semperfiona | (no subject)

Feb 10, after the SLuRP munch, Tammie and Rosa and I were taking Cait home. I happened to have gone the wrong way, and was about to correct my path when Tammie realized we'd be passing right next to Mavrik Romantika. A couple of weeks prior, we had noticed some very pretty rings in the display window while on our way to Ben and Jerry's. Tammie said, "Should we?" and we waffled a little but pulled into the parking lot. Cait and Rosa stayed with us for a while, but after Rosa got antsy Cait took her next door for an ice cream.

Most of an hour later, after looking at and trying on a whole range of rings, as well as talking to the salesman about his own choice, we decided on and purchased three of these tungsten carbide rings. Only the one in Tammie's size was in stock at that location, so he wrapped it up in a very nice orange box "imported from Italy!" and put it in a gift bag, and she went on Monday to pick up the other two from the Clayton location.

Upon arriving home, we found Chris and Woof working away on loading the first batch of furniture into our rented U-Haul. Chris was annoyed that it took us so long to get back, and was not at all pleased when the answer to "What have you been doing?!" was "This and that," but he let it go anyway.

Later, after the loading was finished, we were making plans to take Woof to dinner and called Becky to invite her as well. Tammie told Woof that he should tell her we found a really good Israeli store--the owners, most of the employees and most of the stock at Mavrik come from Israel--but we'd tell her later. Well, she wasn't going to wait for the goods, so Tammie took the phone and went into a back room to explain.

Tuesday morning 2/14, while we were lying in bed in the morning, Tammie brought all the rings and gave us each our own. We've been bouncing around showing them to everyone who'll stand still long enough, ever since.

It really is a seriously cool ring. Who ever heard of a tungsten carbide ring? It turns out it's nearly the hardest metal available--it can't be scratched except by diamond, corundum, and other tungsten carbide items, it doesn't tarnish, and it takes a mirror-like shine. Sure, you get fingerprints on it and the like, but they wipe right off.

And the coolest thing of all? Ooh shiny! T'other morning, I stood in the entryway at the Lake House for several minutes just watching the sparkles from a sunbeam reflecting off my ring. Driving to and from work is like having a tiny discoball in my car.

A few days later, Rosa was playing with one of the ringboxes and wrapped a piece of candy up in it. She gave it to Ray when he arrived as a "present". We had to stop him taking the box away with him. "It was never hers to give away; that's one of the boxes our commitment rings came in." Interestingly, he made nary a comment about "commitment rings" and in fact still hasn't said anything about it.