A few images

This week wasn't overly eventful, so I thought I'd share a few images.

OK, this video is from two weeks ago. At first I thought the cat was trying to keep time with the music with her tail, but apparently she doesn't have great rhythm. More than fourteen years later, she still loves our feet.

When I folded my clean socks this week, one of them had a spider leg on it.

We had the missionaries from my ward over for dinner this week. It's kind of mind boggling for me to reflect on my own mission experience. Missionaries carry iPads now, but they didn't exist when I was on my mission. Smartphones were still brand new in those days (so certainly we didn't get them). We could receive texts, but we couldn't send them. I've also been organizing the letters I received while I was serving, putting them in binders instead of keeping them sitting in plastic bags in my closet. This fall will mark ten years from when I left.

Saturday was my dad's birthday. I got him a cat swimsuit. (And one for me, too.)

I saw this caterpillar-infested nest (or something) near Rudy's Flat. I'm not an entomologist, so I don't know what it is or what the bugs are.

This abandoned structure near the bottom of North Canyon has more graffiti on it than it did last fall. Well, I guess the flag is itself graffiti, but at least it's pretty graffiti, whereas the other writing is ugly. Why can't people leave things alone? I'm also perpetually annoyed infuriated at all the beer cans and bottles littered all over. What terrible people must do that! I hope they get broken glass in their eyes. If I owned a store, I would quit selling beer, because I wouldn't want all that litter (or drunk driving, or spousal abuse, or...) on my conscience. I know people litter other things as well, but it doesn't seem to be as frequent. (I also know lots of people drink beer without doing anything stupid, but everyone thinks they're the exception to negative consequences and poor decisions.)

Memorial Day weekend kicks of the season of patriotic holidays, which means my reverse Lent is over! OMNOMNOM.

Let me geek out a little bit here to explain things. Hershey's is doing a "Flavors of America" line with candies representing different states. I'm counting them as Fourth of July candy, because America. Thus the strawberry Kit Kats (California) and BBQ PayDay (Texas) among the red, white, and blue candy. (No Utah, sadly.) I don't like the M&Ms as much as the other candies, because the M&Ms taste exactly like regular M&Ms, whereas the other candies have unique flavors. But the colors still count.

A hodgepodge of thoughts

On Monday, my ward went to the Salt Lake City Cemetery to hear stories about various people buried there. Of course, I have a career advantage to knowing about the people. I tried not to seem too braggartly (I just made that a word) and tried not to destroy the lessons, so I didn't blab all about Orson Pratt. I may have accidentally ruined the lesson, though, when we got to James E. Talmage's tombstone.

I had previously read about his tombstone, how it had a piece of limestone in the granite, and I thought, "Yeah right." And indeed, when I saw it, I recognized that the featured xenolith was not in fact limestone but was an igneous inclusion. Our second counselor asked if anyone knew the story of the tombstone, and I went all off on the geologic history of the granite (using what I learned in my field studies class four years ago), and I explained the theory behind the darker inclusion. Then the counselor said that the origin of the dark part was unknown to science--right after I had explained it. I don't think he had planned on me. But I can totally understand why the scientists of Talmage's day thought it was a limestone inclusion, because it does resemble the Paleozoic dolostone of Little Cottonwood Canyon.

On Wednesday, I was super happy it snowed. For those who don't know, I enjoy unseasonable snow (though I like it less than I used to), and I'm hoping for a year when I see it snow in nine out of twelve months. My criteria is that (1) I have to see snow falling and (2) I have to see snow on the ground. I haven't personally seen May snow since 2011. I know we had some snow here on May 1, 2013, and Cedar City got dumped on on Mother's Day three years ago, but I wasn't there, so it doesn't count. So I was glad to see it this year! Now it just has to snow in either June or September (the tough ones) and then October, November, and December. It's actually been several years since I've seen October snow.

Yesterday (Saturday), I headed out for my weekly long trail run. I decided to go to Mueller Park (a classic standby). When I got to Elephant Rock, I decided to actually go to the rock itself. I've been up there multiple times but had never gone to the rock. I didn't get on top of it, because I'm not good at climbing (and I was still on the running clock), but I went to it. All this time I had assumed it was conglomerate, but it turns out it's granitic. But that makes sense, as I've noticed lots of gneiss on the surrounding trails.

 I went a little past the rock on trail, which I have often done. I had a time I wanted to turn around. But I decided I had the time and energy to go farther, so I did. I usually go to Rudy's Flat via North Canyon, but this time I went to Rudy's via Mueller Park. It was very wet, what with all the melting snow. But I felt accomplished once I got there, because that was the long way up.

When I got to the bottom of the trail, I had gone twelve miles. Not only is that my longest trail run to date, it's also my longest run, period. I was exhausted.

