Yes it is Official! Diane and I are engaged!!!! And as you can see from the image above, the question was popped at Dodger Stadium. Oh yeah True Blue! Anyways the day was perfect, with the exception that it was 95 degrees and we were in the sun. Diane’s sister Jenny was there and captured it on video, which will be coming shortly. Not much more to say than it was an amazing day!

This camera is amazing! It has the power and features of a digital SLR, but in the body of a point and shoot. There are some things that it does not do as well, example manual focus. Here are some of the technical stats on it: 12 megapixel, 6x optical zoom(never ever use digital zoom!), Canon’s IS system (image stabilization), both JPG and RAW image formats, 3″ screen, high resolution movie mode (1024!), and a lot more. There are also some amazing pre-programmed scene modes, my favorite being the aquarium mode, the images come out so clear it looks like you are right there in the water. Here are a few images I took at the Aquarium Restaurant in Houston.

There are scene modes for just about every type of event/location imaginable. If you are looking for a new digital camera, I would recommend the PowerShot G9, or any other Canon for that matter.

Let’s see what else did I do, oh yeah worked at church all weekend, how can I forget that. I did get to hang out and visit with my good friend Steve Grace and his son Jordan. They were our guest musicians at the Packinghouse this weekend. I ate at Chipotle, yes Frank Chipotle, haha! After that I got to spend some time with my friends Troy and Jen, and help them get images set up so they can share about what they had been up to out in Africa. After that it was back to church to set up for the evening service, which was amazing as always. All-in-all it was a great weekend. But then Monday came and it was back to the daily grind.

Where do I start? First off my good friends, Troy, Jen & Kaylie Gnuschke, just arrived back from the mission field. They have been out in Tanzania, Africa for the last 14 months. It was so good to visit and catch up with them, I look forward to spending more time with them. I also looking forward to what God is going to do next in their lives. They have been a huge inspiration to both Diane and myself.

Last Friday night I stayed up into the wee hours to get Diane’s photography website finished and launched. There is still some things that need to be finished. And Microsoft Internet Explorer makes it look horrible, so I have a some more work to do to it. You can view it here, Diane Loveless Photography, and please view it with either Mozilla Firefox or Safari for Mac.

Let’s see what else…oh my coworker just put his hand in my bagel and smashed it. He just walked into my cubicle, set his hand and sweater right into the cream cheese and leaned into it, and he didn’t even notice. I felt like the guy on one of those commercials where the only thing the guy says is “Dude!”. To make it right he went over and grabbed another bagel with his hands and says here you go. All I could do was laugh.

Moving on…Diane is doing a photoshoot for Relevant today. I’m sure she will right about it later on her blog, so I won’t rain on her parade or steal her thunder.

Pastor Frank Sanchez posted an amazing insight on heaven and hell today. Check it out here! I can’t wait to read it and study it more later this afternoon when I have some more time.

Well….break is over for me, back to work I go!

Mississippi, when you are driving through on Interstate 10 you are not really in the state for all that long, 75-77 miles to be exact, so I would imagine you cannot really get a feel for what it is like. One thing is for sure, I think we saw more state troopers in that 75 miles than we did in all the other states combined. 

 Alabama, if you thought it is short distance across Mississippi,

 well Alabama is shorter by about 10 miles. Once we hit Alabama the sun and bright blue sky decided to come out and join us. When you are traveling though Alabama on the interstate, you get to drive through Mobile, which puts you in a tunnel that goes underwater and then a long causeway, a pretty awesome sight!

Florida, finally Florida! But wait what we still have another six-eight hours of driving?!? You got to be kidding me, I thought we were done as soon as we crossed the state line. HAHA! Driving across the handle of Florida was not what I expected at all, here I thought it was going to be all white sand beaches, palm trees, and alligators with Jimmy Buffett playing. But none the less, it was very beautiful, lots of forrest and we even saw some deer, both alive and dead. 

