2013

Well, it's the last Sunday of 2013, so it's time to recall what has happened over the past year.

January. I returned to Provo for winter semester classes. I took historical geology, geology of planets, Old Testament, phonetics and phonology, and Early Modern English. It was really cold for a really long time, and the air was nasty. On January 24, we had freezing rain, and I unwisely decided to go brave it. I meant to go to my phonetics and phonology class, but I ended up at the dentist instead, since I slipped on the ice and landed on my teeth. One tooth was killed as it was pushed back and severed a nerve, and others were chipped. There were lots of videos of the ice, and I actually know the guy who made this one:


February. A Gospel Doctrine lesson inspired to make a silly song, which my roommate recorded. The video shows my lovely droopy eye and my gaudy Valentine tie.

On Presidents' Day, I got a root canal for my dead tooth.

March. Some friends threw a "morning mourning bash" for my tooth before I went and "helped" my cousin Jesse move into his new house. On the day before St. Patrick's Day, I went on a field trip to Spanish Fork Canyon in which we saw many things, including reptile clawmark fossils.

On St. Patrick's Day, everyone was impressed with my green outfit. On the day before Easter, I went to a funeral of an old family friend.

April. I went to a mission reunion in Draper on conference weekend. My church calling was upgraded from assistant membership clerk to THE ward clerk, which meant that from then on I've had to attend bishopric meetings and ward council. My roommates Scott and Cameron moved out, and the semester ended. There was a tarantula who owned more stuff than anyone I have ever known.

My final for my Early Modern English class consisted of writing a hymn based on scriptures, and I was pleased with mine. During my short break, I went with my parents to see a Mummies of the World exhibit. When I returned to Provo, I met my new roommate Jordan. I had my first day of spring classes, but my only class that day was the editing capstone class.

May. I had my second day of spring classes, and I finally had my structure of English class--a class in which I learned all about ambiguity, so I'm now very good at seeing ambiguity. I went to the first Rooftop Concert Series of the summer, although I don't remember much about the performers. I think I went swinging at Kiwanis Park a couple of times. Jan Terri released a new video.


June. I finished up all the work for my spring classes, and then summer term started. But I didn't take summer classes; I just increased my work hours and had a nice, relaxing summer. A few times I went and pulled up evil goathead plants, a tradition I plan to maintain. At the end of the month, I drove with my parents to California. We went to King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, where we met up with my brother and his wife and my three nephews, Preston, Franklin, and Nathaniel.

On the last day of the month (my mom's birthday), we drove to their house in the Bay Area.

July. I got sick at Six Flags, which made the Fourth of July not very good. I was amused by the goodie bags my nephews got on that holiday.

On July 6, we drove all my nephews home to Utah. I went back to Provo, but I visited on weekends. Eventually it was time to take them back to California, so we drove to California again and went to Disneyland. Then we had to drive back to Utah, nephewless. The air conditioning in my apartment went out for two weeks, and my roommate Bryton moved to Mexico to work at their MTC.

August. I went to another Rooftop Concert--all by myself--but I liked Mindy Gledhill and really liked Mideau. My roommate Chad moved in, but he tends to have different hours than I do, so I don't see him much. I went with ward members up Provo Canyon to go see a meteor shower. It was cloudy at first, but eventually we saw some good ones. Then my summer ended two weeks early so I could go on geology 210. The first week we went to Little Cottonwood Canyon and made a geologic map of the area--Tintic Quartzite, Mineral Fork Tillite, Maxfield Limestone, Ophir Shale, and Alta stock were all terms we became familiar with. Then we had an unseasonably cool Monday before I headed out for the second week of 210. On that one we went to southern Utah, going to Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Capitol Reef.

Our ward boundaries were rearranged.

September. I shaved my beard from 210 on Labor Day. My roommate Scott moved in (not the same one who had moved out) that week. I started fall classes, taking groundwater, swimming for non-swimmers, the senior course for my major (the section being about corpus linguistics), Old English, technical writing, and internship credit. We had a crazy rainstorm that flooded Provo.

I went to another Rooftop Concert by myself, but the following weekend I went to Mideau's album release--an album that is probably my favorite music purchase from 2013. I got ready for Halloween, and then the last weekend of the month I went on a cold field trip for groundwater. We went to Great Basin National Park, and it wasn't terribly interesting, although Lehman Cave was fun. The day after we got back, I turned 25.

October. On conference weekend, I went to the final Rooftop Concert, even though it wasn't on a rooftop because of the cold. It was the Lower Lights, and I always love them. I was with Kristen and Carissa, two horses. My roommate Scott got to learn all of my eccentric viewing habits, as I watched my cheesy Halloween shows. I carved a Jack jack-o-lantern, and on Halloween I went to a tri-stake Halloween party and got my face painted.

November. I got lots of clearance candy corn for Thanksgiving, and I had to share with my roommates. I lost a flash drive, but luckily I found it again. I went home for Thanksgiving, which was at our house, and I saw wild turkeys when I went running in Bountiful. There were only two movies I saw all year, and I saw both of them in November--Free Birds and Frozen. Frozen was really good; Free Birds was perfectly mediocre, but a mediocre Thanksgiving movie is better than an ordinary mediocre movie.

December. My roommate Scott loves Christmas, so I went caroling one Sunday with him and made wassail for his Christmas party. I finished up winter semester classes, doing a very nasty lab writeup for groundwater. Then I went to my cousin's wedding reception in Fillmore, and then on Christmas day I flew with my parents to California to see my nephews again. Nathaniel has been telling us about his sixteen (or "hixteeng") new houses, each with a swimming pool. 

In this picture, he is trying to push the log over.

In 2014, I am going to graduate. Hopefully that also means I'll get a real job, or I'll be in trouble. I have no idea what the year is going to be like. That's kind of a scary thought. 

Groundwater is six feet under

On Friday night I had the glorious experience of coming home and seeing my phone's weather app change to North Salt Lake and seeing presents under the tree and stockings on the fireplace. There's really no place like home for the holidays.

Of course, it wasn't all peaches and cream (or, to make it seasonal, gingerbread and eggnog) to make it to that point. It was, after all, finals week. For Old English, I had to translate eighty lines of poetry. It was fairly easy.

But groundwater was just annoying. I had to write a big nasty lab report. They are no fun to write or do. With my other geology classes, I can learn about concepts and explain them to you, as evidenced by various blog posts. That's not the case with groundwater. It was all equations and math. We learned all these equations, but I don't know what the equations mean. I have a basic understanding of groundwater, but not as much as I had hoped. I was talking with one of my classmates about that, and he said it's sad that that's how I'm ending geology. I'm taking geology seminar next semester, but that doesn't really count as a full geology class.

I finished my report Thursday afternoon, and I was all done with all my classes! That's a great feeling. Then that night I went to the last of the tithing settlement appointments. (But come January, I'm going to have to deal with more tithing stuff. Ugh.)

The Salt Lake area got more freezing rain this week. That's the second time in 2013 with freezing rain, and yet in my whole life there's only one other time I've seen such weather. (And people say climate change doesn't exist?) Fortunately we didn't get any in Provo--I say "fortunately" because I am deathly afraid of ice. I don't believe that God spared Provo just because of me, but I'm glad that's the way it happened.

I would have gone home Thursday night, but the snow and ice made me stay in Provo an extra night. The next day was my cousin Amory's wedding. My parents swung by to take me to Fillmore, where the reception was. On the way I tried to play my Christmas playlist from Google Play on my phone, but it didn't always work. It's weird to me that Amory got married, because I remember when she was a baby, and here she is married and I'm not. I'm ancient!

Small towns fascinate me. They always have the best Christmas displays (I learned that on my mission). We stopped into the town grocery store to get a card, and the girl at the checkout asked who was getting married, and when we told her who, she said, "Oh yeah, the reception's tonight." That wouldn't happen in the city!

On our way back, my mom got a phone call but couldn't answer because of the signal. She sent a text that said something to the effect of "I'll call you back because we went to a wedding in Fillmore and the reception is terrible." Even non-linguistic people can appreciate the ambiguity there, but my linguistic mind finds that particularly enjoyable and hilarious.

Then I spent Sunday going to church in my home ward, getting out cinnamon and cloves to make wassail and gingerbread, and listening to Christmas albums by the Tabernacle Choir and the Lower Lights. It makes me feel so jolly.

I still have to finish my Christmas shopping.

And I wish my thirty readers a very merry, holly jolly, happy snappy Christmas!

The end is nigh

Well, all my classes are over.

My funnest classes--corpus linguistics and swimming--are completely gone from my life, and I don't have to worry about them ever again.

For technical writing, I have to show up on Tuesday for the final, but all that is is watching group presentations. My group already went, so I just have to show up and evaluate the others.

