October, November

Ah, what a wonderful time of the year! 

On Monday, my family carved jack-o'-lanterns, but I didn't carve mine with them because I was at a ward activity. We had one pumpkin grow in our garden this year, and it was still a little green. I carved that one, and my mom bought other pumpkins from the store. Ours was bigger than the others.

Since it was such a big, healthy pumpkin, I kept the seeds to plant next year.

As I posted on Facebook, I decided to make mine look like the first known image of a carved pumpkin, from 1867 (at that time called a "pumpkin effigy"). It was such a big, beautiful pumpkin that I wanted to do something special. At first, I carved the face and worried it was too boring. But then I noticed that the original image had ears. It was just quirky enough that I was delighted.

On Tuesday, the Church History Department held a book release for volume 4 of Saints, and I was invited because of my position at Utah Historical Quarterly. The last time I went to a similar event, it was pretty informal. This time, I was surprised to see lots of reporters and photographers there, and most people were dressed up (probably because most of them were Church employees). I was wearing a haunted house sweater and a skull button-up shirt, so I felt overly informal. Oh well. Going there feels like home. I used to work there, and I talked to a colleague there who told me about the work being done on the Brigham Young letters project, which was what I contributed most to during my time there in 2022 and 2023. And yet, it also feels like it's not home, because I will probably never work there again. But I'm glad my Utah Historical Society job gets me in the door without actually working there. (I got a free copy of the new Saints book, but I already have items in my to-be-read list.)

On Wednesday, I went running to the radio towers, and on my way home I passed a Trump–Vance sign (which makes my respect for people plummet), and I noticed the apostrophe was facing the wrong way. See, it's supposed to have the round part on the top, because it is standing for 20. But with the round part on the bottom, it's a single opening quotation mark. Microsoft Word and other programs default to the way it appears on this sign, but the campaign team apparently couldn't hire a good editor to notice that. Make Typography Great Again.

Halloween was pretty low-key. I worked from home, and then I went on an evening run. It was fun to pass the beginning of the trick-or-treating festivities. I lit our jack-o'-lanterns, and I piped my Halloween playlist (up to 599 songs) both inside and outside the house. We had three groups of trick-or-treaters, eight total. I wanted to make sure we had plenty of candy, so we have lots of leftovers, which has made me sleep poorly the last few nights. I watched The Mummy (1932) with my mom, which I also watched on Halloween the last time Halloween was on a Thursday.

On Friday I was disheartened to get a bill in the mail. I had a physical exam in August, and apparently my insurance doesn't cover preventive exams. What the heck!? I didn't check that, because I've never heard of such a greedy, draconian policy before. Why am I paying insurance if it doesn't do anything for me as a healthy individual? Whoever made the policy should be handcuffed, with the end of a chain attached to the handcuffs and the other end attached to a train, and then the train should take off. (That's something I dreamed up more than a decade ago.)

Yesterday I went to the thirtieth birthday party of my friend Madi, and my friend Calvin was also there. Don't you think I look like a model?

And then I went up to explore the new Hornet Trail in Mueller Park. I was amazed at how beautiful the leaves still were, even though it's November. After less than a mile and a half, the trail reached a bridge, at which point it was only a downhill bike trail, so I had to turn around. It was cold and starting to rain, so it was a good time to do so.

I have been swapping out Halloween decorations for Thanksgiving. The outside is all done; I still have a little to do inside.

I have had my inflatable turkey for twenty years now! That is more than half of my life. Back in 2004, my baby niece loved to go outside and look at the turkey. "Turkey" was one of the few words she could say. It has held up well, even though the technology of inflatable decorations has gotten simpler. My inflatable cornucopia was made in China, and the LED lights are irreplaceable, so if they go bad, I'm out of luck. (One of the lights last year turned into a strobe light, so I had to exchange the whole thing.)

Here are this week's AI dream images. 

a woman gleefully smashes a cockroach with a small bottle

in a tour bus in Hawaiian mountains, Mark and Shane discuss their opinions on Coldplay and the show "Hoarders"

Mark wants to return three Squishmallows he just bought, but he can't find the receipt

(Oddly enough, I had this dream before I bought three Christmas Squishmallows this week. The ham cracks me up.)

