Update from the Berlin - couple, and a response

Dear Amy !
We're sitting in front of our desk and thinking to you !
How are you, are you still working in the San Fran - City Hall ? It would be nice to hear from you and how your life is going on.
Have you been in holidays and what have you done ?
We hope, your are still fine ...

Greetings from the Berlin - couple

Sonja + Torsten

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Dear Sonja and Torsten,

I was just thinking about you today, as well. Adam and I decided to get married. The reasons to outweighed the reasons not to. For example:

1. If I got him excited enough about going shopping for a ring, I might not have to do the breakfast dishes.


2. Last week his mom promised us a Cuisinart as a wedding gift. Apparently all her kids get one when they get married.
   

The egg is still congealing in the sink, and eight hours later, I'm rocking the bling and he's pacing the kitchen, being driven crazy that we don't have a full set of clean plates. In our marriage, which habit will crack first? His need to have a completely clean apartment before any fun can be had, or my belief that as long as you have one dish to put your meal on, you're still sitting pretty?

Anyway, you don't care about the cleanliness of our apartment. It turns out that getting engaged is pretty tough. Neither of us had really planned for today to be the day that we made a commitment, but, then again, when I asked him to make breakfast, I didn't anticipate him using quite so many pots and pans. And, really, why do you need to whip eggs in a separate bowl? What's wrong with just stirring them in the pan?

So we made this big decision, and while I'd never really thought I wanted an engagement ring, it turns out you kind of need one as a reminder that something's actually changed, especially if the plan isn't to traipse down to City Hall tomorrow morning. I've never understood how people wore solitaires without ripping holes in all of their sweaters, and how do you put on mittens over those things?

Google was no help, and yielded only flashbacks of that horrid commercial where the woman squeals to her roommate, "HE WENT TO JARED!" Yelp is a decidedly more hippie way to search for jewelry. But not as hippie as the cashier at a local clothing store, Aviva, who lectured me to immediately begin looking for a dress and to find a way to get into the jewelry mart. I told her I needed to get a ring TODAY. She looked at me like I was a moron, but produced a list of stores that either exhibited local jewelry artists or sold antiques.

There's a lot of hippie crap out there.

We ended up finding the ring at a place called Brand X, in the Castro, across from what used to be Harvey Milk's camera shop. It's been in business for 47 years, and the proprietor has still shots of the movie on display—every time there's a scene in the camera store, you can see Brand X in the background. In addition to hundreds of antique rings, the store also sells old-school explicit gay posters, antique Major League Baseball schedules, old Pez dispensers...It's kind of a miracle of a shop.

The owner, Fred, listened to my list of criteria and pulled out the ring we ended up getting on the first try.

Adam didn't think that making the decision to get married over breakfast was romantic enough (you may recall that he's from the South) (Also, he has no idea how well he makes eggs), so we walked up to Corona Heights, which has a view of the city, and he proposed there. I laughed most of the time.

And now, while we could be getting wasted in celebration, I'm E-MAILING. There's perfectly good champagne in the fridge.

Then again, I notice that Adam has chosen to leave the dishes where they were. Our first compromise? How romantic.

Your friend,
Amy

PS I think, to REALLY freak Aviva out, I'm going to come back into her store next week and tell her I need to buy a wedding dress THERE, THAT DAY.