For Old English, I have to translate a passage and take it to the scheduled final on Thursday. We have been translating all semester, but we have had an online glossary that helps us translate. This translation will be more work, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Groundwater--ugh. I have been working on the final project, but I think I still have a lot I have to do, not least of which is write the three-page report. In this class, we learned lots of equations, but I don't really understand what the equations mean. I don't have to finish until Friday, but I want to finish earlier--especially since other people are going to finish earlier, and I need to work with other people, or I will be completely clueless.

I submitted student ratings last night, including ratings for Geology 210. I was amused when it wouldn't accept my submission:

I think I've finalized my schedule for winter. I just need to get my textbooks now. I decided to drop Old English 2, which I'm a little bit sad about, but I ought to take another class instead that hopefully will help me get a job. It's a three-hour evening class, but it's only once a week, and this way I won't have any Friday classes! I'm going to do my internship for more credit, because I need more money. Also in the schedule are editing student journals, French, and geology seminar.

With Christmas approaching, I've been watching various Christmas specials. I've watched all four Charlie Brown Christmas specials, and all of them are good, since none of them are from the 80s, when Peanuts specials were at their worst. However, I think that they're not as funny as the strips, because the child actors don't say their lines the way I imagine they say them in the strip.

I also bought a DVD set with seven Christmas specials, six of which I didn't have. One of them is an odd one entitled Cricket on the Hearth. It was moderately charming at first, but halfway through it got weird. There was a seedy animal joint with an ugly cat in a slinky dress singing a song about fish and chips--and then three shifty animal characters were shot in cold blood! This was a cartoon from 1967!

There was plenty to laugh about this week. Like the dream I had that my bathroom was a tattoo parlor, and I was going to get a tattoo on my arm, but before I could make the down payment for my $22,000 tattoo, I realized I would be a hypocrite if I got one.

Jan Terri posted this gem on Facebook: "i will be om WGN morning tues at 9:60 singing rock n roll santa . turn in." "Wock and Woll Santa" is a great song, with its wonderful lyric "Jumpin' around like a house on fire," but Jan's announcement of her 9:60 performance made it that much better. 

I've consumed a few million calories* this week, due to eggnog, wassail, gingerbread, candy canes, cookies, and other goodies. The air quality has kept me from running, so I'm going to become nice and "jolly." Then after New Year's, nothing is in season except for hot chocolate. Hopefully the air will clear enough that I won't be so jolly anymore. 

*Thanks to my mom for pointing out that I originally said "categories" instead of "calories."

Brrr...

Well, this week was the first time I saw snow actually sticking to the ground this season. I saw snow falling last month, and I saw snow on the mountains as early as September, and in September I saw snow on picnic tables in Great Basin National Park, but this was the first time I saw it snow and stick at the same time.

Because of the lack of snow, November seemed very Novembery, but it seems like the weather has jumped from November to January. Not only did it begin snowing, it got really cold. People think that snow makes it feel like Christmas, but when it's so cold out, to me it seems more like post-Christmas depressing January.

After breaking my teeth in January, I have become terrified of ice. On Tuesday I went home earlier than I had planned because I wanted to get home before snow became ice. I've worn ugly shoes because they had better traction. I've worn really bulky gloves because then I can hold on to snow-covered railings without getting wet. I've joyously crushed and kicked ice and snow around so that it will melt faster. I chose a running route that I thought would be less icy, although there still were some icy patches. (Running in fifteen degrees was surprisingly easy, but probably because I was going slow so that I wouldn't slip.)

On November 30, I hit my four-year mark of being home from my mission. The length of a mission ago, I had been home from my mission for the length of a mission. The anniversary passed and I didn't think about it until the next day, when someone asked me how long I'd been home. I've had some reminiscing of the mission.

I've been listening to my Christmas music intermixed with my regular music, and one song that came up was on a MoTab CD I brought on the mission--the only CD I had when I entered the MTC. As the song came up, I had flashbacks to my very first week in Spokane, riding around in our car in Mead, WA. I had just moved in with the Welshes, an elderly couple, and their home teachers had given us some cookies. I really didn't know what was going on. I didn't know the area, and I didn't know anything about missionary work. It was kind of an odd time to remember.

The next Christmas, my companion, Elder Love, had lots and lots of MoTab Christmas CDs. But our favorite was the one I bought that year, Rejoice and Be Merry! with the King's Singers. When I hear that album (and lots of other MoTab songs), I remember driving around Davenport, WA, and all the other tiny towns.

The cold has also helped me reminisce, as the gloves and boots I've been wearing were ones I wore on the mission. My snow boots are way too big--the Walmart in Airway Heights, WA, didn't have any in my size (either that, or we got tired waiting for someone to help us).

It took me two years of being home before I was no longer sad not to be on the mission. I've moved on with my life. But once in a while, when I hear a song that I associate with my mission, I get a little twinge of sadness that that part of my life is over and will never come back. If I were to go back, I know that hardly anyone, if anyone, would remember me, especially since I look very different. It's a little sad.

This week is the last week of classes! All of my finals are final projects, rather than true exams. I'm just worried about groundwater, because it's a really big project, and I don't remember how to do it all. But I have two whole weeks, and I can work with other people, assuming I can get a hold of any of them.

I thought that this semester was going to be relatively easy, since I had three credits already out of the way, but it didn't turn out that way. I'm so glad, though, that I did have those credits out of the way, because I don't know what I would have done otherwise! I'll be glad for technical writing, groundwater, and Old English to be over (even though I'm taking Old English 2), but I'll be sad for swimming and corpus linguistics to be over. (I could take another corpus class, but I would have to drop French next semester, or at least take a different section, but I want to stay in the current section because I'll be with my roommate and have a built-in study buddy.)

The giving of thanks

Thanksgiving is the best weekend of the year. It's also the longest (since Christmas isn't really a weekend). What's not to love about it? You get a much-needed break, you get lots of good food (and pecan pie!), you get to get ready for Christmas, you get to visit with relatives (some of whom are more enjoyable than others--but I think everyone who reads this is on the "more enjoyable" side), you get to see movies, and all sorts of pleasant things!

On Monday, FHE was cancelled, so instead of doing homework (which is what really needed to be done), I went running. It was the first time I'd gone running on 900 East since they finished construction. BYU decided to close East Campus Drive, so now 900 East is a lot busier. They've added an extra stoplight, they've widened the sidewalk, and they've added another turn lane to the intersection at 900 and the road that becomes University Parkway. It means that you have to wait a long time at intersections now. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Especially since it's no longer so easy to drive to, say, the Marriott Center from south campus.

Then on Tuesday I went to my Old English class, and only three of us were there, so class was cancelled. A lot of people in that class are in my corpus linguistics class the hour before, and that class was cancelled, so I guess they didn't think it worth coming. (It isn't the most helpful class.) Then I drove home!

On Wednesday my mom and I went and did errands for Thanksgiving. That afternoon I went running and saw a flock of wild turkeys by the Bountiful golf course. There were probably twenty of them. It was in the low 40s, which is perfect running weather, so my running was super easy. I listened to Thanksgiving music while cleaning and such.

On Thanksgiving, we had a repairman come and remove our swamp cooler. Yes, on Thanksgiving. I went running again, hoping to see turkeys again, but I didn't. That run wasn't as easy (since it had been less than 24 hours since my last one), but I made it. I also helped with the final preparations for Thanksgiving, since it was at our house. The turkeys didn't get done in time, so dinner began as a vegetarian meal. But then the turkeys came out of the oven, and Thanksgiving was complete.

Then Thanksgiving ended, and on Friday the Christmas season began. I started listening to Christmas music. I have over 500 Christmas songs! I have some weird Christmas music, but some of it is quite lovely. I enjoy the Lower Lights' new album, and because I've been listening to Kelly Clarkson's new Christmas album, I had a dream that she was one of my roommates and had served a French-speaking mission. (Surprisingly, that's not the first time I've dreamed she was an RM.)

On Friday my family went and saw Frozen. It was quite good; I think I liked it more than Tangled. It was the second movie I'd seen both this month and this year (the other being Free Birds). I rarely see movies.

I also got a blue poinsettia.

Then Saturday, after putting lights on the Christmas tree, I had to return to Provo. My roommate Scott got a live tree and put it up.

I love  Christmas, but it sometimes makes me feel sad for some reason. Maybe it's because I won't get to relax most of Christmas this year. Maybe it's because I don't get a very long break. Maybe it's because it's getting closer to January. But I will do my best to be happy.

The blessing and curse of technology

On Monday, I woke up early to go to campus, because on Friday I had left my flash drive in a computer classroom. I realized I had left it there an hour later, and when I went back, the room was locked. I was sure that it would still be there on Monday morning, before classes started--but it wasn't! I made frantic searches to various rooms in the JKB, and when none of them turned it up, I went over to the Wilk. They didn't have it either. I asked my professor that afternoon if she had seen it. She hadn't, but she suggested I ask the writing center. They didn't have it either, but they took my email in case they did.

