Supafly.com

I’m feeling pretty good right now because I’m finishing up projects in my life. Some of them have been calculated; and time consuming. Others have moved along surprisingly quickly. Like this evening I was getting tired of being at the studio. I; knew I could go home, but I didn’t feel like sitting in traffic during rush hour(s). So I took a half hour to play around with a new design for this site, supafly.com.

Since I have many sites right now, I don’t feel like I have to make my personal site a showcase for my talent. Without the pressure to wow the world with my design skills, I was free to design it as it was meant to be–a personal site. After thirty-five minutes, I had a clean, cool, and easy-to-use layout. In less than an hour!

Although the layout was initially designed to make my journal easier to read, I was super-excited to see the same layout work for all of my other sections too. That means I didn’t have to design anymore. It’s ready to create the code.

It’s been almost five years since I’ve redesigned supafly.com. As a web designer, there is nothing more embarrassing than having your personal site old and buggy. But I’m not the only designer he has this problem. I guess we are kind of like mechanics. You work all day on cars, and by the time you get home, you don’t feel like working on your own. But you know when the time comes, you can get it done.

I think it’s time to get it done.

I was on the phone; this morning with our project manager and he said,; “The smoke is white. No maybe it’s black. The bells are ringing. The bells; are ringing!” Within two seconds, my screen exploded with Instant Messages from friends and family. My cell phone was ringing and shaking my desk. I hung up the phone and watched the live video feed on msnbc.com.

Wow…what an exhilarating, dramatic moment. I heard the Cardinal say “…Ratzinger” and I was like wow…they chose Ratzinger!! I don’t know much about Cardinal Ratzinger, but I know people love him. My hands were trembling so much that I had trouble clicking my mouse and updating the site.

What a cool moment. I can’t imagine what it is like to walk out on a balcony to see 1,000,000 people there to welcome you. Who else on earth gets that? No rock star, no celebrity, no president or world leader. Kick ass.

After watching a couple minutes of the hoorah, I went on a buying frenzy to get some URLs with the pope’s name. I love JP2, so honestly, it will take me a while to warm up to Pope Benedict.

I was supposed to go on a snowboarding trip this weekend, but I decided I needed to stay home and work on getting projects finished. I started working on my landscaping my side yard on Saturday afternoon when the trucks dropped off my supplies. After three days of hard work, my dusty side yard has turned into a beautiful oasis. But it took a lot of hard work and supplies:

12,000 lbs of sand
10,000 lbs of soil
4,000 lbs of fine gravel
1,400 bricks
7 plants
5 cacti
2 boulders
1 tree

In the twenty total days of work for the whole project, I broke a shovel, a hoe, and a wheelbarrow. I wore off the fingers tips of two leather work; gloves. I need to add a trellis arch over the gate so my bougainvillea vines can grow into a pretty arched entry way. Then I’ll finish off the landscaping with a few more plants and some granite landscaping rocks. It’s going to look great!

It was fun to work to listen to the radio this weekend while I worked, because the news was buzzing with news from Vatican City as the Cardinals voted for a new cardinal. So far we don’t have a pope.

Next on the roster is hiring someone to remodel my kitchen, dining room, and living room. Then it’ll be time to put in new flooring and new windows. While he’s doing that, I’ll design my outdoor patio and the fire pit. After I am done with all of these projects, I wonder if I will be satisfied and content, or I will be sad that I don’t have anything left to do.

After I finished typing my journal last night, I tried to go to sleep. The doors shook in their frames whenever a draft would run through the building. I wanted to think it was a draft, because it seemed more like a persistent ghost was tapping at my doors. I got kind of scared, so I flipped on the light and tried to fix the problem. I unfolded the towels and wedged them into the door frames. I kept the light on and read the magazines some more.

I tried to go to sleep again, but the doors kept shaking. In desperation, I pushed my furniture against the doors to keep them from shaking. I guess it’s kind of silly now that I think about it, but it was a huge building and for all I knew, I was the only one there. The furniture kept the doors from shaking, and I fell asleep.

I slept in this morning, then took a walk around the town. I didn’t have much time, so I just walked around Wal Mart. I do this whenever I can, because Wal-Mart is always the same, no matter what town you are in.; I always imagine that I am back at home, fooling around on a lazy weekend afternoon.; t our local Wal-Mart. Then I walked around the neighborhood looking at the houses, getting a glimpse of the lives of people I don’t know.

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The rally this afternoon was a diocesan-wide event for teenagers called “Crossroads”.; I was happy to see that a couple hundred teenagers came to the event. Although every teenager is important, it’s emotionally difficult to leave home and travel across the country to speak to a small group.

