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?).
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