Hardly Wisdom: 2008

Hollie and I had our engagement photos taken today by expert photographer, Travis Symore Prouty. We decided to make fun of other engagement pictures by wearing matching black shirts with jeans on the beach. We also faked being happy :|

Here's why I love this girl; she wanted to have fun with our pictures, so we got our hands on a couple of space suits and the rest is NASA history:

I proposed to Hollie today

Today, I was going to re-watch the first season of Lost. I couldn't find the DVDs, so I decided to propose to Hollie instead :|

Here's how it went down:

For Christmas, I wrote and illustrated a children's book for Hollie called, The Genesis of Hollie and Tony (Tony is my first name). It was the story of how we first met and became boyfriend and girlfriend. She LOVED it.

Today, on 8-8-8, I took Hollie out on a date. I didn't want her to think I was going to propose, so I acted like I didn't have anything planned. In reality, I had about 8 people working in the background, showing up to places ahead of time, and making sure everything would run smoothly. For an extra touch, I had Hollie decide what we were going to do for our date (knowing full well exactly what she would want to do). That part is extremely important later on.

Our date consisted of flying kites at the duck pond, going on the ferris wheel at the Spectrum (which mysteriously lasted longer than normal), eating at our favorite restaurant Shabu Shabu (which mysteriously had our two seats open on a friday night), and finally sitting on the bench at the beach where I asked her to be my girlfriend. Remember, she thinks this whole day was her idea.

While we were sitting on our bench, I pulled out a book that I had been working on for the past few months. It was a sequel to the book I made for her on Christmas and it was called, The Chronicles of Hollie and Tony. I opened it up and began to read it to her. It picked up where the last book left off and went though our entire relationship.

Here's where the awesome part comes in. I turned to the page that said, "So, Tony decided to take Hollie on a special date. First, he picked her up after work and took her to the duck pond where they fed the ducks and flew kites."

The next page said, "Then he took her to the Spectrum to ride the ferris wheel...."

The page after that said, "After the ferris wheel, Tony took Hollie to Shabu Shabu for dinner...."

She's obviously freaking out because the whole day that she planned was in this book! Finally, I turned to the next page that brought us to the bench at the beach. It then says that I gave her a book and started reading it to her. Then, I got down on one knee and turned the page, revealing a ring inside the illustrated ring box.

I asked her to marry me and she said, "YES!"

As we were walking back to the car, Hollie mentioned something that I promised her a long time ago. Back when we first started dating, I told her that if I were to ever propose, I would have the facility guys sing mariachi music while wearing sombreros and mustaches.

I smiled as we walked around the corner to this:

(it was super dark outside)

After that amazing performance, we walked back to the car. I made sure my behind the scenes team knew where I parked ;)

All in all, I'm pretty sure she was happy. Thanks to everyone who helped!

My first day on IT

Let me explain my background. I come from a rag tag group known as facilities. For over a year, I woke up around 5:30am to get to work by 6am. If you were 2 minutes late, you would be in trouble. No matter what the weather was like, you were outside doing manual labor. You had to constantly watch your back because someone might squat you. You're boss is a man fused to a golf cart, whose soul purpose is to find you and make sure you're working. One guy is responsible for replacing every trash bag on a 120 acre campus. At least four times a week, you have to spend hours in the worship center, unstacking and restacking thousands of chairs. Five days a week, you're in one of the roughest environments known to man. I miss it already :)

But, a man has to move on. I moved to a new team and today was my first day. I now sit in a cubical which is very weird to me. My coworkers seemed pretty cool, but my focus was staying awake! I'm used to activity that early in the morning! I actually felt like throwing up due to lack of exercise :) I was okay though. Hopefully I'll get used to not being outside as often as I used to be.

We'll see!