Lord of the Ringless

I am happy to report that I am now officially engaged to Kate! I am very thrilled that we'll be spending the rest of our lives together. I am a very lucky guy to have such a beautiful, intelligent and caring person to be my life partner and am very much looking forward to our wedding next summer.

However, the proposal didn't quite go as well as I had planned. When you manage to lose the engagement ring, it kind of puts a little bit of a damper on things.

My mother shipped up a family ring and it got here safe and sound. I know this because I actually held the ring in my hand after opening up the shipping box when it arrived a few weeks ago. However, five minutes before Kate was due to come over on Saturday and we were to head to the beach where I planned to propose, I went to get the small wooden box hidden in my closet only to open it and discover it was empty. Yes, empty. The ring was not there. Whiskey... Tango... Foxtrot...

There was no hiding my emotion when Kate came over a few minutes later, so I told her what had happened. She assured me not to worry, but that was futile. Try telling a boy who's puppy just died that it's no big deal, and well, you get the idea. We turned my condo upside down looking for it, but no luck.

So what happened? How does a ring just flat out disappear? Good question. The wooden box containing the ring didn't shut well and was not very secure, so I suspect it fell out somewhere when I was looking for a hiding spot. Or so I hope. Another more futile scenario would be in that it fell back into the shipping box which has since been recycled (yes, I called the recycling center to see if anything turned up... no dice). But the truth is I really have no frickin' idea.

But moving forward now, and something that helped get my mind off things on Sunday was heading over to Ryan and Danielle's who were hosting a group run followed by a pancake breakfast. Continuing to be with Kate and also hanging out with good friends helped get my mind off the ring incident, and we had a fun, easy paced run on the trails at the Cathance River Preserve and had a great time chowing down and hanging out afterwards.

I'm currently in Kansas City now for a school competition. Kate is watching over my place while I'm away and will continue to look for the ring. Think good thoughts that it shows up. Even if it doesn't, there are worse things in life and it's far from the end of the world. The important thing is that we're getting married, and I can't wait! But that ring would still be nice...

Sunday run stats:
Ran 8.5 miles @ 11:44/mile pace.
Trails.
Slightly hilly.
Lower 70s, sunny, breezy.