on a sunny spring morning two years ago, i was sitting in the hallway of a church building in northern kyoto studying japanese literature. a young man named ishida walked up to the church door and peered in so i opened the door and asked him if i could help. he said he had heard about the book of mormon a few months earlier on an online message board, but because of his work schedule, he had never had a chance to find out anything more. that morning he happened to have a few hours off so he decided to come by the church he had seen a few times on his way to work. he hadn’t expected anyone to be there since the church had always appeared empty every other time he passed by, so he was happy to see me and a few other students at the church studying. i gave him a quick tour of the church and tried giving the missionaries a call on their phone but there was no answer. so i sat him down and did my best to remember the first missionary discussion in japanese, something i hadn’t taught in over two and a half years. we exchanged phone numbers and that evening at english class i gave the missionaries his contact information. two weeks later the missionaries let me know that they had finally gotten to meet him and he seemed like a really great guy. because of his work schedule and his wife’s feelings, they weren’t sure how things would go, but they would do their best to teach him. i let them know i would keep ishida in my prayers. a few months later, back in provo, i received a facebook message from one of the missionaries who had been in kyoto that spring to let me know that ishida had decided to be baptized. you can’t imagine how cool that was to me. it felt so good to have been able to help out by being in the right place at the right time. well, this morning as i was rushing to me signal analysis class, professor watabe, my old japanese sensei, stopped me and told me that ishida’s wife had also been baptized and that they had gone to the temple to be sealed this last month. when i heard that, i definitely felt a good feeling.

• ability for apps to access exif data on pictures to allow for real direct upliading to flickr.
• 3rd party wired syncing so that all of my apps will sync when i plug in the phone instead of having to get on the wifi and open up each app to sync.
• inter-app communications. if i post a picture in my flickr app i want to be able to post it on my wordpress blog and my twitted feed. whether this is through copy and paste or what, i don’t care.

so yesterday i went on a road trip with mariam and two of her friends to zion national park in southern utah. it was pretty awesome. here is the rundown with pictures and twitter updates throughout.

twitter update #1 @ 6:01 am: loading up the car for roadtrip to zion 2008. (if I get eaten by a bear, at least you all know where I went now).

ok, so yeah, i did say 2008, but it was 6 am so forgive me. by the time all the girls were ready, which took forever, it was 6:30 and we finally made got out of provo. i downloaded animal farm and the screwtape letters audiobooks to listen, and everyone else promptly fell asleep while i drove. our first stop was in parowan at around 9:30.

twitter update #2 @ 9:52 am: hello everyone! i’m back from my time warp currently eating breakfast at the high class parowan cafe!

i picked parowan because it was the only place in southern utah with a restaurant that looked interesting on yelp. the parowan cafe was a nice quirky little place, though i disagree with the yelp reviewer about the “ashbrowns”: they really weren’t that good. parowan itself was just as quirky, and i decided to walk around a bit until i noticed some hoodlums wearing dark hoodies following closely after two of the girls and i decided we should be on our way.

twitter update #3 @ 10:11 am: @pjlibrarylady with Mariam and two of her friends. we are heading to park here in a bit, hoping to make it home tonight by 8ish. then we were off to kolob canyons, which were really pretty.

we wanted to hike around a bit and mariam asked if the trail was called “if you could hike to kolob” but they were a bit too icy at that altitude. so from there we headed to the main part of the park, which was just absolutely gorgeous. my iphone camera hardly does it justice (i’m waiting for mariam’s friends pictures from her camera). we drove past the court of the patriarchs and big bend and then finally stopped at the temple of sawakava.

we hiked up the canyon narrows a ways until the trail was sadly closed by ice. i really want to go back during the warmer months to go up further to see where the canyon walls come right up to the river. after that, we drove through the tunnel and hiked the canyon overview trail. amazing. here are my feeble attempts at capturing it:

we spent a good hour up there just enjoying the view. by the time we were done, it was about 4:30, so we decided to head out of the park and down to st. george for some dinner. i decided since its the only one in utah, we would eat at in-n-out burger, so that was fun.