The next day, I got the long-awaited email saying they had found it. That flash drive had a lot of homework, a lot of work files, and other files I intend to use again. I guess I could have used cloud storage, but a flash drive is more convenient for me--as long as I don't lose it. It's amazing how so much important stuff depends on that little piece of plastic and metal!

That's the world we live in. Technology is both a blessing and a curse.

Last week I got a smart phone, and this week I have been trying to get used to it. I had had my previous phone for four years. I had no problem with it, except that it didn't always charge right. Often when I charged it, it would end up with less battery than when I started. I couldn't leave it charging overnight, because invariably my phone would be dead in the morning, even though it was plugged in. So it was time for a new one. But I get a little sad thinking about that one. It was the first cellphone I ever had! I got it right after I got back from my mission, and it has served me for the past four years. I still use it as my alarm clock because I can't say goodbye.

I'm not sure what to think of my new phone. It is nice to be able to check my email or pull in people's church records without going to a computer. But there are a few things that annoy me about it. It is harder to check my texts. It is harder to text, because the keyboard is wider. I have to charge it a lot more--and considering that charging was the main problem with my old one, I'm not sure the new one's necessarily an improvement. I know I'll get used to it--but I still have to get used to it. New technological advances may be advances in some ways, but they're not better in all ways.

On Monday night, we had an FHE in which we played MarioKart on the N64. I never had an N64 growing up. It came out when I was in second grade, and I wanted one really badly. My brother says that he told me that it was hard, and then I didn't want one anymore. But I never really played one. I've played MarioKart on the Wii at my brother's house, and wasn't very good. I was even worse on the 64. I lost every time. People could tell which one was me because I was the last one.

And then the next day someone asked me if I'm a gamer. The answer, of course, is no. He said I seemed like a gamer. But I wondered why he thought that. Do I really still seem that nerdy? I am pretty quiet, which I guess is a little nerdy in its own right, and because I'm quiet people don't get to know me very well. But I was wearing my most fashionable pants and shoes that day! Maybe it's my long-ish hair. But I don't like talking about that.

This week I had to study for a groundwater test. I set up a Google doc so we could study together as a class. I did pretty well on the last test, so I wasn't too worried about this one.

I have never felt so terrible about a test. I don't know my score, but I'm pretty sure I failed. I've never failed a test before, unless you count the AP tests on which I only got 2s. I had memorized a bunch of equations and variables, but when I got to the test, I didn't know what to do with them. It was awful. For me, a C or a D is failing, but I'm pretty sure that this will be a genuine F. I even wrote that on the front. I left so much blank. For some reason, what bothers me most about doing so poorly is wondering what the professor will think of me. Early in the semester, he wondered if another girl was really going to be taking the class, since she wasn't a geology major. I'm not a geology major either, so what does he think of me? Hopefully I'll be able to salvage my grade, but it's pretty unlikely I'll get a 4.0 this semester (which I only did once during a full semester).

But I don't have to think about groundwater until after Thanksgiving. Or swimming, either. But I like my swimming class. That's one class I'll be sad to have end. That and my capstone corpus linguistics class. I was expecting that a class called "The Senior Course" would be difficult--but it was actually my easiest (except for swimming for non-swimmers).

I'm thankful for Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving thoughts

I love this time of year. There's just something about November that fills me with such joy.

When I think about November, I think of dark evenings in elementary school, in which my brother is listening to music on our computer, our felt newspaper-filled turkey is sitting somewhere in the living room, and our cornucopia decoration is filled with fake vegetables of some kind.

In November, all the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray, but it's not quite yet a winter's day. Even if it snows, you know there's still a good chance of decently warm days returning, if that's what you like. And if you like snowy days, then you know on sunny days that it could soon snow again.

There's a certain brisk bareness all around. Most of the trees have lost most (but not all) of their leaves, but they usually aren't covered with snow. Halloween decorations are gone, but Christmas decorations aren't (usually) up yet. There's just this crisp clearness and cleanness to the time.

I can't decide whether I like Thanksgiving because I like November, or whether I like November because I like Thanksgiving. But I adore them both.

While some people are listening to Christmas music at this time (and thereby diluting the merry emotions associated with such music), I listen to Thanksgiving music. It fills me with such joy to listen to it. Many people are skeptical of Thanksgiving music existing, but by the end of the week, my Thanksgiving playlist should have 67 songs:
Mormon Tabernacle Choir: I just ordered a CD this week entitled The Great Thanksgiving, which hasn't yet arrived yet but has 21 songs. I think it's an older recording, which tend not to be as good, but hopefully it will at least have music you can hear (unlike many of their newer recordings). I also have three Thanksgiving songs sung in general conference, and their "For the Beauty of the Earth" from their Consider the Lilies album.
Craig Duncan: I don't know who this is, except that I bought his Thanksgiving album, We Gather Together: 14 Thanksgiving Hymns. It seems to be instrumental folk. (I think folk is the best genre of music. I attended a concert of the BYU folk ensemble this week, and of all the BYU concerts I've attended, the folk ones are hands down the best. Folk is great because it's versatile. There's rock folk, pop folk, country folk, traditional folk, and so on. I like almost all of it.) This album seems to be easy-listening folk, which isn't my favorite, but Thanksgiving music is hard to come by. Since this is new to me, it doesn't have all the strong Thanksgiving emotions attached yet, but I hope that in future it will.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving: I have watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving every year since 1999, so it is strongly associated with Thanksgiving in my mind. I always thought a soundtrack of it would be nice. Although an official soundtrack has never been made, a few years ago they found some of Vince Guaraldi's original recordings and have released them on various CDs, so I have been able to find all but two of the songs from the TV special. I have ten songs, although two of them are repeats from different CDs. I also have a cover of the "Little Birdie" song (which isn't a Thanksgiving song itself, but because it's on the Thanksgiving special, I count it).
Hymns 91-95: I have those abysmal recordings from lds.org (both vocal and instrumental), but hey, it's free Thanksgiving music. I also have three other recordings of "For the Beauty of the Earth"--one by an annoying a cappella group Eclipse and two by the Lower Lights (one album version and one live version).
Other songs: I also have a few other songs--a cheesy song called "Thanksgiving Day" by a BYUI instructor named Kory Kunz, an introductory piano piece called "Sliced  Turkey," and that ridiculous but culturally amusing "It's Thanksgiving" song from last year.

Now, as you can see, the quality of my Thanksgiving music may not be the best. But I'll tolerate a little lack of quality for the sake of powerful Thanksgiving emotions. (Besides, it's still better than a lot of Christmas music!)

And if you think this is a lot, I still know of more music I could add to my Thanksgiving playlist, but I've added enough for this year. (I need to start budgeting my money better. Today is day one.) But there will be no Adam Sandler or "Alice's Restaurant" for me--too inappropriate.

This year I learned that most historians who have done their research don't believe that the Pilgrims actually wore buckles as we see in pictures. It sounds like they haven't found any buckle artifacts, and it sounds like buckles weren't popular until later. But it sounds like they existed, so they could have worn them but probably didn't. But buckles have become such an iconic image of Thanksgiving. A 5k description for Thanksgiving Point describes the race clothes as "An iconic (and historically inaccurate) giant buckle hat or bonnet and a long-sleeved, cotton tee styled to look like a jacket or dress." It seems that if you're going for a historically accurate Pilgrim, you should leave off the buckle, but if you're going for a Thanksgiving Pilgrim, by golly, you'd better include that buckle!

I don't think that the lack of existence precludes something from being a holiday symbol. I don't think that cornucopias ever existed. Any cornucopias that exist, exist only because of the symbol, not the other way around. 

(But eight-pointed snowflakes? Eww.)

But I think that sometimes historians want to say things simply to shock or make themselves appear smart. There are some historians who say there was no turkey at the first Thanksgiving. Umm, were they there? William Bradford himself says they had turkeys. I'm going to trust someone who was there, instead of some untrustworthy historian. If you said turkey was not the main dish, that would most likely be correct--but to say there was no turkey is idiotic. 

Besides, turkeys are a New-World resource that the Pilgrims would have encountered, just like pumpkins and maize. 

I am so excited for Thanksgiving next week. I hope to finish most of my homework before Thanksgiving so that I can just relax for those few days.

No-Rest November

I'm sure glad I had geology 210 this semester and already have three credits out of the way, because I don't know if I would have been able to manage. This was a rather hectic week. My average time spent on campus per day this week was ten or eleven hours.

One of my big assignments was a lab writeup for my groundwater class. I took that class for fun, but sometimes it's not that fun. Particularly during lab writeups. On Wednesday, I was working on my writeup (these writeups take forever), and we have to put equations in. Word has an equation editor so that you can put equations in, and we're graded on using them. Well, I was using the equation editor, when it mysteriously made a division sign into a boxed question mark. When I tried to click on it to fix it, the whole document froze--and when I closed it, it wouldn't let me open it again. I had spent several hours on the project, and I was locked out of it! I was able to open it in WordPad and then copy and paste it into Word, but all of my equations were lost. The equations are pretty time consuming, so I had to put them all back in.

