This Is the Place was busy this week! Tuesday I was helping out with the mini train, and it was the busiest I have had it when I have worked there. The ride takes about two minutes, and by the time I would be done with one ride, there would be more people waiting. Like, where did you come from?! I like to spend some time reading and weeding there, but I did little reading and no weeding. Then yesterday I was in the print shop, and it was unusually busy again. I was really frustrated with a dad who was pulling pieces of type out of a typeset page we have on display, even though there was a sign saying "Don't Touch! Thanks!" He was trying to put it back in after he realized the sign, but then he kept making it worse. I said, "I can put it back," and he said, "I can too!" His teenage kids kept telling him to stop, and then he rushed out embarrassed. So I moved it out of the public's reach, kind of while his family was still there, my passive-aggressive way of making him feel bad. He came back and said, "Sorry I messed that up," but I didn't say anything, because I certainly couldn't say, "It's OK," because it wasn't OK. I hope he feels bad and remembers this experience so he doesn't do anything like it again.
I was off Wednesday, so on Tuesday night I joined my parents up at Moosehorn Campground in the Uintas, which has long been an August tradition. The next day I wanted to visit a place called Christmas Meadows, which was relatively nearby, because it seemed like I should visit a place with Christmas in the name. My dad and I walked up a trail a little more than a mile. It was pretty but not super interesting.
Then I headed home for the rest of the week.
I picked the last of our plums. We don't have nearly as many as we did last year, which is sad. Then I made some of them into a plum mint upside-down cake. The recipe calls for rosemary, which I usually do, but this time I opted for the fresh mint growing in our yard. (Last year, I was watching Holiday Baking Championship, and in one episode the contestants had to make an upside-down cake with different fruits and herbs. The winner happened to be plum rosemary, which I have been making since 2016! And I think the first time I made it was during the Olympics as well.) It was really good this time, probably because I followed the directions of mixing wets and dries separately.
Last year we had no apricots, and this year I was looking forward to having tons of them. There are lots hanging on the tree—but thanks to the heat and the drought, the tree is parched, and the apricots never ripened, and now they are shriveling up, so close to being ripe but ultimately useless. I think that's worse than not having them at all!
On Friday, my mom and I decided to be political by meeting Becky Edwards, a former state legislator who is challenging Mike Lee as senator. My mom knew her previously because she liked to meet with teachers. I met her four years ago at an Easter performance at a Catholic church, and then she remembered me the next evening when I happened to run past her. We drove to the meeting spot in Centerville, but they had moved it to her home in North Salt Lake because of the smoke. So back we came. I felt a little awkward in her home. My high school English teachers were there, but they didn't remember me. We got Becky Edwards signs, and I got a t-shirt. We need to elect Republicans like Becky Edwards, rather than Mike Lee, in order to heal our country, both metaphorically and literally. Make Republicans Great Again! We need more Becky Edwardses, Mitt Romneys, and Spencer Coxes, with fewer Mike Lees and Burgess Owenses. I was pretty much in the middle before Trump, but Trump did terrible things to his party, so now I have to lean left. Then the last year and a half has made me lose almost all respect for the Republican Party. They are so concerned about their right to do terrible things, like be jerks about masks and not solve gun violence, "because Constitution," and yet they get mad at Mike Pence for following the Constitution. I hope they get some common sense again. (I am having a very hard time feeling sympathy for adults who get COVID after they chose not to get vaccinated.) Sorry, I will stop my tirade.
My Fitbit watch has had a Coach feature on it with three different workouts. It would guide me on each workout, telling me what to do and for how long. I really think it helped me physically (since I hate strength training), and it was nice that it was all done from my watch. But then this week, I discovered that they discontinued the feature! I found an app with workouts, which is OK, but I liked having it all on my watch. Google bought out Fitbit recently, and I was worried they would make it worse. This appears to be the first sign of that happening. Why should I trust Google anymore? They got rid of Google Play Music last year, replacing it with the inferior YouTube Music. They "updated" Blogger but mostly just made it worse. They started charging for Gmail and Photos. But I'm kind of happy they're getting worse, because I get a little uncomfortable when companies have a monopoly on everything.
All right, that's enough for today!
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