Lead-Up to Easter

This will be another one of those posts where I just tell you what I did every day. I never said it would be interesting.

Back in October, I bought some new trail running shoes that happened to be Halloween colors. My Garmin app lets me track gear over time, so I input them into the app as "Halloween shoes 🎃." I'm quickly approaching four hundred miles, so I went up to Salt Lake Running Company in Centerville to get a new pair. They brought out the exact same model, even the same color, so I didn't even have to try them on. It was a quick in and out!

While I was up there, I went running on some of the Centerville trails for a change. There are lots of trails and dirt roads up there, so it's easy to get confused, and I ended up running on an ATV trail. I hate feeling like I'm somewhere I'm not supposed to be, but there weren't clear signs. I did a trail race up there back in 2017, so it was a little familiar, but still somewhat confusing.

Arrowleaf balsamroot!

On Tuesday after work, I stopped at the Other Side Thrift Boutique, where I bought a couple of nice shirts. It feels justifiable to buy "new" clothes from a thrift shop, since it's better for the environment and better for the wallet. (I still worry about closet space.) Only after I got home did I realize that one of the shirts perfectly matches a pair of socks I already had! 

I also like the 2010-era style. Back in 2010, I still somewhat felt that I wasn't allowed to wear stylish clothing

And I also made an Eastertime Trader Joe's run. Everyone loves Cadbury Mini Eggs, but I prefer the egglike Trader Joe's Candy Coated Dark Chocolate Almonds. 

glacier lilies from a Tuesday run

Our apple blossoms

In the evening, I filed my taxes. There are certainly other things I would rather do, but it's nice to have it done. 

Wednesday was a chilly day, and we realized that our furnace was out. So the rest of the week, my parents have been talking with various furnace companies to try to find a replacement. It was April Fools' Day, which isn't one of my canonized holidays, but I had to try the Crumbl everything bagel cookie, which was available for that day only. Various food companies advertise weird products for April Fools', and I was glad to see one of them actually do it for once. It was OK. 

Around Valentine's Day, I took my bike in for a tuneup, and Wednesday evening, I rode it for the first time since the tuneup. The brakes and the right shifting are a lot smoother, but the left shifting was worse, basically impossible on the uphill. That was frustrating.

And in the evening, my friend Sean invited me to a Passover dinner. I think we were careful to make sure we weren't doing an actual Jewish ritual, just having a Passover-inspired meal. (Recently, the Wayfare Slack channel had a discussion about doing Passover dinners like this; one person thought it was inappropriate, but the rest of us thought it was fine.) Sean made lamb, we had unleavened crackers and "bitter herbs" (greens), and I brought grape juice, including some of our own home-canned juice. (This winter, my dad hacked away at our grape vines, so I hope they grow back.) 

Thursday was snowy, which was refreshing! But cold, since the furnace was out. I took my bike back into the shop, and they couldn't re-create the issue on the rack (or whatever they call that thing they hang the bike on to do repairs). They made some adjustments and offered me some tips. In the evening, I swam with the swim team again.

On Friday, I biked to the top of the Summerwood neighborhood. The shifting was better that it had been on Friday, but it still wasn't ideal. It's just so frustrating that it doesn't work properly right after a tuneup. And I don't have the mechanical skills to fix it myself. But I'm always proud of myself when I can get to the top of the difficult ride. I climbed 1,000 feet in about 3 miles, for a total of 6.8 miles when you include the downhill.

On Saturday, we received our Easter baskets, and I'm glad my mom still gives us Easter candy even though there are no kids around anymore. 

And we also colored eggs. Back in 2010, my BYU FHE group introduced me to using colored crayons on eggs. (Before that, we only ever used the clear crayons that come with the dye kits.) And I really love being creative with crayons and dye. 

These are the five I colored.

Saturday evening, I had a mission reunion with my first mission president. I haven't had one with him since 2018, and I haven't been to one at all since 2019. Two of my companions were there, and there were some other missionaries I served around. I feel a little bad about people I've unfriended on Facebook over the years, but it feels weird to be friends with people you barely know.

I have complicated feelings about my mission, and missions in general, these days. I'm glad to see the Church placing a greater emphasis on service missions. I especially think tracting is dumb; even as a missionary, I called it "eating shirts," because it felt as futile as trying to eat a shirt. But it was an experience that helped me grow in so many important ways. (Except physically—I shrank instead!)

They had scrapbooks with all our transfer board pictures. This is mine!

One of the guys I talked to was embarrassed as he remembered what a weird kid he was. And I, myself, was weirder than most. But I pointed out that if we didn't look back and think we were weird, then it would mean we haven't been progressing since then—so it's a good thing we think we were weird. But I was seriously so, so disproportionately weird.

After the reunion, I stopped at the always quirky Brooker's Founding Flavors, where I had their carrot cake ice cream. 