After running so much, I had to make a hearty meal of watercress soup and asparagus. (Just kidding, I had spring vegetable burgers earlier in the day.)

The watercress soup is one of those meals where I will dread the leftovers more each time.

After this busy day, I finally got around to watching The BFG, which I had to see, because I was a huge Roald Dahl fan. (I feel so silly talking about movies on here.) I rarely watch movies, because I think they're generally a waste of time, and I can only justify idly sitting there if I turn on the foreign language subtitles so at least I'm learning something. The ending disappointed me. <SPOILERS> In the end of the book, the bad giants are dropped in a giant hole. Some unruly drunkards get too close and get eaten. At the beginning of the movie, there were some unruly drunkards. I thought they might be the ones to get eaten. But instead the giants got transferred to some mysterious island, and that part of the book never happened. Lame. Roald Dahl instilled in me a desire for people to face horrendous consequences for their horrendous decisions. </end spoilers>

On an unrelated note, I was reading an article today about the Barnum & Bailey/Ringling Bros. circus closing. In all my life, I've never been to a circus. I'm trying to decide whether I should be sad about that. On one hand, I missed my opportunity at being part of a historic cultural phenomenon. On the other hand, it shows I'm part of another historic cultural phenomenon--the culture that cares nothing about circuses and thereby sent circuses to their grave. I don't know whether I never went to a circus because they're simply not that interesting to modern audiences...or because I never got out much.

Sane parents

This post is one I have often thought about, so it's not strictly for Mother's Day, but it is appropriate. It's almost a Thanksgiving-appropriate post.

I feel like I've been pretty successful in life. And I think that's because I was born privileged. And I was privileged because of who my parents are.

A few years ago, I saw a post on Facebook of a young girl saying something like "I have the best mom in the world, and she doesn't know it." As I thought about all the mothers I know, I realized her mom is the worst mom I know. I know there are worse ones out there, but I don't know them personally. Everyone loves their own mother. I'm not going to engage in any sappy hyperbole: my mom is not the best mom in the world. I know that sounds like an understatement where I'm emphasizing her shortcomings, but that's not what I mean at all. I literally mean she's not the best mother, because who is? But when I look at the families other people have, I'm glad I got the one I did.

Occasionally when I have had the opportunity of being home during the day, I have turned on daytime court shows. I see the totally dysfunctional families in those shows, where they fight over dumb things, or get involved in criminal activities, and I feel so grateful that didn't happen to me.

Some mothers are enablers, and their children are abusive toward them, or are crazy lazy. My mother would never put up with such a thing. When I was six years old, at one point I said I wanted to be a bum when I grew up and live in the basement. While that's a funny, quaint thing for a child to say, she did have to tell me she wouldn't really let me do that. If any of us kids were sitting on the couch all day watching TV and playing video games, she would not have any of that. She would make us get a job or move out.

Some parents have no idea how to parent. They yell at their kids all the time but never actually discipline them or follow through with their empty threats. When their children make messes at other people's houses, they don't offer to clean up or apologize. I'm glad I don't have that mom.

In the lottery of parents, I got pretty darn lucky.

Wildflowers and pockets

While autumn might be my favorite time of year for, well, everything, May has got to be the second best time of the year for trail running. You get the late daylight of summer without the hot temperatures. There's a profound fragrance in the air. And, of course, there's an overabundance of wildflowers. Sure, you get Richardson's geranium, common sunflowers, and chicory flowers later in the summer, but not as many all at once. I bought a second Utah wildflower identification book this week, so that if one book doesn't help me, I can look in the other.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record talking about this all the time, but I had to go up to North Canyon again. I hadn't been up since November. Maybe I should have waited a little longer to let all the snow melt, but I don't necessarily regret it. And I saw the father of my childhood friend on the trail. I took my phone with me to take pictures of scenery and in case something happened to me.

The bigger flower in the middle is a yellowbell. The others are Nuttall violets, which I hadn't seen before, but I recognized them from my books.

There was a lot of snow still on the trail up at the top.

Last November, I saw this little baby shoe (aww!). And six months later, it was still there (though it has shifted to different signs).

I believe these purple flowers are western waterleaf. They were all over the bottom of the trail, and combined with lots of dandelions, it was beautiful.

Arrowleaf balsamroot is one of the most spectacular wildflowers, partly because they are huge, but mostly because they form colonies all up the hillsides. This is on a side trail. I was pretty exhausted at this point because I had already run up the canyon and then back down. I just wasn't ready stop yet.

Longleaf phlox captivated me before I even cared about wildflowers.

I usually take my phone with me up the canyons, and I don't have any problems. But yesterday, my phone decided to throw a party in my pocket.

