Sunday, August 25, 2013

Geology 210, week one

This week I had my first "class." We went to Little Cottonwood Canyon to make a geologic map of the area.

As I think back on this experience, I think of how fun it was and what a good experience it was.

But I'm not sure why I think that, because I don't think I was thinking that while I was actually there. While I was there, I was thinking more along the lines of:
This crammed tent is sure uncomfortable. That outhouse smells terrible. When is it going to stop raining? My back is so sweaty. Where is that blasted contact between the Mississippian limestone and the Cambrian limestone? This mountain is hard to get up. This mountain is even harder to get down. Why does that pesky limestone look and act like quartzite? I just want to take a shower. 

But it was a fantastic experience, and I'm glad I did it. 

(I'm including pictures, but I have to make some disclaimers. First, I never claimed to be a photographer; these are meant to be informative more than they are meant to be beautiful. Most of them are quite awful. I just use a little point-and-shoot camera. This is a new camera, since my last one was six years old. I tried to take these pictures quickly, so I didn't mess with settings. Most of them have too much light.)

(Also, I was going to go into more detail about the geology, but I would have to look a lot of things up, and it would take too long.)

On Monday morning, we met up by the Eyring Science Center to load up into the geology vans to head to Little Cottonwood Canyon. I rode with a TA named Rachel, who was in my geomorphology class last year.

We stopped at a hill looking up into the canyon. Our professor, Dr. Ron Harris, instructed us. There we learned a little about the 10,000-year-old glacial moraine of the canyon and learned about earthquakes. The Wasatch Fault has an earthquake on average of every 1,250 years. It has been 1,350 years since the last one. If the "big one" hit Utah tomorrow, according to Dr. Harris, no geologist in the state would be surprised. Others might be, but not geologists.

Next we stopped at a place called Lisa Falls.
This is a place where a little stream falls down the granite. There was a lot of granite rubble; apparently there was a big rock fall there only a month ago. The granite in this area is from the Little Cottonwood stock. During the Laramide orogeny around 30 million years ago, the oceanic plate was subducting beneath the continent. As it did so, it melted rocks and a magma intrusion formed in the crust. About 20 million years ago, the subducting plate fell off into the mantle, and the area underneath the continent was replaced with hot mantle. The hot mantle weakened the crust and caused it to collapse, and it is still collapsing today. As the valleys collapse, the mountains rise from isostatic rebound, exposing the granite.

Next we stopped at Snowbird to look at the mountains. There are some interesting features here.
On the left here is the Precambrian Big Cottonwood formation on top of a granite intrusion. The brown stuff on top of the Big Cottonwood formation is the Precambrian Mineral Fork tillite. (The Mineral Fork tillite formed from glaciers.) The Cambrian Period started 542 million years ago, and everything before then is often lumped into the designation of "Precambrian," since not a lot is known about the time before the Cambrian. There was very little life in the Precambrian. (That's a structural ambiguity there: there wasn't much life, and the life that existed was very small!)
Then you can see where gray layers run next to the Mineral Fork tillite. There is an extensional fault there. Those gray layers are limestone and marble (the white bands are marble, which is metamorphosed limestone). And then on the very top is more Mineral Fork tillite and Tintic quartzite (quartzite is metamorphosed sandstone). The Mineral Fork tillite and Tintic quartzite are actually older than the limestone, but a thrust fault thrust them on the top of the mountain.

After we saw this, we headed to our campgrounds. Apparently this was the biggest Geology 210 group ever, so we split up into different camps. I had signed up to be in someone's tent, so I had to go where he chose. He chose to go to Albion Basin, which is about 10,000 feet in elevation, in the midst of a glacial cirque. This campground is more primitive, meaning it just had vault toilets, which aren't great, but I grew up with them. It was quite rainy, so we didn't do much the rest of that evening. Some of the time we sat in the vans to wait for the rain to stop. I was listening to my little MP3 player, and by chance both versions I have of Vince Guaraldi's "Rain, Rain, Go Away" came on.

