You Win! A Life Partner, and 25 Bucks

So, as many of you faithful readers of my blog already know, Rob and I are engaged. He proposed on Thursday night at one of our favorite pub quizzes. If you click the link below, you can see some photos and the quizmaster's blogging about the occasion:

http://www.geekswhodrink.com/blog/

The proposal was amazing, so I'm going to go on about it a bit here, since I promised so many of you details. I had known for weeks that Rob was up to something, and had a pretty good idea that perhaps he was planning to propose (emails and secretive conversations with my sister; strange meetings with my parents; viewing jewelry websites and then leaving them in the cache for me to stumble upon later; rifling through my jewelry box for a ring; etc.), but I had no idea where or when. Valentine's Day and my birthday both came and went, so I figured maybe I'd misread the signs, or else he just wasn't planning it for any time soon. So I was pretty surprised when he made a whole production out of proposing at trivia.

The first sign of something being up that night was that, while he told me he was guest-hosting the music round, he refused to tell me what the theme was, or any of the songs he was using. Then, he got there before me, which meant that he left work early, and his excuse was that he came early to "practice" for the music round. Um, whatever!? Then, the guy who started Geeks Who Drink was there; Rob said it was because he was there to check that Jason, the quizmaster, was doing a good job... a quality control inspection. I thought that sounded stupid since Jason had been doing the quiz for a while, but I just let it go. Then two more quizmasters from different pubs showed up, and that too was very strange, especially given that one of them had his quiz to host later that night; their excuse was that supposedly, Jason was training someone that night, and they had to watch and learn how to train. That sort of made sense in a weird way; too bad Jason was standing up there all by himself.

The quiz began; we were playing with Kyle and Nicole, and we had a great first round. Then it was time for Rob to head up front to do the music round for round 2. As Jason started introducing him, Rob went into the bathroom, which was pretty funny; we joked about how he must have been really nervous about his music round, but little did I know how nervous he really was. So, he came out and went up to the front, and introduced the round as "Songs that have the word EVIL in the title." Kyle shoved our answer pad and pen over to me, but I passed it back as soon as Rob played the first song -- something by Metallica that turned out to be called "Am I Evil" (all this evilness, by the way, is owing to Rob's trivia nickname, Evil Rob). I believe I said, "I'm gonna suck at this round. I don't know ANY songs with the word evil in their titles."

Then, that wretched song from the 1970s, "Shannon," began playing, and while I cringed, because I hate that song and assumed Rob was just trying to be cute and torture me, the entire bar erupted in protest, since it doesn't have evil in its title. Rob accused the quizmaster of tampering with his music round, and then moved onto song number 3, which was some silly song by Vanilla Ice, apparently called "I Love You" -- this was all lost on me, given that I have never voluntarily listened to a Vanilla Ice song in my life. But then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone who looked a lot like my brother in law Nate stroll into the restaurant and set down a baby carrier, and when he stood up, I saw that it was definitely him, and my sister Stacey was close behind. And then I saw my friends Beth and David standing back there too. So naturally, I got up to go say hello and ask what the heck they were doing there, and when I did that, I noticed some other friends over by the door to the establishment, pretending to read the free newspapers. And I began to get suspicious.

By the this time, the songs had shifted to all being "our songs" -- "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys; "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol; "Tupelo Honey" by Van Morrison; and "The Adventure" by Angels and Airwaves. I was still quite concerned with getting the round answered correctly, but mysteriously nervous and blanking out on the names of these songs!! The final song I didn't know at all ("Wedding Bell Blues" by the Fifth Dimension), and I was all flummoxed and not at all clear about what was happening.

Then Rob announced that there would be a bonus question for that round, even though there isn't normally a bonus question for the music round. But he said the bonus question was only for one person in the room, and that the prize wasn't a free pint. And the entire place got silent, and he said, "Shannon, will you marry me?"

I of course flipped out and started crying, and ran up front and hugged him and said "Of course I'll marry you!" And everyone was cheering and congratulating us and I was shaking and crying and stuff. And then I made my way back to our table where all our friends were waiting; Rob had invited them all to share in the festivities. He produced a little velvet box from his pocket and his hands were totally shaking, and he kept turning the box around and around, trying to find the side that opened, and then handed me a beautiful ring.

Later, after the game was over and we scraped a win in overtime, Jason the quizmaster came over and said, "All right! You win! A life partner, and 25 bucks!"

It was totally an awesome and special proposal, and I was beyond thrilled. I'm so excited to marry Rob and spend the adventure of life with him at my side.

Funny Stuff

The first funny thing I want to mention is this DVD I'm seeing advertised called "The Miracle Man" or whatever, a strange looking claymation tale of Jesus, just in time for Easter. It's not the claymation that's funny though -- it's the fact that Ralph Fiennes does the voice of Jesus in the movie. This is funny because this is the same dude who plays Voldemort, the epitome of evil, in the Harry Potter movies. I know he's an actor and these are just roles he's been given, but still -- it's funny. Lord Voldemort is the Lord Jesus. Hmm.

Next up, the lady with the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. She turned up on Miami Ink tonight (why is it that I only ever blog during Tuesday night viewings of Miami Ink??), wanting a tattoo of said grilled cheese sandwich, which she had archivally framed in a shadow box setting and recently sold for $28,000. She wanted the tattoo so she would always have her Virgin Mary grilled cheese with her. So apparently, this woman has this huge following of worshippers or whatever, just because one morning she woke up, cooked a grilled cheese, and saw an image charred into it that looked like the Virgin. It definitely looks like the face of a woman, but having never seen Mary, I have no idea if it's her or not. What I don't get is why this woman has a following. I could see the grilled cheese having a following, but what's so special about this woman? She got the tattoo on her boob, too. That seems like a weird place to get a tattoo of a grilled cheese with a picture of the Virgin Mary in it.

Kat did a really good job on the tat, though. It totally looked exactly like the grilled cheese in question.

The men on American Idol this season are soooo booooring. I like exactly two of them: Chris Sligh, and the beat boxing dude. I'm already over the men. Totally over them. Bo-ring.