And just as I got to where I had left off on the previous attempt, the exact same thing happened again. The exact same equation, the exact same error, the exact same result. I was locked out of my document again. It was about 11:00 p.m. at this point, so I couldn't bear the thought of putting the equations in again, especially if the same problem would occur. I emailed my professor asking if I could have some more time and if I could put the equations in by hand--which would be both faster and safer--even though we're graded on using the equation editor.

I was granted permission to put the equations in by hand, although I don't think I got permission for it to be late. And it was late. I didn't finish by the deadline of 5:00 on Thursday. That's a terrible feeling. Oh well.

I did have a fortunate experience that night, however. I ate a smaller-than-usual lunch, and after a particularly exerting day in my swimming class, I was feeling a little weak. I bought a sandwich from the vending machine, intending to go buy a regular meal later. As the sandwich began to vend, it stopped, and I panicked that I wasn't going to get what I paid for. But then it started again, and instead of getting no sandwich, I got two sandwiches, and thus didn't have to buy dinner that night! I don't feel bad, because there was no way to return it, but more significantly because BYU vending machines have ripped me off a few times, so now we're closer to being even.

Three nights this week I went swimming in the evening. Swimming for Non-Swimmers is the lowest of the swimming classes, and I'm one of the lowest in the class. I just can't swim. But I'm definitely getting better. I'm best at the backstroke, but that's not saying much.

All my time spent on campus left me mentally exhausted, but the swimming left me physically exhausted. I don't feel like swimming is that exhausting. But apparently it is. On Friday night, after coming up the RB stairs and the stairs of my complex, I felt completely winded.

The next morning I went running. It had been two weeks since I had been, due to schoolwork and Halloween. I've been going on a new route, a route that is quite enjoyable but has some really steep parts. I have successfully mastered this route several times, but yesterday was just really hard. I pushed through the steepest part, but then later I was going uphill again and I just couldn't make it. I had to stop and walk for a few minutes. All day I was feeling the effects of that run. I'm not sure what to think about that--whether I should be disappointed that I didn't successfully make me goal, or whether I should be glad that swimming exhausted me to the point of not being able to finish a run.

Yesterday wasn't a good day to catch up on homework, because I had to go to two sessions of stake conference. Today was the last session of stake conference. They released our stake clerk, and as a ward clerk I got to know that clerk fairly well. At first he scared me, but I kind of grew to love him, despite his very odd personality. Most of the emails he sent out ended with "I hope this is as clear as mud." After they released him today, they asked him to bear his testimony. He told a story, and then for his testimony he sang a verse of "I Believe in Christ." It was very awkward. It always is when people sing in testimonies. But I'll miss working under him, even with his sometimes incomprehensible emails.

I remember hearing of a demotivational poster that, although I never saw it, said something like, "Blogging: Never has so much been said about so little." I feel like that's what happened here on this post.

There's only 362 days left till next Halloween!

The next time someone asks me what kind of movie I like, I think I'll tell them that I like really cheesy, poor-quality movies. It will be mostly true.

Throughout the Halloween season, I've been watching various Halloween shows and movies, and they get progressively longer. I watch all of the Halloween shows I own, whether I like them or not.

On Monday night, after an FHE in which my pumpkin won the contest (there was only one other pumpkin),

I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. That is not a cheesy, poor-quality movie. It is beautiful and one of the most creative things ever. I have it memorized, and yet every time I watch it, I notice something I didn't notice before. For example, this time I noticed that in the scene where Dr. Finkelstein transfers half of his brain into the woman he's creating, Sally is in the background. She's just in the background, and she's blurry, yet she's still blinking her eyes and moving around. The amount of work in the movie is insane! It's always one that I like to watch with people who haven't seen it before. But that didn't work too well. My roommate Jordan had a bad headache, so he went to bed. My roommate Scott watched part of it (he'd seen it before), but then he too went to bed. My former roommate/current home teacher Zach Zimmerman was going to watch it, but he didn't come until the last fifteen minutes. Afterwards I had to show him the "This is Halloween" and "What's This?" sequences.

On Tuesday, I watched the new Frankenweenie movie. This is also a beautiful movie. Sadly, not many people have seen it or even heard about it, but it is a wonderful little movie. It's more beautiful than The Nightmare Before Christmas, although not as good. Both Zach and Scott watched most of it and seemed impressed by it. It's the scariest of my Halloween shows.

Then after Wednesday, the cheesiness came in. Scott was watching the World Series, so I waited for him to be done. I actually saw the end (although I wasn't really paying attention), but I didn't think anyone actually watched baseball anymore. I think the Red Sox should have slacked off for five more years--then it would have been 100 years since they won a World Series. But I guess it was fitting for it to be the year of the marathon tragedy.

Anyway, after the game, I turned on Mad Monster Party? I kept saying that it's one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. After the movie, Scott said, "I think that's the strangest movie ever created!" It's a 1960s Rankin Bass movie. The songs and the animation would make it a children's movie--yet the mild innuendos and darkness make it more of an adult movie. It's literally light, but the story and the sight gags are fairly dark, definitely darker than The Nightmare Before Christmas. Some of the jokes are funny ("It's her own fault for thinking so loud"), some are not ("How did he get an invitation? He has an unlisted tomb"), and some are just bizarre ("Quit acting like the Statue of Liberty!"). You get a surprise ending, Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller as stop-motion puppets, and really weird songs.

Then, of course, Thursday was Halloween. I had classes during the day, but I finished my homework so that I could have fun. I went to a stake party that wasn't that fun and got my face painted to accompany my simple costume,

and then I went to a smaller party with some friends.Then I came home and Scott was watching Wait Until Dark (on KBYU!) and then I watched The Munsters' Revenge. That's a TV movie that was made in the late 70s (but didn't get broadcast until the early 80s). It's very cheesy. The only reason it works (and it barely does that) is because it had part of the original cast. If it had different actors, it would be completely intolerable (like The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas). After it was over, Scott said, "Mark, that's the movie you save for Halloween?" I told him I do so because it's the longest--that's the only reason.

Then the next day, I got up early to cut up a fruit salad to take to a work party. I listened to my Thanksgiving playlist, which has thirty songs. It may not be the greatest music, but it makes me feel so happy and so Thanksgiving-y. People who listen to Christmas music at this time just don't know what they're missing. I have most of the music from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, recordings of hymns 91-95, and a few other odds and ends. The Thanksgiving version of "Linus and Lucy" is the best ever.

I went home for Friday night in order to get ready for Thanksgiving. My time spent at home means that I will have to be Johnny Tremain again today. On Friday I watched a YouTube video on my parents' big TV--it was another Rankin Bass special, The Mouse on the Mayflower, which hasn't been released on DVD. Which confuses me, because I think it would be easier to release it on DVD than on VHS, especially since many companies do manufacture-on-demand DVDs now. But I guess DVDs are starting to go into obsolescence now anyway.

Then yesterday I went with my family to go see Free Birds. It's a new movie about turkeys who travel back in time to take turkeys off the Thanksgiving menu. I read the reviews, and I expected it to be pretty terrible. I expected it to be like Disney's Chicken Little from 2005--so bad that the whole time you think, "This is stupid and not funny at all." It wasn't terrible. It wasn't great--certainly no Pixar or How to Train Your Dragon--but it wasn't terrible. It was a perfectly mediocre movie. I'd take a mediocre Thanksgiving movie over a mediocre Christmas movie or mediocre non-holiday movie any time.

Some people also thought it had a political agenda, promoting animal rights or decrying American imperialism. I guess if you were looking for that you might find it, but I don't think that was the intent of the movie. It certainly isn't promoting veganism, since there's lots of cheese pizza. I don't like how they made Myles Standish a villain, but I didn't think the movie had ulterior motives.

I just love Thanksgiving. I put up all the Thanksgiving decorations at my house. I also count candy corn as suitable for both Halloween and Thanksgiving, so I always go overboard buying clearance Halloween candy for Thanksgiving. In the last few days, I bought candy corn jelly beans, candy corn M&Ms, Starburst candy corn, caramel candy corn, s'mores candy corn, autumn mix, candy corn suckers, candy corn and peanuts, pumpkin spice candy corn, and a candy corn Blow Pop. When I showed Scott my supply, he told me I was going to get diabetes. So I'm sharing, because there's no way I can eat that much candy in four weeks.

I just love November!

Overrated hymns

There are a few things in our Mormon culture that annoy me--like the perception that it's OK to watch a movie as long as it's not rated R, or that the Book of Mormon is the only worthwhile book of scripture, or that prayers on a rainy day must always say "the moisture we are receiving." Not to mention saying a blessing on refreshments.