Speaking of carrot cake, I made a chocolate carrot cake for our family Easter lunch. I made it last year after I had a dream about chocolate carrot cookies, and I loved it so much I wanted to make it again. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. 

My sister's cherry tree

It's been a decent Easter. I'm sad it's not as late as last year (April 20)—but next year it will be on March 28, which makes me sad. In 2038, it will be April 25, which is the latest it can ever be. That's a long time from now, and yet I remember 2014 Eastertime pretty well.

Out like a lamb

I can't say I have anything that interesting or profound to say this week, so if you're looking for a grand update, you'll be disappointed.

On Monday I had to go to the dentist for the periodontist to look at my gums. I'm going to have a gum graft in two weeks, and I'm so annoyed that my insurance only pays a small percentage of it. Why do we even pay insurance!? I'm glad I'm in a space where I can pay thousands of dollars and don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from.

The periodontist said periodontal disease can be caused from overbrushing, but it can also be a result of braces. So it's good to know it's not because of a moral failing on my part. 

On Tuesday, I believe I saw the first wildflowers of the season, glacier lilies and yellowbells. These predictably show up every year in late March and early April. 

Three years ago, I bought Peeps protein powder (both marshmallow and chocolate marshmallow), because I think it's funny. But I still have it three years later because it is absolutely terrible. I don't think it's the Peeps flavoring, it's the protein powder itself. Sometimes I've incorporated it into the topping of cherry crisp, because it's entirely unpleasant on its own.

On Wednesday, I received my new CD of the soundtracks for It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown's All Stars! Since 2022, they've been releasing complete recordings of these soundtracks ever since they found the originals. But they haven't found the original for All Stars, so it's only eight minutes long—hence tagging it along with Arbor Day. I have wanted this soundtrack for years, because what else are you going to listen to on Arbor Day (besides this song)? And I've always enjoyed the special, because it's an obscure holiday, but it's also an entertaining special with some good jokes and gags.

I did some math and realized that the CD arrived exactly twenty-one years to the day after I first watched It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, which I got in my Easter basket on Good Friday (as a bonus feature on It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown). And that was the same day that my niece (twenty months old at the time) came into my bedroom with my nephew's toy with a picture of a dog on it, and she said "Woof!" for the first time.

On Thursday, I woke up early, which gave me lots of time in the evening for a 7.5-mile run on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail between Summerwood and Woodbriar. The last time I did this stretch of the trail was in September 2021, because it's really kind of boring. Most of it is level, and it all looks the same. And at this time of year, it's mostly brown, with a few wildflowers here and there.

It annoys me that this sticker has Delicate Arch on the wrong side of the state

The first arrowleaf balsamroot of the season! I've never seen it blooming in March.

Then on Saturday afternoon, I ran up North Canyon to Rudy's Flat. Last week it was too snowy still, but this time there were only a few snowy patches. I had never been there in March before, and it was so sad and concerning to see the lack of snow. On the way down, I went on the new Mahogany Ridge Trail, which made it nine miles total, but I had to walk the last two. The last time I made it to Rudy's Flat was on Boxing Day.

At the end of my run, I was astonished to find salt deposits on my hat! (From the sweat.)

Today I sang in my ward choir for our Palm Sunday / Easter service. Our choir director has grand ambitions that I think are a little unrealistic for our little choir, but I think it went fine. I really like efforts to make Easter more like Christmas. At Christmas, the secular songs and the Nativity songs are firmly entertwined with each other, and all the songs together make it feel nice and Christmassy. I do the same thing with Easter, mixing the secular and sacred. And I've been listening to the Easter songs long enough that they have a similar effect. But there aren't as many Easter songs. 

Yeah, I don't know what else to say. Have a good week! 

Sweltering Spring

Hi. I put this picture at the top of the blog because otherwise, the Facebook thumbnail was a closeup of my crotch.

Sometime within the last five years or so, I learned that green carnations were once a thing for St. Patrick's Day. I don't remember how I learned it, but I did. And I also learned that green carnations were associated with Oscar Wilde, and consequently they became associated with queer culture.

On Monday, I was looking at the Oxford English Dictionary entry for "leprechaun"—as one does—and came across this quote from March 1960: "Gifts and refreshments were provided for the audience, with green carnations, bowties and traditional leprechaun hats." That reminded me of green carnations, so I wanted to buy one. So I Googled and was surprised to see that Smith's sold them! So Monday evening, I went and bought a bundle of three carnations for the next day.

I only go into the office once a week, and this year St. Patrick's Day happened to line up with my day in the office. So I wore my green shoes, green socks with Irish flags, green pants, green belt, and green shamrock shirt. And I also wore my green carnation, but no one said anything about it, and it was a little tricky to keep it upright.

