Supafly.com

For most of the past month, Carlos and I have gotten to the studio before 8:30 in the morning and we don’t leave until 7:00 at night. It feels great to get all that work done, but it’s a yucky feeling to know you only have time to eat dinner and go to sleep before you have to get up and do it again.

Today after work, I drove around the neighborhood that I want to live in. The sun was setting and it was cooling off, so I decided to take another drive around and look which houses are for sale.

It’s been a few months since I’ve been looking, and in that time, the homes have gone up in price about 10-15% each month.; Now everyone in the city is trying to pack into the neighborhood, and fools are paying mountains of cash for a small ranch house on a small lot. The prices are so expensive now, I think people have stopped using their brains.

If things keep up at this pace, there will not be a single house in the neighborhood worth less than a million. Part of me is disappointed because the prices are so high that there is little chance that I can afford a house worth living in. Two years ago, I predicted that the neighborhood would get hotter, but but I didn’t take it seriously enough.; Now the prices are so high, I wonder if it’s time to start looking somewhere else.

I’ve started to shop around in different parts of town, and even in San Diego. I’m not seriously ready to put in an offer on a home, but I am enjoying the experience of learning about different neighborhoods, speculating on cost and value, and deciding what work to do on a house. I love it! It’s the same thing I do at work with the Internet with all my websites. I just love building things.;

I enjoy the game of numbers, but it’s more than that. Your house and your neighborhood are the backdrop for your life. I’m not talking about a “lifestyle”, but the very basic yet intimate parts of life. Buying a home is part of the story of your life.

I am on a flight from Binghamton, New York, to Detroit, Michigan. This is one of those small propeller planes where people are packed in. The seat in front of me is so close, I can’t even open my laptop and keep my monitor upright. It’s leaning towards me like a half-opened book.

Last night I spoke at St. Charles the Evangelist Church in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. I new the place was going to be small because the closest airport was Scranton, which is a pretty small city. But small towns can be full of flavor, and that was certainly the story last night.

The drive into town was pretty. Low-lying mountains covered with trees surround the town, and the Susquehanna river passed right through town. Although it is a small town, Susquehanna be a thriving railroad town. The main street in town is lined with old brick and stone buildings.; The streets themselves used to be all brick back when the town was booming. The only brick street left is right in front of the church. The church itself was a beautiful tall cathedral-looking building perched on a hill overlooking the valley.

My talk last night was for middle school and high school students. Fr. Simon warned me that I would be speaking to a smaller group. But I didn’t care; the young people who came were great people. And the older folks who gathered along the edges of the room had a great time too. There was a strong sense of community. I enjoyed staying afterwards and hanging out with everyone.

It’s a small town, and I don’t think any restaurants would be open after nine o’clock. So Fr. Simon and I went back to the rectory to have dinner. The rectory was a beautiful old two-story brick home. Every room was big and had high ceilings. At one time, the home was a booming convent for nuns. But tonight it was only us to, so we the new pope and how to do youth ministry in smaller towns. Fr. Simon is a cool guy. He’s my friend.

This plane really sucks. My body is folded and squeezed into this seat. Every part of my body is pressed against something. My laptop screen is too tall to fit on the tray table, so I have the keyboard pressed against my chest and my screen on my lap. I look ridiculous.

::::

I am in a bigger plane now on my flight from Detroit to Phoenix. There were light snow flurries this morning in Detroit when I landed. The snow got heavier by the minute. Once I got in the airport, I bought some coffee and snuggled into a chair and looked out at the blizzard. I pretended I was in a ski lodge in Colorado. I didn’t have to manage too much, because the airport was under construction, and one wall was open. The cold air whipped through the terminal.

I flipped through magazines in the two hour layover in Detroit. I picked up a special edition magazine journal dedicated to Pope John Paul II. I flipped through the pages and my heart started to grow warmer. By the time I was finished with the last page, I was crying. I admired JP2 so much, and it breaks my heart to know that he is gone.

My long walk to my gate was filled with my memories of seeing John Paul II. As I walked, I looked up at the jumbotron monitors hanging high on the airport walls and saw news commentators speculating on the papacy of Benedict XVI. The screens were ten feet tall, and the images of JP2 and Benedict XVI were larger than life. It’s not often that the images in my head are broadcast to the thousands of people scurrying through the airport.

I have a plan for a website dedicated to John Paul II. I don’t know when I am going to find the time to pull it off, but I need to get it done soon. It’s difficult to decide which one of my several sites to develop first. They each need so much work.

:::

Our wings were covered with snow and ice. It took an hour to go through line for de-icing and onto the runway. It’s going to be May soon, so I imagine that’ll be the last time I get a snow delay for the year.

