After another North Canyon trail run seeing yellow leaves and blue chicory flowers,
I went out and did some errands. But not ordinary errands.
I have two church callings, because my last bishopric was big into giving people multiple callings. (The most I heard of was four.) One of these is a stake family history calling. For the last few years we have had paper cutouts on which people can write the names of ancestors they find, and this year we decided to do silhouette cutouts. I didn't like the idea of using all that ink, so I thought I'd buy a Cricut ("cricket") machine. And I did!
A Cricut is an awesome machine. You can select a picture and it will cut it out on paper, fabric, all sorts of things. You can also put in pens and it will draw things. All I needed was paper cutouts, and I will probably never use it to its full capability. I'm really not a crafty person. But I'm at a place in life where my income far exceeds my expenses (that's what happens when you're a college grad living with your parents), so I can afford silly, cool gadgets. Plus, my mom's a teacher, so it will get used.
Weekly tutoring for a group of Tongan students resumed this week, but there wasn't enough for me to be of much help.
On Friday, I went with my family to the state fair. I remember visiting the fair in fourth grade and liking their county displays. I went to see them this year and was disappointed. Only seven counties (Summit, Weber, Cache, Juab, Beaver, Grand, and Washington, I think) did them, and only Washington's was impressive. I'm not sure why our society likes fairs, but we do.
On Saturday, I fulfilled a bucket-list item I made it a goal to do this year. But before that happened, my dad had the door open, and a dog that isn't ours invited itself into our house!
This year I have gone on many runs to Rudy's Flat up North Canyon and Elephant Rock up Mueller Park Canyon. But those places connect, and I wanted to see the connecting trail. So I arranged for my dad to drop me off at North Canyon and pick me up at Mueller Park.
Now, I still think North Canyon is the prettiest trail I've been on in Bountiful. Mueller Park gets all the publicity, but North Canyon is nicer, IMO. Also harder.
As I passed a group of boy scouts coming down from an apparent camping trip, one of their leaders said to a boy, "This crazy guy's going to run all the way!"
Thus once I got to the portion of the trail where I'd never been, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I mean, going to Rudy's Flat is hard enough, but here I was going past it! But my feelings of accomplishment were diminished when a middle-aged couple ran past me. I guess among average people I'm a good trail runner, but among trail runners I'm not. But it was nice to be on new portions of the trail.
All told, it was a 9.5-mile run, the farthest I've ever run. It was a climb of about 1,600 feet--past Rudy's Flat, it was basically all downhill. Once upon a time, I weighed 250 pounds and could barely run a mile on a flat field. Ten years ago, I would have never guessed that this would become my hobby. But here I am.
One more thing: Fall is upon us, and last year I did a pumpkinundation roundup, wherein I documented and reviewed various pumpkin spice items, as well as their cousins, candy corn-flavored and caramel apple-flavored things. I got some positive feedback on that, so I'm considering doing that again. I've also toyed with the idea of doing it on a separate platform, like another blog or possibly a Twitter account. (This would include additional seasonal items.) I would put a poll in, but it doesn't look like there's an easy way to do it, so let me know what you think. (I won't be able to include as much this year, because I'm counting calories now.)
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