Supafly.com

I spent the last couple days camping with the guys in Candyce’s family. The camp site is actually John’s property in between Wickenberg and Yarnell, two mountains towns a thousand feet higher than Phoenix. Although we told everyone the goal of the two-day trip was to look for gold with John’s new metal detector, all we really wanted to do was get out of town and go camping.

The little guys panned in the creek and found some gold dust. But the metal detector was missing parts, so it didn’t help much. But it was still fun to explore the mountains.

This is the Jeep that bounced us through the mountains.

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I took a nap under this tree.

It was a lot of fun to teach the little guys some things I learned in Boy Scouts. I didn’t go into the trip planning on doing this, but once you’ve been trained in responsible camping, there’s no other way to do it. It’s more fun when you do it right. So we spent 30 minutes moving rocks and twigs before we put up the tent. We collected all of our firewood before dark. We kept a good fire, but kept it small enough so that it didn’t get out of control. This is a very big deal when you are camping in the desert. And once it was time to leave, we stirred water into the coals until there was no smoke. Then we buried it all before we left.

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We drove out of the camp on the road you see in the distance.

Me snapping a classic roadtrip photo.

On our way back to Phoenix, we stopped in a dusty village of Stanton, Arizona. It’s basically an RV park in the middle of nowhere for winter-time gold miners. During the hot seasons, there couldn’t be more than three people who would live out there. But from October to April, there are hundreds of people scouring the mountains for gold with metal detecters, or down by the river panning for gold. It’s a subculture that people just can’t believe until they see it.

This is the metal detector “store” in Stanton. Little Matt and Danny are bored to death.

The;town of Stanton, Arizona

Yesterday after we got back I met with a mortgage broker to talk about how I can finance this new house. It was a great meeting because my anxieties evaporated as I got the facts in front of me. I’m waiting for some official paperwork of finance approval to give the homeowner with my offer. I’m going for it.

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Last night two Suns players gave Ron Artest some good knocks on the floor. First of all, Artest was stupid enough to collide with Leandro Barbosa as he went up for; a lay up. Artest got a flagrant foul for it, because he didn’t even try to block the shot. He just through his body against the oncoming Barbosa. Since Barbosa is stacked with muscle, he knocked Artest out of the air and off the court. It was hysterical. These are the moments that I love having Tivo. I must’ve watched that hit six or eight times.

Even though the Suns were down by seventeen at one point, they rallied in the second half and ended up winning by;thirteen. That’s a thirty point comeback. I recorded the game with Tivo, which I don’t like to do. I ended up fast-forwarding through the second quarter because it was too depressing to watch. But the second half was a blast. I was all alone in the house, but I was yelling like I was in the arena. The game wore me out, so I fell asleep pretty early last night. That’s why was able to get up early this morning and come here to Candyce’s coffee shop before I go to work.

It’s 3:06 PM on Sunday, April 9, 2006. After two months of being offline, the new Supafly.com is now up and running. I want to thank Adam Henriksen for making the database and making the CSS work. I’m so excited!

This is the first redesign of my website since the summer of 2000. I actually redesigned the site in the three weeks between leaving “The Real World” house in New Orleans and the airing of the first episode.; I’ve been insanely busy since then, and all I’ve had time to do on this site was update my journal. So it feels great to have this new site.

My goal for this new look is to make all of the content easy to read and easy to find. I have all of my other websites to show off my design skills, so I am okay with this site being understated. In the future I want to add a portfolio and info about my travel schedule.

It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon. It’s so nice to not be traveling so much because I get a chance to enjoy the Phoenix weather. Everyone is in a convertible or on a motorcycle.

Candyce did homework for most of yesterday, so I stayed home and worked on the last details of Supafly.com V3. Websites just take time, and I’m still not used to that. I; always want them done NOW! It was fun working on my computer while all my doors and windows open listening to reggae music. I’ve been stumped on a code problem for several weeks, so I decided to screw it and do a non-liquid layout. With that decision made, I am able to make some tremendous progress.

This afternoon Candyce’s dad is going to show me a house that I want to buy. He’s a Realtor, and he’s going to represent me in the sale. I am so anxious to see this place again because I am confident this will be my next house. I’ve already emotionally divorced myself from my current house, so I’m ready to move on.

I’ve come to this coffee shop for a year. For some weeks, this is the only place I can spend time with Candyce. She makes coffee, and I type on my laptop. Over the course of this past year, I’ve seen this place transform. I’m in awe of how this uncool place has fostered such a cool community of people.

