Steep hills and stressful dreams

This week I started working for my new job. It's been very easy; I've just been reading through a book that's kind of an anthology, checking for potential mistakes. This week I will have to look up the original sources and verify whether the mistakes are mistakes or not, and it will be a little harder, but it shouldn't be bad. I worked from home every day but Tuesday. I thought working from home would make it harder to focus, but surprisingly I found the opposite to be true.

I was thinking about what a non-stressful job I have--that when I worked at the Distribution Center, I would frequently toss and turn at night, having stressful dreams about boxes and conveyor belts. Once I even dreamed a conveyor belt was going around my bed. That doesn't happen with editing. But this week, I tossed and turned a lot, even when I was dreaming about editing. If I had to guess, I don't think it was the job but one of the student journals I'm working on, because the Track Changes feature this week was driving me crazy, and I despise APA style for citations. I'm hoping I won't continue having these stressful dreams.

This week I also had to write a paper for my French class. We had to analyze a poem, which I find to be nonsensical. I wrote a paper all about what the poem meant, even though I don't think that most of the ideas were intended by the author. I'm not an English major in part just so I can get away from literary analysis, which seems so pointless to me. Sometimes I wonder why I'm taking French--it occurred to me that every person I've ever spoken French with also speaks English. I've only spoken French with other students or instructors. When I worked at Walmart, occasionally I had to use my Spanish skills for customers, but I've never had to speak French. I've continued in French instead of other languages because it required the least amount of schoolwork for me out of all the language classes I could take.

Last summer and fall, there was a lot of construction, so I ended up going running on different routes. It ended up being pleasant, and I went running in the "tree streets," residential streets named after arboreal plants. The drawbacks were some places without sidewalks and steep hills. Running up hills is no fun, but there's a great sense of accomplishment when you get to the top. Anyway, at one point I wanted to see if I could find the trailhead to the Y, since I've lived in Provo four years and don't even know where it is. Anyway, I never found it, and steep roads deterred me from searching for it. Yesterday, I wanted to run up to Rock Canyon, but my running didn't go as planned, so I took the liberty of doing a mixture of walking and running. I decided to explore some places I'd never been to before, and soon I found myself at a trail. I went on this trail, and I could see at the other end was a parking lot, Could that be the Y trailhead? So I walked/ran down the trail, past all the limestone pebbles, until I got there. And indeed, it was the trailhead! I was glad to see a drinking fountain, and I got a good long drink. I decided to try to hike it, but shortly after I started I realized that I probably didn't have the time or energy to do so (since I had already been exerting myself), so I turned around.

I was going to get a drink again before I took off. But there were these two men cyclists standing right in front of it. The man who looked like a woman was directly in front of it, straddling his bike, and they were just chatting away. Of all the places they could have stopped to talk, they chose six inches from the drinking fountain. I'm not assertive enough to ask them to move, so I sat on a bench and judged them until someone else asked to get a drink. I try to be conscious of not being in the way of things, so I'm surprised when others aren't so considerate. I mean, I feel bad if I'm sitting in front of a building map so people have to look over my head--the thought of standing right in front of a drinking fountain is unthinkable!

On my way back, I discovered that on previous runs I had come very close to where I had just been. I just didn't want to go up the very steep road that gets near to it. In fact, I had come down that road many times. Now I know where it is. It's very steep, so I don't know if I want to go running there, but now I know where to go if I decide to hike the Y!

I don't understand why we still have the antiquated system of daylight savings time. I do like the extra light in the evening, but I think the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits:

• The entire nation is forced to change their sleeping patterns and biological clock. (Not that biological clock, you weirdo.) 
• With changed sleeping patterns comes increased fatigue.
• It's now dark in the morning for children going to school.
• It makes time differences complicated for logical states like Arizona.
• You have to remember to change your clocks, which can be difficult to do on older car clocks or cheap watches. 
• Our whole idea of time is arbitrary, but DST just makes time seem even more artificial. 
• Motivation can be destroyed because it seems a lot earlier than it actually is. 
• Since the change in 2007, many children go trick-or-treating when it's light!

I really don't understand how they thought it wise to change DST back in 2007. It's not that I think the new system is worse. I just think that if they're going to go through the trouble of changing it, why don't they get rid of it altogether?