In a lot of my classes at BYU, there has been one person who is really annoying in classes. This person often sits at the front of the room and always has something to say. Sometimes the comments are dumb. Sometimes the comments are obviously intended to show how much the person knows. And it is always a guy. When I took Geology 112 last winter, this annoying guy was incarnated as a middle-age man who seemed to think he knew more than he did. (For example, he once was talking about "Milo Farnsworth," when he meant Philo, and once he said that dimetrodon was his favorite dinosaur--and the professor had to tell him that it wasn't a dinosaur.) Well, this Mr. Know It All was in my camp, and he also signed up for the same tent I did. But he didn't tell the owner of the tent that he had brought a cot. Not a pad or a tiny air mattress, but a full cot. If you're going to bring a cot, you should either have your own tent, or at least inform the person whose tent you're in that you're going to have a cot. This guy continued to be a Mr. Know It All in this class, but fortunately I didn't spend too much time around him.

The next morning (Tuesday) we went out to an outcrop of the Ophir shale. Although it is called the Ophir shale, it is really slate, which is metamorphosed shale. We saw some trilobite tracks in the shale. Here we learned how to take the strike and dip with our compasses. The dip is how much a bedding plane is tilted. You put the strike and dip on a map.

Then we got our maps. They gave us maps that had some landmarks and topographic lines. Our assignment for the next few days was to go out and color in the rock types and other features on our map. We got mapping partners, and then we set out to work. Even though we had partners, we ended up staying with a whole group most of the time. My partner's name was Scott; the others in the group were named Rob, Corbin, Hannah, and Shani. Rachel the TA was with us and helped us most of the time.

Our first outcrop was the Alta stock, another granite inclusion. It had a slightly different composition than the Little Cottonwood stock. Then we found the Tintic Quartzite. The Tintic Quartzite formed in the Cambrian period, after the supercontinent Rodinia broke up. Utah at that time was on the coast, so it was a sandy beach. It is those sands that formed the Tintic quartzite.

Cut through the quartzite--and lots of other rocks--were dikes, which are igneous intrusions that go straight up. The dikes were more mafic than the granite, which means they had more iron and were darker.  Then we found the Ophir shale. The Ophir shale is also Cambrian in age; it formed when the sea got deeper and the water transgressed further onto the continent.This particular outcrop of shale was more metamorphosed than the one we had seen earlier in the day because it was right next to the granite intrusion. The heat from the magma body metamorphosed it more at that location.

My partner and I climbed up the mountain to an outcrop of Cambrian limestone. Limestone forms from calcite deposits from organisms in deep marine environments. We knew it was limestone because, for one thing, it fizzed when we put hydrochloric acid on it. This is our view from that outcrop:
And here is the limestone. At first we thought the gray band was another igneous intrusion, but it was actually dolomite, which is essentially limestone that has magnesium in it:
The weather was perfect that day. It was cool and overcast all day. We had one or two tiny rainstorms, but they were no problem. I would take a few small rainstorms in exchange for coolness.

