J&M got Maui'd!

Maggie and I went to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon last week. I was actually there for an ISRI convention, and Maggie came later so that we could spend some time at the Grand Canyon. Apart from going to the Grand Canyon and watching the Michael Jackson One show, we had no plans.  View of the bridge from the Hoover Dam. The convention went pretty well, and Maggie arrived just in time to watch Hillary Clinton give a speech, and duck a shoe . That night we went to watch the Blue Man Group before staying overnight at the Luxor. Where's the water? Afterward we headed east to Hoover Dam where we stuck around for an hour taking some photos before heading towards the Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim. That is a fat squirrel. When went to watch the sun set on the first day, and Maggie wasn't able to wake up for the sunrise the next day so I went by myself. We did however go hiking in the afternoon and make it down about a mile of the Bright Angel Trail. We spent a...

Maggie has been wanting to check out the City Sightseeing tour for Toronto ever since Gina mentioned it to us when they visited this past summer. Last Sunday we were free and the weather looked nice so I suggested we go outside for a hike. She suggested we go do the tour so we headed downtown. The Toronto Waterfront Marathon was taking place that day so driving was not really an option. In fact, buses around downtown were not really an option either due to all of the road closures. We ended up doing a lot of walking around the waterfront to get from place to place. Initially we were told that the bus tour was driving on a modified route due to the road closures with only three stops. This seemed a little annoying, but included in the price was a ferry tour of the harbour and Toronto islands so we rushed down to the harbourfront (on foot) to catch the ferry. Due to the road closures, the buses downtown were either not running or running a modified route. We didn't have time to ...

Okay, I butchered that quote, but a couple of weekends ago, we helped Jeff's mom move some of her furniture out from her condo and into a storage locker. At the locker, I saw something that caught my attention: A black two seat leather couch. This would be perfect for my condo! Unfortunately, I did not have the presence of mind to take a picture of the couch, or have it positioned for easy access, as I did not want to move the couch until I had permission from Jeff's mom and Maggie. I asked Jeff's mom when we got back to the condo and she told us to take it and keep it! Well, we would not have space for it once we move, so we told her that we'd be returning it once we were finished with it. (If we're lucky, the buyer won't have any furniture and we'd just sell it all with the condo.) This weekend we arranged a meeting with Jeff's mom and got Maggie to take a look at the couch. She was quite happy with it, and we decided to find a way to transport it to...

It has been a pretty busy long weekend. Maggie and I took Friday off to go to a friend's wedding in St. Catherines. She spent most of the morning getting ready while I did some cleaning around the apartment. I had some wardrobe issues (me'sa getting fat!) but in the end I ended up wearing basically what I wore to my wedding, minus the belt but plus a tie. We left for St. Catherines in the early afternoon as the wedding was to start at around three-thirty. Who would've thought that traffic would be so bad? Even in the middle of the day, we had a huge traffic jam that was just from volume! We were lucky that we did not leave any later: there was an accident on the highway somewhere behind us that would have made us extremely late. We did manage to make it to the wedding before the wedding started. (Note, I did not say that we made it on time.) But at least most weddings I've been to, none have actually started right on time. The ceremony was small and intimate, and t...

So Maggie spent the past month planning for this past weekend. She told me to take the Monday off, and to pick a date for the party. She also asked who to invite and what food (Italian - since most people can eat this stuff) to have for dinner. I think that was about all the input that I had. Originally it was just going to be a board game party for board gamers on Sunday, but due to issues with getting people together on Monday, we combined the board game party with the family party for a gigantic family board game party. I had to run some errands during the morning for the party: picking up drinks, ice, and Melissa. The last item was kind of odd for me since I did not recall inviting her. But I realized later that she was the one who actually made the birthday cupcakes! One set was for my dad and one set was for me. The theme for the cakes was games so my dad had Mah Jong tiles on them while mine had Agricola items. We had a decent number of people showing up (mostly when the foo...

Maggie and I went on the Ride for Heart this past Sunday. It was a fairly small turnout, and we have less people starting at the same time this time. Hitesh went with the early start and finished before we started. Jeff started later than us but finished more than an hour before we did. Alan started a little earlier than us but finished earlier as well. Maggie and I on the Gardener Expressway on the way back into the city. The weather was for the most part pretty good: not too hot, and not too cold. It did get a little annoying at the end with the winds picking up and the rain starting to come down. We did however, manage to miss out the downpour which started right after we put our bikes back in the car..

Maggie and I wanted to participate in this year's Doors Open again in Toronto. I created an itinerary and passed it along to anyone who wanted to join us on our tour. The weather that weekend was a little cool, but was sunny and good for hiking around town. We even managed to hit every stop that I had listed down and then some! On Saturday, we took public transit and checked out Lower Bay Station , grabbed some street meat and then waited for the Campus & Cosmos Walking Tour which was way more popular than the tour guide had expected. (He expected fifty, the website indicated that there was a limit of eighty, and I think we broke 250.) We were at the head of the line and got wrist bands, but nobody was really checking. The walk was an hour and a half long and we learned quite a bit about this part of the city. Because of the walk, we took a look at the Munk School of Global Affairs which I did not see on the map and was once a meteorological observation centre. Afterward, ...