2014, a mixed bag

Well, this is the post I think about all year, in which I remember everything that happened over the course of the last twelve months.

And what an unusual year it has been, with graduation, jobs, trips (of both the vacation and injury variety), and more. I'll let the months speak for themselves.

January. I began my final semester at BYU, taking a fairly easy load. I worked at my BYU Studies internship for credit. I also helped out on some student journals, Schwa (linguistics) and Chiasm (neuroscience) for credit. I took beginning weight training and a weekly geology seminar. I took an unusual class called the Publishing Industry, which only met once a week and had guest speakers, some of them local authors like Brandon Mull and Brandon Sanderson. My most intensive class was French 322, Advanced French 2, which I took with my roommate Jordan. We had to deal with new apartment management, which led to us having our power cut off one night. We had to walk around with flashlights, which cast interesting shadows.

February. What a crazy month. I got a little annoyed with some Facebook fads:

After applying for a job with the Joseph Smith Papers in January, I went to Salt Lake and interviewed, but I didn't get the job. On Valentine's Day, I went home to visit. When I got home, my mom told me that my dad had fainted at work and had had to go to the ER. In celebration of the day, we got Papa Murphy's pizza, and my mom was carrying it downstairs when she misstepped on the bottom step and broke her leg. Well, she didn't just break it. She massacred it. I tried not to look, but I could tell that her foot was not at the angle it was supposed to be. One of her bones was shattered; the other was intact, but it detached from all the ligaments and broke through the skin. I had to clean up the blood. I still have not seen the gory picture my sister took. I don't need to. The following week, I got a call from Reid Neilson, the managing director of the Church History Department, who had received my resume from the JSP. He wanted to hire me as his editorial assistant intern, and I accepted. I therefore had to quit working for BYU Studies.

March. I began official work for Reid. I began to see the joys of trail running, and on March 14, I got my wisdom teeth out. They were already sticking out, so it was a very uneventful procedure. All I had to do was have some gauze for a few hours. Apparently the only image I have from the month of March is one where I was amused that Jeffrey R. Holland had more Facebook likes than the other Apostles.

April. On the day after Easter, construction began on my family's basement. They tore down the old wallpaper and the flimsy ceiling and installed new lights. I went to my commencement and convocation meetings. After commencement, as I walked home in my cap and gown, thinking how I didn't have creative graduation pictures, I had a crazy idea. I had never hiked to the Y before, and here I was graduated. So what if I had my graduation pictures taken from the Y?

I was officially no longer a student. But my boss allowed me to keep working remotely through the rest of the summer, so I didn't have to move yet. My sweet-bro roommate Chad was replaced by an even bigger sweet-bro, Jon, who was rarely around. My roommate Scott at this point had decided he was too good for us, so Jordan was really my only roommate. (He hiked the Y with me.)

May. At Mother's Day, my sister's husband left them. My dad had to get a pacemaker after his Valentine's Day fainting spell. But besides these unfortunate events, May was an outdoorsy month! I fell in love with The National Parks after seeing them at Provo's Rooftop Concert. I began running to Rock Canyon; there I could identify the Mineral Fork Tillite, Tintic Quartzite, and Maxfield Limestone. Memorial Day weekend, I went to Yellowstone National Park with my grandparents, aunts and cousins. We stayed in a nice little rented cabin, and we saw six bears. I made a little joke that stopping to take pictures of buffalo in Yellowstone is like taking pictures of cactuses in the desert, so we began calling buffalos cactuses.
The following weekend, my Provo ward went to Capitol Reef National Park. The other car in our caravan hit a deer on the way there, so they had to turn around. Capitol Reef is probably Utah's least famous national park, even though it may be its best.

June. At the beginning of the month, I went to another Rooftop Concert. On a rainy, unseasonably cold day, I drove up to Salt Lake for my cousin Quin's setting apart for a mission--he was the first person to go on a mission from that side of the family since I got home. That week my family headed to California to visit my nephews and their parents. We met them in Lassen Volcanic National Park. I only got one hilarious, unflattering picture of all three nephews at the same time:

We then went to Mount Shasta before going to my brother's apartment in the Bay Area. We visited several other places in California, including Big Basin Redwood State Park, Fitzgerald Marine Reserve's tidal pools, a Petrified Forest, and the Charles M. Schulz Museum. On all these trips, Franklin (6) and Nathaniel (4) enjoyed asking me questions that got continually more bizarre, culminating in "What was your favorite leaf when you were a little baby?" My dad, sister, and I drove home, leaving my mom and niece in California. I had to prepare for my apartment to get painted.

July. My nephews, niece, mom, and sister-in-law and her niece came in from California just in time to celebrate the Fourth of July. Did you see the above link to Reid Neilson's Wikipedia page? I made it in July. My apartment got all out of order from the painting, but I was gone from it a lot. I would go to my apartment on the weekends but spend time at home, visiting my nephews, during the week. On one occasion, I prevented Ya-ping's niece from going out in public wearing a shirt that said "Pervert." Nathaniel loved telling us about his hundreds of moms and dads, who lived in a variety of houses, including jello and candy houses. I was released from my calling as ward clerk, and on a weekend when the rest of my family went to Yellowstone without me (since there wasn't any more room in the vehicle), I climbed Mount Timpanogos with my Provo ward.

Being afraid of heights and not in as good of shape as I thought, I don't have a great need to hike Timp again. My nephews left the day after Pioneer Day, and I returned to Provo. But they were doing more renovations on our apartment, so Jordan and I had to stay in a hotel for a week (they paid for our stay there). The timing worked out nicely, because that was a time when I needed to work in BYU's Harold B. Lee Library.

August. On August 1, I went to a Cherie Call concert and my final Rooftop Concert. On August 2, we were allowed to move back in our apartment. There was an incredibly rainy day that caused a landslide in North Salt Lake, and I cooked up some fresh vegetables from the Jensen family (the first counselor in my Provo ward). My final fling in my Provo ward was a trip to our Bishop's cabin near Yellowstone. This trip was much more enjoyable than the one with my relatives because there was no bickering; we boated on a Montana lake and I went into the park twice (with different people). We attended the West Yellowstone ward. Then I had to leave Provo and the apartment where I had lived for more than two and a half years. I moved back home, and I got my own cubicle in the Church History Library, no longer working remotely. I began attending the North Park YSA Ward. At the end of the month, my parents and I took a trip up to Idaho to see where Lake Bonneville drained out.

September. On September 1, I went running by the North Salt Lake landslide (since it's not far from my house).

I also discovered the Wild Rose Trail for running, and I went to the Utah State Fair. I helped out with a service project for the North Park Ward (remodeling a house) the same week that my grandparents moved from Salt Lake to Centerville. We see them a lot more now that they are closer. At the end of the month, I turned 26 and therefore had to get health insurance.

October. I attended general conference in the Conference Center with my friend Emily, and also taught her third-graders about the Mesozoic Era. We also went to a Lower Lights concert. I viewed a partial solar eclipse and examined the springs in Warm Springs Park in northern Salt Lake (but not quite in North Salt Lake). My parents took me on a trip to Capitol Reef and Goblin Valley State Park, my first time visiting Goblin Valley.

I had a satisfying Halloween, listening to a Dracula audiobook and running on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail on a cool, spooky evening.

November. I had fun putting my Thanksgiving decorations out in the yard, even though I didn't really decorate for Thanksgiving. I didn't want to decorate because we weren't going to be home for Thanksgiving, since my parents and I were driving to California again to see my nephews for the holiday. It was an enjoyable trip, although I left my pumpkin pie dish (meaning a pie dish that looks like a pumpkin) there. The boys loved having us there, and Nathaniel especially seemed to like it. He loves climbing things, a hobby that made me a little nervous. 

We went to Six Flags and to the Point Reyes National Seashore.

December. I went to lots of Christmas events--first a work Christmas devotional/lunch, then four concerts: Cherie Call, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Lower Lights, and Piano Guys. We simply had a wonderful Christmastime on a snowy December 25, and I got some awesomely random Christmas gifts.

"The unicorn of the sea helps at home."

I got to hear President Henry B. Eyring speak twice in my ward. It was an unusually warm and dry December until Christmas. 

I hope 2015 has no broken bones or broken relationships, but I would be just fine with new jobs and more trips!

Happy New Year!

The Modern Yuletide Carols

This has been a month of Christmas concerts. Earlier in the month I went to a Cherie Call Christmas concert and to the Tabernacle broadcast of the MoTab's Christmas concert.

This week, I went to two more Christmas concerts--The Lower Lights and the Piano Guys.