On Wednesday morning, we headed out to the other side of the area we needed to map. The weather wasn't as great on this day. There were some patchy clouds, but overall it was sunny. We saw lots and lots of Tintic quartzite on the path up to Cecret Lake. I think they spell it "Cecret" because it's not much of a secret. There were lots of people on that trail, and we heard some kids talking about a quartzite outcrop: "This isn't clay. This is rock!" "Yeah, stone!" We could have told them exactly what it was, but we didn't. We found some more dikes in the quartzite. Then we made it up to Cecret Lake.
We ate lunch there and examined the outcrop of the Mineral Fork tillite, which we initially thought was the Ophir shale, since it was slaty. A fault has thrust the tillite on top of the quartzite. Here is a picture of the tillite on the bottom and the quartzite on the top (which is how it's supposed to be--no fault in this picture.) I didn't realize that Corbin's head is in this picture.
As we left, we saw some salamanders in the lake:
We walked through some more quartzite, and then we were at the less steep Ophir shale portion of the mountain.
Right next to this (above) particular outcrop of shale was an outcrop of limestone. I think it was just a place where the sea got temporarily deeper; I think it's still part of the Ophir shale formation. The limestone had a rough texture, so I was able to recognize it as such, since I had seen limestone in Death Valley with a rip-your-pants texture. This is my view from that location:
Then we proceeded to limestone. (This is the typical order of a transgression, or rise in the sea level--sandstone forms on the bottom, then shale on top, then limestone on top of that.) We knew that there were two formations of limestone, the Cambrian Maxfield limestone and the Mississippian limestone. (There is a disconformity there, meaning there is time missing from the rock record; there is no representative rock from the Devonian, Silurian, or Ordovician periods.) Most of the time, we thought we were in the Cambrian, but we were wrong; most of the time we were actually in Mississippian limestone. We found some shell and horn coral fossils in our various limestone stops. Sadly, I only got one blurry picture of a fossil, a horn coral. It's embarrassingly blurry so I'm not posting it. With all our various limestone adventures, we got back to camp pretty late.

On Thursday, we climbed to where we left off the day before. It was a long, steep trail, and it was muggy, so we got pretty sweaty. I couldn't go as fast as the rest of my group, but there was one girl who was really slow, so I wasn't the last one. When we got to the top, it was cold and windy and made our sweat really cold.

The limestone in that location really was Cambrian limestone (thrust on top of Mississippian from a fault). It was white marble. In the midst of one outcrop, I found the world's tiniest Christmas tree:
We got to look over Lake Catherine:
Then we made our way across the side of a mountain covered with blocks of broken granite. We found a goat skull,
a granite wall,
and a big, annoying granite pile we had to climb over.
We ate lunch on an overlook of a valley.
Then we proceeded onward. We were in a place that was quite steep, and not being very coordinated and being a scaredy cat, I went very slowly down the mountain, sometimes just squatting down and sliding on my feet. It wasn't the best way to get down, but I did find a pretty green garnet crystal that formed from metamorphism of limestone. As we came down the mountain, we had to pass through lots of plants, including burrs that stuck to our clothing. They weren't sharp; just a little poky. The burrs loved Rob's shorts, so we had some group unity by helping him remove the burrs from his clothes:
(I didn't even wear shorts. I didn't want to get sunburned, so I was completely covered up. Only my hands and maybe some of my face were exposed to sunlight.) We found lots more Ophir shale:
We could tell that a rainstorm was coming, so we couldn't spend too much time at the locations; I wanted to take a strike and dip measurement but we had to get going. And then eventually a storm hit. It was raining pretty hard, so we found shelter under some trees. They worked well at first, but then they became drippy. It was still better than being out in the open, though. It even started hailing. Eventually I pointed out that it was wetter in the trees than out in the open, since the rain had stopped. We found more limestone as we walked along. We were very annoyed with that limestone (which we had seen all day), because it looked like quartzite, and it even didn't fizz as well as most limestone does. Then we found Rachel, the TA, who was looking for us. She had spent the day at the other mapping area, so we had flown solo that day. We were all wet, so we went back to camp. We learned that everyone else at camp had gone into town and got food. Dr. Harris showed up, and we talked to him and ended up going to dinner with him.

We went to a restaurant/lodge at Alta. It was just a little place run by a BYU alum. We looked at the menus and kind of panicked. There wasn't much on the menu (our host told us that their one chef was a gourmet Boston chef), and what was there was really expensive. The salads ranged from $8 to $11. Most of the meals were more than $20. The waiter told us that the meals were pretty big; when he described the steak, he said it was huge. The TA and the five other people of my group ordered regular meals but split them, while Dr. Harris and I just ordered salads. When we got our food, we wondered why they said the portions were big, because they weren't. Few of us were actually full afterwards (we wanted to go someplace else afterwards, but it was too late). The salad was small, definitely not big enough for a meal, and most definitely overpriced. The steaks were not as big as the waiter said. They might have been a sufficient meal for one person, but not for two people, and poor college students are not going to fork over $25 for one meal. 

