Before I start hacking on this myself... anyone have a Ruby method to produce this?

time_until_in_words.rb

# return strings like:
# "3 months and 14 days" until"...
# "1 year and 11 days until"...
#
def time_until_in_words(future_date)
  future_date - Date.today
  # magic!
end

What about this?

def time_until_in_words
  "#{ distance_of_time_in_words(Time.now, future_date) } until"
end

cheeky ;-)

i need very specific dates... not ending it with "about" or "less than"

looks like i'll have to hack on a custom method :-)

The dotiw gem will do this. It overrides the default distance_of_time_in_words method. http://rubydoc.info/gems/dotiw/1.1.0/frames

distance_of_time_in_words(Time.now, future_date, false, :only => ["years", "months", "days"])
#=> "3 months and 14 days"