I closed my window blind when we were taking off in Detroit forty minutes ago. You couldn’t see anything beyond the thick cloud of snow. I just opened my window and I was shocked to see Lake Michigan beneath us. The clouds have broken up into delicate white puffs, each casting a dark blue shadow on the light blue shores of the great lake. The coastline is so brilliant that it looks tropical. This has to be Chicago. Oh yes! There’s the stadium off the water…and O’Hare Airport. Now the clouds cast playful shadows on the patches of city blocks. In a few hours, I’ll be in the deserts of Arizona. What a life!

I’m on a short flight from Detroit to a small airport in Pennsylvania. This morning has been quite an adventure in being a grown up.

I went to bed at one this morning, then woke up four hours later to catch my flight. I don’t think anyone likes to get up after just four hours of sleep. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember any part of my drive to the airport. After I got my ticket, my body was screamed for a cup of coffee. But I wanted to sleep on the plane, so I avoided caffeine and walked past the Starbux to get in line at security.

It’s so funny to stand in line with other grown ups who are tired and cranky like little kids. Once I got to my gate, the chairs were piled with people taking little naps. Sleeping is an intimate experience, and it was funny to see how silly they all looked. Those who weren’t sleeping stared blankly into the distance. I walked to the window and watched the first light of dawn. The sky was growing warmer, and the mountains were a cool blue.

I fell asleep a few minutes after I sat down on the plane and then stumbled into dreamland. I was at a concert amphitheater carved into the high mountain ridges of Arizona. In the distance you could see fantastic canyons and mountains of boulders. The whole place looked familiar.

It was so exciting to be that high above the towns beneath us. Next to the concert venue was an airport that walked through.; My luggage collided with Avril Lavigne. We both apologized like nice people do. We chatted for a while about random things, then I explained to her that I was involved in youth ministry, and she was thrilled that I had used my fame for something good. So I asked for her phone number so we could be in touch, and she handed me several sheets of paper with notes scribbled on them.

By this time in my dream, the two teenagers sitting next to me on the plane woke me up. I patted my hands on my pant pockets and couldn’t find the papers that Avril had written on, so I knew I had to get back into the dream to see if I could read them and try to remember what she wrote. So I covered my head with my airplane blanket and went back to sleep.

Now the airport had turned into a parking garage next to the lake in my hometown in Georgia. I saw teenagers strutting through the parking deck towards the concert. Each of them was wearing a shirt that I had designed. I was excited to talk to them, but my conversation was interrupted by a flashback montage. It showed the Miz from the Real World New York taking my designs, changing them, then selling them for himself. By the time the montage was finished, the teenagers were already lost in the concert crowd. I wasn’t upset; that the Miz stole my designs; I was flattered that someone would bootleg my designs. The dream flipped and swirled away from that scene into something I can’t remember.

The flight attendant on my plane tapped my forearm and asked me to lift my seat up because it was time to land. Although I was bummed that my dream was over, I was more excited that I had slept through the whole three and a half hour flight.

I am always disoriented for the first few minutes after I wake up. I walked out of the plane and realized I was in Terminal A in Detroit. I don’t know when this Terminal was built, but every time I walk through, I feel like I am in a futuristic movie that I could’ve seen as a kid: moving sidewalks, huge TV screens, a sleek train. The only thing that was missing was robotic floor sweepers.

It’s late Friday night, early Saturday morning. I have plane to catch in a few hours and I should probably go to bed, but I have a lot spinning in my head, and I have to get it down before I go to bed.

Tonight I saw the movie “Hotel Rwanda” at the dollar theater. I remember watching the news back in 1994 and hearing about the genocide in Rwanda. My mom explained that one group was trying to kill all the others of another group, but I was in high school and it didn’t register.

The movie did a great job showing that genocide is not just about an atrocious number of deaths, but the individual stories of real people murdered. What evil.

I took a two-week trip to Africa in 2000, and since then, there has been bloodshed in one of the countries that I visited. It’s startling to watch the news and see people dead in the a country where I was once a spoiled tourist. But what has happened in those countries cannot compare to the genocide ten years ago in Rwanda.

I’ll never really know what it’s like to live in a war-torn country. I walked out of the theater and to my car with a renewed since of gratitude. I live in a safe and peaceful country. I sat down in my car and looked at the wires spilling out of the huge hole in; my dashboard. Earlier this week someone stole my CD player while my car was parked in front of my home. It’s a bad feeling to know you were robbed right under your nose, but it didn’t really matter when I thought of the movie.

::::

I passed by my neighbor’s house on my way home. It’s the second house to go up for sale on my street in the past week. They sold it for a lot of money. In the two years that I have owned my house, the value of homes in the neighborhood have almost doubled. Doubled! I’ve made more money sitting in my house than I do; laboring at work all day. I can’t explain why this fortune was given to me and not someone else. I just no that I have to be thankful, and be generous to those who do not have anything.

Earlier this week I went to the awards ceremony for “Arizona Man and Woman of the Year.” In one of the speeches, the award winner said, “Nobody gets into heaven without a recommendation from a poor person.” I know the room was filled with rich and powerful people, and these words kicked them in the gut. It kicked me in the gut.