But one of the ones that annoys me the most is that we can't sing a hymn if we don't know it. People don't want to sing new hymns. But that's ridiculous. Every hymn you know was new to you at some point. There are 341 hymns in our current edition of the hymnbook. And yet we get stuck hearing the same tired hymns over and over again, while there are numerous hymns that we never, ever hear. The hymnbook itself says that we should seek to find a balance between familiar and lesser-known hymns. But when was the last time you sang "Truth Eternal" (4), "Awake and Arise" (8), "Come Rejoice" (9), or "Come Sing to the Lord" (10)? That's four in just the first ten hymns!

So here are some hymns that I think are highly overrated or oversung. That does not mean that these hymns are bad--it just means we need a little more variety.

"Come Thou Fount." This one bugs me more than all the others, because this is a song that really bores me because it is oversung, despite the fact that IT IS NOT IN THE HYMNBOOK! It was in the 1948 edition (the previous one), but it was taken out for the 1985 (current) version. I have heard various speculation about why it was taken out. The one that seems most likely to me is copyright issues, but I have also heard speculation that it wasn't sung enough, that it was sung too much, or that its lyrics could potentially be misunderstood. Whatever the reason, we surely don't miss it, because versions of this song are a dime a dozen. It seems like three-fourths of special musical numbers are this song. I like to collect hymn recordings, and when I look at CDs with hymns on them, it is unbelievable how many of them have "Come Thou Fount." My mom even has a Christmas CD with this song. It is not a Christmas song! I once considered joining my ward choir, but when I found out they were singing this song, I decided not to. There are 341 hymns IN the hymnbook, dozens of which we never sing, and yet you're going for one that is NOT in the hymnbook and is overdone? It's not that I think it's a bad song. I just don't find it particularly spectacular, especially not spectacular enough to merit the status of default musical number. Once on my mission, I heard some missionaries sing "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy" (335) to the tune of "Come Thou Fount." Why would you do that? I think "Brightly Beams" has a far more interesting tune than "Come Thou Fount." If it were still in the hymnbook, I can't decide if it would be worse or better--on the one hand, we'd have more access to it, but on the other hand, it wouldn't be as special. And for the record, it is "Come Thou Fount," not "Come Thou Font."

"If You Could Hie to Kolob" (284). Many years ago, I overheard someone at the store having a conversation and saying that you can be a good Mormon without having "If You Could Hie to Kolob" as your favorite hymn. If I can overhear such a conversation at the local Shopko and remember and agree with it, you know there's a problem. I do think it's a pretty tune, but it's just overdone. We don't sing it often in sacrament meeting because it has deeper doctrine, doctrines that can be more controversial to people of other faiths. (Most of my readership is either Mormon or just plain non-believers, so I can talk about it.) I don't know if Mormons think it's special because we don't sing it often, or because it has those profound doctrines, or because it's kind of taboo, but they sure do like it. It was sung in my ward conference today. Like I said, I like the tune, and there's nothing wrong with strong doctrines. But it's just overrated. One mix CD I saw on my mission was called "Founts of Kolob"--just different versions of those two hymns. Fortunately, I never heard that one. The idea is bad enough.

"Praise to the Man" (27). People are hesitant to sing "If You Could Hie to Kolob," yet no one bats an eye at singing "Mingling with Gods." This song also makes it seem as though we worship Joseph Smith. We don't, of course, but it makes us seem like we do. I get so bored singing this song, despite the fact that it's an upbeat tempo. And that's another thing--it drives me completely crazy when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings this song, because they sing it really slow. I do not think the tune is meant to be slow! If you put the words to a different tune, slow would be OK. But not this one! I've become so bored with this song that when we sing it in priesthood meetings, I will sing the lyrics to "Hail to the Brightness of Zion's Glad Morning" (42) instead.

"We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet" (19). This song is OK for situations where there are no hymn books or where there are limited pianists, since it's a song everyone knows. In the last area of my mission, we sang this every. single. week. in priesthood meetings because that was the only song the Aaronic priesthood could play. That's excessive. At that point, a cappella (or finding another pianist) would have been better. What bothers me most is that people think of prophets and they automatically think of this song. It's in the "Restoration" section of the hymnbook, but it would fit better in the "Praise and Thanksgiving" section. Only the first line has anything to do with prophets. The rest is just a hymn of gratitude. If you don't believe me, just think about it. You probably have the words memorized, since we sing it so much.

"Ye Elders of Israel" (319). I really used to like this song. But since it's sung at least once a month in priesthood meetings, I have become so bored by it. There are lots of other priesthood songs--why do we only sing this one?

"Joy to the World" (201). This is the first hymn in the Christmas section, and I think it is the one that is sung the most. But I think it is placed at the beginning of the Christmas section not because it is the best but because it is a good transition between the Easter hymns (197-200) and the rest of the Christmas hymns (202-214). The tune is rather uninteresting. But even more than that, the lyrics aren't very Christmassy. In fact, it has hardly anything to do with Christmas, unless you think of Christmas as just being about Jesus, in which case I might suggest you think about him year round. As a matter of fact, the 1948 edition of the hymnbook actually says, "Joy to the world, the Lord will come." The fact that you can change the lyric to say that proves that it's not very Christmassy. Now, I still count it as a Christmas song (due to tradition), but it's not the best. "Once in Royal David's City" (205) is a Christmas song that is more Christmassy and more beautiful, yet we rarely sing it.

"I Know that My Redeemer Lives" (136) and "I Am a Child of God" (301). I feel blasphemous mentioning these, because there's nothing wrong with them and they're simple yet profound. I can't say anything bad about them, except that I get sooo bored singing them. Overrated? I would say no; Oversung? I would say yes.

So what should we sing instead? Some of my favorite lesser-known hymns are "Awake and Arise" (8), "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" (46), "Great God Attend While Zion Sings" (88), "Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me" (104), and "Thy Spirit, Lord, Has Stirred Our Souls" (157). (By the way, I did not consult a hymnbook in making this post--all the numbers were provided from memory.)

Now, there are rumors about a new hymnbook. I don't know when this new hymnbook will come out (whether it will be months or years), but I want to make some predictions about what I think will happen. Then when the new one comes out, I can say I guessed correctly, and I will have the documentation to prove it.

• "The Morning Breaks" will maintain its place as hymn number 1.
• Many of the mountain/Utah hymns will be removed. If "The Wintry Day, Descending to Its Close" (37) manages to stay in, the lyric that says, "Where roamed at will the fearless Indian band/the templed city of the Saints now stands" will certainly be modified or removed. 
• "Faith in Every Footstep" and "Behold the Wounds in Jesus' Hands" will be added.
• "Come Thou Fount" will probably be restored, which could be either good or bad.
• The sections of songs for men and songs for women will be cut down or eliminated. I definitely think that the songs that are neither for men or for women but are simply choral arrangements for men's or women's choirs will be adapted to be regular hymns. Specifically, "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy" (335) will no longer be a men's hymn.
• The patriotic songs may have additional countries (like Canada or New Zealand), but more likely will be cut down or eliminated. I can't think of any specifically American lyrics in "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (339), so I can see it staying.
• I think the total number of hymns will decrease.

And when they revise the Children's Songbook (from 1989), here's what I think will change.

• There will be fewer season and fun songs. A few years ago, the nursery manual was revised so that there are no longer lessons like "I can be thankful for fish," so I think some of those more trivial songs will leave. They will keep the classics like "Popcorn Popping" or "Give, Said the Little Stream." I suspect that "Give, Said the Little Stream" will finally give in to popularity and say, "The grass grows greener still." (The lyric is, and always has been, "the fields grow greener still," despite what people actually sing.)
• "Scripture Power," "I Know that My Savior Loves Me," and "If the Savior Stood beside Me" will be added. 
• The tune of "Latter-day Prophets" will be lengthened to accommodate more prophets. As it stands, there's only room for one or two more prophets. 
• Some songs will be less childish and more doctrinal. 
• The layout of the book will feature photographs instead of illustrations. 

And when they do make the new hymnbook, I can only hope they have the  Tabernacle Choir sing the audio recordings, instead of that dismal "choir" they currently use. 

Blast that hydraulic gradient!

The first round of midterms ended this week. On Tuesday I had a groundwater test. I think I did reasonably well, but there was one question in which we had to find the hydraulic gradient, but I was trying to find the hydraulic conductivity, and there wasn't enough information. In fact, I solved the hydraulic gradient in trying to solve the hydraulic conductivity, but I didn't realize that, so I don't know how many points I will get.

Last week I took my Old English test, and I thought I did OK but not great. Thus I was stunned when I got it back and got a 97! I tied for second high score! I actually missed a lot, but our professor said that she graded everything, then lumped the tests into piles and assigned scores based on how well we did. So it was more subjective. But that's OK—I'm happy with my score, and even the girl who got the lowest score was happy with hers. Maybe I will take Old English 2 after all.