This year, the Lower Lights did seven Christmas concerts, each with a special guest. One of their guests was the National Parks, who I grew to like this spring, so I got tickets for that show. I went with my mom, sister, and niece. (Another guest this week was Neon Trees, disguised as "The Christmas Trees," but even though I knew who they were, we already had tickets for Piano Guys. Between National Parks and Neon Trees, I prefer the Parks; but I don't know who I'd pick between Neon Trees and Piano Guys.)

I was a little disappointed, because the National Parks only sang three songs, and it was very stripped down. They got to sing later with the Lower Lights, and they were, after all, not the main act. I own two of the songs they sang. They sang a new Christmas song--I don't own it because it's only available on a Provo Christmas CD, and I didn't feel like getting it if I don't live in Provo anymore.

The Lower Lights, as always, were great. They sang their Christmas songs and some songs from their latest album. There were about twenty of them total. They always put on a good show. I don't like most of the vocals by the men of the group, especially not Ryan Tanner, but they have a bunch of super-talented male instrumentalists, such as Ryan Tilby and Ryan Shupe. (I just had to make sure that I wasn't confusing their names; there really are that many Ryans!) The three primary female soloists, however, are great. Sarah Sample is good, but a little generic. Debra Fotheringham has a powerful voice and amazing range. When I went to see Cherie Call's CD release concert in March, I was sad to see Debra had a ring on her finger. And the last singer is Cherie Call, who is of course my favorite, but she's only my favorite when she's singing her own songs.


The Lower Lights concert was held at the Masonic temple, which was an interesting, intimate place. It was a far cry from where the Piano Guys concert was, at the Energy Solutions Arena, formerly known as the Delta Center. (Why'd they have to go and make the name twice as long?) The Piano Guys tickets had been purchased months ago, because my aunt and cousin from Delta wanted to go and invited me and my mom as well. At the beginning of the show, I was thinking it just didn't work--all I could hear was a muffled cacaphony; that music just didn't work in such a huge area. But then the sound guy woke up and it got better.

I find it strange that the Piano Guys filled such a huge arena. First of all, I think the Piano Guys are extremely talented, and their mashups are incredible, but I think they're a little overrated. There are lots of piano and cello virtuosos, although most of them aren't as creative. I'm surprised that classical-ish music can fill a stadium. (They sold concessions for the concert, but the beer stands were closed.) Second, I think it's weird Jon Schmidt has done world tours, when he's practically a neighbor, just living in Bountiful. He performed at several South Davis Junior High assemblies when I was there. I think he was on the high council in my YSA stake a few years ago. And last year at a Cherie Call concert on Temple Square, he was sitting right behind us.

I am glad that Alex Boyé didn't make an appearance, because I find him annoying. I feel like the Church uses him a lot to show we are diverse--but it's not diversity if you use the same person over and over.

Last year, Jan Terri released a new album called No Rules, which included her own version of "Ave Maria." She recorded it as a dance number because she had a voice instructor tell her it couldn't be done. Her music video of the song debuted yesterday. I put it on Facebook briefly, but then I took it down. With everyone sharing thoughtful videos to #ShareGoodness and #SharetheGift, I thought it would be in poor taste. Although the messages of peace and love in the video are the essence of the gospel, the half-naked Gabriel and the Mary and Joseph dance party are a little blasphemous. Sacrilege aside, it was a typical hilarious Jan Terri video--but I think the ridiculousness in this one was deliberate, unlike the others. (I also don't approve of the language in the scene after the credits, but no one seems to bat an eye when Taylor Swift sings it on the radio.)

One thing that bugs me about Christmas songs is the tradition of singing "Silent Night" at the end of meetings. I guess it may be the most peaceful Christmas song, but by no means is it the best. I like "It Came upon the Midnight Clear" and several others more. Another recent tradition has been to close church meetings with "Joy to the World" on the piano and organ. "Joy to the World" may be the least interesting of the 14 Christmas songs in the hymnbook (with the exception of "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks," which nobody sings). Not to mention that the lyrics of "Joy to the World" are the least Christmassy Christmas lyrics ever.

I had to give one of the prayers in church today. That's a little nerve-wracking when your bishop's dad is the presiding authority, and your bishop's last name is Eyring.

One Christmas season! Ah ah ah. [Thunder]

What a joyous time of the year!

On Thursday this week, my mom and I went downtown to try for standby tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert. We didn't get tickets, but we got to watch the broadcast in the Tabernacle, which is just fine by me--in fact, the Tabernacle is more historic and iconic.

Since 2007, the Choir has released CD albums of their Christmas concert from the previous year. I have collected all of these, and some of them are wonderful. But their guests for 2011, 2012, and 2013 were all opera singers. But no one likes opera! The only people who like opera are people who were told they should like it. And last year's guest, Deborah Voigt, is the most opera-y, horrible of them all. I only got the CD to keep my collection complete. Her singing is terrible.

Therefore, I was delighted that this year's guest was not another opera singer. The singing guest was Santino Fontana, who was Prince Hans in Frozen. But he didn't sing any Frozen songs because he doesn't want to be remembered as a villain. I thought he was a little bit hammy, but he was good--especially compared to opera.

The main charm, however, was the Sesame Street characters. I was so glad that they didn't take themselves so seriously that they had such beloved characters. They had Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, Count Von Count, Cookie Monster, Grover, Elmo, Rosita, and Abby Cadabby (who was not a Sesame Street character when I was a kid). I was disappointed they didn't have Oscar the Grouch, but oh well. It was just so charming. My eye literally teared up a little because I was so happy the MoTab/Sesame Street mashup happened. I loved the Count helping with the organ solo of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

However, it was more of a performance than a concert, so I'm not sure how well it will work as a music CD next year. But I'm so glad I got to see it. I haven't been to one of their concerts since 2005, when they had another terrible opera singer, Renee Fleming. Of course, I'm not sure this year counts as getting to go, since I only watched it from the Tabernacle.

As I've been listening to Christmas music, I have noticed just how bad the lyrics to "The First Noel" are. Seriously. I have thought and thought about those lyrics, and have tried to grammatically parse them, but I just don't get it! Does it mean "The angels did say that the first Noel" or "The first Noel that the angels did say was to..." Regardless, it still doesn't make sense. The first Christmas was to shepherds? It makes zero. sense. And "a cold winter's night that was so deep"? What does that even mean? The tune is pretty and makes me feel Christmassy, but the lyrics are pure garbage. "Once in Royal David's City" and "It Came upon a Midnight Clear" have better words.

Yesterday, we finally got our artificial ten-foot tree up. The Christmas season got off to a slow start for us, since we were out of town for Thanksgiving. But yesterday I also put up a six-foot tree in our basement, a five-foot tree in my bedroom, and a three-foot pink tree in our TV room. It is fun to do those things.

Sometimes I worry I won't get all the things done for Christmas that I want. But this week I read a Christmas talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf in which he likens those things to Jenga--we have these ideas about all these things and where they should go, but when they aren't right, everything comes crashing down and we are disappointed. But we shouldn't let those things disappoint us, because that makes us miss the essence of Christmas.

Happy Holidays! (You see, I said that, and I still celebrate Christmas. If you got offended, you are a rotten person.)

Delight in fatness

It's that time of year for gaining weight. I gained a few pounds over Thanksgiving, since there were plenty of goodies and I didn't exercise and spent entire days riding in a car

There's sort of a double whammy when it comes to getting fat at this time of year. For one thing, there are plenty of goodies: pies, pumpkin spice, and candy corn at Thanksgiving; candy canes, gingerbread, and eggnog at Christmas; everything at New Year's. For another thing, it is difficult to exercise at this time of year: it may be icy and snowy; and if it's not icy and snowy, it's smoggy; and if it's dry and clear, then there are lots of seasonal obligations (this week I went to the Festival of Trees and a Cherie Call Christmas concert); and it gets dark early.

Actually, this week it has been dry and warm for December--warm enough that I wore a short-sleeved shirt to church and was able to wash the crabapples off my car. (One of the problems of parking under a tree.) A few weeks ago, I thought I would have my last trail run of the year, but I was actually able to do so again yesterday. Unfortunately, I felt the effects of Thanksgiving, although there may have been other factors at work. After less than fifteen minutes, I was quite exhausted and didn't think I would be able to finish my typical hour of running, so I had to stop and walk. But since I was walking, I figured I might as well use the opportunity to explore some new trails, ones that looked very steep. And they were very steep! Steep is not fun going up nor is it fun coming down. I'm not sure whether I'll go on the steep trails again, although they would probably be more beautiful and rewarding in October than in December. On one trail, I found a plastic water bottle just lying in the middle of the trail, and I couldn't just let it stay there, so I picked it up and took it home to recycle it. Yet another reason I don't believe in bottled water.

