08.30.04 - 10:21 p.m.

What expensive shoe-wearing, cheese-eating diarist got a big shiny ring slipped on her finger by her baseball-loving, beer-drinking boyfriend this weekend?

Hmmm?

Oh, but I lie, because I actually put the ring on my own finger for fear it would drop into the bushes while I was kissing Dan, and then I would have been in BIG TROUBLE. But I didn't, and we executed the proposal thing successfully, and then we sat on a bench for a while.

He actually did it at the pond in Westfield, at the same pond where Ed and Carol kissed, and then got engaged, and one of a few scenarios I had mentally concocted as A Good Place for Dan to Ask Me. So it wasn't completely a surprise, especially since I'd known about the ring since January, but I couldn't believe the time had actually come for it to happen.

There was also a monstrous mallard duck at the pond. Seriously, twice the size of a normal duck, so large that you could clearly see him the whole way across the water. That duck shall live in my memory forever. That, and the bee skirt I was wearing. And the large amount of Cold Stone Creamery, which seemed like such a wonderful, celebratory idea at the time.

And everyone else is freaking out (in a good way, but still), but I'm just here. I'm fine. I'm happy, OF COURSE!, but I'm fine. What is there to freak out about? It's as it was always going to happen, and as it was always meant to be. We are who we are, we're Dan and Casey, and it's just another little adventure in our excellent life together.

In fact, I think it is AWESOME.