RING!
The story of how we got the ring is worth telling. The week before Christmas Bryan started to complain about jewelry stores in the mall, and how all of the salespeople in them are like used car salesmen, and he would tell me things like "We'll just have to go ring shopping after Christmas, maybe it'll be better then." So when he came out the Wednesday before Christmas to have birthday/graduation dinner with me and my family, I dragged him to jewelry stores in Northampton. We wandered into this tiny one that was sharing space with an optometrist, and the guy behind the counter looks at my jacket and says "Umass Transit Service?" So I reply, "yeah, I'm a bus driver." Turns out he worked at Transit, and left just after Bryan started (Bryan recognized his name - Tim Fisk). He just happened to be covering for someone that night. He was really nice, and pulled out lots of stuff for me to look at (and made them shiny!), and I found my ring. Unfortunately, Bryan didn't seem to thrilled that I'd found my ring. He took me out to the car and pulled out the ring he'd gotten me for Christmas (which was lovely), and asked me which one I liked better, and I picked the one from the little jewelry shop, partly because it was a great ring and partly because I found the idea of buying it from a Transit person incredibly amusing. So then we had to go and return the one he'd already bought, which was surprisingly painless, and then he got me this one. :-)