I had an unintended exercise this week. Work held a Christmas lunch/devotional on the 26th floor of the Church Office Building. The nature of my job is that I work by myself, so I really don't know many people, so it wasn't like I could go there with someone else. (Well, I could, but I'm very introverted.) In general I don't use elevators when I don't need to, but I didn't think I could do 26 floors of stairs, and I didn't want to get lost. So I got on one elevator, not knowing where I was supposed to go, and I realized the elevator only went to the 14th floor. Another rider told me I should take it to the 14th floor and then go find the elevators that go up. So when I got out on the 14th, I didn't know where the elevators were, but I found one. I think it might actually have been a freight elevator, and it was extremely slow. I got tired of waiting, so I just decided to take the stairs up the remaining twelve floors. It probably would have been faster than that elevator (but slower than the elevator I should have taken). When I came out of the stair door, a man was sitting there, and he asked, "Does that mean you climbed all the way up here?" I was a little ashamed to tell him, "No, I only climbed from the fourteenth floor." But he still said he was impressed. For dessert, there were brownies with Christmas sprinkles that I could eat--but what about the cookies with cranberries? After a quick look at Wikipedia on my phone, which said that cranberries generally sell at Christmastime, I decided that cranberry cookies counted as a seasonal dessert, and therefore I could eat them. (Although I probably shouldn't have, as I didn't realize how many brownies I was eating.)

(I think the cranberry thing is reasonable, as I see them for sale around Christmastime, and one of my earliest Christmas memories is stringing cranberries into a garland. The next Christmas I was disappointed that I couldn't find it in our decorations.)

I'm not sure I ever totally lost the weight I gained last Christmas. But now that I'm not in school anymore, I hope to be able to be better at that.

Thankful people

Most of the time, I just blog straightforwardly about what went on during the week. But sometimes I like to take a theme and thereby mention things that went on in the week. And since it was Thanksgiving, it only seems proper that my topic be thankfulness.

I am thankful that I live in Utah. People tend to hate on Utah, but it is a wonderful state. And it's not Nevada, which is just barren desert, as I got to see yet again this week as I rode through it with my parents on our way to California. Utah Territory originally included most of Nevada, but I'm glad that as it got whittled down, we lost Nevada. Utah has five national parks; Nevada only has one. Utah is the second driest state, but Nevada is the first. Utah has the largest lake this side of the Mississippi. The Utah haters can go elsewhere, but it would be better if they stuck around and realized what a great (or "pretty, great") state this is.

I am thankful that I have a good family. I look at other families, and I think, "Yeah, I'm glad I'm not in your family." We are a happy, functional family.

I am thankful that while I don't have any children of my own (and yet people in horrible dysfunctional families do have them, even though they are going to ruin their kids' lives), I get to be an uncle. I know my niece Allie, 11, appreciates having me around. But my nephews live in California, so I don't get to see them much. After this trip, I think they appreciate me too, although I don't think that's always been the case. I didn't get satisfactory pictures of all of them this trip, unfortunately.

Preston is 10 and he is a fun kid. I haven't heard him say this himself, but apparently he has said he wants to be like me, since I'm not married, and he got glasses similar to mine, and he broke his arm (his dad broke my arm twice).

Franklin is 6, but he is an old 6-year-old, since he will be 7 in January. He is a great kid, and both he and Preston have improved dramatically as far as behavior goes. He used to be known for having screaming fits, but I haven't heard him scream since this summer, and I haven't seen him have a full-on fit since December 30 last year. We went to Six Flags on Friday, and I went on a train ride with him. It was nice to have some one-on-one time with him, even though he's quiet like me.

Nathaniel is an old 4-year-old. When we showed up on Wednesday, he talked my ear off, telling me all about Super Smash Bros. He has some major speech problems (he voices many voiceless consonants, and all l's and r's and most clusters with those letters come out as w's), but I think he's gotten a little better since we saw him in July. For example, he now says "fifty" instead of "wifty."

He seemed most attached to me, so I got to spend some time with him, making sure he was safe climbing all over everything at the playground.

In all my time with him, I got to have some interesting conversations. I asked him what his full name was. He said, "Nathaniel Melville," and I said, "Or is it Nathaniel Qi-en Melville?" to which he responded, "That's a totally stupid name!" At one point I was wearing a large frisbee around my neck (to avoid holding it), and he told me my shadow looked like a clown. I asked him if he liked clowns, and he said, "No! Why would you ask that!?" This summer, he would talk about his 399 moms, so I asked him how many moms he had. His number has gone down: "Two, because Grandma is one of Daddy's moms." He does, however, still have some imagination, as he told me about calling his dad by his full name when his dad was a kid and he was a baby. At one point I was playing Clue with them, and he told me he could see through my cards. My favorite thing he said, however, was when we were coming back from Six Flags. Someone asked what time it was, so I said "7:05," pronounced "seven oh five." Qi-en said, "You mean seven zero five, because o is a letter."

I am thankful for my current flexible job and my boss, who let me take work off to go to California. I'm thankful for my chosen profession as an editor, because it doesn't require odd hours or stressful nights--at least it hasn't yet. I would hate to be a snowplow driver, as we saw driving through Nevada today, because then you have to be ready to work at any time.

I am thankful that I got to serve a mission. Today (November 30) is the five-year anniversary of my homecoming. (By homecoming, I mean the day I came home, not when I gave my talk.) It blows my mind that it's been that long. I have changed a lot in the last five years, but my mission served as a catalyst for the changes that have happened since the time it ended. It may very well be the most influential period of my life. The Christmas season makes me reflect back on times associated with it--my brief time in the MTC and my infant days in the field, the time spent in my favorite area with my favorite companion, and the month immediately after I got back, when I was incredibly awkward but trying to adjust and spending time with Preston and baby Franklin, he having been born while I was gone.

And finally, I am thankful for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. It's a simple holiday, so you don't have to stress too much. You have to make food and sometimes host guests, but you don't have to worry about buying presents, going to tons of parties, and things like that. And leftover turkey and cranberry sauce is very comforting. Sometimes the Christmas season gets me down, for reasons I can't usually explain, but Thanksgiving doesn't get me down.

Cursive

There have been heated debates in recent years about whether elementary students should learn to write cursive.

My opinion: Reading cursive may be a valuable tool, but I hope no one ever writes in it again.

Cursive can be extremely difficult to read. Nothing made this clearer than this week when I was indexing. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with indexing, it's a program through FamilySearch where you transcribe the information off of old records so that the information is searchable electronically. This week, the priority project was marriage records from the 1930s. These documents were written in cursive. And many of the names were names of immigrants, so they weren't names I was familiar with.

It can be practically impossible to read these records. Often, you will see one or two letters, but the rest of the word is just a series of bumps. These bumps could be any combination of u's, m's, or n's. And if the writer wasn't particularly careful, which happens more often than not, the bumps could also include v's, r's, i's, s's, w's, c's, and e's. How on earth are you supposed to guess that?

At work this week, I actually verified a transcription of a cursive record written by a teenage girl more than a hundred years ago. Her handwriting was very clear, and yet there were some places I couldn't read, particularly with Japanese terms. I was so happy when I tried multiple combinations of letters to see what she meant and finally found the Japanese word. But that took me a fair amount of work to figure out. The transcription had been typed up by a senior missionary. She, therefore, would have been more familiar with cursive than I am, since she would have grown up with it more than I have. And yet I found numerous places where she read it wrong--"That is clearly a capital L, not a capital S!" This summer, I did another transcription verification project, and there were times when I successfully deciphered words that others could not. Therefore, I think I'm fairly proficient at reading cursive. But then those indexing batches were just impossible. If I can't read them, who can?

I remember my teachers telling me to use cursive because I would use it the rest of my life. ERRT--wrong! I only use cursive to sign my name.

Now, I do like having the ability to read cursive. I can read old documents, including letters in old movies, back when they preferred to show you the letter rather than read it to you.

But as a writing system today, what use does it have? Cursive may be more elegant. If you are accustomed to using it, it may be faster than script, since you don't have to pick up your pen as much. But when there are series of bumps that are illegible, it might just as well not have been written.

I also think that there are more variations in writing in cursive. In script, each letter almost always looks the same. But there are multiple ways to form cursive letters. As I look over old documents, I even see how a letter may be formed different ways within the same sentence by the same person! Cursive is practically useless as a legible medium.

Cursive exists because it can be faster than script--but even cursive is not faster than typing. So cursive is going into obsolescence. And as it gets more and more obsolete, the only people who will need it are those who work with old records. And those people can learn to read it fairly fast.

It is nice to be able to type and write cursive and write script. But if there's only time for two of the forms, cursive has to go.

Sometimes when I read cursive, I think it's called cursive because it makes me want to curse.

