Sunday, August 31, 2014

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.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Farewell, Provo

Well, another era of my life has come to an end. I left Provo this week.

Back in fall of 2010 and 2011, I left Provo and moved home, but those were temporary moves. I knew I would be returning to Provo in four months. This time, however, I'm at home indefinitely.

I need to find a full-time job, as my current internship won't last much longer and I turn 26 next month and will need to get insurance. I'm talking with my boss this week about some of my future work plans, now that I'm out of Provo.

It is a different environment being a single Mormon up here than it is down at BYU. Down there, I lived in a complex surrounded by people in my same position. I walked to church on campus, where a million wards met simultaneously. Here, I have to drive to church (walking is basically out of the question) and my ward consists of people from all over Bountiful and North Salt Lake. We meet in a different building now than we did last time I was in the ward. In fact, for Sunday School we combine with another YSA ward. There were a fair amount of people I know, and I was able to see two of my former roommates, Zach Zimmerman and Chase Elwood. There are a lot of younger people (today's speakers were born in 1993. I remember 1993.), but there are older ones as well.

I know there will be good things about living up here, but I will miss Provo: Easier access to socializing. Superior running routes. College-town atmosphere.

I was thinking about the unofficial bucket lists that go with living in Provo/Utah County and the things that I did and didn't do.

I did attend local concerts, hike to the Y, eat at J-Dawgs, graduate from BYU, attend the Llama Festival, run the Freedom Run and watch Stadium of Fire fireworks, and hike Timp.

I did not attend a BYU football or basketball game (BOR-ing), hike to the top of Y Mountain, visit Timp cave, slide in blue Homecoming foam, go to the Festival of Colors, visit Utah Lake, attend Stadium of Fire, or go to Bridal Veil Falls.

I would love to return to Provo. But I don't find that extremely likely--and if I did, would I still like it? Or would I feel like the old graduated person who doesn't fit in because my life is different?

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Yellowstone round 2

I have been to Yellowstone several times, and this weekend I was able to visit it yet again. I think it was the seventh time in my life, and it was the second time this year.

I have a fantastic bishop, and in addition to all his other awesomeness, he owns a cabin/lodge in West Yellowstone. On a lake. And since he is so generous, he invited us to go up there to visit.

It was awesome. His cabin is really nice, and it even has a large swing in it--like a playground swing but much bigger. We drove up on Friday and had fun playing games there. On Friday night, we went out to his dock and looked at the stars and the Milky Way and saw a few meteors. Then the moon rose and looked amazing.

On Saturday, we went to another park of the lake. I kayaked over to an island in the lake and some others did too. We saw lots of birds, including a pelican. While others were out boating, I did some backstroking, but it was a little cold.

While others stayed at the cabin playing games and playing on the water, I went with one group to go into Yellowstone. Board/card games and boats are fun, but those are everywhere. Yellowstone is not. We saw the paint pots, Prismatic Springs, and Old Faithful, getting there just in time for it to go off. I bought a really nice book about all of the national parks. (My bucket list is to visit all of America's national parks. Only forty-four more to go.)

Then on Sunday we went to sacrament meeting in the West Yellowstone Ward, which is mostly a tourist ward.

After church, the other groups went into Yellowstone, but the previous group went home. So I was the only one in our group to go twice this weekend. We went to Old Faithful again, and though I have been there every time I've been to Yellowstone (I think), this was the first time we walked around and looked at the other geysers. I actually liked doing that, and it wasn't long or hard. We were especially impressed with Castle Geyser, but I like to pretend it was called Unlawful to Leave Walkway Geyser.
 After Old Faithful, I told my car (well, the people in my car) (well, the people in the car I rode in, which wasn't mine) that they should see the Fountain Paint Pots, since they hadn't been to Yellowstone. So off we went. We also saw the Red Spouter, which has only been there since a 1959 earthquake. It just so happened to be its birthday!



It was fun to be there with people who haven't been before and have them see how perfectly amazing Yellowstone is.

Then we drove back down to Utah. It's probably the last time I'll interact with these people, as I'm leaving Provo this week. It was a perfect way to end my four-and-a-half-year sojourn in Provo.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Only in August

Despite my former disdain for the month, August is actually a decent time of the year. While 90 degree weather isn't great, August has the best thunderstorms, which may be the best kind of weather there is.

Last Monday, some of our ward went to the home of the Jensens, Brother Jensen being our first counselor. The Jensens are the most generous people I know, and Sister Jensen gave us a bunch of vegetables from their garden. Not being a cook, I had to try to figure out what to do with them. I did manage to use most of them and make them edible, but a real cook would still do a better job. I don't eat enough vegetables, so it was good to have them and have to use them. Yesterday I cooked the beets. I think the most interesting thing about beets is the way they turn everything red or magenta. And I mean everything.

This weekend was my roommate Jordan's birthday, so on Friday he did a night-time Capture the Flag game with glowsticks. I can play that one because it doesn't involve a ball. It was kind of pleasant playing out under the moon, even though my team lost. The last time I played Capture the Flag, I fainted that night after running. But I didn't faint this time.

After we moved back into our apartment last week, I realized that the storage space is greatly diminished. But this week I learned that the kitchen storage space is diminished as well. I think the cupboards are shallower. The cupboard above the sink is half as tall as the old one. Worst of all, the bottom cupboards don't really have shelves. They have shelves that only take up half of the depth of the cupboard. And one of the cupboards just has a giant lazy Susan in it. The amount of wasted space in the kitchen now is crazy. Like I said last week, the renovations make me glad to be moving out. Because there was nothing wrong with the old counter and cupboards, and these are just poorly designed.