On Tuesday I also went running. When I left it was lightly raining. I was running toward the mountains, and there was an enormous rainbow. There were also low-hanging clouds, snow on the higher peaks, and trees with changed leaves. Then later, the sun was setting and shining through clouds. There was pink sunlight shining on the Mississippian limestone. It was simply beautiful and wonderful. I love fall.

Then when I came home, my nipple was bleeding. If I were a mother with sucking child, my child would be a vampire.

This week I also began watching my daily Halloween shows, beginning with my 1960s sitcoms (The Beverly Hillbillies, The Addams Family, and Bewitched). In the past, I thought that my 60s shows were classics and high quality. Now I realize it's really not that way. I think Bewitched is fairly high quality, and Green Acres is genuinely hilarious, but most 60s sitcoms are hardly intelligent. I like them because they're clean and because they have cultural/historical significance, but I think that I probably like them for the same reasons I like Jan Terri—they're so ridiculous they're entertaining. Gilligan turned invisible from being struck by lightning? All of Mayberry thought that a goat could explode? Sergeant Schultz never reported Colonel Hogan? I think only in the 1960s could a show about a flying nun last for three whole seasons. After one Addams Family episode, my roommate Scott said, “The 60s were rough.” It's kind of true. But at least they didn't have to resort to inappropriate content, as most shows today do--I think they choose dirty things simply to shock, not because it's funny or intelligent. 

Yesterday I made a project about geology for my corpus linguistics class. I may have inserted some subtle (or not-so-subtle) biases concerning evolution and global warming. My professor seemed skeptical that I could make a project about geology interesting, but I hope he finds mine suitable.

I feel like I'm always writing about boring things. How can I change my blog posts to make them more interesting? 

Oh, it was THAT week.

This week was homecoming at BYU. Which I really don't care about.

I really think there must be something wrong with me, because our culture is so greatly interested in sports and teams, and yet I could not be less interested. I can't tell a touchdown from a layup, and yet society makes sports such a big deal. Increasingly, I think I'm kind of a normal person, but then sports remind me I'm not. But I'm not going to change, because life is easier without them. I don't have to schedule things around games, and I don't have to be disappointed when my team loses. (I kind of understand how enjoying basketball might be helpful, since January and February are pretty dismal. But football? There are too many wonderful things going on in September, October, and November!) I don't hold myself above people who like sports, I just find it strange that they love them so much when I find them so uninteresting.

There were things associated with homecoming that went on, but I didn't participate in most of them. This is my second and my last homecoming at college. On Tuesday, the "devotional" was homecoming opening ceremonies. I thought, "Should I be here?" But I got a free t-shirt out of it, so it was worth it--although it's not a t-shirt I care to wear around.

On Friday my grandparents came down to Provo for the Homecoming Spectacular and took me to dinner. So that was a way I was indirectly affected by homecoming. They also gave me a box of holiday decorations made by a great aunt whom I've never met. They're mostly just Christmas ornaments with different colors. I really like the orange and black cubes, but who ever heard of a Halloween bell?

Then Saturday I watched the homecoming parade from my apartment window, making cynical comments to my roommate the whole time. If I were ever asked to narrate a parade, I would probably get fired, because I would just make snarky comments the whole time. (Especially when the medieval and Dr. Who clubs passed by.)

Before the parade was a pancake breakfast across the street. I didn't go to it, but their music was so loud it was as if I was listening to it myself right in the apartment. Since I didn't think I would be able to concentrate on scripture study, I did other productive things instead. Like submitting an application for graduation. (What!)

Other things I did this week:

• Took a midterm for Old English. It wasn't too bad, but I should have been better at learning OE nouns. I might take Old English 2 next semester, because hopefully that will mostly be translation and not grammar. 
• Went running Friday night, since it was the first time I'd been in Provo for the weekend in four weeks. It was a good run, but it meant that I was totally exhausted for my Saturday morning run.
• Did a project about words from the Pilgrims instead of watching the game. (The project was less interesting than you might expect.) 
• Missed most of institute because I was making water table and potentiometric surface maps. That's OK, though, because the food doesn't come until the end of institute anyway. 

As I have read over past blog posts, it has come to my attention that I am very boring. Sorry about that.

O-C-T-O-B-E-R

With this being conference weekend, this was another busy weekend, but hopefully it should be the last busy one for a while. Last week was my field trip (and it was just in time, since the national parks are closed now) and the week before that was a trip home.

I was hoping that since I already have three credits out of the way, my semester would be easier, but it's still a lot of work. I had to do a lab writeup for Groundwater that took six or seven hours. And then I had to work on a project for my corpus linguistics class, which wasn't too hard, but it took me a long time to figure out what to do for my project. (I wanted to do 1960s TV, but that wasn't too interesting, so I switched to 1950s TV instead.)

Anyway, the weekend started busily Friday. I had a mission reunion in the evening. This reunion was with President Palmer, my second mission president. I always feel awkward at those reunions. I only had President Palmer for the last five months of my mission, and all that time I was in Lewiston, ID, which is one of the edges of the mission. I kind of feel that President Palmer remembers me more from reunions than he does from the mission. That's the impression I get when I talk to him. I really go to these reunions more to see other missionaries.

But that doesn't work too well either. Most of the missionaries at those reunions were after my time, or if they were from my time, I never served around them. I was able to visit with my former companion/roommate Derek Warren, but other than that there were few people I knew there. In fact, there were a few people there whom I knew outside the mission. One is my childhood friend Hillary Ulmer, who also served in the mission, and the other was a girl who used to be in my ward, who is dating someone who went to my mission. She has since unfriended me on Facebook, but that's OK, because one of the missionaries I did know at the reunion I have unfriended as well.

I couldn't stay long at the reunion (which was fine by me, since I didn't know many people, at least not many I cared to talk to) because my old horse friend Kristen was visiting. We went to the Rooftop Concert, but it had been moved inside the Marriott hotel because of the cold. I would have preferred it outside, because it was crowded and noisy, but at least it was warm. When we got there, we decided we didn't care to hear the act that was going on then, so we waited in a lobby until another horse, Carissa, met us there. We went inside to hear the Lower Lights. I love them. Their music is just so fun and meaningful. They're working on a new album, and I think that a lot of the songs they sang will be on the new album, since they weren't on their other albums. I think that was the eighth concert I'd been to this year, and six of them were free. I'm sad that the Rooftop Concert Series is over until May.

Then I drove home for conference. I haven't been home for conference for two years, when I lived at home.

Conference weekend is Holy Week for Mormons (even though Holy Week should be Holy Week), but BYU doesn't seem to care. I mean, they do close their buildings for conference, but we don't get any days off or any reprieves from homework. I think BYU cares most about Christmas. They start putting up Christmas decorations in October and we get time off for the holiday. After Christmas, I think they care most about Valentine's Day. That's the only other holiday for which I have seen significant campus decorations (both the Cougareat and the library). But the most religiously significant events they don't care about. We don't get any days off for conference or Easter, and in fact I think that Easter next year is right in the middle of finals week. What's up with that?

With midterms and projects coming up, this is going to be another busy week. But at least I don't have any weekend plans.

The Last Weekend at Age 24

I am officially a quarter of a century old.

Today is my birthday, although it doesn't feel much like a birthday--no presents, no cake, no ice cream.

It was also a fairly busy week, culminating in another field trip. Yay for field trips! This trip was for my groundwater class. Groundwater so far has turned out to be my most boring class--not because groundwater itself is boring, but because we have mostly done math and uninteresting labs. On our way to our field trip, someone asked jokingly why we didn't do this trip earlier in the semester (since it was so cold), and someone said it was because we didn't know anything about groundwater then. Then someone said that we still don't know anything about groundwater. (That comforted me, since I felt like I was the only one.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

On Friday, I had to miss my 3:00 writing class because we were leaving at 3:00. There were twenty of us students, two grad students, and our professor. We all loaded up in two geology vans and a truck and headed out to Great Basin National Park. This was just barely the seventh national park I went to at the age of 24, the others being Death Valley in November for Geomorphology, Kings Canyon and Sequoia in June with my family, and Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Capitol Reef for Geology 210.

Lots of people brought iPods, but I was the only one who brought a cord to plug them into the stereo. If I had known the kind of stuff we were going to listen to, I wouldn't have brought it. I was surprised that my fellow BYU students were listening to music and standup comedy with such utterly foul language. Sometimes I think my Lady Gaga is pushing the limits, but I had to listen to Gaga on my headphones in order to try to block out all the offensive stuff! I guess I could have asked them not to play that kind of stuff (after all, the only reason they were able to was because I brought the cord), but I feared man more than I feared God and didn't say anything. I think the next time I go on a trip like that (if I go on one again), I will say they can use my cord only if the content is clean--at least clean enough to be on the radio. The only stuff from my music we listened to was Mideau (another van mate had been to that same show); I didn't think this crowd would like a lot of my regular music. That's one of the problems with my personality: I let people walk all over me.