Lifelong learning

One of the things I like about being an editor is always being able to learn new things. I learn about what I'm editing, of course, and sometimes I am asked to write little blurbs, which requires research and learning. I'm continually getting a new perspective.

In addition to direct learning, sometimes I will come across things that make me curious, and I will refer to Wikipedia to get a better grasp. I do this because there have been times when doing so has allowed me to correct things that I wouldn't have otherwise known.

These are some of the things that I learned this week:

• Utah's highest point, Kings Peak, is not as high as Hawaii's highest point, Mauna Kea. This really surprised me, as Hawaii is an island at sea level, while Utah is on a continental craton.
• Cannibalism used to be practiced in Fiji.
• I have heard about the Great Australian Bight, and I thought it was so called because it looks like a bite was taken out of the continent. But the etymologies of bight and bite are completely different, even though a bight looks like a bite.
• There are barracudas in the lakes at Yellowstone, and they can crawl out of the water and chase people. Oh wait, that was just a dream.

The Christmas assault on Thanksgiving continued this week. It didn't help matters that it was cold and snowy, which made people try to justify Christmas stuff. But I don't understand why people think snow equals Christmas, as I have seen it snow before Halloween and after Easter. (Still waiting for Fourth of July snow.)

As I announced on Facebook a few weeks ago, this year I have decided to include "Jingle Bells" in my Thanksgiving playlist, which is currently up to 73 songs. "Jingle Bells," so multiple sources tell me, was originally written for a Thanksgiving program. But then Christmas stole it--as if it didn't have enough songs already! I have kind of been questioning whether I should count "Jingle Bells" for Thanksgiving--after all, nearly every Christmas movie includes it, and the imagery of Thanksgiving usually includes autumn leaves and pumpkins, not snow and sleighs. But it is often snowy at Thanksgiving time. Thus, if we can change the idea of Thanksgiving to be one of a possibility of snow, and not purely harvest symbols, then we can try to curb the idea of snow meaning Christmas.

Yesterday, I figured it would be too muddy for a trail run, so I went back to my preferred running route of three years ago. Part of this was so that I could run past the Bountiful golf course, where I have often seen wild turkeys during the month of November. I wasn't disappointed yesterday. At first I saw some dark objects in some trees, which I guessed were turkeys. After I turned around, I saw some turkeys in a field right near where I had seen the perched objects, so I'm fairly confident they were in fact turkeys. Those were pretty far away. But then I heard some noises, and there was another flock of turkeys, much closer. It wasn't the gobble-gobble sound you hear on commercials, but it nevertheless made me so happy to hear them making noises and see them perched in trees. I had no idea turkeys perched in trees until I saw them flying up there for the night four years ago in Zion National Park.

I used to like winter more. But slipping and breaking my teeth has given me a severe hatred of ice.

Not very interesting

This week was fairly uneventful. If anything, today was perhaps the most interesting day.

This morning, I went to my home ward's sacrament meeting because it was the primary program. It was my niece's last program, and my mom is the primary president. Seven years ago, before I left on my mission, I was a nursery teacher, and it was fun to see all my old nursery kids grown up. That was so long ago.

Sometimes I get baby hungry. Mostly toddler hungry. I get sad that my youngest nephew will be five in January. I read a story this week about a drunkard mom who left her seven-year-old son shirtless in a car overnight and then lied to police when they asked her where he was. It really irks me that these moronic lowlife losers have children when a responsible, good person like me has none.

Today in my family history class, I was looking at my family history line and I discovered that Charlemagne is my 42nd great-grandfather. Now, I don't feel special out of knowing that, as it's not unique and there are lots of ordinary people in my line, but it amazes me that someone has done the work to figure all that out, and it amazes me to think that Charlemagne probably never considered that more than a thousand years after he died, he would have plain ordinary descendants living on a continent he didn't even know about! Where will my descendants be a thousand years from now? Will they be on the Moon or Mars? First I need to get some children before I start thinking about that...

That line was through my great-grandma, Grandma King. When I was born, there were three of my great-grandmothers who were still alive. Days after I turned three, Grandma Nada died. My only memory of her is seeing her in her casket at her funeral, but I remember that I knew who she was. Grandma King died when I was in sixth grade, and I visited her a few times in my life, so I remember her. I always remember getting birthday cards with $2 in them. Ironically, the only great-grandma I didn't meet was the one who lived the longest. Grandma Mary was apparently very mean, so mean that my dad vowed he'd never visit her again. And he kept that vow. In her late life, apparently, she had Alzheimer's. So between the meanness and the dementia, I never met her.

I'm not really decorating my house for Thanksgiving this year, even though it's my favorite holiday, because we won't be here for it. But this summer I bought a light-up turkey from eBay, and I figured since I recently got it, I might as well put it up; and if I was putting it up, I might as well put up the matching Pilgrims I had; and if I was going through the trouble of putting them out, I might as well put out the inflatable turkey as well. As far as outside decorations go, I usually do more for Thanksgiving than for any other holiday. It really is the best.

Yesterday I went to Winegar's grocery store. In years past, I have been dismayed by all their Christmas decorations in early November, nearly two months before Christmas. Yesterday I was happy to see that they didn't have their decorations up. (They were selling Christmas stuff, but I don't have a problem with that.) Instead of the decorations, they were playing Christmas music. Which may be even worse. Now, there are some Christmas activities that I think are fine before Thanksgiving--like putting up lights before it gets snowy, or buying Christmas gifts, or buying decorations so you'll be ready to put them up. But simply decorating or listening to Christmas music just because Halloween is over? Preposterous!

Today I made a pizza with crust made with pumpkin. It was decent, but not very pumpkin-y. One of these days I want to try my hand at cooking a raw pumpkin instead of using canned. Except that I tend to be lazy.

Maybe next week's post will be more interesting. Probably not.

Candy, pumpkins, witches awound

Sometimes holidays scare me, because I'm worried they'll just be lame days and I'll be disappointed. Thanksgiving rarely disappoints; the Fourth of July often disappoints. But Halloween this year was satisfactory.

On Monday, I went to a four-ward Halloween party. I wore the old Fred Flintstone costume we have, but I also took my brother's old stuffed woolly mammoth, and that seemed to be what people liked most. At this party, I bobbed for apples for the very first time. At first, I thought of the germ factor--but then I remembered my swimming class last fall, and I figured bobbing for apples is more sanitary than swimming, so I went ahead with it. They were keeping track of how fast people did it, and when I grabbed my apple, I was the fastest one up to that point, but others later blew me out of the water (no pun intended). I think the bobbing tradition is dying, but I'm glad to see it still exists.

On Tuesday, I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which has been a Halloween/Christmas staple since I was six years old. I have literally seen it at least fifty times, and yet I always notice new things. Here are some things that were new to me this time around:

• Lock has a devil tail that actually moves around, as though it's part of him and not a costume.
• I've always noticed Mrs. Claus moving around with a pie in the kitchen, but this time I realized she was packing Santa's lunchbox.
• A rat-like monster lives in a little dwelling near the automatic gate in Halloween Town.
• Oogie Boogie's lair is surrounded by basalt columns, and there are skeletons up high near his ceiling. 
•  There is a dragon or dinosaur skeleton on a wall outside of Jack's house.

On Wednesday, my family carved pumpkins. I tried to make spiral eyes, but they didn't work out.

On Thursday, when I was done with work, my car wouldn't start. It would turn the lights and things on, but it wouldn't turn over. Once in April it did that, but a few minutes later it worked, so I waited a few minutes and started it again. But it still didn't work. So I called my parents, and they came and jumped it, but it still didn't work. So we had to leave my car in the parking lot.

The next day, Halloween, I drove my mom's car to work, and my mom drove my dad's car, and my dad drove the car that belongs to us but used to belong to my sister. My mom was going to take care of getting my car towed on her way back from work. So I met her in the parking lot. She decided she would try to get the car started--and it worked! Not wanting to turn it off again, in case it didn't work again, she drove my car home, leaving my dad's in the parking lot. Confused yet?

I wore a Halloween tie and orange belt and skull socks to work. While I was working in Adobe InDesign, I was listening to an audiobook of Dracula. (When I started it a few weeks ago, I was hoping I would be able to finish it in the Halloween season, but nope.) As I came out of work and it was cloudy but warm, and I had just heard the Dracula story, it really felt like Halloween. I drove home in my mom's car, and when I got home, I decided I wanted to go running, since it would be my last chance for an evening run, with Daylight Savings Time ending. I think it was the first time I've ever gone running on Halloween. I put on my jack-o-lantern running shirt, and went on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, with the evening clouds and wind blowing. I had the trail all to myself, except for one cyclist coming the opposite direction. I literally had to put my arms out because it was so Halloweenishly glorious, and I loved standing in the wind and looking out over the Salt Lake Valley in Halloween twilight.

