Tan Christmas

Trail running is my favorite form of exercise, and I was able to do it six days this week. And I'm sad about it!

I want to save the Great Salt Lake, but it's very hard to when we got almost no snow in November, and almost no snow in December so far. At least we had a wet October. I want it to feel cozy and Christmassy, but it's hard to do that when the weather is in the fifties and sixties and there's no snow.

Actually, at the beginning of the week, we had some small piles of snow from the previous storms. And yesterday, Saturday, I ran up by the radio towers between Salt Lake and North Salt Lake, and I did see some patches of snow. 

In fact, there are already hyacinths sprouting in my mom's garden! It's still a week before the winter solstice! 

When I'm not running, I have been doing Christmassy things. The most Christmassy thing I did was to take my parents downtown to get standby tickets for the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. We can usually get in, and that's always a good time. This year's guests were Stephanie J. Block and Sebastian Arcelus, a married couple who are Broadway stars. I'm sure they would be great on Broadway. I thought Stephanie's singing style was a little odd for Christmas songs. The concert always features a story, and they told the story of the Apollo 8 astronauts reading verses from Genesis on Christmas Eve in 1968. I think that is an odd choice for astronauts to read to the world, and I also think that is an odd choice of a story to feature, though I always like hearing about astronauts. The organist Richard Elliott always does some epic mashup, so he played "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains" along with "Glory to God" from Messiah, but it was arranged and accompanied so that it sounded like 2001: A Space Odyssey—it was very impressive but also kind of an odd mashup. They also had the audience sing along with a few Christmas songs. It was a good concert, just not as good as some of the others I've been to.

I have been doing other Christmas things like reading from Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays, watching Christmas shows like The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, buying Christmas things like The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures, and getting Christmas treats like Sodalicious cookies with peppermint frosting right before they closed the location by my office.

And I continue to go through my Christmas playlist. I should finish the 2021 section today and make it to 2022. I use iBroadcast to upload and stream my personal collection, and the website seems to be down today, but at least the app is working. Yesterday I listened to the playlist while I used a giant zucchini from our garden to make stir-fried vegetables. They were OK.

This week I have been doing some tedious things for work (formatting footnotes), so I have been watching some things online. After watching the Christmas episodes of The Twilight Zone, I decided to watch the episode "It's a Good Life" with Billy Mumy, which is very famous, but I had never seen it. I found this episode quite startling in how relevant it felt—it could totally be retitled "GOP." The premise is there's an evil, omnipotent six-year-old named Anthony who can read minds and send people to the "cornfield." No one is allowed to say anything bad or complain, or else he will punish them. So they all have to tell him everything he does is good, because they are terrified. Many of Anthony's actions negatively affect not just others but also himself, such as when he sends potential playmates to the cornfield. When one character opens up an opportunity for someone to attack Anthony and bring him to an end, everyone is too afraid to do anything. When will Republicans wake up and stand up to the horrible monster who is destroying their lives?

Dee Sem Ber

December has started, so we're in full Christmas mode, and there have been various holiday activities. I'm paring down my expectations this year—I don't have to do all the things, because there's plenty already.

On Monday, the City of North Salt Lake hosted a winter lights festival where they were "unveiling" a new mural on a building that is apparently a historic railroad building, which I didn't know. But they weren't actually "unveiling" it, just turning the lights on. We all gathered on a corner across from the building and kitty-corner from the city offices. The corner is where Hatch Park is currently being remodeled, so it's just surrounded by a fence. They had some people speaking, but it was very hard to hear on their quiet speakers. It felt pretty sad that we had this community event on a construction lot at a busy four-way stop at rush hour. That is our "downtown." We really are a bedroom community. There are summertime events at Legacy Park, which are more enjoyable, but they have to bring food trucks and vendors for those events.

At city hall, they also gave out scones, which was a nice Utah thing, and there were people singing carols, and Santa and Mrs. Claus arrived on a firetruck. But part of the time, they were playing a Christmas playlist with a disproportionate amount of Pentatonix. Ugh, why do people love that group? I find them a tad obnoxious.

On Tuesday, my work had our holiday lunch at Loveland Living Planet Aquarium, so we got to tour it. I don't think I'd been there since 2014, so it was fun to go back. I think it's nicer than Hogle Zoo. It is pricey, so I was glad that work paid for me to be there, but it's so cool that I can see why it's expensive. One of my colleagues is married to a guy who works there, so he showed us the new Asian exhibit that's under construction. In the public part of the museum, I also got to see the employees interacting with the penguins, sloth, and leopard.

