Good story: fell in love with beautiful lady. Hapless English major - on student loans, no job. Realized I needed to come up with a ring. Damn. Ok, so I leveraged relationships. My friend in my portfolio poetry class (yeah, we were pretty hipster).../1
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Replying to @ProfessorStrix @MorlockP
... had a stepfather that was a custom jeweller - worked mostly in platinum and 18k, selling to oilmen's wives in downtown Calgary. I talked to him, and balked at the price. Then he looked at me, sighed, and thought of his hapless English major stepson... /2
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Replying to @ProfessorStrix @MorlockP
... and decided to do 18k gold at cost, With a platinum setting of course. Got started on the ring. Decided on a gemstone instead of diamond - beautiful violet tanzanite -
@vithebird - Violet is my (now) wife's name. And now I had to come up with 1600$ cold hard CAD$ .../31 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
... so I got a job waiting tables, put aside tips. Made a jar labelled ring. Taped a paper to it with a sum, that added up as I added I could see the numbers. Sold unnecessary things - old textbooks, the like. The big jump came when my dad ... /4
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... took a look in his farmyard and saw a bunch of bent aluminum irrigation pipes. Scratched his chin and said to me - "you know I have a cobalt blade for my skillsaw. You could clean up these pipes, cut the cast ends from the rolled aluminum shafts... /5
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... and fetch a premium at the recyclers. So I did so over two weekends, filled up the end of the old five tonne grain truck - couple tonnes worth of aluminum to turn into an 18k ring. He came along and lectured me about those darn Catholics... (she was Catholic)... /6
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... and all of a sudden I had most of the ring. A few months go by, and I have the money. Except I put it in a savings account that was linked weirdly to a mutual fund/bond account at the credit union. I had invited the lady to dinner at the Calgary Tower... /7
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... the kind with the revolving restaurant. Booking was good, lady was in from another province and I was on track to spring the question... and I had no ring because the funds were tied up. Bank figured things out, but the time was tight. I had to rush to my friend's house /8
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... because office hours were over. I push it down the road in the car. Red-and-blue lights. Cop comes up and I can't string together a coherent sentence. He mercifully took pity on me - I mean people don't use the "gonna pop the question, need to get the ring" excuse often/9
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... finally get to friend's house and his stepdad *reluctantly* hand over his handiwork for the thick wad of cash. It's glorious. I'm ready. Go to restaurant in the sky. Beautiful dinner. Ready to go home. At the doors to the elevator... /10
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