Sunday, December 27, 2015

The end of another year

I look forward to this post all year, the one where I remember what I've doing during the past twelve months. 2015 has been a pretty good year.

January. It was a warm, dry January. It was kind of depressing, actually. I did research for my boss, Reid Neilson, and sometimes research was easier than at other times.
I began spending my Thursday evenings by helping tutor some Tongan high school kids in Salt Lake. One Thursday night after going to tutoring, I got a call from Reid Neilson--he wanted me to look over some press releases, because the next day it was announced that he had been appointed as a new Assistant Church Historian.

February. Another warm, dry month. I saw Woods Cross High's production of Mary Poppins on February 6, and the next day the wind blew our recycling all over the neighborhood, the same day I went to an awkward concert of the Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum. On Valentine's Day, my family went to Promontory Point.

March. March wasn't a really eventful month. My laptop got knocked to the floor and the charger broke. I began working as a contingent (contract) employee, but I was doing the same things I was doing as an intern. But with better pay and benefits. Apparently it was so uneventful that I don't have any pictures to share, so instead I'll post this music video that came out in March.

April. I got a new laptop to replace my broken one. On Easter I made a picture with what I imagine  Isaiah was describing when he talked about "wizards that peep and mutter":
 I went to Thanksgiving Point for a tulip festival. I had some fun experiences with trail running: I discovered beautiful North Canyon on Arbor Day, and one night I got very lost.

May. It didn't snow like I was hoping, but we did have an impressive hailstorm.
I was given a calling as a stake family history director, so I had to begin going to the Bountiful Heights Family History Center on Saturdays. My family went down to Cedar City and Millard County for a cousin's baby shower and a cousin's farewell. On Memorial Day, I ran (mostly) to Ensign Peak and nearly stepped on a snake.

June. On June 1, I had an impromptu trail run up to Elephant Rock in Mueller Park, even though I wasn't dressed for it. Reid Neilson asked me to take his place on a women's history tour as part of the Mormon History Association convention in Provo, and that same weekend I went on a ward trip near Altamont, Utah. I got my broken laptop repaired, resulting in me having two. My June evenings were spent eradicating goathead plants and seeing sego lilies along trails.
At the end of the month, I ran North Salt Lake's 5k and discovered I've gotten much slower, even though I can run farther. And my nephews arrived from California for a few weeks.

July. Spent the Fourth of July with my nephews, and then we drove to California to take them home. It was a very fast trip, and we only had one full day in California. We went to Muir Beach.
This summer was the first time I formally celebrated Pioneer Day, because I learned more about the early celebrations of the day. One Friday night I drove up Parleys Canyon for a work party and got stranded up there because my car wouldn't start. I took it in to be fixed, but they couldn't figure out the problem, because it started just fine for them.

August. In the beginning of the month, my family went to a family reunion in Fillmore, and we got to see many of the artifacts of my pioneer ancestors. Most of the reunion was at a hotel built in the 1920s, when people were apparently shorter.
I also went on a short hike near the U with two other people and we got lost (but not really). I began transitioning to a new job, working on a women's discourses project with the Church History Department. I went to see the National Parks (band) in Kaysville.

September. I began working full time on the women's discourses project, and I began a pumpkinundation roundup on this blog. I was flattered when Reid Neilson gave me cookies for my birthday. I began my new calling as an assistant ward clerk, and my stake calling got busy as we had to coordinate stake FHEs. We made murals to support family history, not knowing they were too heavy, so they kept falling down.





October. I dressed up as Vector from Despicable Me for Halloween, and in that costume I won a North Salt Lake Halloween 3k, but that's because most of the people were children and their parents. My parents went to Hawaii, leaving me alone in the house for the days before Halloween and the beginning of November. I spent Halloween with my niece, and on Halloween night our cat brought us a rat. Not a mouse like she usually does, but a huge rat.

November. I went to Orem to see the Addams Family musical, and there was a certain Mark Melville there who had gotten my tickets in addition to his own. My family went to California to spend Thanksgiving with my brother's family. We went out to eat for Thanksgiving, but I had a stomach bug of some kind and could only eat a little bit. We took family pictures while we were there.




December. We got a late start to the Christmas season, since we had been in California for Thanksgiving weekend. We had lots of snow, to the point that I stayed an entire day home from work. I went to Christmas concerts by the Lower Lights and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We made gingerbread houses.
It was an enjoyable Christmas.

Although there aren't a lot words in this blog, it took a while to gather all the memories. I don't feel like writing anything else, except

 ~Happy New Year!~

Sunday, December 20, 2015

White snow and red cranberries

What a wintery week! This wasn't the first snow (it's been snowing since November, at least here on the hill), but this was the first problematic one.