As I was standing near the penguins with some colleagues while wearing my reindeer shirt, we got on the topic of my pet peeve about Christmas penguins. Puffins are much more suitable for Christmas! So imagine my surprise when I got on Facebook this morning and saw this post (which I had to remove a swear from). I have been saying this for years (I think even decades).

But I'm not autistic, at least as far as I know

After the aquarium, I wanted to go over to Brooker's Founding Flavors, the quirky ice cream shop themed after the American Revolution, which has a location in Draper. They often have seasonal flavors, but I was dismayed they didn't really have Christmas flavors. Even though Thanksgiving is over, I wanted to try Priscilla Alden's Caramel Cornucopia, because it's aligned with my very niche interests; I got the coconut-flavored Valley Forge Shoe Leather, because it looked like a temporary flavor that aligned with a wintry theme, but apparently it's a year-round flavor; and "Candlelight Cookies and Cream" sounded Christmassy, but it was made with Halloween Oreos, because it was originally themed around the Headless Horseman. The employee didn't understand what I asked for, so I ended up with two ice cream cones. OK, I guess?

Candlelight Cookies and Cream and Caramel Cornucopia

Valley Forge Shoe Leather

On Wednesday, I made gingerbread cranberry apple crisp. I invented the topping (recipe in this blog post), and I love it, but I picked the apples from our own tree in October, and they're not the greatest apples.

Because we have had light snow showers this week, I didn't do any running, and I went swimming on Wednesday and Thursday. So I got to wear my Christmas jammers.

As I was working from home on Friday, it was lightly snowing. I was amused when the snow on our deer fence slid so that it was upside down.

In the evening, I attended my home ward's Christmas party, even though I go to a singles ward. It's an older building, and currently there's only one ward that meets there, so the Church is going to sell it. So I always wonder if it will be the last time I go there. It's sad, because I have so many memories of the building, ever since I was in nursery. It's also the only LDS meetinghouse I know of with three levels (though the top level is only a classroom and closets).

Since I spend so much time trail running during the spring/summer/fall months, I feel like I should do more biking when the trails are snowed over / muddy, so yesterday I went on a bike ride. I only went six miles, but it was very steep, to the top of the Summerwood neighborhood. I'm proud of myself that I can do something that hard, even though I'm not great at biking. But I didn't go to the top of the road that goes to the trailhead, because I didn't trust my biking skills to avoid the snowy patches on a steep, curved road.

Another holiday has passed

Ah, another holiday has come and gone! 

The week got off to an unusual start. 

On Monday night, my ward was having a bread night, where people would just bring breads and spreads to share. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try something new. You all know I like things that are flavored like holiday foods (what I call category 2A), and years ago, I wondered what it would be like to have stuffing-flavored cookies. I found a recipe online (for some reason the link works on my phone but not my laptop), so I made them Sunday evening. They use a box of stuffing, as well as dried cranberries.

I thought they were just OK. They were better fresh, and as the days went by, they got more off-putting. 

On Monday morning, I woke up early, so I started work at 7 a.m., and I was excited to have a full day with lots of extra time. 

Unfortunately, during my workday, at about 10:30, I recognized that I was getting an aura, where I couldn't see properly, and soon a migraine would come. This happens to me once or twice a year. There are spots in my field of vision where I simply can't see—for example, when I looked in the mirror, I could only see one of my eyes. I read for a living, and of course it is extremely difficult to read when there are blind spots in my vision. So I had to quit working and took a couple of long naps. Eventually I got so I could see again, so I got back to work, but my head still hurt. This was all very annoying, but I am grateful that I work from home, so I had the flexibility to stop working and take a nap.

I took my cookies to the ward activity, and people were very intrigued. One person took several with him.

Unfortunately, since I had been napping so much, it took me a long time to fall asleep; and once I did fall asleep, I didn't sleep that well. So I slept a little later than I would have liked on Tuesday morning, and I was groggy all day. Tuesdays are the day I go into the office. I brought my leftover stuffing cookies and shared them at a meeting. My coworkers were intrigued, but no one said a word once they tried them. I'm not offended (I didn't love them either), just a little embarrassed.

I didn't quite get a full workday in, because we were rushing to finish proofing Wayfare magazine, so I spent some time on that. (It got all done on Wednesday.)

Tuesday evening I met my family at Megaplex Theatres at Jordan Commons. My dad's financial planner had rented a theater for their clients to see Wicked: For Good for free. I enjoyed the movie, and I was surprised how many of my family members asked me whether I liked the first or second one better—I don't think of them as separate movies; they're just different parts of the same movie. We saw Wicked on Broadway in 2017, and no one asked me then if I preferred Act 1 or Act 2! But I didn't love seeing it on the giant IMAX screen, because it was hard to watch when the screen was moving. I watched the first movie on my flight back from England this summer, and honestly I preferred watching on the tiny airplane screen.

