Marriage is why we have gathered together today...

Please allow me to share some exciting, personal news before I get back to talking about whatever it is I write about here. This is a copy of an email that went out yesterday... Sonja will guest-blog part of it. Perhaps it's not the best way to make the announcement, but, hey you found out about it!

(And now, a letter from Mike and Sonja)

Dearest Family and Friends,

Please sit down.

Are you sitting? Good, because we have some big stuff to tell you.

We would like to take the opportunity to share the exciting news of our engagement! Mike proposed, Sonja accepted and now comes the exciting part of wedding planning and debt! (Just kidding…it’ll all be wonderful!)

We know you all want the juicy details, and that’s exactly what this email will (hopefully) do!

So…get ready to experience the Mike and Sonja Engagement Story:

---Sonja’s Version---

On Friday, May 16th, Mike and I went on a picnic. Now, this wasn’t really a huge shock because we had planned on picnicking for quite some time; he just decided to keep the location a secret. He picked a perfect spot on Rye Beach. We dined on a grassy patch high enough to view the ocean’s unlimited waters. It was a beautiful day, even though it was slightly chilly and breezy. After stuffing ourselves full of sandwiches and goldfish, he decided to have a surprise up his sleeve…

He had a little date planned in the Fuller Gardens. It’s a turn of the century rose garden on the Seacoast. When we walked over to the gate and realized it was closed, Michael got really upset (if you know Mike, you know he’s not exactly crazy about shrubbery…) I told him that it was not a big deal…we’d just visit another day. He started to get pouty and all grumbly because he called ahead of time and was POSITIVE that the garden would be open! But, knowing there was nothing we could do about it, we decided to take pictures from the gate.

Directly across the street from the Fuller Gardens was this tiny chapel. Michael asked if I wanted to go in, and hesitantly I said “sure”. We heard someone doing construction behind the chapel, so he insisted on talking to the fellow to see if we could go in, even after I told him that we shouldn’t interrupt and just visit another time. After a few minutes of waiting for Mike to return, I walked over to where he and the carpenter were and was introduced to Mitch. Mitch, who was “totally bodacious,” was kind enough to allow us to go inside and peek at the adorable building while he worked outside. The chapel took my breath away. Complete with stained glass and arched open beams, I completely fell in love with the little place. While we snooped around inside, I kept noticing Michael fidgeting behind me… but if you know me, I take things with a grain of salt, and I thought nothing of it. While I was at altar looking around, I turned around and Mike was on his knee! He took my hand and said something… but to be completely honest, I have NO idea what he said. I was in complete shock that he was actually PROPOSING! I asked him if it was a joke, and (thankfully!) he said no. Then, the big question came: “Sonja, will you marry me?” Of course, I said YES!!!!!!

His proposal couldn’t have been more perfect. Afterwards, we thanked Mitch (who Michael had met and planned the proposal with a week before!) and headed for the beach again to celebrate with champagne. I think I cried about a million and twelve times because I was so incredibly happy and surprised. I had NO clue that he would ask me that day, let alone before his departure to Japan and China! It was one of the best days of my life, and I couldn’t ask for a more perfect engagement.

(Oh…and the ring is ABSOULTELY STUNNING! )

Mike and I are so excited to start another chapter in our lives…TOGETHER! This is such an amazing time for us, and we thank you all SO much for the love and support that each and every one of you gives.

We are beyond thankful.


---Mike’s Version---

I don’t have too much to add, I suppose. But I’ll fill in a few of the details.

Since I’m a Nagel (and therefore, totally type-A), I plan things out. The proposal had been in the works for quite a while — I talked with my parents back in February, spoke with Sonja’s at the end of March and then bought the ring in mid-April. I’d been holding back on proposing while I waited for the weather to warm up (Sonja loves flowers, so I wanted to do the proposal outdoors).

I visited Fuller Gardens and the Union Chapel a week earlier to scope things out. The gardeners told me that they’d be open for business, but I either misheard them or they wound up being closed randomly on the day of the proposal. However, when I visited the gardens, I also met Mitch, the friendly surfer-contractor, and arranged for him to let us into the chapel for a viewing when I came back with Sonja. She had no idea that Mitch and I knew each other when we walked up to the church.

We got into the chapel. I had the ring safety-pinned to the inside of my jacket pocket (totally paranoid about losing it). Sonja kept walking around, looking at the Tiffany stained glass windows. I tried to deftly maneuver behind her to get the ring out, but mostly wound up flopping around awkwardly and helplessly. Finally, though, I got it free and shifted it to another pocket.