Mark and Ann climb up a staircase with weird, tiny steps at McDonald's

Mark buys Costco muffins that come in the flavors of apple, pumpkin pie, banana pie, and turkey sausage

Mark and Susanne are in a car watching a Looney Tunes cartoon involving a seahorse

Mark looks in an eighteenth-century book that has a Marmaduke comic in it

Mark goes to a vendor fair in Plymouth, Massachusetts

Mark rides in a van with a woman and her family, and his boss pulls them over while acting as a volunteer sheriff

Mark can't figure out which stack to put the folding chair on

Mark's mom has bought many brands of protein bars

Mark's mom has bought many brands of protein bars (Each prompt usually generates three or four images, and these were both so funny I had to include two)

Mark calls his classmate on an old cellphone to see what she knows about the Salem Witch Trials

Mark chases a girl in orange and black clothes who stole fruit-punch-flavored snacks from a concessions stand (Hmm, I wonder where it got inspiration for this image . . . )

Mark attends a conference with his mom

Mark tries not to step in a puddle in his nice shoes

Mark is in a hotel with a female pop superstar and she plays her new song

Mark thinks he sees an ugly dog, but it's actually a porcupine, so he avoids it

elevated wooden slopes covered in snow are popular for biking, running, hiking, and sledding

Susanne brings her burger franchise home, so Mark tries to make his own pastrami burger

The Church History Museum has a jazz band playing "The Great Pumpkin Waltz," and they gave out large pyrite rocks

Mark's LDS ward choir releases a Christmas album

At Latter-day Saint stake conference, Mark's mom wears a cactus shirt, and his dad wears an enormous shirt

Mark finds some of his mom's old recipe cards, and he has torn one of them up

***

Whew, as if all the dreams weren't enough, here's pumpkinundation roundup! Now that we have switched to Thanksgiving, this includes Thanksgiving foods now.

For a ward activity, I made pumpkin black-bean turkey chili. I've made this before, and this time it was more watery than usual. Maybe because I used fresh pumpkin instead of canned? It was still good though. 8/10.

This Wowza Bakery Pumpkin Spice Cookie takes the classic and adds a generous amount of frosting. It was better than most. 8/10.

These cheap fruit pies are so trashy, and I love them. I worried the Kroger Caramel Apple Fruit Pie would not have much caramel, but there was a big glob of caramel filling. 8/10.

Thomas' Pumpkin Spice English Muffins have been around since at least 2013, and I'm glad. I don't love most English muffins, but I love these. Since I have so much sugar at this time of year, I usually pair them with eggs and cheese. The muffins have small pockets of pumpkin filling. 8/10.

My official review of DiGiorno Thanksgiving Pizza should go up on The Impulsive Buy this week. The turkey on it is great. There's something odd in the gravy, or maybe it's just the crispy onions. I am delighted this exists, and I would love to see more pizza companies follow suit. 7/10.

Halloween happenings

 It seemed like there were so many things going wrong this past week. And since I work two jobs and have other things going on, I like to keep my work hours tight, so it's frustrating when things set me back on my hours. (I thought about naming this week's post Murphy's (Hal)law(een), but that was a stretch.)

When I got back from California last week, our water heater was leaking, so my parents worked on getting it replaced. And our landline phone also quit working. I don't use that phone, so it didn't affect me, but it was still another thing going on.

And also my grandpa's eye ruptured (he couldn't see out of it anyway), so he had to have it removed. My mom spent her Halloween night at the hospital for his surgery.

Monday, when I went downtown to work at the Church History Library, it was closed because of a city water issue. So I went downtown for nothing. (The CHL also closed on Wednesday for water issues, but I had already been working there before they sent us home, so it didn't disrupt my schedule too much.)

I woke up early on Halloween, so I was going to go to work early and get ahead on my hours. But once or twice a year, I get a migraine, and Halloween was the day this year. So I took a nap before going to work, and then I also had to put my head on my desk at work for a while. And to top it all off, on my way to work, the stoplight wasn't working, so it was a four-way stop, and the backup started right after it was too late for me to take a different route.