I drove home from the trailhead while singing along with the theme from Mad Monster Party?, with house windows reflecting a salmon-colored sunset and trick-or-treaters all over the place. It was a weirdly splendid experience. I was a little surprised with how light it was when the trick-or-treaters started. I imagined myself as an old geezer, saying, "In my day, we always waited until it was dark to go trick-or-treating." In my day, DST ended a week earlier. (If Utah gets rid of DST, then we will once again have dark trick-or-treating. Except that one option I hear is to put us on permanent DST, which would be idiotic. For one thing, it would always be dark when kids are going to school. For another, that would put us on permanent DST, Arizona on permanent Standard Time, and all the surrounding states changing every November and March. I would love to get rid of the time change, but only if we do the same thing Arizona is doing.)

The disappointing part of Halloween was having to run around doing tasks. First, I was sent to go buy candy, since we didn't have much. I had seen one group of trick-or-treaters just around the corner that would have decimated our supply. But it turns out I didn't need to buy candy, because we only had one group of four trick-or-treaters the entire night. Fortunately, I bought candy that can be used for Thanksgiving. After buying candy, my dad and I had to go get his car from my parking lot.

That evening, we went and visited my grandparents and then got pumpkin shakes.

Today, as I look out at the overcast sky, with the trees partly bare with orange and red leaves, I'm so glad it's my favorite month. At work this week, the Intranet website for employees did a little introductory bio about me. It included that I listen to Thanksgiving music, and some of the comments were intrigued by Thanksgiving music. My Thanksgiving playlist is currently up to 73 songs, and they make me feel so wonderful.

The wonders of nature

The natural world is pretty fantastically awesome.

It is almost Halloween, and while some trees are mostly bare, I'm so glad that so many are still green, because that means we still have several more weeks of changing leaves. We have a continual supply of colorful trees, instead of them all changing at once and leaving us destitute of the primary symbol of fall.

At work this week, I was reading (and writing) about the Warm Springs Bath House that the pioneers built in Salt Lake in the 1850s. And I thought, reading about it is all fine and dandy, but nothing beats a first-hand experience. It just so happens that the warm springs are on my way home, so I left the office a little early to take a field trip to Warm Springs Park. When I was a very young child (like 4), we would sometimes go to the children's museum on Beck Street, which was a bath house in the 1920s and which is vacant today. I walked around the park a bit, and I found the warm springs! They smelled like Yellowstone, and the water was what I would call tepid. They definitely would not serve as a satisfactory swimming or bathing place today. The springs themselves weren't that great, but it kind of blows my mind that there are warm springs in the middle of the city! Hot springs occur when groundwater, which is heated by the earth's temperature, reaches a fault, at which point it rapidly rises to the surface, fast enough that it still comes out warm. Since we live right at a fault, we get hot springs.

Our cat, Jenny, is a strange animal, and my dad always makes sarcastic comments about how he hates owning her, although he admits it's better than owning a dog. But recently, he has been appreciative of her, because apparently our neighbors have had troubles with rats, but we have not. Twice this week, I looked outside our side door, onto our little patio area, where there was a dead rat! For both rats, I took a shovel and scooped them up on the end of it. The tails hung off the edge of the shovel--except they weren't hanging, but rather sticking straight out. One of them even vibrated when being moved, like a spring would do. So that's what rigor mortis looks like. The second rat had its eyes all glazy and its fur a bit ruffled, its whiskers gleaming in the October sun.

On Thursday, I turned on the news in the morning and was reminded that there was a solar eclipse. So I grabbed my eclipse glasses from the last one, two and a half years ago. At the appointed time, I looked out the window near my cubicle with my glasses. A very old missionary was trying to view it through a pinhole, but I lent him my glasses. Then I invited two other senior missionaries (who are married to each other) to look at it. They hadn't known it was happening. So I was glad I was able to share the experience with them--and then they called their daughter to get their grandkids to see it too (apparently they had glasses), so my sharing caused multiple people to see it. I was surprised that I didn't hear very much about this eclipse. The only camera I had with me was my phone, but the picture isn't worth sharing. I came home early to try to show the end of it to my parents, but the clouds had gotten too thick.

On Thursday, I went to a Lower Lights concert at the Granite Stake Tabernacle. We didn't know which door to go in, so we went up this way where we walked right past the performers. I was wearing a Lower Lights t-shirt, which made them want to talk to me. I don't remember who I talked to, but I think one of them was Scott Wiley, who is really big in the local music scene. I wish I were more outgoing and had had a better conversation with them. Oh well. The concert, as always, was awesome. It was apparently a ward activity combined with a local Evangelical congregation. I didn't know we were "ward-crashing."

And since this week is Halloween, here's a little Halloween song. I spent way too much money on a used CD from eBay this summer because it was the only way I could get it (and the other songs from Mad Monster Party?).

Get Down Goblin Valley!

This week was dinosaurian in age, even though there weren't many dinosaurs.

This week, my friend Emily asked me to teach her small third-grade class about the Mesozoic. Of course, I love talking about that, so I agreed. I took some Triassic shell fossils and tried to give a very brief overview of the Mesozoic--having to check myself before sharing too much that they wouldn't understand. I drew a foot-long line and told them that if one inch equalled 1,000 years, then at half an inch would have been Columbus, and at a foot would be woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers--but I couldn't draw a line to the time the dinosaurs died, because that line would be over a mile long. That kind of blew their minds.

Then on Friday, my parents and I went down to Capitol Reef National Park. I'd never been there until August last year, and this was the third time I've been there. Capitol Reef is an underappreciated place. It was fairly busy because it was UEA weekend. On Friday, we took a small hike through Wingate Sandstone, which was deposited in the late Triassic and early Jurassic when there were lots of sand dunes in the area. In May, I went to Capitol Reef with my Provo ward, and we went on a little hike. At that time, I was sure we were in the Navajo Sandstone--but now I think it might have been Wingate. Both sandstone formations were deposited from sand dunes, which I didn't realize before, thus my confusion.

As usual, I fully acknowledge that my photographs are terrible, with a little cheapo camera where the settings are annoying to change, so the pictures are too dark. On our walk, we saw some Indian drawings.

 At another place, there were lots of pioneer writings, which they wrote as they drove through the canyon with wagons. It was hard to distinguish between pioneer writings and later writings. I was amused by one at the end. Someone made their own writing this year, and there was an accompanying sign saying the vandals had been found and were facing prosecution. With the nature of this one, my guess is they were just ignorant people. Sometimes, there are jerk people who write directly on top of Indian writings--those people should be punished by being required to have a tattoo that says "Moron," "Jerk," "Vandal," or something similar.

We stayed at a hotel just outside the park, and we were amused by the little playset by the parking lot. My dad advised me not to play on it.

The next day, we drove up a really bumpy road (in the 4WD Pathfinder my parents bought from my sister) to look out over the Waterpocket fold, a geologic monocline where the crust has folded the strata. There are flat strike valleys where easily eroded rocks (shale) have weathered down, while the more resistant rocks stick up. In the foreground of this picture, you can see red rocks of the Carmel Formation butting up against the whitish/yellow Navajo Sandstone. The Navajo is actually older, so it should be below the Carmel, but because of the folding, it is sideways and actually appears to be above it.

Then we drove up to Goblin Valley State Park, where I had never been before. It surprises me that it was only discovered in the 1920s. In the late Jurassic, an interior sea was in North America, and near the sea, sand was deposited as the Entrada Sandstone. Because of differential erosion (shale eroding more easily than sandstone) and physical weathering, the rock forms the hoodoo goblins.

Of course, I had to play "Get Down Goblin" on my phone.

But despite my time in the Triassic and Jurassic this week, it's time to get back to the Holocene Epoch of the Neogene Period of the Cenozoic Era.

Scattered thoughts and scattered leaves

This time of year always blows my mind. So many trees change their colors and look amazing! This week I went trail running a few times. The maple trees had started to change in September, but now the scrub oaks are changing too--some of the leaves look like they were spray-painted red.

On Friday, I had to visit Provo for work. If you're one of my Provo readers, don't feel bad that I didn't see you, because I wasn't there for very long. Anyway, I only spent two falls in Provo, and I loved both of them, although I think I liked 2012 better than 2013. Y Mountain is stunningly beautiful with all the red and orange trees covering it, with a few yellow aspens at the top. And I miss that scenery. However, both of those falls I would sometimes be a little sad only to see the trees from a distance. To actually be among those trees would require organizing a hike--something I don't ordinarily feel inclined to do, especially when I had fifteen credit hours. But now in NSL, I can run through or near them, and it only takes ten minutes to run, or five minutes to drive, to the trailhead.

