Eek! :D

Family finds dead mouse in cheese


While slicing some cheese for his children, a father in western P.E.I. recently uncovered a dead mouse in the middle of the block.


"This would have been the very last thing I would have expected to find… in a block of cheese, which I buy every time I do groceries," Deborah Atkinson of Miscouche, just west of Summerside, said of her husband's discovery.

Atkinson said her family loved Maple Dale's Caribbean brand cheese from Ontario, which has hot peppers and sun-dried tomatoes in it. A couple of weeks ago, while her husband was cutting slices from the last block he bought in Summerside, he gave his four-year-old daughter a couple of pieces to munch on.

He made the unpleasant discovery a few cuts later.

"Obviously he cuts it in little squares because our children are three and four," said Atkinson.

"He kind of got to just about the middle and as he cut, he noticed what looked like fur."

He immediately took the cheese, a few pieces already gone, from the children. They hadn't eaten any of the cheese from near the mouse, and they didn't get sick.

Here Sucker, Sucker, Sucker

Now I understand that there are probably only two people in the world who read my blog (thanks Mom and Kristi :), so I hope you both thoroughly enjoy this. I think it's amazing and if I were gonna put a black man in office just to prove a point, I'd vote for this guy about a million times over before I'd ever even consider Obama.

Listen and be amazed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxhYampIl7A

This was cute, too:

Monday

Although most people dislike Mondays, I usually see them as a fresh start--a new week to do better.

"Smile! Attitude is contagious!" -Bob Moawad

"When you choose to be pleasant and positive in the way you treat others, you have also chosen, in most cases, how you are going to be treated by others." -Zig Ziglar

Completely Nuts!

Carpe Lunae - Seize this Monday!

Smile

For the sake of something happy... some pics I took from a fun blog, http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com/. Hope they make you smile, as they made me smile. ;)

Find something each day to be happy about--then smile and share your happiness with others.

Goliath and morning glories

"Envy, greed, fear, laziness, doubt, vice, pride, lust, selfishness, discouragement—all spell Goliath." ~President Thomas S. Monson

~

Recently my friend built one of these slings from some leather and twine--we spent a few minutes down at the creek learning to use it. I was incredibly impressed by the speed and strength with which the rock was released from this weapon. It took me by surprise.

~

Similarly, I have been surprised by how eeringly sneaky bad habits come into our lives. They are infectious and parasitic. I compare them to the morning glory flower: at first glance when they appear in your garden or on your fence, you may think they are quite pretty, or at least harmless enough. Think again. These flowers are fast-growing, twining terrors that quickly take over wherever they are allowed to bloom. They suck all the nutrients out of the surrounding soil, so strong, independent, useful plants are choked out.

~

So it is with bad habits. We may not even notice their presence in our lives...until they have quickly taken over and we wake up one day and realize that all those good, strong habits we've worked so long to build have been choked out by some, at the time, seemingly harmless habit we let into our lives.

~

We must be Davids and stand up to our Goliaths. We must need weed out the morning glories from our lives and take back control. Just like David has his surprisingly powerful sling, we have a supply of powerful weapons to help us weed out the unhealthy things from our lives. President Monson reminds us that Courage, Effort, Humility, Prayer, Love of Duty are in our arsenal and may (and should) be used at our discretion. He has said "Victory will be ours. I like to think of David as the righteous lad who had the courage and the faith to face insurmountable odds when all others hesitated, and to redeem the name of Israel by facing the giant in his life."

~

Best of luck to us all as we identify and conquer the Goliaths in our lives.

Wonderful

As amazing as our cold front was, and as much as I enjoyed wearing a coat and drinking hot chocolate, I reveled in our 80 degree Saturday this week. I just ambled and had lunch out in the sun and was content.

This weekend provided a much needed-for-my-sanity break from life. Here's just a short run-down of why it was amazing. :)

We passed our cleaning checks.

I saw my friend's band in concert (which means I got to leave my house!) and I won a free cd.

I got into the club where they played for FREE.

I got to visit Julie and Ryan. Just gotta love those guys.

Krista and I perused a farmer's market where I bought some cool earrings made of bone.

We had lunch at an amazing Asian place called Thaifoon.

:)

We got a free dessert. It was called the Banana Roll and consisted of a banana and cream cheese roll deep fried, then rolled in cinnamon/sugar and served over cream with caramel, strawberries, and ice cream.

We watched the fountains at Gateway Olympic Plaza dance to music. It reminded me of the Fountain of Rings at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta and, to a much less grandiose scale, the dancing fountains of the Bellagio.