I've been wasting some of my free time by watching Hulu. This week I finished Green Acres, which was a great show, but the last couple of seasons were sorely lacking. Then with my interest in cheesy, poor-quality but clean 1960s sitcoms, I began watching another show, My Mother the Car, which has sometimes been rated as the worst TV show ever. I'm sure there are worse shows, and this one is watchable, but it's definitely a so-bad-it's-good thing. The premise is that David Crabtree's mother is reincarnated as a car. But she only talks to him, and even his wife doesn't believe it. Of the three episodes I've watched so far, there have been some severe leaps in logic that make you think, "How did that work?" In one episode, his mother gets drunk from antifreeze and drives erratically, so then he puts coffee and tomato juice in the engine, first to relieve the drunkenness and then to relieve the hangover. I'm pretty sure my interest in 1960s sitcoms stems from the same root that makes me like Jan Terri.

Our washing machine quit working this week. It's always something.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

The staycation

Even though I stayed in Provo and worked this week, it kind of had a vacation vibe to it, because I was staying in a hotel.

They've been remodeling our apartment, so they put us up in a hotel. They did that earlier this month when they painted the walls, but I just went home at that time (before the Fourth of July). This week, they installed new cupboards and counters in the kitchen and new carpet in the living room and bedrooms.

My roommate Jordan and I each got a two-bed room to ourselves, because our roommates just use our apartment as a storage unit. Being in a hotel, I was kind of in vacation mode, and I didn't go to bed as early as I should have and I tried to find interesting things to watch on TV. It was the Super 8 Motel across the street from the BYU track, where I stayed for UEA/Y Weekend almost eight years ago. It wasn't the nicest hotel, but it was all right. I ate out more than usual this week, but we don't have to pay August rent because of all this, and the hotel provided continental "break first."
I also went swimming in the little pool one night.

Even without the hotel, this was a bit of an unusual week. Usually I work from my apartment, but this week I worked in the library because I needed to check some sources for a project. This is the first time I've done a source check for my current job, but I did it a lot for BYU Studies. It's been a little awkward, though, trying to communicate with my boss, because I've been working in the religion section of the library, where there is zero phone reception, and even if there was reception, it's not one of the "No shh" zones. While working this week, I discovered that Snape is actually a real name.





In the library, I saw one of those sticky spider traps. There was a spider stuck on it, with all its little babies stuck to the paper around it. There is a line where the sticky part ends, so I can only surmise that a lot of baby spiders crawled over their stuck brothers and sisters and are lurking all over the library now.

I also had to go to the dentist a couple of times. Ever since I landed on my teeth a year and a half ago, my retainer hasn't fit me, so I went to get a new one. They tried to reshape my old nine-year-old Snoopy retainer, but they couldn't, so I have to get a new one.

Friday was an evening of free concerts. First I went to see Cherie Call at the Central Utah Gardens, a venue I saw her at last summer. I think this is the ninth time I've seen her, so I know all her stories and her jokes. But she did sing one song I haven't heard her sing live, "Restless Soul," because one of her accompanying musicians worked with her on her first album. At the end of the show (for the encore), she asked for requests. Some people asked for "Gifts" from her Christmas album of the same name, and she obliged, which was a little weird. (My favorite song of hers, "More than Enough," is one I've never heard her sing live, so it would probably throw her for a loop to request it.)

Immediately after that, I went over to the Rooftop Concert, the eighth one I've been to. They usually have folk, rock, and pop, and this was their first hip-hop show (I'm not sure if they've had a country show). Hip-hop is a very interesting genre. Some of it's catchy, some of it's just annoying. In mainstream music, you would have a hard time finding a country album with an "Explicit" label, but you'd have a hard time finding a hip-hop/rap album without an "Explicit" label. I missed the first act at the concert. The second one was called House of Lewis, and I didn't really like them. Their music was just remixes of other things, and they just did their white-dude rapping over it. It was probably the most inappropriate stuff I've heard at a Rooftop Concert, although I don't think it would garner an "Explicit" label. The last group, Can't Stop Won't Stop, was better, both in content and talent. It kind of sounded like 70s music with rapping. I debated getting their CD, but I decided against it because I would probably get tired of it fast. I must say that I think hip-hop has some of the most creative lyrics. That doesn't necessarily mean it's good, but it's certainly creative.

Then on Saturday, we returned to our apartment. Not only did they change the carpet and cupboards, they got rid of our dressers, desks, and bed frames. I feel a little uncomfortable that they took all of the stuff out of my desk and dresser drawers while we were gone. Our new beds have drawers in the bottom, so that's apparently the dresser replacement. The new desks don't have a shelf like my old one did (although I was the only one who had a desk with a shelf). Thus we went from having five wide dresser drawers and space under our bed (the beds were propped up with cinder blocks) to four narrower drawers and no space under the bed. I've been feeling a little sad about moving out, because I've lived in this apartment for more than two and a half years, this complex/ward for more than three and a half years, and Provo for more than four and a half years (not counting the two fall semesters I took off). But the sudden decrease in space makes me a little glad to be moving out. It's a good thing I already moved a lot of my stuff home.

My roommate Jordan is pretty annoyed with the situation. He went to renew his contract, but they had mistakenly sold all of them in the apartment without asking us. He asked them if he could stay, but they wouldn't let him. So we have to deal with all the renovations before moving out.

Last night I ran up to Rock Canyon again. People who run on tracks don't know what they're missing, because you see all sorts of interesting things. Last night I saw a tree with half of its leaves already yellow, and when I was coming back, a little boy was driving his toddler sister in a toy car, and she waved at me as I walked past.

August means that my time in Provo is almost up, so I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.