When I was a kid, my dad used to go around singing a Halloween song: "Halloween, Halloween, lots of fun on Halloween! Black cats and ghosts, skeletons too, clowns and witches all say boo!" Then in kindergarten, a music teacher taught us the rest: "Pumpkins with eyes, shiny and bright, make us shiver with fright! [Or something like that.] Halloween, Halloween, we love Halloween!" Recently, I Googled that song--and I found out it was a Mormon song! The few hits I found for it were from Mormon mommy blogs. I found out it originated in The Children's Friend, so I looked for it and found it in the October 1959 issue.

As I was looking through 1950s editions of that magazine at the Church History Library, I found lots of Halloween images of ghosts, witches, skeletons, and so on. I even found a story about a village of black cats who went to school to learn how to ride witches' brooms. You would never find that kind of thing in that magazine's modern-day successor, The Friend. You might find a few images of jack-o-lanterns, but no witches. And I wondered why that is. Is it because The Friend is less secular than The Children's Friend was? Is it because some people might consider witches and ghosts to be satanic or occult? Or is it because they're trying to reach a more global audience, and Halloween doesn't always translate to other cultures? All these questions arrive from one little surprising fact--that our Mormon society has its own Halloween song floating among its culture, even though it has nothing to do with the religion.

Speaking of Mormons, I saw Meet the Mormons yesterday. It is currently at 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. And I understand why. Parts of it seemed hokey. I didn't care for the narrator. It was really just an extra-long "I'm a Mormon" video. But it did have its merits. I really liked the segment about the Candy Bomber--if it had been a documentary entirely about that story, it would have been a better movie. And the convert missionary mom, who was born to sixteen-year-old parents and became a mother herself at sixteen, had an inspiring story. The movie was originally meant for Temple Square--and I think that would have been a much more appropriate venue.

I think most people who will see this movie are Mormons, who already know what Mormons are like. Most people who really need to have their perceptions of Mormons challenged are those who (1) are unlikely to see it or (2) are so hateful of Mormons that nothing could sway their opinions. You know the ones I'm talking about--if President Monson got up and said, "Go hug your grandma today, and be kind to kittens," they would find fault. Overall, I'm just skeptical of how much of a difference the movie will make--but maybe I'll be proven wrong.

I made an interesting purchase this week. I really like local artist Cherie Call, and I knew she had some original songs on a project CD. I ordered it this week, Saga of the Sanpitch, a combination CD and art book about Sanpete County, which was originally called Sanpitch. Some parts of it seem like what you might buy from a museum gift shop, but overall I was impressed with the quality; there are lots of local folk musicians singing about the county's history. Mostly I'm impressed with the Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts's endeavor--the plan is to create one about each of Utah's twenty-nine counties, with two being made about Salt Lake County. That's a massive undertaking, though, and I'm not sure how they're going to do it. The music isn't available as downloads, and it's not sold in stores. I think the only place to order it is from their website. But I'm telling you all about it because I'm impressed with the idea and I don't know how they'll be able to do it all.

I could have written some more things today, but I didn't want to bore you with all the details.

A Is for Apple, B Is for Birthday, C Is for Conference

I feel like this wasn't an overly eventful week, even though it was.

In fact, I find myself most amused at the oddly specific dreams I had: a horrible second date with a girl named Kelli, a new intern at work named Nigel (neither of these people existing in real life), and Walmart restrooms containing rooms for religious rituals, such as infant baptisms.

Monday was my birthday, but it wasn't very eventful. We had cake, and I got some presents, but all of them need to be returned, either because they weren't what I wanted or they didn't fit. (Don't think I'm just picky; my mom says she knew her gifts were a gamble. My sister got me some awesome socks, including ones with dinosaur fossils, but they're too small.)

My birthday means that I'm 26, which means that I'm no longer on my parents' insurance. So with the help of an agent, I got set up for insurance. Earlier this year, in a political post, I said, "Obamacare is a good idea in theory, but in practice it has some major problems." I still feel this way. I'm glad that I've been able to be on my parents' insurance until now. But when we tried to get me set up, it wouldn't let us in. So then we had to call HealthCare.gov, and we were on the phone for like an hour--probably more--with two different people who didn't know what they were talking about. The next day we were able to talk to someone who knew what he was doing--but it still took longer than it would have if we had been able to get into the site.

Except for Monday, I worked from home this week, because all my tasks have been ones that didn't require being at the Church History Library. I was supposed to go to Provo, but they weren't ready, so it will probably be this week. (It had better be.) I'll have to be back in the office this week. But I learned that I can stay at my job until the end of the year--so now that I have an insurance plan set up, it makes my job hunt a little less urgent. Which is good.

It's really unusual to be excited about an apple, but I was. We have apricot and plum trees and grapevines that all yield fruit. We also have an apple tree, but it has never yielded good apples--they never got big or ripe. Our neighbor's tree hangs over into our yard, and their apples are decent, except they usually have worms. (I was thinking about how "worm" today means either the worms in the ground or larvae of various insects. It's still a very broad word. But Old English "wyrm" meant snake, dragon, and pus, and I think it meant worm as well, so the meaning has definitely narrowed a lot.) Yesterday, I actually found a good apple from our very own tree! It made me so happy. In more than twenty-three years living at this house, I don't think I've ever had an apple from that tree.

It was conference weekend, and I even got to attend the Sunday morning session. It's the first time I've attended conference there since I sang in the choir nine (!) years ago. Of course, there were protesters there telling us what we believe. I didn't realize how nice it would be to actually be there. But I was disappointed they didn't have any foreign speakers that session, because I wanted to see how the subtitles worked. (On TV, they just did voice-overs.) When they put a picture of President Hinckley (who was the prophet last time I was in the Conference Center) up on the screen, I noticed that he was being photobombed by Brother Brigham:

Also this week, I've been fasting from Facebook. So if you've been wondering where I was, that's why.

Scattered thoughts

On Monday this week, I had a tour of the Church History Library, where I work. No, I didn't get to see anything super special on my tour. (If you go into the library now, in the part open to the public, you can see displays with historic artifacts--original versions of different books of scripture, etc.) But I got to go in the freezer rooms that are kept around zero degrees to preserve photographs. I also learned that they store every available patriarchal blessing there. At one point in the tour, we watched a video clip with early Church leaders. At one of them, our tour guide said, "I'll be surprised if anyone knows this one." I said, "Isn't that James E. Talmage?" When he asked how I knew it, I said, "Because I minored in geology, and he was a geologist."

You may or may not know that I really like Lady Gaga. But I don't really like her morals, which means I have never bought a complete album of hers. (I have one song from The Fame, four from The Fame Monster, five from Born This Way, and three from Artpop.) That changed this week with the release of Cheek to Cheek, her collaboration with Tony Bennett. I like it because of Gaga but also because I'm amazed such a thing exists--a controversial pop-star singing with an old-school 88-year-old jazz singer! There seems to be a perception that she must do all her craziness to mask a lack of talent. This new album proves that's not true. Some songs, like "Poker Face" and "Telephone," disguise her voice. With Tony Bennett, Gaga is stripped down--and this time it's in a good way.

This week at work, I've had to look at various places in Utah. I had to look up a mountain called Barney Top. I should have known this would happen:

I also found a very interesting website where you can see how Utah's counties have changed through time. I'm not into history, but I find myself fascinated by Utah history. I like visiting small towns, because even though they have modern conveniences, they're still very much pioneer towns. My dad is from Fillmore, and I find myself interested in that heritage. As a linguist, I like noticing the Utah accent. My dad uses a few idiosyncrasies. For words like "with" and "teeth," he ends them with "f," as in "teef" and "wiff." They speak that way in some parts of England. I noticed that he pronounces "measure" like "may-sure" instead of "meh-sure"--I'm pretty sure his pronunciation is closer to what the original would have been. He drinks root beer with the "oo" sounding like that in "book." As a kid, before I knew anything about dialects, I remember once talking to my aunt Terri on the phone, who talked about visiting the "crick."

Now, for those of you who may think, "I'm glad I know the correct pronunciation"--stop it! Dialects are a natural occurrence. They are not inherently dumb or unintelligent. One person's pronunciation is no better than yours. Yes, yours.

As of tomorrow morning (the 29th), I will be 26. So I have someone coming over this week to help me with insurance, now that I can no longer be on my parents' plan, and my internship gives me no benefits.