I mean, this little coffee shop is a part of these people’s lives. It’s almost like a small town grocery store that you see on an old movie. People gladly come in here by themselves, knowing that they’ll run into friends and join them for a drink. It’s great. It’s the kind of coffee shop everyone wants in their neighborhood, but you don’t think would really exist.

I am so proud of Candyce, because she’s helped create this community. She and another barista named Dan work hard to make their Saturday morning shift a good time. They get to know the customer’s names, they joke around, they make people laugh. They make good drinks. Whenever they work, there’s always a line of smiling people. They’ll wait for ten minutes to get a drink.

I just never thought this could happen in a coffee shop that is so dorky. There’s no cool art, no hip music, no hip furniture. Just some chairs, tables, and some coffee-making equipment.

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This afternoon I’m going to meet with my friend Mike who’s going to do my taxes. He’s a good guy, and he has a fun family. It’s always interesting to go over to his house because he always has some new project he’s working on. So far, he’s my first friend to put in one of those beds that fold down out of the wall. I think it’s called a Murphy bed. You always see them on TV, but who really has one of those?

I am slightly embarrassed that I am writing about launching a website and getting engaged for marriage in the same journal entry. Getting engaged deserves it’s own shrine on this website, but by the time I got that done, I’d already be married. I understand that my life is messy, and this journal will be messy too.

We went back and took some more photos when the light was better.

I asked Candyce to marry me on Saturday, April 1, 2006. Again, it’s messy that I proposed to her on April Fool’s day, but it’s the only chance I had while Candyce and I were in San Diego. I knew I wanted to propose over the weekend, but Friday was Danny’s big day because he put on a big concert/event for his school. I didn’t want to steal away any attention from all of his hard work. And by Sunday night, she would be in a frenzy with our flight leaving early the next morning. So April Fool’s day it is.

I knew I was going to propose at sunset, so all day Saturday was a thrill. Nobody else knew how the day was going to end, and that was exhilarating and nerve-racking at the same time. I’ve never felt so much suspense watching the sun slowly trace a path across the sky as the day passed. By four o’clock, I was an emotional mess. With thirty minutes till sunset, I conned Candyce into walking with me down to the beach.

We snapped a couple pictures from the top of the cliff, and then ran down the stairs and onto the beach. We climbed up into a lifeguard tower to watch the last ten minutes of the sunset. The little ring box in my pants pocket poked me with every step up the ladder. I asked Candyce to pray a decade of the rosary with me for my parents, who just returned from a week of helping Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans.

As each rosary bead passed through my fingers, my heart trembled with suspense and joy. I started crying on the seventh bead. I was so excited about what was going to happen–that our lives were going to change. I closed the prayer by asking God to bless Candyce and I and to watch over us. And then I turned to her, dropped on one knee, and through my tears, I asked her to marry me. She said yes. (Oh man…my eyes are watering up right now just writing about it.)

Candyce was so in shock that she gave me her right hand, not the left had which she was supposed to. It was pretty funny because it didn’t fit–I had to push the ring onto her finger. We laughed at the bad fit, then we laughed harder that it was on the wrong hand. So we slid it off, I dropped on my knee, and then I proposed again.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and I lifted her off her feet. We hugged and cried. I felt her left hand lift off of my shoulder, and I knew she was looking at her ring. That’s okay. I paid a lot of money for that thing, and I wanted her to like it.

We watched the last few minutes of the sunset over the Pacific. It was beautiful. The climb up the stairs and the walk across the street was intense. I don’t know if ever in life I’ve savored moments like that. I knew that we had only 200 feet left before we stormed back into the house and gave their family the good news. It was beautiful.

We cried and hugged once we got inside. Everybody was happy. We proposed toasts and drank champaign for a good thirty minutes. It was awesome.

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Candyce in our own little photoshoot on the forbidden;lifeguard tower.

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…so happy together…

TLA.

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That was Saturday night. It’s Tuesday night now. We flew into Phoenix early Monday morning. Candyce spent all day yesterday in the studio at ASU, and I spent all day yesterday at the lifeteen.com studio. She had homework, and I had a website to launch.

I actually finished the website just before 9 PM Arizona time, which makes it midnight on the east coast. I promised people on lifeteen.com that we would launch a new site on April 4, and I realized I could actually launch it on midnight. So I did. It was wild to post the site, get in my car, and drive thirty minutes to my house.

And here I am at my house. I’m engaged. I launched a website. I’m very happy about both. This engagement thing is too new to reflect on. I just know that it is very good that we are engaged now.