I didn't even make it to work on Monday. I didn't think my little car would make it down (or up) our hill safely, and even if it did, it sounded like the commute was terrible. I had to use some of my vacation time for Monday, because I was only able to work an hour from home.

My dad called early in the morning and said that the snowblower hadn't been working, so I set out to shovel the driveway by hand. It was more than a foot deep (I didn't measure, but it had to have been), so I could only do a little bit at a time or it would be too heavy. This picture shows how much I got done in an hour. Or maybe it was two hours.
Shoveling was definitely my workout for the day. After three hours of shoveling, I was less than halfway done. Our neighbor across the street (whom I hadn't met, since I'm a terrible person) offered his snowblower, so I accepted. But I'd never used one before, so when he saw me struggling, he came over and did the rest of it. It was very kind and saved me hours of work.

However, by that point the driveway needed to be shoveled again, so I thought I'd bring out our own snowblower. I figured that it hadn't been working because the snow was too deep; but I later learned that my dad thought it wasn't working because he had one of the switches flipped the wrong way. I got it started, and I was able to get a lot done that way. I figured while I was going downhill with it I might as well do our neighbor's sidewalk. Then I had to turn around. And since I hadn't used it before, I didn't know that you could switch between one wheel functioning (to turn) and both wheels functioning. I only had one wheel going. And let me tell you, pushing a snowblower with one working wheel up a snowy hill is no easy task. When I would push on it, it would push me down the hill, rather than the snowblower up the hill. Somehow I eventually got it back up our driveway, and I was furious with the machine. I later felt a little silly when I learned how to turn both wheels on. I probably spent around seven hours (or more) in the driveway that day.
However, I was reflecting that it's not really something I minded doing at this time of year. I had Christmas tunes playing from my phone in my pocket, and I wasn't at work, and I had wassail in the slowcooker. It was kind of pleasant. Much better than shoveling in depressing January and February.

The next day I went to work late, and I had to brush all the snow off my car. (My niece had brushed off some of it the day before, but there was still a lot on it.) And once I got the snow mostly cleared off, the tree dumped more snow on the car--and on me.

I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas concert on Saturday night. We applied for tickets both at my house and at my sister's, and my house didn't get any but my sister's did. I used the tickets with my niece, while my parents went to the standby line and also got in.
I was amazed with how great it was. I mean, I knew it would be good, but I didn't think it would be that good. Between 2011 and 2013, the guests were operatic, and the 2013 guest, Deborah Voigt, was especially awful. Last year's Sesame Street guests were charming, and Santino Fontana was fine. But Laura Osnes was surprisingly good and had a great voice. There were some opera guests, and while I honestly think people only like opera because they're trained to, these weren't as bad as some are, and it fit with the Handel theme of the show. They had an entire segment on the story of Handel's Messiah and how it was performed for charity. I found it very inspiring. I always listen to Messiah at Christmas and Easter, so sometimes I get a bit tired of it, but I was reminded how beautiful it is.

My one annoyance was that they sang "Over the River and through the Wood" and "Jingle Bells," which were originally written for Thanksgiving. There are already hundreds of Christmas songs, so why do they have to purloin more from the small canon of Thanksgiving music? I don't mind "Jingle Bells" as much, but with "Over the River" they replaced the word "Thanksgiving" with "Christmas"--thus consciously trampling all over my favorite holiday!

And I just want to say something about cranberries. Cranberries are nice and festive (in cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and in other settings at Christmas), but plain they aren't very good. Last week I made a recipe from my vegetarian cookbook, panfried squash with cranberry and orange sauce. In October I made a similar recipe and I wasn't a big fan, but it was OK. This time, the whole thing was disgusting. The cranberries gave it a sour, bitter taste. And for the previous recipe I used a pumpkin, which was fine, but this time I used a kabocha squash. I literally gagged on it. At one point I moved the squash out of the sauce, but there was a piece hiding out in the sauce, and when I ate it I gagged again. And to top it off, the brown rice I was using was stale. You can bet I'm not making it again. (This happened in time for last week's post, but it didn't fit with the theme.)

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Peace on Earth

Since it is Christmastime, I have been busy and don't have much time. Therefore, I will not be providing links or citing sources tonight. That way, I can have more real-life adventures to blog about here!

Anyway, the theme this week seemed to be love and compassion for all people, regardless of our differences.

Last Sunday, I watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, and the message I took away was love and service. I don't really remember what they said, just what I felt--but that's the point of those meetings anyway. Then after it was over, I was asked to help a stranger move, and in the spirit of Christmas I did just that. I could have stayed home and put up Christmas decorations, but service seemed more Christmassy.