twitter update #4 @ 5:35 pm: no bear related fatalities.

getting some dinner at in-n-out and then back to provo. it was turning into dusk then, so before we headed back we went to look at the st. george temple. it is a very pretty building.

after a walk around the ground it was apparent that the women folk were about to fall over from fatigue, so we piled back into the car and started heading north. it was a really freaking long drive it seemed and even the audiobooks didn’t keep me all that entertained. we finally pulled into provo around 10:15 pm. once i got everyone unloaded, i went straight to bed.

twitter update #5 @ 10:45 pm: home safe and sound in bed. worn out from ~8 hours of driving but had lots of fun.

overall, it was a pretty sweet day trip.

national hug a republican day 😄.

i think a lot of you are coming over from the blogger world. blogger is nice for how well it plays with other google stuff, but thats really about it as far as good reasons to use blogger if you ask me. but since my switch over into the wonderful world of wordpress, i’ve missed one thing: commenter avatars. well, now i’ve figured out how to get them working! in non-blogger world, people are big into interoperability outside of just google. one of the neat ideas is a global avatar system that allows a person to have the same avatar across all blogs and website. wordpress has out of the box support for gravatars (stands for globally recognized avatar). basically you create an account with your email address and it links the avatar with that address. then every time you comment on a blog using that email address, it will display your avatar. so, for you people who have started commenting on my blog, please go grab yourself a gravatar and represent yo self!

so if you haven’t noticed, i’m on kind of a mint/menthol kick lately. first was the american crew citrus mint shampoo/conditioner, then came the menthol gold bond powder. now i have mint soap!! i’ve been needing some new soap lately. i really liked my last two bars. i had a crabtree & evelyn aloe bar during the summer to help with my sunburn, and after that i used the geo f. trumper spice body bar that they sent me with a shaving sampler. btw, i wasn’t impressed with their shaving stuff, even the much vaunted skin food, but the soap was actually quite nice. since it was almost out, i was doing some research on new soaps, and i was torn between some nancy boy soap and some mitchell’s wool fat soap. but then on saturday mariam and i stopped by one of those mall shops with all of the girly smelly lotions and i noticed they had a section of c.o. bigelow men’s products. i was pretty “eh” about the shaving stuff, but the mentha soap caught my eye! i picked up a bar and i love it. it makes my morning shower quite exciting and i feel tingly all over for quite some time. add that to the gold bond powder and i am wide awake by the end of my morning routine. now my only concern is smelling like a candy cane.

edit: i now see that nancy boy also has a mint soap. i think i will try that next to compare!

i made this bracelet as a christmas gift for mariam. i used embroidery thread that my mom had, and my good friend google helped with the design. this is how i kept entertained/not yelling quite loudly at the tv during that terrible byu football game.

i thought i would share with you all some of my great wealth of knowledge about looking and smelling totally sweet:

antiantiperspirant

ok, so yes, i no longer wear antiperspirant. for those of you who have been lucky enough to be in “close” quarters with me, you will know that i tend to sweat.. a lot for some reason. its like i’m an obese man in a tall skinny kids body. so yeah, that sucks. and guess, what, antiperspirant does nothing. i sweat just as much with it as i do without it. and when i wear it, it just turns my undershirt’s armpits nasty (thats right folks, its not sweat that causes yellowing, its caked up antiperspirant). so, i decided to stop. “but won’t that make you just really smelly ryan?!” i hear you saying. and guess what! nope! i’ve changed over to one of those natural crystal deodorants. i dunno how much i believe all of the health nut mumbo jumbo about the stuff, but it works. no smell and no stains. also, i filled an old sock with gold bond powder and i slap some of that on to help reduce moisture. it also makes me feel all tingly, so thats cool.

boots

girls, if you don’t own a pair of boots, get some. they are hot.

they’re back

the mustache is inching its way back - the new york times i think all of you guys should join me. i started mine three weeks ago.

