The time has come, my friends, to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings…

And, much to my sadnes, a lost ring.  As many of you know, last Saturday (a week ago), my engagement ring disappeared.  I have searched for hours.  Nik and my housemates have helped search too but it has just disappeared.  I have NO idea where it could have gone.  I suppose I am resigned to its fate now but I am still just very, very sad.  Nik and I are going to go look for a new ring soon.  While I know I will love wearing whatever ring Nik and I find, I will always be just a little bit sad for the loss of my great-grandmother’s ring.  And, if miracles of miracles, my ring does reappear, I guess will have two gorgeous rings to wear!

In other news, the Internet at my house has been broken for over a week.  So I’m currently using the free wireless at Panera while waiting for covenant group to start.  My housemate Emily very kindly lent me her laptop so that I could come here to check my e-mail and work on wedding stuff.  I made some really good progress today on our invitations and have pretty much finished them.  I still have to print them to make sure they look good.  I’m sure they’ll need refining but I like the fonts that I found so I’m hopeful that they’re close to being done.  On Sunday, I went to the Paper Source in Georgetown and bought all of the paper for the invitations – also for our thank you notes and programs.  The paper is probably my one big splurge of the wedding but I love what I got – it’s beautiful (there’s even some orange Zona!) and I hope it will all come together well.

Nik and I started our premarital counseling on Sunday with a couple from church.  I think they are going to be really helpful – I learned some things just in our first couple hours together.

And finally, tomorrow marks the last day of the Maryland State Assessment.  We’ve been caught up in doing these high stakes tests for the past week and a half.  While they are very hard and practically impossible for my ESOL kids to pass (and so EXTREMELY frustrating), I like this week because I have far less teaching to do and practically no grading.  So I didn’t have to do any work last weekend and I left school at 3:30 today!  I wish this could continue.  But alas they end tomorrow and I have to go back to real teaching.  Oh well.  I guess that’s what I get paid to do anyway!

I love you all!