Notwithstanding small portions and ridiculous prices, we had a good visit with Dr. Harris. He asked everyone why they got into geology, and Rachel said, "Excluding you two," pointing to Rob and me, since we weren't geology majors. Rob was a physical science education major, and this class is required for that. Dr. Harris asked if I was also that major. I said, "No. English linguistics." There was a little bit of laughter, and Dr. Harris said (not in a mean way), "You're the kind of person I try to get out of my class," since sometimes there's not room for everyone in geology. (But I do think there were still some open spots in the class, and I did get permission from Dr. Morris, who will be teaching the class this coming week.) He did say he had no problem with linguistics, and Rachel assured him that I was a geology minor. He told us the story of how he met with the First Presidency and got them to tear down Deseret Towers at BYU, since they weren't earthquake-safe. I asked him about the crystal I had found; he found out it was garnet by scratching it into a dinner knife. (I guess that was our way of sticking it to the man--if you're going to charge so much for a meal, you should let us scratch your silverware!) We left and went back to camp, sad that it was too late to go get more food.

The last day, Friday, Dr. Harris showed us lots of things that we had missed. For example, he showed us this fault. Quartzite is on the left and shale (or slate) is on the right. The shale should be on top of the quartzite.
He also showed us this sill. A sill is a magmatic intrusion that goes in between the bedding planes of sedimentary rocks, in this case shale. We had puzzled over this earlier, because we thought it was shale intermixed with quartzite or limestone. But when Dr. Harris showed us, it was so obvious that it was granite that I don't know how we thought it was sedimentary. But it did explain why the shale was so warped.
He also showed us a place where there were garnets that had formed in the aureole (a place of intense metamorphism). I don't think any of the garnets were as big as the one I found.

It was cold and rainy--more like November than August--so we left. We went to a posh resort to finish working on our maps. And we were so excited to come back to Provo and take showers.

I came home with a bunch of rock samples. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I think, "What am I going to do with all these rocks?" Except for the garnet. The garnet's pretty cool.

I did take a razor with me, but I didn't shave. I don't think the geology department cares whether I shave, so I'm growing my beard out until school really starts. I've never done so before. This is my beard as of Friday night (it's darker than it looks in this picture):


Then on Saturday we had to go to class to refinish our maps based on feedback the TAs got us. I got Bs on most of my stuff, so in this class I probably won't get the kinds of grades I'm used to, but oh well.

This class did make me a little sad. I'm getting close to the end of my geological career, and this class made me realize I'm not cut out to be a geologist. I just didn't see the same things everyone else saw. Also, geologists are better hikers than I am. I was slower than most of my teammates, and Dr. Harris walked really fast. I suppose that's why I'm going to be an editor instead of a geologist.

And no, I didn't lick any rocks on this trip.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Then school comes along just to end it

All my life, I have never had a school year start in September. They've always started in August.

And this year was my last chance to start in September, since I graduate in April. BYU fall semester starts September 3, the day after Labor Day.

But I blew that chance by enrolling in Geology 210, field studies. This is a class that takes place the two weeks between summer and fall.

It starts tomorrow, thus putting an end to my summer. (I think I've got everything I need, but I don't know if I'm academically prepared--they told us to study, but I don't know how much we actually needed to study.)

Luckily, I've just been working this summer, which means I got a break. I feel bad for those who took summer classes and are taking Geology 210 and are taking fall classes.

It has been a good, interesting summer. Big things have happened, like going to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks and going to Disneyland and visiting my cute nephews. Little things have happened as well: I learned that a relative unfriended me because I used big words, I found some mustard spice in my mom's cupboard that expired before my older brother was born, and a little girl hid in a closet because she didn't like my family--and then her mom did the exact same thing, only in a bedroom.