The first strange thing I noticed was when I got to Rudy's Flat, I stopped to look around, and I could hear some music. I wondered if some hikers had brought a guitar up. But nope, my phone was playing music without me asking it to--and it wasn't even the playlist I had most recently been listening to!

Near the end of my run, I stopped to take a picture of western waterleaf and noticed I was calling someone by mistake. Whoops.

Then when I got home, I noticed even more things. I had started drafting a text message to someone else that said this:
2111th, 11a÷×AwqaqQ@`

Thankfully, I didn't send it!

Then I looked at my pictures, and there were lots of pictures I remembered taking, but also some that I didn't remember. Like this one:

 And this one:

And not only did I take those "pictures," I even took a 23-second video. All without knowing it.

Six years of song lyric titles

It is the sixth anniversary of this blog, and on every anniversary I like to highlight some of the things I've posted about during its history.

Writing blog posts is pretty easy--since it's not a formal paper, I just start writing and say whatever I want. But sometimes it's challenging to create a title, and I often resort to song lyrics and song titles.

So here's a list of the posts I've made using song lyrics. Those with an asterisk* mean that I modified the lyrics somehow to suit my purposes. Some of them are popular, while others are incredibly obscure, and I don't necessarily endorse every song on here. How many do you know?

Enter Sandman
And It's Hotter than the Fourth of July
River of Tears
Wake me up when September comes*
I turn my music up*
A Spoonful of...Something*
The REAL most wonderful time of the year*
A short holiday and looong hours*
Yuletide by the Fireside, and Joyful Memories There
Two Whole Years*
Auld Lang Syne
Ring Out the Old, Ring In the New
You say goodbye, I say hello
Free as my hai-ai-ai-ai-ai-air
Those Easter Morns*
Jumping around like a house on fire, having some fun tonight.
Oh, beautiful for rainy skies*
Take the last train to Emeryville*
One year older and wiser too
Let the Lower Lights be awesome*
Bewitched, Bewitched, you've got me in your spell
Fin Octobre, Début Novembre
Gravity hurts
Journey to March*
Here Came Peter Cottontail*
It Passes All My Understanding
Only because it's spring
Summertime, and the living will be easy, eventually*
Whenever I think about pioneers
Then school comes along just to end it
I turn my music up, part two*
California Dreamin' on Such a Winter's Day
Love and Remodeling at Home*
The bombs bursting in air
Ain't it fun living in the real world?
Get Down Goblin Valley!*
Candy, pumpkin, witches awound
Thankful people
The Modern Yuletide Carols*
Christmas and New Year's found me home
Iron wheels a'rolling
On the rock our fathers planted
Boys in cars
O Ye Mountains High
Leaves are falling
This was Halloween.*
Seize the week*
I'm gonna run right up this hill
Monkeeing around*
Red, white, and blue upon a birthday cake
Natural highs*
All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray
The snow lay on the ground

April showers

When I was a kid, I loved rainy days. They were my favorite. But now that I have a hobby that is best enjoyed during dry weather, I don't look forward to it as much. But if I have lots of things I have to get done inside, it can go ahead and rain, I won't mind.

On Monday, my stake and adjoining stakes did a concert/fireside with Gentri, a "gentleman's trio" that is signed with Deseret Book. I'd heard of them but never heard them. Now I understand why. They are talented singers, but I just found their style of music boring. I've been to a number of concerts by local musicians (including Cherie Call, the National Parks, Mideau, Vocal Point, Debra Fotheringham, Utah Symphony, and the Lower Lights), and this was probably the most boring. Even more boring than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Maybe it's because it was a fireside rather than an actual concert. This paragraph makes it sound terrible. It wasn't, it was just forgettable.

Friday was Arbor Day, a holiday that is becoming increasingly obsolete. (Sorry, Nebraska, I'm going to guess that our state holiday is more exciting than yours.) Maybe it's becoming swallowed by Earth Day (which is becoming more popular), but we certainly need a day like Arbor Day even today. Climate change wasn't even an issue when J. Sterling Morton invented the holiday.

Anyway, on Arbor Day two years ago I first discovered the beauty of North Canyon, which has since become my favorite place in Bountiful. I went there again last year. But this year was snowy! Nevertheless, I still had to spend time in the trees on Arbor Day, so I thought it would be a good time to explore a little side road near the beginning of the dirt road/trailhead. I had been there once last year, but I wanted to see where it went.

 I felt a little bad going on such a wet day, because just a few days earlier I had heard a news article about people damaging local trails by using them when they're muddy. Well, I'm going to justify myself: (1) The road has lots of rocks, so most parts of it don't change shape when I step on it; (2) I'm less damaging than a wheel; (3) I do stay off of muddy trails, except this one day.

I'm not accustomed to seeing arrowleaf balsamroot covered in snow.