Just then, Mitch came back into the chapel. He knew I was going to propose there (I’d told him 3-4 times), but the poor dude seemed like he spent too many hours baking in the sun, so I’m not sure if he forgot or what. Anyways, he interrupted us and asked to see Sonja’s ring. Luckily, she wears a promise ring and he seemed satisfied to see that and left. Otherwise, I would have hit him over the head with a 2x4.

Alone once more, I got down on one knee, grabbed Sonja’s right hand, told her that she was the love of my life and asked for her hand in marriage. I like to think I did so eloquently and gallantly. However, I don’t really remember what I said, but I do remember fumbling around with the ring, noticing I had the wrong hand and mumbling, “I need your left one now.”

Despite my poor attempts at a proposal (Guys, if I have any advice it’d be, “Write it out and read it out loud.”), she said, “Yes.” And she cried a lot. And said, “Yes,” some more. I just smiled so much my face hurt.

It was awesome.

I’m so unbelievably excited — Sonja came into my life at just the right time to be my perfect soul mate. I couldn’t imagine a future without her. I love you with all my heart, Sonja.

“And they lived happily ever after…”

To answer your questions, no we don’t have a date. But we’re thinking for late-May, early-June of 2009. In lieu of gifts, please just send large wads of cash. Mike has a ring to pay for, thanks.

(Kidding!)

Sonja and I outside the closed Fuller Gardens

Post-proposal in the chapel

The altar where she said yes.

Outside the chapel (with Mitch's van).

Mitch

Where Mike's At...

If anyone's around Southern NH this weekend, I'll be attending the Hooligans in a Darkened Theater production of Reservoir Dogs.

Apparently, it's the first time it's ever been staged (at least to the knowledge of one unnamed show member who gets to play a dead body on stage for 60 minutes). And it may be the last, since, they didn't get the rights to the script from Tarantino.

So, shhhh... don't tell anybody. I'm keeping it a secret. Which is why I posted it here. No one reads this anyway, right?

Shows are at 7 and 10pm on Friday and Saturday. There's no entry fee (they wouldn't dream of making money off of pirated material, but I bet they'd catch a few dollars if you balled up a wad of cash and threw it at them).

My living situation...

So, I've talked here about moving out of Boston, but haven't yet mentioned much about my new digs on New Hampshire's Seacoast.

First, for clarification, my home state does have a sliver of seacoast. The 30 miles NH claims as its own is the smallest amount of any state that touches ocean. But, hey, that's plenty of room for us to fit in fat, wrinkled old sun-worshippers in bikinis and speedos and to fumigate the refreshing, salt smell of the sea with fryer after fryer of fried dough on the ever-classy white trash mecca that is Hampton Beach.

I've spent just over a month here and I'm liking it just fine so far. This is my first time living alone. I thought it might be weird at first, but there was practically zero adjustment time. From Day 1, I've been walking around in my underwear, talking to myself, keeping the heat turned down to the point I can see my breath and not changing the TV from ESPN like I've been doing it all my life. It's pretty awesome.

I have a one-bedroom apartment. After four years of city-living, it seems like I've moved into a palace or become an investment banker. It's huge. I'm bad with numbers, but my living room is approximately the size of an Olympic swimming pool. My bedroom is big enough so that my voice echoes. My bathroom is comfortable (just a stand-up shower in there). I even have enough closet space to fit all of my clothes (which is saying something, because when I move it looks like a Broadway production just hit the road for a 35-city tour). It's a pretty swinging bachelor pad.

The only drawback is that I'm not actually supposed to be living here. The place is zoned as commercial office space. The rest of the building is occupied by a bunch of 9-5 businesses. That means my kitchen is somewhat lacking. I have a full set of cabinets, some counter space a sink and a 3/4-sized fridge but that's it. There's no oven and no stove.

So, I'm now cooking on either a dual-burner hot plate (which sucks) or a plug-in wok (which sucks less). I also have full use of my tiny toaster oven, which actually cooks really well, but is about the size of a shoebox. No more roaster chickens for Mike. Actually, I've been able to make do, since I'm generally cooking for one (and, while I could eat a whole chicken, I am watching my hourglass figure).

The main drawback is that it takes forever to do anything on the dual-burners. I can get away with cooking bacon or pancakes in the wok, but I do need the burners to do other things. Namely, boil water. It took me an hour to boil a water for a pot of spaghetti. That's just not going to cut it. I'll have to figure out a better way to do that... can you microwave pasta?