My final week of the summer was fairly enjoyable. On Monday, several of us went up Provo Canyon near Vivian Park to watch the meteor shower. It was really cloudy at first, and I'm not sure whether I saw meteors or if my eyes were tricking me. Then later it cleared up and we saw a couple of good ones.

On Wednesday, BYU Studies (where I work) had an end-of-the-summer student party. The editor-in-chief at BYU Studies is John W. Welch, who discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. He was present at our party, and he told the very interesting story of how he discovered Book of Mormon chiasmus. Then after his story, we descended into the world of frivolity and watched YouTube videos. I think I must have a different sense of humor than most people, because I didn't find most of their stuff that entertaining. But I did introduce them to the face workout video. If you've ever had a YouTube party with me, you've probably seen it. But if you haven't seen it, you're in for a real treat. Prancercise has got nothing on these exercises.

On Thursday I got my first--and perhaps last--Slurpee of the summer.

Then Friday and Saturday were spent getting ready for Geology 210. There are butterflies in my stomach. I haven't been on a week-long campout in forever, much less one like this. But it should be fun. I have noticed that a lot of geologists study geology because they are outdoorsy people. But I am not an outdoorsy person. Other people do geology because they like the outdoors. I do the outdoors because I like geology.

A year ago, I was surprised when Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" soared to the tops of the charts upon its debut. Unlike "Mean" or "Back to December," I didn't think it was a particularly great song, so it was obvious to me that it was so successful simply because Taylor is so popular. But I fed that beast this week by buying Lady Gaga's new single, "Applause." I got it not because I thought it was a great song (although I still kind of like it), but because I like Lady Gaga and she hasn't released a new song in a while. She is a really talented singer, as evidenced by songs like "Speechless" and "You and I," but this song masks her talent.

Katy Perry also released a new single, "Roar," on the same day. They were released early because they had been leaked. I like Gaga more than Katy (hence the reason I got "Applause" but not "Roar")--I think Gaga has real talent while Katy's just another pop star--but I think "Roar" will do better because it is less weird.

I have bought new (or "new") music by five artists in the last month, but my favorite of those five is still the Mamas and the Papas.


I have found that when I post my blog early on Sunday, I don't get many pageviews. So I probably won't get many today.

Fall really starts in two weeks. And my blogs will probably be just as unstructured then as they are now.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Forgive me, August

I have often considered August to be the worst month of the year. I mean, it's hot, there are no holidays, and summer vacation comes to an end.

But this past winter, with the never-ending inversion and the freezing rain that broke my tooth, I think January moved into the spot of Worst Month of the Year.

And while August is no November or September, it still has good merits. This week I had some enjoyable experiences that could only happen (or are more likely to happen) in August.

Once I asked my previous roommate, Bryton, what his favorite month was, and he said August. I was surprised he would say that, since it was my least favorite. But he said he liked it because of the thunderstorms. And thunderstorms are pretty cool. At work one day this week, a few of us stopped what we were doing and stepped out into the JFSB courtyard in order to enjoy the weather.

This week I also had a rather pleasant drive. My cousins were visiting Utah and staying in Park City, so I went to visit for a few hours. I drove through Provo Canyon, listening to the Mamas and the Papas, while rain fell and lightning flashed in the distance. It was beautiful. I should go on more scenic drives. I was sad I wasn't able to spend more time with my cousins' kids, because they seem pretty cute.

This weekend I went home for one last time before fall semester starts. Most people get a two-and-a-half-week break starting this week, but I don't because I'm taking Geology 210, Field Studies. But this whole summer term has been a break for me (even if I didn't do as many things as I had hoped). I have one week until Field Studies, and I'm nervous. I was feeling less nervous, but then last night I had a dream that I showed up for the first day (at Death Valley, even though that's not where we're going) and didn't understand how the last week of summer had gone by so quickly and couldn't remember if I had gotten everything I needed. I know it's ridiculous to be nervous because of a dream, but I am.

