Centre Island

As Ry mentioned a few posts ago, we visited Centre Island a few weeks back.  I just wanted to share one little story from that visit.  They have this area of tall shrubbery that have been cut into a maze.  I've been there lots of times, so I told Ryan that he can lead the way and I'll just follow him.  While we were walking through it, he paused and then dove to the ground; I was so confused.  At the same time a crow flew directly up.  Apparently, the bird thought Ryan's head was shrubbery and Ryan thought the crow was shrubbery.  Then there was movement and they were both a little startled.  Funny!  That's all.  :)

Expecting

Yep, we thought we should officially say we are.

Is this Graffiti? Apparently not.

The top left one is a goose. The focus of this post is the other two pictures. If you'll notice this phone company painted a mouse on the subway wall (I spend a lot of time on the subway every day). How much did they have to pay Toronto Transit Commission I wonder? I thought it was something.

Centre Island

We went to Center Island Saturday before last.
It was great! Here we have a picture of Downtown Toronto from the island. Melissa sure is pretty!

Here is a picture of a swan. The peacock startled yelling for no reason. It was a great outing!

Fast and Testimony Meeting

So...this was funny to me and it's probably bad that this was all I remembered from the fast and testimony part of the meeting today (besides the fact that it seemed to be everyone's anniversary), but a Latino man was bearing his testimony and this is what I remember hearing (it really made me laugh, still kind of makes me laugh).

"My name is Ignacio and so I tell people they can call me Nacho for short, but sometimes people get confused and call me Taco instead.....and then Mucho Burritos called and....[something joyous and happy that made everything better]"

To make this a little more spiritual, since it was supposed to be and was in reality, Ryan informed me that he was talking about tithing and Mucho Burritos called him and gave him a job and it was a miracle or something like that.  I kind of got stuck on the Nacho Taco thing myself...  :)

Plagiarism and Sharing Ideas

To whom it may concern:

I will now discuss my thoughts regarding the good of the entire human race. Benjamin Franklin believed as I do that any information learned by one should be shared with others that together it can benefit the entire society.

The way Aristotle said it was "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts." So if I make a contribution to society, I want as many people as possible to benefit. So if information I receive is useful, I am little concerned with its source.

Now I realize that money complicates the issue. When generating ideas is your profession, it is important you get paid for it and not anyone else. So I am saying quote me all you want. The way God says it is "whether by my own voice or the voice of my servants it is the same" (Doctrine and Covenants 1:38, 1831).

References

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1981. The Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Salt Lake City, UT. Published by author.

Franklin, Benjamin, 1769 or something. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Some place (I left the book in Utah). Bantham Books perhaps.

Happenings

So it's becoming more and more apparent to me that we are not that great at regularly updating this blog...maybe that will change, but there's no guarantee that will be the case.  In order to make this post more interesting, perhaps I will steal pictures from Facebook.  

The semester ended, which really is a fabulous thing and Ryan and I made a long visit to my parents in North Ogden.  Thanks for letting us stay with you.  During that time, my little sister married James Michael Clark.  So happy for them.

They're happy and that makes me happy.

 My sister-in-law Kyoko is due with her second baby (a boy) on August 3rd.  I'm excited.  This is her only son, currently.

This is kind of an old picture now, but I think it's cute.  Keitatsu is the same age as my other nephew Sam.  They were born on the same day.  Sam is huge!  He's cute too.  :)  (I'm tempted to steal a picture of him from a blog, but I don't know how his mother feels about that, so I won't.)

On May 19th, Ryan and I took a plane ride to Buffalo, NY.  Our flight was late leaving Salt Lake, causing us to miss our connecting flight, but that ended up not being a problem and we were on the next flight to Buffalo (which was less than one hour after we landed, it seemed at least).  Once we were in Buffalo, my brother Jer picked us up and drove us to Etobicoke (Toronto) where we are now living.  We had only minor difficulties and delays crossing the border.  It seemed odd to me to be stopped on my way into Canada because that had never happened to me before, but that was fine.  We pointed out that we were Canadian Citizens and Ryan was my husband and all problems were solved.

So we made it to Toronto and have done a few things here.  We'll tell you more about what we've done and are doing soon!

Funny thing with the Phone

I found this humorous, so I thought I'd add a little follow-up to my last post.  (Especially since it's the most follow-up worthy topic, not!)

So I went to my TA's research lab to get some help with an engine problem.  I was asking him questions and, like a good TA, he was making me answer them.  Suddenly he noticed my phone and got a worried look on his face and said, "Is that your phone?"

"Yes..."

"I have the same phone.  How do you like it?"

"It's pretty good...it's a phone...it works like a phone."

"Do you find it quirky at all?"

"The alarm goes of randomly...I told my husband we have to use his phone as the alarm from now on."

"Yeah, when I first got married we suddenly heard, 'It is time to get up.  The time is 1:27.'  Glad to know it's not just my phone."


So, I guess that I am not alone in having a defective phone, it must be the whole batch or design or something.  ;)

My Possessed Phone

About a month ago, Ry and I bought a new phone from Walmart (you couldn't hear him very well on his).  We were happy because it was super cheap, it felt cheap, but it was a phone and worked like a phone, so, as already said, we were happy.  I took the phone because Ry didn't really like it.  No biggie to me.

So, I use my phone as my alarm.  It's something I've been doing since I've had a phone.  It ends up that I can sleep through even the loudest alarm clock (you can ask my family members, I bet they remember).  However, even the vibration of the phone (unless I'm super super super tired) will wake me up.  So it's worked well for me.

This new phone has an alarm that talks to you, and this is what it says, "It is time to wake up.  The time is [insert current time here]."  And it just repeats that over and over.  I find it kind of humorous.  Anyhow, one night we set the alarm for 7am.  When the alarm went off, as expected, it said, "It is time to wake up.  The time is 2:32."  And I thought to myself, "Weird!"  I asked Ry what time it was and he said it really was 2:32, so I checked the alarm and it was set for 7.  I disregarded it, but since that time, it goes off at least once in the middle of the night everytime I use it.  Needless to say, the phone is no longer being my alarm.  ;)

Our Christmas Prank and Summer news

So, as promised, I will now tell about our prank we played on all of the Madsens (Melissa's Grandparent's and descendants). Every year the Madsens have a Christmas party on the 23 of December. Every year each family gives a presentation. One of her cousins led us all in singing happy birthday to Jesus. It was quite memorable

Anyway, the prank. Before the Mikhail family started the presentation I made the following announcement (with Melissa's encouragement) "Before we get started I would like to announce that Melissa and I are expecting, in May, to live in Toronto!" We had a LOT of thems peoples convinced that Melissa was pregnant. Haha!

So that's the news. We will live in Toronto from late May to late August of 2010. Melissa is looking for work there, we will be living with her grandpa, Zarif Mikhail. Unfortunately, my end date is too close to the start of classes. Melissa will have to go back to Utah without me.

Anywho, I've included some pictures of Toronto to make this post more interesting:

(Sorry this one is small, it's the only way it would fit!)