Yesterday, with all the rain, I frivolously spent my time. I may come across as mature, but I'm really not, as I spent a good amount of time watching YouTube videos of people falling down and crashing and such. But then I realized, "This is such a waste of time, and it's not even that funny." And some of the videos are mildly inappropriate, and I remembered President Monson's talk from last April: "If you ever find yourself where you shouldn’t ought to be, get out!" I never view pornographic sites or go to bars or anything like that, but I realized that some YouTube videos or BuzzFeed articles are places where I shouldn't ought to be. "Get out!" is kind of my unofficial motto now.

Then today there was an early morning priesthood meeting and ward conference. At one point, they talked about finding balance in our life, and when they talked about being physically balanced, they talked about getting enough sleep. Ever the cynic, I couldn't help thinking, "Then why did you schedule such an early meeting?" I kind of had a bad attitude this morning. Anyway, in the various meetings today, they talked about priorities and making good use of our time. It really confirmed to me my decision to quit watching those dumb videos.

Except for cat videos. They're just too hilarious.

Not a worthwhile read

I didn't have an overly interesting week. It was just more working down at the Church History Library, running the Wild Rose Trail, looking for a new job, etc.

I did have some weird dreams. One involved magic wands and Professor Umbridge from the fifth Harry Potter book. In another, my sister-in-law Ya-ping had called my mom, telling her about a sinkhole in their parking lot, and it was saying my nephews' names. I wondered if there might be someone in it or if it was echoing; I was skeptical about it actually talking.

In another one, I had to fill in for a part in a junior high play. The first time, I learned my lines really fast--but the second time, there was a king in the play who hadn't been in the previous night's show, and I didn't know the lines. I had to wear a pink robe thing. My first line was, "Here is some water, your majesty," and although I hadn't been instructed to do so, I kneeled, since I was talking to a king. But I didn't know my next line, and I was hoping either to remember it or inconspicuously look at the paper with my lines on it--and while I was pondering this dilemma, I woke up.

Hmm. I  really don't know what else to write about. I'm feeling a bit cynical tonight. If I wrote more things, I may make people feel bad, cause a controversy, or make people worry about me and ask "Are you OK?" Which I am. So good night.

"Soon we shall all be fifty years older." The Professor

Usually on my blog, I write about things in real life.

But seeing as it's my blog, I have the liberty to write about whatever I want!

Those who know me know that I like 1960s sitcoms. I used to consider them classics, believing that they were superior to modern shows. Now I realize that that isn't the case. But I like them for their campiness, cleanliness, and culture. They tend to be really cheesy, and they are often so bad they're good--sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. They are definitely cleaner than today's shows--there is no swearing, and the few innuendos they have are still cleaner than a lot of today's kid shows. (That is not to say I completely agree with their morals; in 1960s shows, cigarettes are delicious, alcoholism and drunkenness are something to laugh at, and some episodes are mildly to moderately sexist or racist.) And I feel that when I watch them, I get just a little insight into what the world was like back when they said "groovy" and "terrific." (Although I realize that I don't get to see it all, as network censors kept out some of the grittier things. Also, I'm pretty sure there weren't any talking horses, mothers reincarnated as cars, flying nuns, or genie-owning astronauts--but with all the drugs going on, maybe people thought they existed.)

It just so happens that this month marks fifty years of four of the best: Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, The Munsters, and The Addams Family. (It's also fifty years of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., but I haven't seen much of that, and I think it was mainly successful because it was a spinoff of the ever-popular Andy Griffith Show.) So in honor of their anniversaries, I'm going to write a little about them!

*****

I often hear one thing repeated about Gilligan's Island, often verbatim: "If the Professor could make a radio out of a coconut, why couldn't he build a raft for them to sail off on?" Sometimes there are variations, but it generally is the same. But all the facts and arguments herein presented are wrong, as I will show.

First of all, the Professor never made a radio out of a coconut. They had a working radio. How else would they know what happened to all the visitors they had? What they needed was a transmitter, which Gilligan destroyed by dropping a pile of logs on it (after he had accidentally thrown it and the radio in the ocean and fish swallowed them).

Second, although coconuts were among the materials used for Professor's inventions, it wasn't the primary one. I would say bamboo was the primary material, although the lie detector used a gourd and the phonograph used the ship's wheel.

Additionally, it wasn't that they couldn't build a raft. In fact, the very first episode (not counting the very different pilot episode) was entitled Two on a Raft, and Skipper and Gilligan went out on a raft they had made. But Professor warned them that it wouldn't work, and he was right; waves and sharks destroyed their little raft.

In the third season, Professor determined that the currents were such that they could safely sail back on a raft. Unfortunately, Dr. Boris Balinkoff, a mad scientist (who had previously switched their bodies around), came on the island and gave them rings that transformed them into his obedient robots. He wanted to use the castaways to rob Fort Knox, so while he was experimenting on them, he didn't want them to leave, so he had them destroy the raft while they were in their robotic trances. By the time he left, the currents had changed again and it was no longer safe to travel on a raft.

Sometimes the argument is changed to "Why couldn't he fix a boat?" or "Why couldn't he build a boat?" In one early episode, they tried to fix the boat using a tree sap glue, since they couldn't make useful nails (their nails were either too brittle, too flexible, or too explosive). They coated the entire S.S. Minnow with the sap, but it didn't hold, so the entire boat fell apart. (It must have dissolved the nails or something.) In one episode, a robot visited the island, and when they asked it to build them a boat, it explained that to build a boat would require a huge amount of materials.

You see? It was a perfectly logical show. ;)

*****

Bewitched is one show that is very predictable and formulaic. A lot of the episodes follow this pattern: Endora is mad at Darrin for some reason, so she casts some nasty spell, which causes him a lot of embarrassment and causes his clients to not want to do business with him. Then Samantha demands that Endora take off the spell. She reluctantly does so, and they explain to Darrin's client that his odd behavior was to prove a point or demonstrate a new campaign.

But despite its predictability and its primitive special effects, I think Bewitched may just well be the best show to come out of the 1960s. I have had multiple roommates enjoy watching it with me, and it's in my top three favorites (the others being Gilligan's Island and Green Acres).

I'm not sure what made it so enjoyable. Maybe it's that we all wish we could solve problems by twitching our nose. Maybe it's that the premise was such that it could utilize a wide array of situations. Maybe it's the cast of characters--in addition to what I would consider the four main characters (Darrin, Samantha, Endora, and Larry Tate), there is a large array of regular characters: Tabitha, Adam, Serena, Uncle Arthur, Maurice, Phyllis and Frank Stevens, Louise Tate, Abner and Gladys Kravitz, Aunt Clara, Esmeralda, and I'm sure I'm missing some, not to mention some of those that appear in just a few episodes.

Bewitched ran for eight seasons and had a good run. The first season had kind of a heartwarming approach, but by the third and fourth seasons, it was full-on sitcom. The last three seasons, with the second Darrin, weren't as good, but they were still passable, even though they recycled earlier episodes.

I'm honestly surprised there have not been more efforts at spinoffs. There was a spinoff about Tabitha in the 70s, and there was the 2005 movie. Tabitha and Adam appeared in an episode of the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie (which, as far as I can tell, was a show to try to get spinoffs), but that was all. Japan did their own version of it. But there have been no genuine remakes, as the movie (which I have never seen) was just about remaking the show.

*****

When discussing The Munsters or The Addams Family, it seems that you can't talk about one without talking about the other. And they are very similar. Both premiered in September 1964. Both ran for two seasons, both of which were in black and white, even though other shows of the era were beginning to use color. Both were about strange families who lived in haunted-looking mansions and delighted in the macabre. Both were loosely based on preexisting material--The Munsters on Universal's monster movies, and The Addams Family on the drawings of Charles Addams. (And both are mentioned in Jan Terri's Halloween song, "Get Down Goblin"!)

But in many ways, the shows were very different. The Munsters were a typical suburban family, with a housekeeping mom, working dad, school-going kid--except that they were monsters. The Addamses, on the other hand, were just altogether ooky, but they were mostly human (Uncle Fester's electricity, Morticia's "smoking," and Cousin Itt's everything notwithstanding). The Munsters sometimes struggled with money, but the Addamses were filthy rich, keeping drawers full of money throughout their house.

Of both shows, I really think The Munsters was the superior show. The jokes were funnier, and because they were a normal family with a twist, the episodes had a lot of flexibility. The Addams Family was more gimmicky; most of the first season episodes follow the same formula, down to the point of reusing the exact same gags over and over. It got a little more creative in the second season, but The Munsters was the more enjoyable show.

Paradoxically, though, more people are probably familiar with The Addams Family because they have seen the movies or another incarnation of it. I haven't seen the movies because they don't fit my standards, but my understanding is that they were decent. As a kid I enjoyed The New Addams Family, even though I had never seen the original. There have also been two Addams Family cartoon series, and now there is a musical. The franchise lends itself well to remakes.