As I was walking back to my car, I noticed a glove on the ground. I wondered if it was mine, but I reached into my coat pockets and felt gloves, so I determined it wasn't mine, and I left it on the ground. But later, I realized I had two pairs of gloves in my coat, so it was my glove after all! Oh well, it was a cheap grocery-store skeleton glove, so I'll be able to buy more next Halloween time.

Fortunately, I was all back to normal on Wednesday, and after a regular workday, I ran up the trail above Wild Rose. I don't go there too often, because it's steep and shadeless, but it is nice, so maybe I should go there more often.

And in the evening, I made cranberry sauce and did some other Thanksgiving prep.

And then it was Thanksgiving! I awoke early, and I decided I wanted to run up North Canyon. I've been up there the day before Thanksgiving, and the days after Thanksgiving, but never on Thanksgiving itself. It was a lovely way to spend Thanksgiving morning, though my shoes did get pretty muddy.

After my run, I made green bean casseroles, and then we went to my sister's house for Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's family. It wasn't an especially noteworthy holiday; Thanksgiving is just a relaxing day.

Then the next morning, I swapped out Thanksgiving decor for Christmas. As I was putting away the inflatable turkey (which is twenty-one years old!), the friendly neighbor cat came up and tried to go inside the house. 

And after Wednesday's run, I decided I wanted to go above Wild Rose again, this time a little longer. I enjoyed it a little less during the middle of the day, but it was still nice.

I didn't do any shopping over the weekend, and the only business I went to was The Park barbershop, a local business in a random, unexpected location. 

On Saturday, we finished getting up all the Christmas decorations. And then I went to North Canyon again, this time to go up to Cave Peak, like I did last week.

The view this week was very different from last week's.

November 29

November 22

I was a little chilly on the way down, and I was glad I was wearing thick gloves (that was the only warm clothing I was wearing). That will be my last trail run for a while, at least at that higher elevation, since it is thankfully snowing.

In 2021, I bought the complete series of Lost in Space on DVD, but I haven't made it very far, and this year I learned it had a Christmas-adjacent episode. So I watched that last night. It's nice to get into the Christmassy feeling.

Hmm, as I reread this post, I think my writing this week is a little hard to follow—almost like the posts I used to write back in 2011. Oh well, I just want to get it posted, so I'm not going to refine it.

***

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time for the final installment of pumpkinundation roundup in 2025.

I don't think I saw Thomas' Cranberry English Muffins last year, so I was happy to find them this year. And I consider cranberry a flavor for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so they're still relevant! I really enjoy the sweetness, with just a touch of tartness, of the cranberries. 8/10.

I used McCormick Pumpkin Chili mix to make the recipe on the back. It's ground turkey, canned kidney beans, canned tomatoes, canned pumpkin, and water. The spice mix includes spices more usually associated with sweets, like cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. I've had better chili, but this is super easy, so it's good enough. 7/10.

I formally reviewed the DiGiorno Thanksgiving Pizza last year, and I'm happy they brought it back. I love the crust. But truth be told, I love the pizza more because it's seasonal than because I love the toppings themselves. 8/10.

I'm not sure I've had a lava cake before, so I was excited to try Lee's Pumpkin Molten Lava Cake. I put it in the microwave to slightly melt the inside. I was sorely disappointed. First of all, I don't think this is a proper lava cake. But also, the cake was very dry and bland. I liked the frosting "lava," but it was nothing special. 5/10.

I had to discreetly take this picture of Apple Pie à la Mode Oreos at my sister's house. They have a nice apple flavor, though I can't really say it's like apple pie. I had Apple Pie Oreos in 2017, and I can't say the "à la mode" version is that different. 8/10.

At our Thanksgiving dinner, my aunt brought pies from Sam's Club. Member's Mark Apple Pie is not nearly as good as homemade apple pie. 6/10. Member's Mark Pecan Pie is the best of these three; pecan pie is just so good in general. 9/10. And Member's Mark Pumpkin Pie is OK; I've had better. 7/10.

See you back here in September!

[Insert Novembery Title]

Recently (this week, I think) I heard a local news anchor say, "It's been hard to get into the holiday spirit." I don't know what she meant by "holiday." If she meant Christmas, maybe that's a sign it's too early? But if she meant Thanksgiving, I disagree—I think it's been easy to get into the Thanksgiving spirit, with some leaves lingering on trees and piling up on sidewalks, crisp evenings, general cozy vibes. 

