mostly because of the company, and we followed it up with an evening stroll along the Sacramento River.

Later that month Kyong-ok again had to leave town, this time for a week long church conference at a retreat center in Indiana.  Wow, a whole week apart!?  It pretty much sucked as much as we thought it would, especially for her as the conference wound up boring her to tears, but we survived thanks to a few hundred text messages and long phone calls during breaks.  Again, I think the time apart was good in some weird way, and by the time she flew back I was incredibly anxious to see her, but this time it was my turn to pick her up from the airport.

October 4, 2008
More texts, more phone calls, more visits every day, and our two month anniversary arrived.  We decided to return to the scene of that first amazing day trip, the Bay Area.  The weather was beautiful and clear around the Golden Gate Bridge so we stopped off again for some better pics, before heading into the city itself.  We had dinner at The Stinking Rose, a garlic-themed restaurant, that of course I loved, but surprisingly, so did she!  (A woman who loves garlic - it must be a sign.)  After overdosing on garlic, we drove down to the waterfront for a nighttime stroll through the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.  Rumors abound there may have been smooching on a park bench as waves lapped the shore under a starry sky, but I can neither confirm nor deny them...

(More pics here.)

We'd scheduled our date, but it was still a week away.  I wanted to stay on her radar so began texting her little comments now and again which turned into mini-conversations about whatever happened to be going on in our lives at the moment.  The stage was being set for our future Textravaganza (yes, I just created a new word) but finally, Monday arrived and it was time for our first date.

August 4, 2008
I picked her up from her office after work and we headed to a little place in midtown called Thai Basil.  We weren't really hungry yet so I asked if she wanted to walk around a bit before dinner and she agreed.  As we walked, we talked and got to know each other more since we'd only really spoken once before, that night over a month before when I first met her at the Mins'.  I asked if she had any questions for me and she immediately went for the jugular - "Why'd you ask me out?"

Well...um... *gulp*  Hello!  I wasn't expecting something so straightforward but fumbled around and basically told her I was impressed with her passion for Jesus, heart for people, wit, intelligence, personality, etc, plus she was easy on the eyes.  Oh yeah, and I prayed about it for three days before I asked you out.  I later found out it was good I tacked that last bit on because it kept replaying in her mind over the next few days.

I then had to return the favor and asked her, "Why'd you agree to go out with me?"  She never quite answered the question, but did say that she normally wouldn't, as she hardly ever dates, and honestly surprised herself by agreeing.  Apparently her family and friends had repeatedly tried to set her up and she'd been mostly turning them down for years, but for some reason this time she said yes to a guy she didn't really know.  Interesting...

After walking around for 30-40 minutes we'd finally worked up an appetite and went inside to chow on Thai food.  There was more chitchatting over dinner about family, work, personal history, etc.  Eventually, dinner was over and we headed to her favorite coffee shop, the Naked Lounge.  A friend of hers was there, Mui, which was a bit awkward since I don't think either one of them knew how to handle the oddity of a strange guy walking in with Kim, but we finally made our way to a corner table and made more small talk.  We didn't stay too long, though, as she had to work the next day, so I drove her back to her car.  I was about to leave for Indiana for a week and a half, but asked if she'd like to go out again when I got back.  I can't remember her exact reply, but while it was affirmative it wasn't the resounding "Yes" I'd hoped for, but it was close enough!  She later told me at that moment she was thinking she'd just stay in touch with me as a "networking buddy".  It's certainly an inside joke between us now. 


I texted her the next day to check in.  She texted me back.  I texted her again the next day.  And the next.  And the next.  Finally, I was off to Indiana for an extended visit with my family.  She told me to enjoy my time with them and give them my attention but I had no intention of completely losing touch for that long.  I remembered the wise words of my friend Rachel, "Chop, chop, chop" - like you're cutting down a tree, persistence is the key, so I continued to text, email, text, send pics, and text some more.  Eventually it became a carpal tunnel-inducing torrent of texting from morning to late into the night.  In fact, we both began to look forward to the evening texting marathons that would run several hours, until the wee hours of the morning.  I blew past my monthly 200 text allowance and eventually bumped it up to 1500 per month, blew past that and finally bumped it up to unlimited.

It did seem a bit odd that, except for the occasional email, the entirety of our conversations those two weeks was via texting, but it just seemed to work for us.  It was certainly different from face to face dating or conversations and we found it easier to discuss deep issues that probably would have taken months to get around to with normal dating.  Regardless, by the end of my time in Indiana we were both counting down the days and she even offered to come pick me up at the airport.  Seemed like a good sign to me...

Here's an article on the results of a study of 300+ colleges on how your choice of college affects both your starting income and your median income "mid-career" after 10+ years (median 15.5 years).

The basic gist?  "Ten years out, graduates of Ivy League schools earned 99% more than they did at graduation.  Party school graduates saw an 85% increase.  Engineering school graduates fared worst, earning 76% more 10 years out of school."

http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/105499/Ivy-Leaguers%27-Big-Edge-Starting-Pay

Here's the actual data you can sort through and pore over.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Salaries_for_Colleges_by_Type-sort.html

A few schools of note:
                                        Starting           Mid-Career
Dartmouth College           $58,000.00     $134,000.00  (#1 Mid-career)
Cal Tech                          $75,500.00     $123,000.00  (#1 Starting)

Harvard                           $63,400.00     $124,000.00

Berkeley                          $59,900.00     $112,000.00

Auburn University             $45,400.00     $84,700.00
Univ of Alabama               $43,100.00     $82,700.00  (Take that Bama!)
UAB (Bama @ B'ham)         $39,200.00     $70,100.00

UC Davis                          $52,300.00     $99,600.00
Sacramento State              $47,800.00     $82,400.00

Purdue University              $51,400.00     $90,500.00
Indiana University              $46,300.00     $84,000.00

Michigan                           $52,700.00     $93,000.00
Ohio State                         $44,900.00     $83,700.00

You say you like Joss Whedon?  You loved Buffy, Angel, and Firefly?  You think everything that man touches is gold?  Then go check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog!!!  Starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day, it's a musical about superheroes and supervillains - what's not to love?  It's completely free, but only until Sunday at midnight after which you'll have to pay to download it from iTunes so watch it while you can - you'll be glad you did!  (Act III releases tomorrow.)