While I was at home I picked plums from the tree in the backyard, and my mom made a pie. I'd never had plum pie before, and it was pretty good, although tart.

It has almost become a tradition to buy shoes during August (at least I did in 2012 and 2011), since that's when Famous Footwear has their buy-one-get-one-1/2-off sale. I got some new running shoes (K-Swiss have become the only shoes I trust) and then another pair of shoes. I felt like a girl, because there were three pairs that I really wanted, but it seemed excessive to get four new pairs of shoes.

My new roommate Chad did some more moving in this week, and I've learned a little more about him, although he is still gone a lot. On Friday morning, while he was still asleep, I heard him say, "It's all right! I got it, dude!" He has been sleeping at our apartment, but that seems to be the only thing he's been doing here.

I'm really sorry. I'm sure you didn't come here wanting to hear about shoes, pie, and weather.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Fossils. Concerts. Mysterious roommates.

Two years ago, when I was packing up all my stuff to move back home for fall semester, I made a Facebook status that said, "Well, Provo, it's been fun." My cousin April commented and said, "Provo's never fun!"

I think she was just trying to start a fight about the BYU/Utah rivalry. But I don't buy into that. Rivalries are dumb, deplorable, and diabolical and should be flushed down the toilet.

But she's wrong. Provo is a pretty fun place. I don't see Salt Lake City putting on monthly free concerts or getting Google Fiber.

Anyway, this week was pretty fun. I only have two weeks until my Geology 210 class and four weeks until fall semester officially starts. I hope I'm all prepared for it when it comes.

On Monday my ward went to the Museum of Paleontology. Compared to the similar museums at the U and the former College of Eastern Utah, BYU's paleontology museum is pretty pitiful. But it is still enjoyable, and it saddens me that it is one of the least known buildings on campus. Every fall, thousands of people clog up roads and sidewalks so they can go watch grown men playing with toys in a giant stadium, yet so few people care or realize that directly across the street you can see animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago!

Before we went over there, many people were saying they'd never been there, but I said I'd been there several times. So someone casually mentioned I should be the tour guide. When we got there, there was another group having a tour from a student who works there, but most of us didn't join that group. Someone once again said I should be the tour guide (after the other group moved on), and I said, "Well, I guess I am the resident geologist of our group." So I was able to talk about how dimetrodons, crocodilians, and pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs; recognize crinoid columnals in a piece of fossiliferous limestone (there were bryozoans in there too, but I didn't remember what they were called until later); point out the humerus crest that is the diagnostic feature of dinosaurs; and provide mind-boggling scales of time. Someone said that if I knew that much from my minor, he wondered how much I know about English.

On Wednesday I got a new roommate. Kind of. I had heard that our new roommate was supposed to move in Tuesday or Wednesday. I was getting ready for bed on Wednesday night when the doorbell rang. I wondered who was coming by at midnight. It turned out to be the new roommate, Chad. He had met my roommate Jordan and talked to him, but he'd never met me. Jordan was in his room asleep, so Chad put his stuff in my room and said he'd decide later which room he'd choose. (My room's better--we have a bathroom, and I'm generally cleaner, AND I'm just plain awesome.) But we haven't seen him since then--although I know he came in today, because when I got home from church his tub was open and some of his clothes were out.  So I don't even know this roommate's full name, his age, his major, his hometown, or anything.

On Friday was the Provo Rooftop Concert series. This was the third time I've been, and it was much busier than I expected. I guess people prefer outdoor concerts in August to outdoor concerts in May and October. I went by myself. I was hoping people from my ward would go, so I posted on our ward Facebook page, but no one was going, so I went by myself. That made it a little awkward, especially since there were all those hipsters around. I was probably wearing an outfit that's as close to hipster as I get (tapered, slim-fit khakis with blue Chuck Taylors), and I still felt out of place. However, there were still plenty of normal people there. I wasn't too enthusiastic about the first guy that played.