2008 reflections and 2009 resolutions are up

well, hello 2009. and i thought 2008 was going to be an exciting year… but yeah, lets talk about 2008 first. it was pretty crazy. i did a lot. just off the top of my head:

• moved to california
• bought a car
• worked at intel
• started an 8 month relationship
• took the GRE
• returned to provo
• started my senior year of college
• applied to grad schools
• ended the 8 month relationship
• went to seattle
• got a new niece
• etc etc etc

i loved my time in california. i look back at it all quite quite fondly. it was amazing to be out on my own, with a car, money and free time. i kind of wish i was getting ready to go back there in two days instead of provo. i remember my first week in sacramento, trying to sleep on my air mattress surrounded by my boxes of stuff. we had no internet so i borrowed some movies from my mentor at work.. crazy chinese and japanese films. eating my first chipotle burrito.. going to the dances and not knowing anyone at all.. going to tahoe with some friends i had made and loving the scenery and snowshoeing. hard to believe that was all a year ago. here are some photos that i wanted to share:

tahoe over mlk jr. weekend.

the habitat for humanity project we worked on for intel’s 40th anniversary.

a bunch of intel interns after lunch at jack’s urban eats, one of the places i definitely miss.

pictures from the annual cheesefest my roommate dragged me to. i it was so freaking hot that day.

a night out on the town.

a barn party i went to with some friends.

fried oreos. nuff said.

some pics from my final week at intel.

i miss it. and of course all of those who have read this blog know all of the other things that happened. i could write tons about my california adventure (and i probably someday wish i would have), and even more about my relationship starting and ending. i think i will let that subject rest for the most part in the past now.

and now for a review of my resolutions from last year:

• “make everything i can out of this internship. learn a ton, experience a ton, make a ton, and enjoy a ton.”

i would give this a big yes. i loved my time at intel, and the more i look back on it, the more valuable it seems.

• “be more friendly and outgoing. i am moving to a new city and state where i know no one. i really want to make some good friends.”

i think i did pretty well. i had a bit of a reset as far as my group of friends about two months into things, but i still feel like i had a great social life in sacramento.

• “get in good shape. i have been away from the weight room for over a month now with sickness, finals, etc., and i can feel it. time to get back.”

yeah i totally failed at this one. i paid about $60 a month for a membership at california family fitness the whole time i was in sacramento. i started off well, loving the kickboxing and cycling classes and getting in for lifting pretty often. but things just went down the tubes. i am pretty sure right now i am in the worse shape i have ever been in.

• “stop being afraid to fall in love. who knows if it will happen or not, but i at least want to allow myself to have it happen.”

well, i think i passed. like i said, i could write a ton, but i won’t. i learned a lot. love is a good thing, even though it hurts sometimes.

and now for this year. oh gosh, i’m scared. at the time of this writing, in a little under four months, i have absolutely no idea what i am going to be doing with my life. i have no idea where i will live. i have no idea what i will do for work. i have no idea if i will be continuing my education. nothing. i’ve never had something like this before. i’ve always known what was coming next and what i planned to do. i think this will be good for me.

here is what i hope happens this year:

• get into a graduate school (first choice is UC-berkeley).
• get a summer internship that is stimulating and fun.
• fall in love again.

some of those i have more control over than others…

lets resolve some things:

• rock my last semester of undergraduate work. i am not looking forward to some of my courses, but i know i can do hard things.
• find a job/internship. it doesn’t matter what happens with grad school, i need to find something that i can love to do.
• get in %$#^#$@^$-$%##^$ing shape. mariam and i have already resolved to start running around the track together. this year its happening.
• just be the best person i can be. i know that sounds vague, but i think that more than worrying about relationships and all of that, i need to just be a great person myself. i’ve got plenty of issues i need to deal with, and i think that once i do, love will just be natural.

ok, so, nothing too out of the ordinary, but i think i’ve got plenty on my plate this year as it is. a year from now i could be working on a masters degree, in great shape, and madly in love. or i could be working in a burger joint, overweight, and all alone in the world. who knows, but i’m excited to find out. bring it on 2009.