The other quirk of living here is that my neighbors don't know that I'm living here. They think I'm "Mike, a freelance writer and marketing consultant," which is half true. I am a freelance writer. But I had to throw in the "consultant" thing because it makes it sound like I actually make money and can afford an "office." Plus, I've found if you tell people you're a consultant, they don't ask any questions. Since no one knows what a consultant is or what they actually do.

But my landlord is pretty anal about people not finding out that I live here. He's put down a series of ground rules that I have to abide by (which, by the way, I'm happy to do, since I got a great steal of a deal). They are:

1) move in at night, on a weekend (so no one will see you)
2) keep blinds open during the day (so it looks like you work there)
3) close blinds at night (so no one will see you)
4) do not have parties (so no one will see your friends)
5) park your car at the far end of the lot (there are people that live in the buildings on that side. I'm supposed to blend in)
6) tell everyone you work there
7) keep silent at all times (so no one will hear you)

It feels a little weird to be sneaking around my OWN HOUSE, but the rent is a steal and I really don't want to have to move again. So, I abide by them as much as possible. Instead of parking my car in front of my door, I park 100 feet away, on the other side of the lot. I sneak down every morning at 7:20 a.m. to grab my newspaper, timing the snatch between the residents leaving for work and the early birds showing up to the office. I move my bags of laundry to my car in the dead of night, so no one will see me. I keep the TV turned down. And, when the cleaning people come to vacuum the hallway, I turn off all my lights, switch of any music and sit in the silent darkness, waiting for them to leave.

It's a little weird, but, hey, it's home...

I haven't quite finished unpacking. My prints and decorative items are still in boxes. Once I have those in place, I'll try to post some pictures.

Last note: NH is so rural that my address doesn't actually appear on Google maps. Good times.

Coming home to the Granite State...

My apartment in Cambridge is bare. Well, my half of it is, anyway. There are boxes and boxes of books, knick-knacks, art work, souvenirs and the collected detritus of my past 24 years of life. When you see that your whole world can fit comfortably into a small, 12-dollar-a-month storage unit. you can't help but feel a little depressed.

I'm moving out of the city this weekend, packing up my junk and heading north to a small town in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire. Eight years after I left my tiny home state for college, I'm returning for the foreseeable future. Since then, I've lived in three of the world's greatest cities (London, New York and Boston) as well as a reasonably decent college town in upstate New York (Ithaca).

I think, at one point, I swore I'd never, ever move back to New Hampshire. Now that my stuff is all packed away, it's sort of hit me that I'm a city boy no more.

There are a bunch of reasons behind the move. I've never had a place of my own, so I figure as my quarter-century birthday approaches, it's about high time.

Of course, being a freelance (penniless) writer doesn't really lend itself to spacious one-bedrooms in urban areas, unless you count the handicapped-sized port-o-johns they set up at high rise construction sites. My economic needs forced me to look outside of Boston for a place to live.

Also, since I really do intend to make this whole writing thing work out, I needed a place free of distractions. Well, I got it. The town I'm moving to has a thriving downtown of one cafe, one convenience store, one pub, one dirty Chinese place and one crazy townie that wears a one-piece Carhart suit and an orange vest everywhere he goes. Whereas, the town I'm moving out of is widely considered to be the cultural hub on Boston, is home to two world-class universities, contains plenty of shopping, hundreds of restaurants, dozens of bars, a half-dozen T stops and one really gorgeous area to run.

I'm also moving for love. My girlfriend has been driving her Jeep Wrangler (in all its eight-miles-per-gallon glory) to Boston on a weekly basis for two years now. She has gotten lost on the Mass Pike (which is actually about 20 miles west of the city), she's been stuck in hours of traffic before, during and after Sox games, she's been involved in a highway car crash, she's had to reverse direction on Storrow Drive hundreds of times, she's learned how to parallel park and she's fallen asleep at the wheel going in both directions. She hates that drive more than I hate Yankee fans named "Sal."

Has she ever complained about it? Well, no, not too much (Only when I forgot to reminder her about that night's Sox game, which causes the 75 minute drive to escalate into the 150 minute range. That only happened a half dozen times or so. Last season.). Did she ever ask me to move? No. Unless you count the way her eyes flashed with the clear, though subtle message that I would be receiving a prostate examination with a 9-iron and a hacksaw if I signed another lease.

But I wouldn't do that to her. Nope, it's time for Mike to pack up and head to New Hampshire.

I have a lot of good things going for me. I have a tremendous apartment (I'll write more on that later) that's a 1-bedroom, practically brand new and I'm getting for only slightly more than what I paid in groceries and cable each month in Boston. I'm near New Hampshire's cultural center of Portsmouth (which, actually, does have culture that doesn't involve Nascar, bass fishing, ice fishing or the ever-popular lit-dynamite-in-a-barrel fishing). And I'm just over an hour from Boston, making the commute down there pretty smooth, since I'll have to be there about three days a week or so until May.