We arrived at our destination, Merritt Island, FL, at about 10pm safe and sound. The people that Diane will be staying with, the Wellings, are amazing people and so kind. The made us feel at home and made us breakfast in the morning. Then that’s were the fun began, I had a flight at to head home at 2:40pm and we are about an hour from the airport. So after breakfast I got my things packed up. Then we headed over to a Circuit City near by so that I could pick up a wireless router so Diane could have internet access for her laptop, we had to wait a bit because they didn’t open until 10, so as soon as they opened we ran in got what we needed and then booked it back to the house. I went right to work on installing it, as to be expected with setting up any kind of electronics with only a short span of time there would be problems, and there were but I was able to overcome them.

Now a few posts back I had mentioned that we had some comical incidents, and this is were those began. After finishing installing the router I decided to make one last pit stop before we headed out, so I use the restroom and the toilet decides that this would be an opportune time to back up. I am freaking out about now, I just met these people late last night and I am about to flood their house. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised because there was a plunger sitting right next to the toilet, and that would be the first sign that something must not be right with the plumbing. Well I plunge away for a good few minutes, trying to figure it out as I go, I finally figured it out and it was all good again. Next incident, we are ready to walk out the door and I realize that I haven’t checked in for my flight, so I check-in but bad news is that I need to print my ticket out but Diane hasn’t got out her printer yet, so I have to use the Welling’s printer, so there is another good bit of time wasted. So now it is 11:30 and we are really pushing the time, we go out to load up my stuff in the car and move some things to the trunk, in the midst of this craziness we shut the trunk and go to jump in for blast off, except Diane can’t find her keys and she just had them. Oh boy! It takes us about 15 seconds to realize that we just locked the keys in the trunk, and if you know much about Diane’s car that is NOT a good thing. Let me elaborate on this, for one the trunk release latch that is in the car has never worked since she got it, the extra key she had made for the car doesn’t work, and her car doesn’t have fold down seats. I immediately call AAA tell them where I am, the keys are locked in the trunk and I have to catch a flight, the time is now 11:40am. Diane is worried and I am trying to cheer her up by telling her that she did it all on purpose to keep me in Florida, but I have a pretty bad sense of timing with my jokes so it doesn’t work. At about 12:15pm there is van honking out front, it’s AAA! Yay! We are saved, or so we think, the guy says “oh man we are in trouble” after I explain to him the situation. So he and I begin to remove all of the back seats, which reveals an opening where we are able to clear out all the stuff in the trunk and find the keys. The guy opens the trunk with the key, while I begin putting the seats back, he starts fiddling with the trunk release mechanism and finds that the reason the trunk release latch never worked is because there is a switch in the mechanism that disables the latch, boy do we ever feel stupid! I tip the guy for the work that he didn’t even have to help us with, and then we are off, off to a gas station that is.

After leaving the gas station I get confused on which highway is the toll road, is it the 520, 524, or 528, hmmm, I choose the 524, but almost immediately realized that it is not right and we turn around and get onto the right highway, 528, hey I was close! Now we are off like a rocket. We are both bummed because we didn’t really get to spend much time together, that wasn’t running around, before I take off. So we get to the airport, check-in, and then reality sets in. This was extremely hard to do, probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, leave my girlfriend/best friend/soulmate in a place where everything is foreign and I won’t be there to take care of, protect, and just plain be by her side. We say our teary good-byes and I head into the security check point, man what a crappy feeling. But I know everything will work out and be good.

The plane flight home was pretty uneventful, thank the Lord, cause I don’t think I could take any more excitement, my body is exhausted. So all in all it was a great trip, and guess what in March we get to do it all again, just in reverse and with Diane’s sister Jenny. I must say I am really looking forward to it. And so far, thanks to technology (video chat and cell phones) it hasn’t been too bad. If you are still reading this, wow, you are amazing. Thanks for everyone’s love, support, and prayers during our trip.