Then Donald Trump made his Islamophobic comments. I don't care about what he says, but what gets me is that people agree with him. People were cheering after his comments. People like that actually exist?!

Fortunately, the backlash against his comments was far stronger, and people were making lots of supportive comments for Muslims. Mark Zuckerberg did. Governor Herbert did. I don't agree 100% with Gary Herbert, but I often agree with him, and I have great respect for him because he's willing to say things unpopular with his party. His statement continued to cement my respect for him.

The Church also released statements about religious freedom made by Joseph Smith, about being willing to die for believers of other faiths and about welcoming all. At work I was able to read several more similar statements he made. There's a tendency to think of nineteenth-century folks as being heartless and mean, but my experiences dealing with primary sources have shown their true compassion, even though they did things differently than we do.

For my scripture study this year I've been reading the words of Latter-day prophets, so this part of the month it's been Gordon B. Hinckley. I planned out my scripture study nearly a year ago, but this week one of the talks just happened to be about interfaith charity work.

On Wednesday night, my family went to the Lower Lights Christmas concert at Kingsbury Hall. It was awesome. I'm amazed how many talented people are in our state. It was a beautiful Christmas evening.

At this time of year, we talk about "Peace on earth, good will towards men," wresting it from its biblical context to describe the feelings we should have now. This is a good thing; we could all use a more peace and good will, whether it's in December or June.

Unfortunately, we have those who would do exactly the opposite at this time of year. There's a small group of militant atheists who chafe at "Merry Christmas" or anything remotely similar. On the other hand, there's a small, but probably larger, group of militant Christians who chafe at completely innocuous things like "Happy Holidays" and plain red cups. Way to ruin the most wonderful time of the year, guys!

(Before this gets too heavy, I will share some holiday mirth. I had some eggnog in the fridge, so my mom went to drink some, but she hadn't seen the container--she just knew that I had some--so she poured some liquid from a container that said "Egg" on it. It wasn't until she drank it that she realized it was Egg Beaters--simply egg whites!)

Anyway, my hope for this Christmastime, and always, is to have the spirit of brotherly kindness. Not "You're stupid for believing in God" or "You're a jerk for not believing in God" or "I don't want to associate with a heathen like you."

But "I will love you and serve you in spite of our differences." "Let us work together to serve the common good and help those who need it." "Let's unite in the things we both hold dear."

Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Bringing out the tapes

This week, I've been thinking about the way media consumption has changed.

When I'm on my own computer, I'll usually listen to the music files I have on my computer--usually in a shuffle playlist with everything I care to listen to, but sometimes my various holiday playlists as well. I'm not on my own computer as often anymore, because I don't have homework and I have better things to do than YouTube and silly websites. When I'm at work, I use Pandora and Spotify. (I make good use of Pandora's "I'm tired of this track" feature, and I switch to Spotify when I run out of skips. Spotify has a disproportionate amount of alcohol commercials. They clearly don't know this market. Sam Adams commercials are especially annoying.)

I still buy CDs. If I own a CD, I can listen to it as a CD, or I can simply listen to the digital files by ripping it to my computer and having Google Play upload it. I don't have to choose, because I can have both. I've listened to CDs more since I moved up here and have been commuting to work, since I listen in my car. (Surprisingly, one of my favorite albums that I've purchased from 2015 was Fall Out Boy's American Beauty/American Psycho.)

However, last month my CD player quit working, and I haven't gotten it to work since then. However, I won't really know whether it works or not until spring, because it doesn't like to work during cold weather. I find this a little unfortunate, because I've bought several Christmas CDs, yet I haven't listened to them as CDs, only as digital files.

It makes me wonder if I should buy any CDs at all anymore. This week, Google Play had three free Christmas albums--Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, and Blake Shelton--so I had to get them to improve my Christmas playlist. (At the moment of this writing, they're still free, but I don't know how long that will be.) I also bought Walk the Moon's Talking Is Hard when they had it on sale for ninety-nine cents.

Anyway, in the absence of a working CD player, I looked through our family's leftover collection of tapes, since my car is old enough to have a tape deck. Most of it isn't stuff I'd care to listen to, but I was looking for some nostalgic Christmas music. I found one tape that I put in--it was mediocre at best, but I was surprised when it was playing along and suddenly my mom began singing "I Am a Child of God"! I remember those days when, if you wanted to record something, tapes were the way to go.

It's easy to be nostalgic and miss those things--but there's a reason that mixtapes and tape recorders are obsolete, because they really are cumbersome. I thought about making mixtapes for my car, but I have a tape deck adapter, so it would just be easier to make a playlist on my phone and use that.

This was terribly uninteresting. Sorry about that.