Life's looking up.

Yes, it's sad to be leaving Boston. I've had a great two-year run. Though moving can bring on some brief twinges of nostalgia, it's also an exciting time. It's a new chapter in my life and I'm looking forward to what I've got in store. It'll give me plenty of material for this old blog thing, too, so I'll keep you updated. Wish me luck...

PLUS I get to redecorate! Which I'm totally pumped about. More on that later, too...

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It would be remiss to end this without giving a huge thank you to my incredible girlfriend who, singlehandedly, packed my entire apartment yesterday while I sat and typed up a story that was on deadline. How did I ever get to be so lucky?

Guys out there, that is love. She did that for me just because I needed the help and she cared enough about me to pitch in.

Either that, or she took the opportunity to throw out my Mr. Rogers sweater (this is probably the closest thing to it, just add argyle and subtract the beard) that I like so much and she despises. I'll find out when I unpack...

Digital mountaintops...

So, I was reading the New York Times today...

Isn't that such a pretentious statement? Well, I guess it could be. I'm not one of those people who actively try to find reasons to say, "Well, I was reading in the Times..." or "Did you this this morning's Times?" or "It's a good thing I had the Business Day section, 'cause we ran out of toilet paper!" But sometimes it's unavoidable.

The Times is great - all the world's news packed into one, handy package that easily fits into your messenger bag and provides a concise analysis of everything you need to know to start your day. I love it. In fact, the only thing that I don't like about biking around the city (have I mentioned yet that I bike? I bike.) is that I can't sit on the train and read my paper in the morning. It means that I have to get up a little earlier in the morning to read it, but it's worth the time.

You will never, by the way, here me say, "I was reading in The New Yorker the other day..." because that is way too pretentious. I'm under the opinion that no one actually reads the New Yorker, they just carry around copies and casually leave them on tables in coffee shops, hoping it makes them look worldly and wealthy and pick up chicks. It's a fashion accessory for nerds the way that popped collars and too much cologne are for frat guys.

But that's not the point! This is a travel post! Shut up, Nagel!

The point is... the Times alerted me to a great new website. The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) has always put out the best books for people looking to hike on the east coast, in particular, for the White Mountains in New Hampshire. But until now, their maps, trail information and directions have only been available in a handy, pocket-sized, annual print edition.

Well, my internet friends, the day you've been waiting for has come... the AMC is moving its trail map database online into a searchable, interactive website. Just check out www.wmgonline.org. It does require that you sign-up, but it's free to use and view the basic maps.

Now, all you need to carry is granola, some water and bug repellent.

Happy trails, to you my friend. Happy trails, indeed.

Star light, star bright...

So I just spent the last couple days up in northern New Hampshire at Living Water Campground. Staying there definitely brought back memories - it had been a favorite Nagel family vacation spot for years, with the five of us heading up there pretty much every year while we were still kids.

My family hadn't been there in a while, but not much had changed. The camp store had gotten bigger (even added a pizza place and a Quiznos!) and the family that owns the area had built a few log cabins (very cute). But, other than that, it was all the same.

The campground is a peaceful slice of the White Mountains. The babbling Ammonoosuc River runs along the back edge of the campground provide a delightful, melodic background to nightly campfires and sunrise (okay, a bit later than that) walks through the woods.

But the thing that got to me the most about this latest trip was the sheer beauty of the night sky. I was lucky enough to make it up there on two consecutive clear nights in the midst of a meteor shower. Well, the show Mother Nature put on was Grade-A, top-quality.

Each night, the Milky Way stretch directly overhead, touching each horizon. Millions of stars, far more than I can see from my apartment balcony in Boston (where I can see the moon, Venus and landing lights headed to Logan) twinkled everywhere. The constellations not only stood out, they seemed like they were closer to me than ever before.

Looking up at the night sky, surrounded by perfect darkness and 100 miles from the nearest city, it was so easy to lose myself in the beauty of nature.

And that's one of the often overlooked aspects of travel, I think. We go around with our cameras and our checklists and visit the great monuments of the world. We see everything that man has built - huge skyscrapers, breathtaking cathedrals, beautiful works of art. But I think we sometimes don't take the same time to appreciate the natural beauty in the world around us.

So the next time you go somewhere, or even if you're at home, make sure to pause, take a moment and look up. You might be surprised at what you see.