It was beautiful, even though it was lightly snowing.

 Alack, I didn't expect this road to end in a gate to "private property." I had thought it might go to the road and then I wouldn't have to go back through the mud to get to my car, but I was obedient and obeyed the signs. This gate was anticlimactic. But there are lots of steep side trails I might have to explore sometime.

There were lots of giant puddles.

Yesterday, I went to Thanksgiving Point's Tulip Festival, as I did two years ago. It's nice to get out of the house and out of Davis and Salt Lake Counties (barely...), but I can see lots of tulips on a smaller--but no less beautiful--scale for free at Temple Square.

I only included this because it seemed a shame to leave the tulip festival without any pictures of tulips. We were literally walking out.

They told us this is the largest man-made waterfall in the northwestern hemisphere. That's a lot of caveats. I wondered how they defined biggest. Tallest? Most volume of water? Most square feet?

Then yesterday, my friend Shane showed me a little trail head in North Salt Lake that I hadn't heard of. Three years ago, there was a famous landslide in NSL that destroyed a home and some tennis courts. That one garnered a lot of attention, but there was an older, less dramatic landslide in NSL that destroyed the foundations of several homes. They built this new trail near where they used to be, called Springhill Geologic Park. I had to visit it because (1) it's a trail, (2) "geologic" is the name, and (3) I thought I'd been to every park in NSL. Due to the tulip festival and taking my niece bowling, I didn't have time for a long run, so I just ran up this little trail. For just a tiny (less than one mile, with a 230-foot climb) trail in the middle of a neighborhood, I was impressed.

This I guess is the most "geologic" part of the trail. I was hoping for interpretive signs, but no. I didn't even stop to analyze the rock, though it's probably conglomerate.

I first saw tufted evening primrose last year on the Wild Rose Trail and fell in love with it, but I might have only seen it that one time. I was delighted to see this cluster. They only bloom in the evening. My book says they are also very fragrant, but I didn't stop to smell them. Next time I see them, I will.

At the top of the trail was a monument dedicated to Art Gregerson, a prominent developer of North Salt Lake. He's also notorious for shoddily built homes. What can I do to get a monument for me?

Good and bad hippies

It's only been a week, and I already miss Easter. I had a very realistic, detailed dream about going to the Walmart in Orem and buying Little Debbie carrot cakes (which don't exist, but I wish they did) and bunny-shaped crackers and cereals. I also learned in real life that there was Peeps eggnog at the store, but I didn't see it in time. I'm feeling unreasonably sad that I missed out on it. I also felt unreasonably sad about the dead cat I saw on the side of the road. :(

I also had a dream with a Bewitched episode with a funny joke about King Henry VIII and a leg of lamb. When I woke up, I realized it wasn't really funny.

Yesterday was Earth Day, and I've decided you can't have Earth Day without hitting the trails. So I decided to run to the last radio tower again, like I did a few weeks ago, but I decided to run from my house. Once I got there, I decided to keep going, rather than simply turning around. I was glad I did--I found trails where I've been before but haven't spent as much time on. There was only a small portion of trail that was new to me, but that was still more than what I had planned on.

This is a brief portion of the trail where I had never been. It's out in the open, so my face got a little sunburned, but not too bad. It was a beautiful day.

I saw a rotting deer head. This was the first picture I had, but Facebook doesn't let me choose the thumbnail anymore, and I didn't think I should have a rotting head as the preview.

Parts of this trail get surprisingly swampy.

There were lots of blue and red ribbons attached to signs and trees all over. I found it obnoxious.

In the distance are some dirt bikers, even though motorized vehicles are not allowed. What entitled jerks!

One of my favorite parts is this little ravine that has a meadow in it. I think I've only been there once before. But this part got a little awkward, because another trail runner was following me.

 I also had to spend Earth Day making a meal that is good for the earth, so I made veggie burgers. Of the five kinds I've made, this is the least tasty but the easiest. They have onions, oats, almonds, egg, and seasonings.

Earth Day is a hippie holiday (though not one I formally celebrate), but it's a good hippie holiday. However, there was a bad hippie holiday on 4/20. People say that marijuana isn't as bad as cigarettes or alcohol. I don't know whether that's true, but even if it is, it's still not good. I hate to play the "My hobby is better than yours" game, but if your hobby is smoking weed, then yeah, my hobby is better than yours. I'm so grateful that I don't need harmful and addicting substances to feel amazing. And I find it frustratingly ironic that while there are increasing crusades against cigarettes and soda--which I don't disagree with--there is a push for acceptance of recreational cannabis. We need instead to foster a culture where people decide they don't want that. Let's put those dealers out of business! (Please note: this is not a commentary on legalization or medicinal uses, which are multifaceted issues.)