(no subject)
Jewelry Mart. Is everyone familiar with it? I’d never heard of it before about 6 weeks ago. It’s some big super center where one can purchase jewels of various kinds for near wholesale bargains. Hence, why they require some sort of business license before you can get in. I’m not certain how Kevin got in, nor how he got me in as he’s a teacher. I do know however, that I was able to get in.
I have every Saturday and Monday off from work making one of those days the perfect days for me to go ring shopping. However, Lesley has Saturdays off as well, and that becomes one of our days that we spend together. It could be a chore day, or a fun day, or both, but ring shopping away from her on one of our days wasn’t really the best. That leaves Mondays. As it turns out, she gets every other Monday off also since she works nine hour days during the week. So every other Monday was out as well. My limitations to getting over to Jewelry Mart were further compounded by the fact that Kevin has been teaching summer school, and hasn’t had many free Mondays. He really only became free July 16th. The Saturday following this day was his wedding, and afterwards he and his bride would be leaving for their honeymoon not to return until he would be back in school, and would no longer have anymore free Mondays until Veteran’s Day. Of course, I would be back in school myself, and would probably not have the time to go ring shopping at all. So if Jewelry Mart was in the cards, it pretty much had to be done on July 16th, or else I might be forced to shop at the dreaded Shane Company, the jeweler who advertised on the radio, making my stomach turn. So on this last July 16th, we had an appointment to go (literally, you need an appointment to get in, which I find amusing to some degree as this building is the size of Wal-Mart). It turned out that although this was Lesley’s day to work, she took the day off to get her hair done, and had planned a whole long list of house chores for us to do. So, at the last minute, I had to come up with an excuse that would keep me out of the house for at least six, but most likely eight hours. After all, we, Kev and I, had to drive to San Francisco, shop, buy, wait for it to be set, and then return. That’s not exactly a quick jaunt. Her taking the day off wasn’t part of the plan. The best I could do was to tell her that we had to buy some last minute stuff for Kevin’s wedding, and I wasn’t sure how long that was going to take. I also weakly offered up that this would be the last time Kevin and I could hang out as bachelors so he might want to do something fun. It was rather vague, and it wasn’t as though we were going to go bar hopping or to some strip club on a Monday afternoon, but I needed something ambiguous that would buy me more than just two hours. Lesley seemed placated, but disappointed by my excuse, but what else could I do?
So on the morning of July 16th, 2007, at approximately 10:30 am, Kevin and I set off for the Jewelry Mart in San Francisco to buy an engagement ring for Lesley.