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.