The second group was called Mideau (MID-oh). I actually quite liked them; the female singer sounds remarkably similar to the female lead of Of Monsters and Men. I was sitting there enjoying them when they said, "Who likes the Mamas and the Papas?" It has only been the past month that I have come to appreciate the Mamas and the Papas. (What kind of deranged individual wouldn't like "Monday, Monday"?) That sealed it for me, and that night I bought tickets for their CD release concert next month. (You can hear one of their songs on their Bandcamp page.) Both Neon Trees ("Animal," "Everybody Talks") and Imagine Dragons ("It's Time," "Radioactive") came out of Provo and have become quite popular, so I think it would be cool if Mideau did too and I liked them before they got big.

The main/final act was Mindy Gledhill. I knew some of her stuff from my mission (her Sum of All Grace album), and while I liked it on my mission, I didn't find her spectacular enough to continue to listen to now (unlike Cherie Call). I was therefore surprised with how popular she was. I was pleasantly surprised when I heard her sing and I liked her more than I had previously. I think she has transitioned from religious to mainstream music (probably more lucrative that way). I liked her enough to buy one of her CDs, which was the fourth album I've bought in the last two weeks (the others being by the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, and Lady Antebellum).

Then Saturday I had to get serious again, since I only have two more weeks of summer. There were three things I wanted to focus on this summer: looking for jobs, doing things for my calling, and preparing for my Geology 210 class. I haven't done too well on the job search. Yesterday I was going to go get some stuff printed for my editing portfolio, but I need to modify the PDF of my book file first. I did, however, successfully do clerk things. I cleaned out our ward closet of old finance records from 2004 to 2009--we only need to keep back to 2010. Then last night I hit the books and read about the geology of Little Cottonwood Canyon and started the open-book take-home test. While I am nervous for this class, the homework made me excited for it. I have heard from others that it is their favorite class ever, and I have heard that you learn the most from it. I'm excited for that!

When I was at the grocery store yesterday, they already had boxes of bags of Halloween candy out. Sometimes people think I'm crazy for starting Halloween in mid-September--but even I think it's too early now for Halloween.

But what puzzles me most, and it happens every year, is that the trick-or-treat candy is the first Halloween thing to go on sale. I think that most people put up Halloween decorations and prepare costumes before they give candy to trick-or-treaters, so I think those things should appear in stores before the candy. Not to mention that decorations and costumes don't have expiration dates (although candy doesn't have much of an expiration date either).

Now, you may wonder why I think that, since I can't have candy until Halloween candy, and I certainly want to get Halloween candy early in the Halloween season. But the thing is that I don't really eat trick-or-treat candy. I don't consider it to be Halloween candy simply because you give it to trick-or-treaters; it has to have some Halloween connection (like Halloween flavors, colors, or shapes). But even of the trick-or-treat candies that I consider to be real Halloween candy, I'm more likely to consume them in other ways, especially early on in the Halloween season. For example, consider the caramel apple Sugar Babies (which are really good, by the way). They come in theater-size boxes and in individual trick-or-treat packages. (By theater-size, I mean the size of the candy boxes you would buy in a movie theater. Although a box of candy as big as a theater would be amazing.) At the store yesterday they had the trick-or-treat packages, but not the theater boxes. I just don't get it.

Then today I finally had my financial audit for my ward. I've learned a lot from the process, and I finally feel like I know what I'm doing in this calling. I'm glad it's over.

Then tonight I went up to a baby blessing of my cousin's newest baby. Most of these cousins I haven't seen since before my mission. Due to construction and GPS problems, I got into the chapel literally right when they were about to start the blessing. I found it funny that as soon as I went in I was invited to help with the blessing, even though I'd never even seen either the baby or three of his four siblings.

I hope to sleep well tonight, because I certainly didn't last night. (I slept in late yesterday morning because I was having a dream about potty training a little boy to use the litterbox.)