One year later ...

One step closer to being the real (almost) housewife of Santa Barbara. I'm at a different address now; same city, different zip, in a condo in a two-story white stuccoed, red-roofed building with lots of palm trees and succulents in its professionally-maintained surroundings. I got promoted since last June, so I now make more than I used to, thus increasing our combined household income. We went on a fancy vacation to a resort on Mexico's Riviera Maya for our friends' wedding, and we're heading to San Francisco in a few weeks and staying at a lovely French country-themed hotel downtown just because. But none of these things are why I'm one step closer to being truthful to the title of my blog.

I got engaged!

After almost five years of calling this cute blue-eyed brown-haired man sitting next to me on the couch studying his notes on god-knows-what aspect of materials engineering for a presentation he has to give later this week, I can now say that he's my fiance, and in case anyone has there doubts, I can show them this rock on my ring finger (it's at the top of this post, in case you missed it ;)

In case any of you love it as much as I do and want to know exactly what to tell your boyfriend so that you can stop calling him that (and avoid all of the questions that goes with that title ... shouldn't there be another term once you've made it past two years? boyfriend level II? training-pants boyfriend? please-take-us-seriously-when-you're-reading-over-this-rental-application boyfriend?) because that is basically how I decided what ring I wanted, this ring has an emerald-cut center diamond that is about 1 carat, but it looks a lot bigger in the emerald cut. I actually had one person comment, "wow! that's huuuuge!" which is of course an exaggeration but it is definitely more noticeable than similar carat-size princess cuts I've seen. This is one of the advantages of the emerald cut, but it also means that the diamond is more visible, so if you don't get a completely colorless diamond you and everyone pretending to ooh and ahh over it will. The setting is "petite cathedral pave" if you're shopping at Blue Nile like my fiance (ahhhhhh omg! or barf?) did, which basically means it's a very thin 18k white gold band with tiny diamonds in the band on its front sides.

I'm only writing about my ring here because I know that nobody reads it. I thought about putting a picture of it on my Facebook like I've seen other people do, but that seems a bit obnoxious to me and if there's anything I'm not it's obnoxious. I've gotten a lot of questions about it, though, and so perhaps my Facebook friends who are interested enough to stalk me will discover that I've made a new post on this long-forgotten relic of a blog and their curiosity will be tamed.

And now, off to enjoy what I call my cleaning-out dinners, which is basically when any and all leftovers or perishables in the fridge are eaten and I feel like I've saved a few bucks which I proceed to spend on something unnecessary like a Starbucks soy chai the next day.

Goodnight!