After waiting all afternoon to do my thing, I was excited to finally get on stage and connect with the teenagers. I was startled when I looked out into the crowd because there were a dozen kids who ten and younger. Why would you bring your nine-year-old daughter to an event aimed at high school kids?

Throughout the whole talk, I had to censor myself so I wouldn’t scandalize the kids. I could hardly talk about the big issue of teenage life: sex. I had to use complicated words or substitute silly words so that the kids would not understand. I hope I didn’t lose credibility with the teenagers. It’s not even about credibility–it’s about meeting teens where they are.

I met the Vocations Director for the diocese today: a strong, bright-eyed priest in his early forties. He said the Mass this afternoon at the rally. His homily was fascinating and relevant. He has the heart of a fighter and you can feel it in every word he spoke. It was painful to know that so few guys are following in the footsteps of guys like him. Of the two guys I spoke to over the weekend who were considering the seminary, neither was admirable. They were both fragile and aimless. That’s hardly the priest we need tomorrow.

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The quick flight from Lacrosse to here in Minneapolis was pretty. The airport in Lacrosse is on a small island in the middle of the Mississippi. The setting sun torched the pockets of water beneath us as we flew up into the clouds and I couldn’t see anymore. Thirty minutes later, we were back beneath the clouds on our descent into Minneapolis.

It’s always interesting to look at the lives of people from above. There are baseball fields, neighborhood playgrounds, and big backyards with pools. Those are the fun places in people’s lives, all lives different from my own. Along the lakes you see the bigger homes reserved for the people who’ve made more money. I’m sure they moan about the behavior of the people in smaller homes on the other side of town.

I’m here again at my favorite coffee shop in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. I was here two weeks ago at the same table. My plane won’t leave for another hour, so I’ll stay curled up at this table and sip my coffee and pass the time.

I flew in this afternoon to Lacrosse, Wisconsin. I had no idea when or where the event would be, although I figured it would all happen tonight. After getting a leisurely tour of the town, I concluded that it wouldn’t be until tomorrow. I suppose I could’ve asked, but I was too embarrassed.

We pulled into someone’s driveway for a cookout for their youth group. There were a dozen or so teenagers in the front yard playing croquet already. I picked up a croquet hammer and joined in the game. It was a fun way to get to know each of the kids. It got pretty aggressive and the competition was intense. I hardly new these people and were were smacking each other’s balls off the yard and down the street. It was one of those scenes of life you never imagined you’d be a part of, but sure enough, it did.

Staying true to their Wisconsin heritage, they only grilled bratwurst. They even soaked them in beer all afternoon. After a game of volleyball (my team one four of five), we started up a campfire. Their backyard used to back up to a forest, but those trees came down a few years ago to make room for a Wal-Mart. On the other side of the wooden fence was the bustling parking lot of a shopping super-center. Revving engines, clanging shopping carts, and echoes of the intercom. Just a few feet away, we were making smores and telling stories. It was another bizarre scene in life that I never scripted in my ambitions.

In my four years of traveling, I’ve stayed at some interesting places. I stayed at a charming bed and breakfast on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. I stayed in a stylish retro hotel in New Jersey. I’ve slept on the floor of an abbey in the ghetto of New York City. Tonight I am staying in an old castle-looking seminary in Lacrosse, Wisconsin.

At the center of the building is the church, which from the outside has all the grandeur of a cathedral. There’s a huge wing that stretches off both sides of the cathedral.; This seminary was built fifty years ago when the diocese was preparing for a large number of young men entering the seminary to become priests. The boom never came; the number of seminarians has dropped every years since then. Now it is the headquarters for the diocese of Lacrosse.

I’m staying on the third floor, close the end of the building. From the outside, it kind of looked like the pope’s apartment at St. Peter’s. I got here an hour ago, at about eleven PM. It’d been a long day, so I fell into the bed and started reading two Catholic teen magazines I was given earlier that day. I’ve been interested in publishing a magazine, so I was interested to see what others are doing.

One magazine was called YOU! Magazine, and it was four years old. I’m loyal to the magazine because I was an intern there the summer after I graduated high school. The magazine was pretty pitiful, barely forty pages even with the advertisers. This might’ve been one of their last issues. Although the magazine was popular for ten years, it lost it’s edge in it’s last few years.

I think this was one of their last issues before they finally closed down the magazine. The graphics were mediocre and the content was shallow and uninspiring. I can’t imagine a teenager picking it up and being interested at all.

The other magazine was a local magazine published a couple years ago by a religious order. I have no doubt that they tried hard, but it lacked a true understanding of the world teens live in. It seems like it was written for church kids who wanted to read about stuff they already knew. When you put it on the shelves next to any other magazine, it would never be picked up by a regular teen.

I know that I could do better than this. I think I’m going to pray about it and fall asleep. I think it’d be cool to run a website and publish a magazine.