If you live in Utah (and I think most of my readers do), you know that it got cold this week. We drove through Eureka, UT, and there was snow there. We stopped in Delta for dinner and then headed out to the park. We arrived at twilight, so we had to put up our tents without much light. (I got there and realized that I had forgotten my flashlight. Oh well. I survived.) There was snow on the picnic tables at our campground. It was quite cold; we set up a fire. I'm usually apathetic about campfires, but I think this was the first time in my life I actually appreciated a fire for its warming quality. We roasted marshmallows (and I bought pumpkin spice marshmallows in Delta specifically for that purpose) and talked around the fire. I don't go around advertising that I'm not a geology major, but I enjoy it when I get a chance to tell geology folks what my major is and see their reaction. "Why are you taking this class?!"

Then it came time to go to bed. No one wanted to sleep in my tent, so I got to spread out, but it meant that all the heat came from my body. I wanted a really small sleeping bag for Geology 210, but small means cold. When I went to bed, I had on a thin hoodie and a thick hoodie, a beanie, pants, and two pairs of socks (one thick and one thin; I tried another pair of thick socks but they put too much pressure on my toes). I had a fleece blanket in my sleeping bag. I felt quite nice when I went to bed, and thought, "This won't be too bad!"

But it didn't last. I got quite cold. And there was one point when I felt decently warm, but I couldn't fall asleep for more than an hour. The one time when I felt I could have really slept well was when it was time to get up. I was really tired all day.

Our first stop on Saturday morning was Lehman Cave. I had been there when I was twelve, but that was twelve years ago. Our tour guide wasn't a geologist, so we may have known more about caves than she did. Caves form when water mixes with the carbon dioxide in soil and becomes carbonic acid. The carbonic acid then dissolves bedrock limestone. Then the calcium carbonate that is in solution will deposit again as travertine, making the stalactites and stalagmites and other features.

Caves are pretty cool. The problem with Lehman caves is that lots of early explorers did lots of damage. Some of the broken stalactites had new formations, which allowed us to see how "fast" the caves grow. The stalactites only grew an inch or two in like a hundred years!

I was reluctant to take pictures, because I knew they would be awful, but I did take some.

The cave tour was the most interesting thing we did. After that, we went around with a biologist PhD candidate who worked at the park. He took us to a well that the USGS installed.

When you take the lid off, there are three pipes (wells) that go down into the ground. We measured how deep they were and where the water came up to. I didn't understand everything that went on with the wells, but I do remember that the shallow well had the water come up higher.

Then we saw a place with limestone cliffs. I think that the sudden cut in the cliff comes from where a stream once eroded it away, but eventually that stream joined another stream. Something like that. I didn't quite get it.

I do like September snow, even if I have to sleep in the cold.

The rest of the trip consisted of going to different springs and using a machine to measure the chemistry of it. I didn't understand all of it. One of the things we measured was the amount of dissolved oxygen. If there is not much oxygen, then it means there are lots of nutrients in the water. Therefore, springs without much oxygen will have fluorescent algae that take all the nutrients. We took the measurements at different springs and compared them to others to see whether or not they were part of the same aquifer.This spring was one of our last stops actually in Great Basin National Park.

The rest of the time was in Snake Valley in Utah. You may remember the controversy that Las Vegas wants to pump water away from the ground. Snake Valley is the place that would be devastated if they did so.

At one spring, we had to crawl under a barbed wire fence onto private property. (We're geologists. We do what we want.) There were these two horses there who kept following us around. Really--we would walk, and then they would follow and hang around. The black horse was a little shy, but the white one was really friendly. It kept going up behind people and sniffing them. I don't care to be by animals, so I tried to make sure someone was always between me and the horse. The horses seemed a little skittish (though fascinated by us), so I worried they might bite or kick or trample us. (They didn't.) They were kind of distracting. The box that we put the chemical-analyzing meter in was on the ground, and the horses went up to it and sniffed it and even bit it. It was funny.

After we were done at the spring at that location, we closed the lid and walked away. The horses stayed behind and sniffed the lid where we had just been.

And once their curiosity had been satiated there, they followed us yet again while we looked at a groundwater meter installed by the Utah Geological Survey. Then we had to climb under a barbed-wire fence again, while the horses sadly watched us leave.

Then we walked across the road to another spring.

This spring also did not have much dissolved oxygen, so it had fluorescent algae. It was part of the same aquifer as was on the horses' property. This was a small pond, complete with ducks, but it was entirely from groundwater, not from runoff.

The soil here had lots of water so that one person could jump on the ground and everyone around would feel the ground shake.

We went to another stream.

There were lots of mudcracks at this stream. Some of us played a spontaneous game of catch with one of the dried-up pieces of mud. Normal mudcracks break when you step on them, but some of them were so huge that they didn't even break when I jumped on them.

Our final stop was at some hot springs. This water was warmer than all the other springs we'd visited. None of us had swimsuits (since no one told us there were hot springs), but it's just as well, since the pool was pretty small, certainly not big enough for a class of twenty people. There was a stream at the bottom, and then we had to climb up a hill. We took off our shoes to get across the stream, and then had to climb barefoot up the hill. The stream deposited tufa--a sharp precipitated limestone--so that was painful to walk on. But the gravel and dry grasses weren't too comfortable to walk on either. I got a cut on the bottom of my foot, but hopefully it will heal soon. (I learned this week in my corpus linguistics class that our term "tenderfoot" was a mining term that came from newcomers literally having tender feet. I couldn't help but think of that word as I stepped gingerly up and down the hill.) I dangled my legs in the spring at the top; it was like warm bath water. But we couldn't stay long, so it was back down the hill and back to the vans.

Then we drove back home, listening to foul comedy.

This was probably one of the most boring of my posts that you've ever read. That's OK. It was one of the most boring geology field trips I've been on. But a boring geology trip is still funner (yes, that's a word) than most other things that go on in my life.

Johnny Tremain

This semester is (or was) going to appear to have rather calm Sundays. Last week I wrote on both of my blogs and still had time left at the end of the day that I didn't know what to do with. Church starts earlier now, so I have more time in the afternoon. (That's a bad thing, because then I want to take naps, which means I won't fall asleep when I go to bed. I'm not looking forward to the two hours of lying awake that I know will happen tonight.) I have made it a rule that I don't do homework on Sundays unless it is of a religious nature. I know that's not a commandment, but it's my personal choice. I don't have any religion classes this semester, which means no Sunday homework.

Except that tonight was the first time in college that I've done non-religious homework on a Sunday. You see, I have some classes in which I have to do the homework assignments on the weekend. But I spent my weekend frivolously by going home.

I wanted to go home in order to get ready for Halloween. My Nightmare Before Christmas CD was at home, so I had to add it to my Halloween playlist, which now has 102 songs. I wanted to watch Frankenweenie in 3D (I still can't believe my dad got a 3D Blu-Ray player). I gathered a bunch of Halloween decorations to put up in my apartment. I went grocery shopping with my mom and got all sorts of pumpkin- and pumpkin-spice-flavored goodies--Pop Tarts, M&Ms, granola bars, cereal bars--and Count Chocula.

It was also that time of year to make grape juice from the grapes that grow in our backyard. We get lots of leverage out of our home-grown produce--apricot jam, apricot cobbler, plum pie--but the grape juice is my favorite.

I didn't leave to go back to Provo until fairly late, since there was some kind of uninteresting event going on in Provo. I probably wouldn't have been ready to leave anyway. Then I came home and just had to put up Halloween decorations before I went to bed, and Carissa the horse visited me while I did so.

Thus I did zero homework on Friday and Saturday. I don't necessarily regret it; it was fun to rock out to the Mamas and the Papas with my mom, see my sister's new house, and take my grandparents out to lunch before they went to that uninteresting event. But it meant that I didn't have a very restful day of rest.

Johnny Tremain lost the use of his arm for breaking the Sabbath. All I lost is a few relaxing hours.

glīwcræft

It was a weird week for wildlife. You probably heard about the bats in the Marriott Center, either from Facebook or from my other blog, so I won't talk about them here. Then on Friday, I was sitting outside on a bench near the Eyring Science Center. I thought I saw a deer nearby. Then it came running around the corner. It ran around and made a circle back to where it started. Then it came around again. It looked like its tongue was hanging out; it almost seemed as if a deranged deer was coming straight at me. It turned, but it was such a sharp turn that it kind of lost its footing and kicked dirt out of the little garden area. Then it kept going straight, and it almost fell over when it switched from dirt to concrete. Deer aren't as interesting as bats (they practically live in my yard at home), but it was still a strange experience.