We visited the state capitol building to remind Krista of home. Ah, good old D.C.

I put highlights in my hair for the first time. It is more blonde than I had planned on, but I think it looks really good.

I went to my friend Siri's farewell talk. Germany will be lucky to have her.

I found a ride to Texas for Thanksgiving, so I can see my Rachel one more time before I relocate.

God is good. Life isn't always what we think it should be and we sometimes get dealt cards that we would rather not have to play, but as Elder Wirthlin reminded us, we just need to learn to say "come what may" and then love it. Perspective is everything.

Cheeky

CHEEKY: impertinently bold, impudent and saucy; SYNONYMS: audacious, bold

I have never striven to achieve a degree of speech or a character that could be interpreted as cheeky--I just have a firm understanding of who I am and I have no problem stating, what I consider to be, a well-informed opinion when I have one. However, in the last month, I have had 3 people call me cheeky, one of those being a professor in reference to a paper that I had written for him.

So, I was forced to self-evaluate and I think I'm okay with being cheeky--sometimes. There's definitely a time and a place for everything, but in general, I don't think that being audacious and bold is a bad thing. As long as it surfaces but occasionally, I am okay with being impertinently bold. What do you think?

Autumn Magic

I get a thrill every year when the weather turns chilly. I just love walking outside and filling my lungs with crisp air. Then I get really giddy and run to my room to unpack my sweaters and jackets. *sigh*

Today was no exception. It snowed briefly this morning, and I love nothing more than the first snowfall of the year (except maybe Spring when I can bask in the sun for the first time of the year :)

October
~John Updike

The month is amber,
Gold, and brown.
Blue ghosts of smoke
Float through the town.

Great V's of geese
Honk overhead,
And maples turn
a fiery red.

Frost bites the lawn,
The stars are slits
In a black cat's eye
Before she spits.

At last, small witches,
Goblins, hags,
And pirates armed
With paper bags.

Their costumes hinged
On safety pins,
Go haunt a night
Of pumpkin grins.

Happy Autumn everyone!

**update: I woke up today and it's as if my body just wanted to be better. So, I'm still a little sore, but I'm up and moving and feel 200% better today.

Luma Lynai? or not...

Lynai was, in fact, a superwoman from the planet Staryl whom Superman was in love with. :)

So, I'm pretty much a "live life to the fullest," "do or die," "push through the pain" kinda girl. At least, I consider myself as such. So when my surgeon said recovery would take at least a week, I thought, "yea, right....give me a couple days..."

So, here I sit (more truthfullly, lay). Wednesday. Unable to spend more than 3 minutes standing without passing out and definitely NOT attending classes. Dizzy and in pain. Wishing I were on Lortab, and refusing at the same time to take any. Cold (from the Polar Care ice machine borrowed from Laura and Rikson Z) and grateful for the cold since the ice dulls the pain. UGH.

Jess "Appendix-free" Jones

So, I started this weekend uber-excited for General Conference. I had plans to attend the Saturday sessions at the Conference Center, then come back and enjoy Sunday sessions in the comfort of my home from the apartment LoveSac. But, of course, the Philippines Olongapo Mission reunion came first. I went up to Salt Lake on Friday excited to see both of the mission presidents, which was great.

Not to leave out too many distressing details, but I ended the evening in the Intermountain Medical Center talking to a surgeon about appendicitis. You guessed it, I got really sick and had to leave the reunion early only to be driven to a hospital to be prodded and poked and catscanned and, finally, cut open. :)

Luckily, I have some family in Salt Lake that stayed by my side the whole time and nursed me in their home all weeked after I was discharged from the hospital.

So, here I am, on Monday morning, lying on my couch icing my stomach, trying not to let the Lortab control my thought processes.

The procedure was done laparoscopically, meaning they just punched 3 holes in my stomach instead of having a big incision. Then they inflated my stomach with air until I was about as big as a 10 month old pregnant lady. During the procedure, however, they DID grab some excellent pictures of my organs and stuff. So that's cool. Now that I'm appendix-free, my stomach is still really stretched out and although my incisions aren't really sore, the spot in my colon that now houses a couple of staples is pretty sore. I'm having to ice my whole stomach to get the swelling to go away, so that's an adventure. lol.

So, I'm sad that I didn't get to watch General Conference, but I'm excited to read the talks next month in the Ensign.

And the best part is that I know that I'll NEVER have to go through this ever again. I am officially "appendix-free."