Many people complimented my outfit at staff meeting. I have earned a reputation among my colleagues as a fashionable person, which is a bit strange, because I don't think of myself as being that fashionable. Our director said I was very "on brand," but I don't know whether she meant "on brand" for the holiday or "on brand" for me. 

The director was wearing snake earrings but no green, and one coworker told her those were the snakes that Saint Patrick drove out of Ireland. Our assistant director got up and asked people to raise their hands if they weren't wearing green. Then he held up a pair of salad tongs and said they were "HR pinchers."

We have a lot of boxes of old materials to go through before we move into a new office space in June, so my time in the office was spent looking through old papers from the '90s and early '00s. There are some interesting finds, such as a handwritten letter cancelling the subscription to Utah Historical Quarterly because the subscriber "has gone to be with the Lord." My boss let me play my St. Patrick's Day playlist while we went through the boxes.

For dinner, we had corned beef and cabbage (I would say I made it, but my mom cut most of the vegetables for me) and Irish soda bread from Smith's, which was the sweetest soda bread I've ever had. (I didn't have time to make my own this year.)

And my mom also made these potato candies. My all-time favorite candy is the See's St. Patrick's Day Potato, which I didn't get this year, and it is a nougat candy. But apparently the more traditional Philadelphia candy is one with a coconut filling and a cinnamon coating, and I ordered some from Amazon last year. This kind that my mom made is more like the Philadelphia version, with a coconut and cream cheese filling, coated in cinnamon.

After I finished working, I ran on the Wild Rose Trail in green shorts, green shirt, and leprechaun hat. (Unlike the quotation above, by "leprechaun hat" I mean a hat with leprechauns, not a hat for leprechauns.)

And I spent the evening watching The Secret of Kells, which has grown on me quite a bit, and relevant sitcom episodes.

The next day I got to wear my carnation again, because my friend Connell invited me to a screening of the silent film Salomé from 1923, held at the Utah Film Center. It was based on an Oscar Wilde play (hence why I wore the carnation), which in turn was based on the New Testament story of Salome asking for the head of John the Baptist. (Back in 2012, I made this Facebook post: "My semantics textbook gives 'Herod gave Salome a nice present' as an example. I don't know about you, but I hardly consider a head a 'nice present'...") It was an interesting cultural experience. I can't say the entertainment value holds up a hundred years later, as it was very slow paced. I think it's the first time I've watched a silent film all the way through. 

Then on Thursday evening, I attended an event at the Church History Museum for practitioners of public history to talk about their projects about the Mormon Trail. Most, maybe all, of the panelists, were not professional historians. It was just an OK evening. One of the participants was musician Clive Romney, who I've followed for a time. More than a decade ago, he was leading a project with other musicians to release an album about every county in Utah. They only released three, the last one back in 2015, so I asked if there will be any more. He told me he's devoting all his time to trying to save the Great Salt Lake, specifically by writing a play (or something like that) for children to perform.

As I was leaving the Church History Museum, There was a pickup truck with the tailgate down, and it was full of a chair and lots of books. One of the books fell out. The truck drove off before I could catch it, but I picked up the book from the road; it was a boring book from 1920 about court cases. I'll probably just recycle it. (If the truck driver cared about the books, he should have secured them better.)

Yesterday I went to the North Canyon Trailhead. Fortunately, the main North Canyon trail was still too snowy to go on, so I went up to Cave Peak instead. I say "fortunately" because at this point, we want as much snow to linger as possible. 

This is the main trail, and I turned around here to go up to Cave Peak instead

Guys, I am so sad and worried about our winters. We had a snowless Christmas, New Year's, and Valentine's. Now Eastertime is more like Memorial Day. And I remember our late snow in 2021, and our record-shattering September 2022. Will we ever have normal Christmases and Easters again? We have a president and his uneducated followers claiming that climate change is a hoax, denying all the expertise of scientists, just as they do with vaccines and diseases.

Meanwhile, I'm over here limiting my plastic use, eating less meat, driving an efficient vehicle, voting for candidates who care about the planet, taking short showers, using our own cherries and apples, pulling up invasive plants, and recycling. And my efforts just feel so futile. I'm worried about our seasons and our lake, and yet I feel like I'm already doing everything in my power.

Anyway. I'm happy for Eastertime, and I was able to get up all the Easter decorations.

I got this bunny four years ago at the start of my existential crisis

I got the deviled egg / salt at Target last year because I loved it, so I had to get the umbrella/cloud and carrot / watering bucket yesterday

I reminisce about how wonderful last Eastertime was: nice and long, trying lots of Cadbury Mini Egg cookies, seasonal ice creams, cherry-blossom soap, singing "Were You There?" as a partial solo, making chocolate carrot cake, new Easter musical recordings, more appropriate weather. I don't expect this year to be quite as charming, but that's OK.