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!