thirty, flirty, and thriving/ENGAGED!

it's true. except for the flirty part. i got the best post birthday present EVER! i'll start at the beginning...

this week marks the 30th anniversary of my birth. thursday was it actually, but the week began with severe back pains that made me dread hitting 30 even more. i felt like my body was falling apart. i'm much better now, thank you.

thursday was a pretty good day. i got a lot of the standard notebook paper cards from my students and promises of a gift that they "left at home." i hold to those promises very loosely. i had lots of messages from sweet friends wishing me happy birthday. jon came and picked me up for dinner and gave me my gift...an anthropologie gift card. coincidentally, my brother and sister-in-law and my bff gave me the same thing. they all know me too well. deep deep down i was hoping he was going to propose for my birthday, so i just told myself it wasn't going to happen. maybe christmas? we had a lovely dinner at texas de brazil which should be renamed "see how much meat you can shove in your stomach." i guess that's kind of a long name for the sign. everything there is sooo good. i was trying so hard not to fill up with the incredible salad bar, but it's just so delicious with so many things to choose from. after passing on viewing the dessert tray, jc reminded me that it was my birthday and i unpassed. my poor stomach.

on friday there was a b-day party at darrah and michael's house. darrah, karis, and i had been planning it for a while. michael set up the wii outside on a big screen to play. i got the american idol game which is for a whole other post. anyway, we had lots of food and chocolate items and such. it was going well. then karis brought out the cupcakes on a plate with candles and everyone sang happy birthday and i blew out my candles. backing up just a little- karis said, "make a wish" right before i blew them out and i literally wished that we would get engaged. push play...two seconds later, jon stopped traffic with an announcement where he asked me to MARRY him in front of EVERYONE! not even kidding. i never use all caps and i've done it like four times in this post. i of course said yes through my shock. he told me to put my cupcake down so he could put on the ring. it's beautiful...i LOVE it. (5 times). i had to squeeze it on my finger (they're enormous. one thing i love about jon is that his hands are really big...not in a bad way, but they make mine look smaller.) jon is by far the last person i would ever think would propose in front of a lot of people. it was kind of convenient for me though, because i didn't have to call a bunch of people...they were all there. he was definitely going for shock value. he had had the ring for a while and had snuck my cell phone to get my dad's phone number. another shocker is that my parents didn't give me any clue. they don't keep things in very well. my very fun party instantly got a million times better. i'm still kind of dazed.

i went to get my ring sized today, and i already got it back. it looks perfect. darrah also came with me to borders so we could look at and buy many wedding magazines. it's so weird to legally be able to purchase such items and seriously contemplate the things in them. wow. anyway, i am so excited and can't wait to spend the rest of my life with jonathan andrew cook! here are some pics.

pre-engaged. yes, he's that much taller than me.

putting down the cupcake (and drink)

we're engaged!

some of my sweet friends

i heart ny

i really do. i've always wanted to live there...i'm still concocting ways to do it. anyway, jc and i took a quick trip to nyc this past weekend. it was my fifth time to go. it really never gets old. it was jon's first time. our reasons for going were two-fold. one-one of us is a hardcore baseball fan and really wanted to see yankee stadium before it got torn down at the end of this season. and two-one of us is a mere few days away from turning 30. i'll let you guess which reason was whose. anyway, we decided a few weeks ago we wanted to go, so we just did it. i think that's what you have to do when you have semi-far fetched ideas...just buy the tickets. once you do that, there's no turning back. 

my uncle (tio juan) was gracious enough to allow us to stay at his apartment in queens. it was a somewhat short subway ride into manhattan, so quite convenient. we had grand plans of the things we were going to do for the two full days we were there. we were somewhat faithful to get up at the crack, but even with that some of our plans had to go out the window. everything took longer than we thought it would. we went to ellis island and planned on going to a museum and then tkts to get half-price tickets to a show for that evening. ellis island cut into museum time, so that was out and by the time we got to the ticket place, it was out of control. people everywhere! we had no idea about any of the plays and were going to have to choose at random (after we stood in a huge line), so we took a girl's advice and bought tickets to this play called "perfect crime" at the actual box office. no line there, and also cheaper. she made it out to be like law and order or c.s.i...a real thriller.

that night we went to the play (at jerry orbach theater...no lie). it is the longest running play in nyc at 21 years. the main character, a woman playing a psychiatrist who may or may not have killed her husband, has been in the play for 21 years. she has missed a grand total of 4 performances in those 21 years. yeah, it was pretty obvious. she needs to move on. it was pretty terrible. it's like she was just itching to get off stage saying all of her lines in fast forward. i don't really understand what even happened in the play, nor do i wish to. it was still a fun experience that we could laugh at.

next day was harlem for brunch. chicken and waffles. sounds strange, but it's so good...thanks d and m for the suggestion. we then caught the subway to yankee stadium. we sat in the section where the "bleacher creatures" are. very interesting. let's just say they love them some yankees. it was a lot of fun but kind of a bummer because we were quarantined to the bleacher section and couldn't explore the whole stadium. the atmosphere was great though. the yanks aren't doing so hot lately, and sunday's game wasn't any different. so after the 7th inning, the most unlikely thing of the trip happened...we left the game early. i was fully prepared to stay at the game for its entirety, but we decided to beat the subway traffic.

we met my uncle in chelsea for dinner and then decided to do the next thing on our list...go to the top of the empire state building. it costs something like $32 to do this...a little ridiculous, but that was a thing we wanted to do, so we were going to suck it up and do it. when we got there, the line was crazy long. it was going to be 2 hours. we still weren't ready to call it quits (i have no idea why not), so we went to the security line. we were taking some photos of the line when my camera decided to die. of course i didn't have extra batteries, so we bailed. a little disappointing, but really a blessing. we saved $64 and 2 hours. we'll go back. when it's not a holiday hopefully.

ok, so this is getting really long, and i haven't even put pictures yet. here they are.

jc and lady liberty

at the yankees w/ the crazies

in the line that killed my camera at the esb

(i never realized how crooked my teeth are)