Last week, I went to a Friendsgiving that is part of an informal group called "Sunday Stories," where people give presentations or tell stories about something they know about. A couple of years ago, I told the history of Pioneer Day. For Friendsgiving, I volunteered to tell the history of Thanksgiving, and that was fun to do. And then the next day, the article about Thanksgiving in Utah, for which I was interviewed last month, was posted. It feels nice to be consulted as an expert on something. The reporter was looking for a Utah historian, and luckily for him, he happened to find a Utah historian who's an expert on Thanksgiving.

Snow is very much part of Thanksgiving, so I am disappointed it didn't snow this month—I am very concerned about the climate and the Great Salt Lake.

I have long associated Thanksgiving time with relaxing, dark evenings at home. This goes back to elementary school, when I used to make simple Thanksgiving crafts out of brown, red, orange, and yellow construction paper. For 2025, my November evenings have followed this pattern: I go on a run right after work before it gets dark, and then I have a long, free evening. (I'm grateful the weather has been such that I have been able to run all month, but I'm a little sad I haven't had an opportunity to wear my new Thanksgiving swimsuit.)

This week, though, much of my cozy evening time has been spent proofing Wayfare magazine. I'm the most experienced copyeditor on the team, so I get the final say. I proofread the entire magazine, and the other editors also proof a few articles, and I decide whether to accept or reject their suggestions (I accept most of them). We're getting close, but it's not done yet.

Because of Wayfare, my Saturday run was just under seven miles. And part of me is glad to have a reason not to do a harder run. I ran up to Cave Peak via the Mahogany Ridge Trail, which is a new trail this year. Yesterday's run was exceedingly foggy. I was also surprised at how muddy it was, since that trail is not very shady. (Of course, shade doesn't make much difference in fog.)

This was the "view" at the top.

I was a little disappointed to get my "Halloween" shoes all muddy. I have had them just over a month, and I have already put 124 miles on them!

And here are this week's illustrations of some dreams I have had recently. As always, I am definitely not an artist, and these are not meant to demonstrate my (lack of) artistic ability, but rather to foster creativity, instead of relying on AI. And also, I just think dreams are funny.

A father accidentally knocks his baby off a wall into a small pool of water

Teenagers on carousel horses join a bicycle race

At a work party, a man hits an old piñata where hornets had built a nest

Mark wants to be the water cycle for Halloween

***

This is the penultimate installment of pumpkinundation roundup this year.

I took Trader Joe's Pumpkin Cheesecake to Friendsgiving, because I've wanted to try it for years, having had most other Trader Joe's pumpkin items. It was mediocre, and I don't love cheesecake anyway. 6/10.

Trader Joe's Roasted Turkey and Sweet Potato Burrito is a fine burrito, but I can't say it has strong elements of those flavors. But maybe I just try to eat it when it's still too hot to really taste. 7/10.

I wasn't pleased when I tried the Subway Festive Turkey sandwich, but I think the problem must have been the way it was made, because I much more enjoyed the Subway Turhamken, which has turkey, ham, and chicken, along with cranberry sauce and stuffing. When I got the turkey sandwich, the "sandwich artist" asked what toppings I wanted. This time, the worker asked if I wanted what came with it—cheddar, spinach, onions, I think some other veggies—and it was much better. I think the provolone might really have been the culprit. 8/10.

I simply had to try the Chip Turkey Cookie, which is a regular chocolate chip cookie with a peanut butter cup and candy corn. This helps me feel justified in counting candy corn as a Thanksgiving candy. I love the idea of this special Thanksgiving cookie, since Thanksgiving often gets overlooked. But it's also kind of boring, and the candy corns kept falling out. 7/10.

I do enjoy Trader Joe's Thanksgiving Stuffing Seasoned Popcorn. 7/10.

It's better than Trader Joe's Thanksgiving Stuffing Seasoned Kettle Chips, which might be my least favorite stuffing chip. (Earlier this month, I was not impressed with the Target version, but they have grown on me.) 6/10.

I had a Pumpkin Pie Perfect Bar a few years ago, and this was just as I remembered. I really, really like it as a peanut butter product. But it doesn't really remind me of pumpkin pie. 9/10.

And then I had the last of the Subway Festive trifecta: Subway Festive Chicken sandwich. Again, this was much better without provolone. 8/10.

The 7 Select Pumpkin Cheese Danish is what you'd expect from a mass-produced, packaged Danish. It has less than 2 percent of pumpkin, and it really tastes like Danish but not like pumpkin. 5/10.