The Munsters, on the other hand, has not had as many remakes, and those that exist are not good. There was The Munsters Today in the late 1980s, and it was just awful. (It's on Hulu if you don't believe me.) The only one I've seen that I think worked was a pilot episode two years ago called Mockingbird Lane--and that was so different that pretty much only the character names were the same. I just think that the original actors, particularly Fred Gwynne (Herman) and Al Lewis (Grandpa), made their characters, so no one will be able to replace them. John Astin (Gomez) and Carolyn Jones (Morticia) were good, but they didn't define the characters, so remakes work for The Addams Family.

*****

Forgive my nerdiness for writing about a topic that so few will care about. At least now I know that people won't care.

Black widows and goatheads

I had a busy week this week.

My ward was helping out with a service project where we were helping to remodel a house for a needy family in a week. It didn't get done, but we did a lot of work.

I feel like I didn't help out as efficiently as I could have, but it's hard when there's a finite amount of tools and space and lots of people. On Tuesday, I helped dig a trench, but it was mostly already dug.

On Wednesday, we were moving a bunch of cinder blocks piled up next to a shed. Peter Moosman told me that there was a black widow on one, so I took a stick and smashed it. Then someone who had gloves went through each individual brick and cleared off the dirt and bugs. Apparently, they found a total of four black widows in the brick pile. There were lots of earwigs, which tend to freak people out. Earwigs don't bother me; mostly I find them funny, and I find people's reaction to them funny. (I also like their etymology; apparently the "ear" comes from people believing they go in people's ears, but the "wig" is not related to fake hair but comes from "wicga," an Old English word for bug.)

After we had moved the blocks, we proceeded to weed the parking strip. There were lots of goathead plants, and if you know me, you know my utter disdain for those plants. Their seeds ("goatheads") have two extremely sharp points, sometimes sharper than most needles, and the seeds are practically indestructible. And each plant creates several long vines that extend for several feet, producing dozens of sharp stars, each star consisting of five goatheads. Of course, the goatheads stick to skin, fur, tires, shoes, everything. Thus they easily reproduce, and they are totally diabolical.

Anyway, I was pulling some goatheads away from a little boulder (my June goathead walks have made me familiar with pulling up the plants). It was a really cool rock; it appeared to be a mix of sandstone and conglomerate. (The other boulders in the parking strip were quartzites [metamorphosed sandstone], so that would make sense.) Anyway, as I was pulling out the goatheads from the base of the rock, another black widow climbed up the rock and rested in a small nook on the rock. I didn't have gloves on, so I became quite nervous about pulling weeds! I borrowed a rake-thing and scared the spider out of its resting spot, then stepped on it once it landed on the ground. It almost got away.

Black widows and goatheads are similar in that they are both attractive but dangerous. Black widows are the prettiest spiders, with their shiny, spherical bodies--no hairy ugliness. Goatheads have cute little leaves with cute yellow flowers, and the seed clusters they produce are perfect five-pointed stars. But despite their attractiveness, they are both evil. Black widows can cause severe sickness (not that they always do), and vulnerable people can die! Goatheads have aggressive reproduction habits, as I already explained, and are very painful. I'd actually say they are worse than black widows. Their effects aren't worse, but they are more common and aggressive, since black widows just hide outside.

On Thursday, I feel I was most productive, shoveling a large pile of dirt that had to be moved with wheelbarrows. Then we had to move a big pile of bricks.

On Friday, I showed up late. I didn't feel terribly productive, so I went to the vacant lot behind the fence of the house--I heard conflicting stories about whether it was part of the property. It was a yard of nightmares, as it was a yard full of goatheads. I think there were more goatheads than any other weed. I spent a good couple of hours, pulling them up, because they don't deserve to exist. And yet I don't feel like I made much of a dent because there were so many. At some point, a friendly old man with a dog walked by and talked a little bit too me. I told him that these were the "worst plants ever," and he said, "I don't have any work pants, because I don't work." He apparently misheard worst plants for work pants.

On Saturday, I didn't work at the house, because instead I was helping my grandparents move. They were moving from their condo in Salt Lake to a smaller one in Centerville. They moved in that condo after they got home from their mission when I was 10. But even though they lived in the condo for a bigger portion of my life, I don't feel as great of an attachment to it as I did for their previous house, which had four levels, a swimming pool, a hot tub, a large deck, a floor that turned purple from the sun, wallpaper with old cars on it, a bathtub with feet, a pool table, an ice cream parlor, and more.

Their new condo is smaller than their old one, and the layout is just plain ridiculous. But they will be a lot closer to us now.

Welcome to September

Labor Day was rather low key this year, and it was a fairly enjoyable day. Part of enjoying it was knowing that it was the first day of September.

I decided to run by, and take pictures of, the landslide that occurred a month ago in North Salt Lake.

It was a big slide, but it wasn't nearly as big as the 1983 slide at Thistle, UT.

If you were to see only the house, you would never expect that it was only slumping ground that destroyed it.

It looks like it was a dollhouse made of cardboard.

I'm kind of hoping that this makes them reconsider future development in the area. NSL has had a bit of a history with landslides. Our house, fortunately, seems to be in a fairly secure place.

This week, I discovered North Salt Lake's Wild Rose Trail. I knew it existed, but this week I actually went on it. It is a super pleasant trail with great views and jaunts through little groves, and it only takes about twenty-five minutes to run the trail. There are already a lot of trees with their leaves turning red, and it's only going to get better. I'm so excited for fall!

Twice this week, I ran past a house where the pet dachshund came out and chased me. I know the family, and they're wonderful people, so I don't know why they would have a dog as annoying as a dachshund. I think the only reason that people like them is because of their looks--and they're not even cute, just interesting. But that wasn't the only dog encounter I had--yesterday, I was at my driveway when I noticed some Alaskan-looking dog chasing me. It didn't look vicious, but I didn't want to find out its motives, and I got in my house's door quicker than usual. These unleashed dogs reminded me why I don't like dogs. Now, for you dog people, I'm not saying dogs are bad. I'm just saying that I personally don't like them. I recognize that dogs can be good companions and that they serve important purposes. Except dachshunds. They're just useless.

I also went to the Utah State Fair with my family for a little bit, which I haven't been to since 1998. I got an overpriced foot-long corn dog, which was much more corn than dog.

I know there were football games this week. I don't care about those, but I like that it is the time of year for football. My work on Thursday did a "tailgate social" and I got a free lunch. I am so excited for cooler temperatures and changing leaves! The last four months of the year are better than the other eight.

Ain't it fun living in the real world?

Up to this point, I have been working remotely.

On Wednesday, I had to go back to Provo to get my retainer, and while I was there, I worked in the library. I looked up at Y Mountain and saw some of its trees already turned red, and I was once again sad not to be there. But I'm adjusting to my new life; that night, after I got back, I ran to the place of the North Salt Lake landslide. I want to go there again and take pictures. It was crazy. It looks like a cardboard dollhouse got ripped apart--but it's a real house, and it wasn't an earthquake or a wrecking ball that did it, but moving ground.

But on Thursday, I went and worked in the Church History Library east of the Conference Center. I got set up with my own cubicle, my own computer, my own work phone (although I still need to set up voicemail), and my own drawers and cupboards. I feel like a professional! It seems like a fun place, except that I have to dress up and I don't have very good dressy clothes. It will be weird working in an office, but I got a nice transition into it. Thursday just so happened to be the day of a semi-annual two-hour-long meeting in which they talked about what's going on in the Church History Department. Then on Friday, I only worked a few hours before I left with my parents.

We drove up to and through Idaho to see where Lake Bonneville drained. Around 14,500 years ago, a natural dam in southern Idaho broke, and the lake dropped three hundred feet in a period of eight weeks. The water gushed at 70 miles an hour, carving out the already existing Snake River Valley.

 This is where the water first started running out. I'm not sure how much of the valley was already carved out when the dam broke.

 This little hill is a Cambrian-age limestone outcrop. I know it's Cambrian (which started about 500 million years ago) because the geologic map on one of the signs said so, and I know it's limestone because it fizzed when I put hydrochloric acid on it. The stairs lead to a monument about a pioneer, not about Lake Bonneville.

The Snake River Plain in Southern Idaho is full of volcanic rocks. Usually we think of sedimentary rocks as having stratigraphic layers, but it happens with igneous rocks too, as there are different layers of basalt (cooled lava) and tuff (volcanic ash welded together). This was near a site where you can see ruts from the Oregon Trail.

 You see that light-colored layer at the bottom of where the bridge connects? If I understood correctly, that is the depth of the river before Lake Bonneville came through.

 

 Tomorrow is a new month. And a continuation of my new life.