The storm after the calm

 When I titled last week's post "the calm before the storm," I didn't know that there would be literal storms this week!

Wednesday was my day off, and I took the opportunity to go to the Church History Library to look at some sources for my Pioneer Day article. Hopefully those are the last sources I need for my article, and I can submit it soon! I have wanted to look at these sources for a long time, but, you know, COVID. I was so happy to do so.

One of my classes this semester is both a graduate class and an undergraduate class. Our professor invited us grad students to his house to discuss the class, so I headed there Wednesday afternoon. He had already met everyone else, so I felt out of place for a few reasons. I'm super socially awkward. Impostor syndrome is very real, and I feel dumber than all my classmates. The professor seemed very hipster (or whatever the 2020s equivalent is), serving fancy hors d'oeuvres of dates stuffed with brie. They were all drinking alcoholic beverages, and there was a friendly, well-behaved dog walking around. Brie, dogs, and alcohol are all things that I very much dislike. But it was OK.

(Now that most of us sane people want to follow the CDC's guidelines about masks, vaccines, and social distancing, I want to remind people of the CDC's guidelines on alcohol: "The Dietary Guidelines does not recommend that individuals who do not drink alcohol start drinking for any reason. . . .  Alcohol has been found to increase risk for cancer, and for some types of cancer, the risk increases even at low levels of alcohol consumption (less than 1 drink in a day)." And also: "Although past studies have indicated that moderate alcohol consumption has protective health benefits (e.g., reducing risk of heart disease), recent studies show this may not be true. While some studies have found improved health outcomes among moderate drinkers, it’s impossible to conclude whether these improved outcomes are due to moderate alcohol consumption or other differences in behaviors or genetics between people who drink moderately and people who don’t."

I really hope that someday, alcohol will be stigmatized in the same way tobacco is. The sooner the better. And I really think alcohol is more detrimental to the general public, even if tobacco is worse for individuals.)

That evening I made grape bread, one of my favorite late-summer treats. 

When I went out to pick the grapes, it was certainly strange to smell smoke so strongly when it was rainy. What a weird August!

The next day I had requested off as well, and it turned out that This Is the Place closed anyway because of the weather. I had "new" student orientation at the University of Utah. I'm not officially a new student, but they invited us second-year students, since we only had a virtual orientation last year. On both Wednesday and Thursday, it was weird to meet my classmates in person. I recognized their faces, but I didn't know what they looked like from below the shoulders, such as their height. I enjoyed talking to one of my professors for the semester, even though I'm shy and awkward.

During orientation, we introduced ourselves and had to share something that other people might not know about us. So I said, "I'm a reviewer for a junk-food blog, so I spend a lot of time going to random grocery stores to find things to review." After the orientation was over, I planned to go to several stores, since there have been four things I've been searching for, but I was delighted to find two of those four things at Dan's. So I reviewed/am reviewing both of them. (I'm still looking for Candy Corn Red Vines and this year's version of turkey dinner candy corn.)

I've been listening to a creepy song lately, so the song and the skeleton on the Skittles package led me to have some horrifying dreams/nightmares this week. 

First, I dreamed that I had seen lots of corpses and skeletons in a mausoleum, then took them to Carrie Underwood's house. (I just learned that Carrie Underwood is anti-mask, so she deserves to have corpses in her house.)

Then the next night, I dreamed I was in a Washington DC grocery store where there was a man with large guns. I was calling the police, then left the store but came back, and he shot us! That woke me up.

But soon after I fell asleep again, I dreamed that I awoke from a coma with one of my legs missing, replaced with a fake leg. I'm not sure whether that was from the shooting or from a drunk driver.

Fortunately, my real life is not so terrifying. The rest of the week, I attended a family party, went to the wedding reception of my first cousin once removed, and made tomato zucchini cobbler.

Yesterday was my last day working on Saturday at This Is the Place. I have worked every single Saturday since I started back in May! Phew! But I can only afford to keep working there on slow days. My classes start this week. Even though it's my second year in grad school, so much of it will feel new since I will be on campus. I just hope I can keep up with everything, since I didn't have to worry about commuting last year!