Then Wednesday morning, I was supposed to have a call for insurance. And my phone decided not to receive phone calls that morning. Twenty minutes after the appointment was supposed to start, a voicemail finally came through, because apparently my phone went straight to voicemail. So I had to reschedule for the next day.

But not everything was bad this week.

I wore my Halloween sweater to both of my jobs on Tuesday and got lots of compliments. Since my mom was on surgery duty Halloween night, I was on candy duty. I had my Halloween playlist (now up to 553 songs) both inside and outside the house. I spent some time working in the living room, and then I watched some dumb old cartoons from a DVD I bought at Top Hat back in January. 

I did the second and third from the left.

Then November started, and I switched to Thanksgiving. One of the greatest things to come out of COVID-19 is the rediscovery of Vince Guaraldi's original recordings, so this year they released the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving to commemorate the special's fiftieth anniversary. Since I watched the show ad nauseam as a kid, I can tell that the recordings aren't the exact ones used in the special. But this has the best version of "Linus and Lucy" ever recorded.

Since I work from home for the state, I've decided that I'm going to spend more time running in the day, then working late, now that it's dark earlier. This is important, since my diet mostly consisted of sugar this week. 

Because of the conference last week, I got ahead of my hours, so I was off work on Friday. Except that I wasn't actually off, because Faith Matters asked me to edit a book for them. That's how I spent Friday and Saturday; I still have a little work to do on it this week. But unlike my work for Wayfare (also from Faith Matters), they're going to pay me for this one.

After the last month and a half have been full of conferences and other things, I'm hoping things will start to calm down.

***

Pumpkinundation roundup now transitions from Halloween to Thanksgiving. They're mostly the same, except that Thanksgiving includes pie and savory things, and I think of caramel apple as a Halloween flavor. 

We now have a Chip in North Salt Lake! The Chip Naughty Pumpkin Cookie is a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie with whipped cream, caramel, and toffee. It was good, but I might have liked it better if I hadn't already gorged myself on sugar. 7/10.

Kirkland Signature Pumpkin Pie has a nice squash flavor, but it's still definitely a pie. 8/10.

Kencko Pumpkin Spice Instant Smoothie is a hippie food. It has dried fruits and vegetables, and there's no plastic in the packaging (which I appreciate). They prefer people to use vegan milks (oat or almond), but I only had cow's milk. It's not great. It's gritty. It tastes and feels like sand, but at least it's autumnal sand. 4/10.

Someone left this candy corn taffy in the breakroom at the CHL, so I don't know the brand. It's fine. 6/10.

Apple Pie Toast Crunch is one of the greatest seasonal cereals ever made. It has the comfort of Cinnamon Toast Crunch but with an apple flavor. 9/10.

I don't love salad, but I had to try Dole Maple Pecan Pie Seasonal Kit. It has pie crust pieces, brown sugar pecans, dried cranberries, and maple vinaigrette. I don't like vinaigrettes that much, but I liked this one. It was sweet but still had a savory kick. As far as salads go, I liked this one. But I think it will always be impossible to actually make a salad taste like pie. 7/10.

Kellogg's Pumpkin Spice Special K has Special K flakes with pumpkin spice yogurt-coated clusters. It's not overly pumpkiny, but it's a great cereal. 8/10.

Great Value Caramel Apple Cereal is not great. It has a little bit of caramel flavor, but it mostly just tastes cheap. 4/10.

I'm really showing this Kellogg's It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown Cereal to show a missed opportunity. This is vanilla flavor with marshmallows. It's as generic as you can get! They could have made the flavor, you know, pumpkin, or at least orange. I love the box, but this is so lazy. 5/10.

Big Hazy's Apple Cider Ice Cream doesn't taste that strongly of apple cider. It's just kind of bland. 6/10.

Lily's Pumpkin Spice Flavor Baking Chips have no sugar. I still have them after buying them a year or two ago because I don't know what to do with them. They taste better than other pumpkin spice baking chips I've had. 6/10.