I made an important decision in my life. It is a major change from my upbringing. I have decided to become an ordained minister. Please try to respect my religious choices. As my first act, I married my dogs Turtle and Piggy. They are on their honeymoon now (Turtle is humping Piggy in the backyard). Abe became a minister too, maybe he'll marry Em and I.

Please refer to me as Reverend from now on.

Abe and I have been busy looking for investment houses. We've been running around every day from the courthouse to locations throughout the city. We have a few good prospects, but no signed contract so far. One house has been an ongoing project - the owner of the house got divorced and rents the house to his ex-wife. He stopped paying the mortgage and left town. If we can find him and buy the house, we'll make a ton of money.

Em has been doing great with the hard money lending. She is constantly talking to new and existing borrowers, making the deals and even learning how to write up the loan documents! I'm so proud.

I'm in more magazine articles! When I was a student at American University, I developed a new way of creating photographic images. It involves printing a digital file onto lazerjet transparency paper, waiting for the ink to smear, then scanning the resulting transparency. I called this method the "Bradotype".

A few months ago, I wrote a press release about the process and sent it to a variety of photography magazines. Studio Photography and Design was the first to publish the article. However, they didn't tell me that they had published it, so I didn't find out until my dad read the magazine and stumbled across the article (he was shocked, of course). Today I got a copy of the British Journal of Photography in the mail and sure enough, they published the article too! At least they were considerate enough to send a copy.

Emily and I are engaged!! It's very exciting. There wasn't any big dramatic proposal (it's me, what did you expect?), but it's something we've been talking about for a while and we decided that now is the right time! Our families have been great. They are all very excited and supportive.

Typical of my mom - Literally two minutes after we told her, she ran out of the room, not to call family, not to call friends, but to call her diamond jeweler in New York. We have visited a local diamond store yesterday and today. Emily found the perfect ring and we bought it! Too bad it won't be ready for a month. She did, however, get to take home the stone (picture above). And she has already begun the "for the rest of your life" threats.

It has taken me a while to post info about our Rome trip. Now that it's done, I will hopefully start posting more regularly. Emily and I have been incredibly busy since returning from our trip. My sister and Diane are both in Orlando now, because their school semester just ended.

Lindsey, Em and I spent Saturday night and part of Sunday at the beach. There were suppose to be a bunch more people coming to meet us, but they took too long to get ready, so we told them not to come (they wouldn't have gotten to the beach house until midnight). But we had a great time anyway - laying on the beach and eating at Steve's Diner.

We went bowling last night with Diane, Will and Kelly. I watched an instructional bowling video online beforehand, and was convinced I was going to bowl a perfect game. I got a strike on the first frame and was ecstatic, but it was all downhill from there.