Classes are still going good. Here's how they are looking:
The Senior Course for my major, a class that focuses on corpus linguistics, is probably my easiest class (at least so far)--not what I was expecting from a senior course. But we haven't really started doing much with the corpus yet. But I don't expect it to be too hard.
Old English doesn't have many assignments that are due, so I'm least motivated to study for it, but it probably requires the most studying for me to learn it. Old English is so weird. Last night I spent some time trying to memorize the pronouns. The first- and second-person pronouns are easy enough, but the third-person pronouns are crazy. Especially since there are four, sometimes five, cases we have to learn. I understand why English dropped all that stuff. One day after class, some people from the next class came in and saw the Powerpoint projected at the front. Several of them said, "What language is that?" I wish I would have said, "It's English. Can't you tell?"
Technical Communication seems to be a fairly easy class. Most of my classmates are from more technical fields, so often our professor will ask me if I can explain a particular principle or ask if I have an example, since I'm the only editing minor in the class. I feel I'm pretty good at writing, so it shouldn't be too bad.
Groundwater is a lot more math than I've done in a long time. Fortunately, it seems to be all algebra, which I can do. It is a lot of work (tomorrow's not going to be fun getting a big lab done), and so far it seems to be more math than geology, but it's all right. I'm at the point where I think that geology is more interesting than linguistics, but I'm more linguistically minded than scientifically minded. I'll stick with the linguistics (which is also pretty interesting).
Swimming for Non-swimmers is fun, but I feel like I'm not learning as well as I'm supposed to. I think I'm learning more than I would otherwise know, but I feel like I never know what I'm doing in class. I can't hold my breath. And I can't see without my glasses. I ordered some prescription-ish goggles, so hopefully those should arrive this week and make the class better.

Those are really all the classes I'm taking, since Geology 210 is over and the internship class is what I was already doing anyway (I just have to turn in some reports and papers).

On Friday I went to Provo's concert venue Velour. It was my first time there. And honestly it's not my kind of place. It's loud, it's crowded, it's hot, it's smelly--not my ideal place. But I went to see an indie-folk ("Of Monsters and Men" type folk, not "Peter, Paul and Mary" type folk) group called Mideau (MID-oh). I first heard them at the August Rooftop Concert Series, and I liked them enough that I would have bought their CD. But they didn't have a CD, so I bought tickets to their CD release concert instead, which was on Friday. Their CD was only available at the concert; there will be a wide release later. I really like them, and apparently so do lots of people. Their concert sold out before the show, and it was their first headliner show (the first time they were the main act)! The friend I was with has been to Velour many times and said it was the busiest she'd ever seen them. If they become the next Neon Trees or Imagine Dragons, I will be able to say that I was at their first headliner show and that I bought their first album the day it came out (#hipster). Here is a video with samples of their album:

Then Jan Terri's album comes out tomorrow. Between Mideau, Jan Terri, and my new Halloween music, I'll be on music overload!

A Grand Deluge

Ah, what a week!

Monday, Monday, so good to me, was Labor Day, and my last day before classes started. My parents came by in the morning and took me out to brunch. Then I had to finish up my field notebook for Geology 210. I bought some roast turkey socks that I plan to use for Thanksgiving, and then I had to shave. This was the final result of my beard:

 (There is a picture of Jesus that used to hang in my aunt's house and that used to be a tiny magnet on our fridge at home [I Googled but couldn't find it]. I think I kind of look like that picture here, and I didn't even try to do that. Is that blasphemous?)

I am allowed to have a mustache at BYU. But this, folks, is why I do not.

Then Tuesday was back in classes. After turning in my 210 notebook, I first went to Groundwater. Last year I had to choose between taking Groundwater and Geomorphology. If I took Groundwater, I could have taken Middle English, but I decided on Groundwater. I'm glad I did that, because apparently last fall was the first time that professor taught, and he's toned down the workload now. Groundwater is a 400-level class, and I'm not sure but I suspect that once again I'm the only geology minor in the class. It even has two of the TAs from 210. Geology is a really small department (and I don't understand why, because it's awesome), so there are a lot of people that I've had other classes with. One member of my class used to be in my ward, but even though he moved out, his records stayed in the ward, and he never responded to my emails or texts. Now I will be able to accost him to get his records out of the ward. (There are several such people in my ward who moved out a long time ago but never moved their records and never responded to my requests. That really irks me. It makes me question their testimony and their integrity as human beings that they can't even be polite enough to respond. One such person is a famous athlete, and it really annoys me when I hear him on news reports talking about the Church. If you really like the Church, why aren't your records in your ward yet? </ soapbox>)

I also went to my first class of Swimming for Nonswimmers, but we didn't do any swimming that day.

Tuesday afternoon I went to get a new parking permit. When I went in to Aspen Ridge Management, there was a middle-aged man with a mustache. Walmart and my mission taught me that middle-aged mustached men are usually mean. There are exceptions, of course, but they're generally scary. (Young mustached men are just hipsters or wannabe hipsters. Mustached women are socially awkward.) Well, this guy was ornery. I don't know who we was, or why he was mad, but he was ornery. He kept asking to see a manager. People who insist on seeing managers are never up to any good. At one point the receptionist told him that her boss probably wouldn't want to talk to him with the way he was acting. We don't need any mean people. They should become nice instead. And if they are incapable of becoming nice, they should cease to exist.

On Wednesday I went to more classes. The senior course for my major differs every semester, depending on the professor. This professor is Mark Davies, who is the master behind the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the other corpora. Corpora are large bodies of text that you can look at to see how language is used or see how it changes.Our class will be focused on corpus work, which is exciting for me, because I sometimes use the corpora for fun.

Then I went to Old English. Our professor is actually from the English department, rather than from the Linguistics and English Language department. I'm kind of a snob, so I don't always trust English people. But hopefully it will be all right. Old English is nothing like Present-Day English, so it will be like taking another foreign language. (But it's only a three-credit class, whereas most language classes are four credits.)

In the afternoon I have technical writing. This is a class I have to take (well, I have to take some writing class), and it actually is an English class. Once again, there are some trust issues there, but I think I'll do pretty well, since most of my classmates are doing engineering or health. (I'm more trusting of English people who are into writing than I am of English people who are into literature.)

On Thursday we actually did swimming in my swimming class. We put on flippers and got kickboards and practiced kicking in the water. I didn't realize how exhausting swimming could be. (My main form of exercise is running. I had weird running this week. On Monday it started pouring right after I left. It was dark, so I didn't think it was safe to run in the rain, and after only ten or fifteen minutes I was completely soaked. On Tuesday I ran past a house where water was flooding into the gutter. I even had the nerve to go knock on the door to see if they knew what was going on, but no one answered.)

Then Friday night I went to the Rooftop Concert Series. I had advertised it on my ward's Facebook page, but I never heard from anyone. I went all by myself. It was lonely. I couldn't help thinking, "What is wrong with me, that I'm a quarter of a century old, and I'm at a concert all by myself?" I later learned that other people I knew went, but I didn't know they were there.

Then Saturday--what a day! In the morning I drove some people up to Alpine to the home of Brother Jensen, the second counselor in my ward. We ate pizza and had fun. And then the rain clouds came. We watched some clouds swirl and descend. It was cool. They said the sky was green, but I'm kind of colorblind with certain shades of green, so it just looked gray to me. (It's also a problem on geology field trips when people talk about green shale--it just looks gray to me.)

I didn't want to drive in driving rain, so we waited a bit before leaving. But eventually we left.

It was pretty wet. Driving wasn't too bad. But then at one point a car totally cut me off. They didn't just cut me off; they nearly rammed into me. I didn't have time to think; I could only react. I swerved and slammed on the brakes. Fortunately no one was to the side. I honked at them. I think they were driving pretty irresponsibly. Meanies!

As we got to Orem and Provo, it got really slow. I thought it was game traffic, but I think it was probably police clearing debris in the road from all the wind. At one point I went on a side street to get out of slow traffic. The street was all muddy, and there were rocks, some of them with at least a six-inch diameter, strewn all over the road. It was crazy. In geology, I have heard of streams carrying big rocks, but here I saw it for myself--and it was rain that did it, not regular streams! There were lots of broken trees.

Then after buying a journal at Deseret Book and two Halloween CDs at Barnes and Noble, I went to do my grocery shopping. As I was driving by Zupa's and Olive Garden, I was surprised to see waves on the parking lot. Waves in the parking lot! I had to stop my car to look. All I had with me was my phone, so I couldn't get pictures. But it was crazy. People were up to their knees in water. In a parking lot! I have never seen any weather like this before!

You probably saw my crappy video footage. (I shouldn't have panned across; I ruined the quality in doing so.)


Then today was a busy Sunday. The executive secretary told me we had meetings at 7 a.m., but they were actually at 8. Then after church I had to go to ward council, count tithing, update callings, and pull people's records in. But I'm getting assistants, so that should relieve me of some of the burden. I did clerk stuff while I watched the CES broadcast, but I didn't pay very good attention.

I wonder if any of the rain will be discussed in my groundwater class!