The Proposal

Zac and I have considered moving to a new apartment - one with more space and less neighbors.  Four things are holding us back: 1) the big pool with BBQ grills and outdoor patio furniture that makes a great place to hang out on the weekends 2) the treadmills in the "workout center" 3) the ping pong table that makes for great beer pong and 4) the fact that it will be VERY expensive to move out once the property manager realizes he needs to tear out and replace the carpet in the living room.  Why does he need to do that?  We can thank Zac and his proposal :)

It was the Thursday evening before Jill Schommer's (my highschool girlfriend) wedding to Eric Hohmeister in Minneapolis.  We'd both taken Friday off to fly there and still needed to do all the packing Thursday night.  After work Zac met me on Sony's Lot for the weekly Happy Hour on Main St.

It's something we did frequently at that point, so nothing was strange or out of the ordinary.  We left around 7:00ish to pack.  I don't know how to describe this without sounding tedious, but we live literally five minutes from Sony.  I parked in the parking garage at work, which adds about five minutes onto the "trek" home and Zac parked on the street.  I'd say he had a MAXIMUM of five minutes lead time.  This is important in a few minutes.

Once I got home and opened the door to our apartment, U2 was playing in the background and Zac was standing in the middle of our living room, surrounded by a heart of lit votive candles with a rose in his hand and a bottle of champage chilling nearby.  He'd changed from his work clothes into his nice summer suit and he looked so good and handsome.  So I told him so. (What I didn't realize until later that he was sweating profusely, too - with all of the stress and excitement and having only five minutes to change and prepare before I got home). 

My response was, "You look nice.  Oh!  And we have champagne!"  Although I figured he was proposing, I didn't want to think it was happening and then have it turn out to just be a nice surprise for the evening, like he'd made dinner or something instead of proposing marriage.  I didn't believe it.  And kept saying so.  A lot.  Of course I said yes and it was all very romantic and exciting and thrilling and, well, just great.

It was after about 10 minutes that I realized the votive candles on the floor were not placed on any sort of holder and were, in fact, melting into the carpet.  Zac hadn't realized that this was going to happen.  You can even see the little pools of wax solidifying onto the synthetic carpet.

  

We didn't bother cleaning it up with all the phone calls and packing to do.  But I did try to clean it up the next week by putting a paper bag over the wax and then warming the wax with an iron so that the paper bag would soak up all of the wax.  I think it would've worked in a normal situation if I hadn't melted the plastic carpet, too.

So now when you're at our apt you can still see red-stained melted circles of carpet shaped into a heart.  I think it's a great story, but I don't know if the landlord would appreciate the romance behind the accident :).