Demotion.

I don't think anything worthwhile weally went on this week.

This week my two-week-old phone decided that it would vibrate for both texts and emails. It didn't at first. I really don't care to have my emails vibrate. (Most of my emails this week were from Healthcare.gov reminding me to renew my coverage, but I have insurance at least until May.) I think I got it fixed, but it was very non-intuitive.

A while ago, I complained about Google guessing what you want to search for and requiring you to put things in quotes so that it includes the words in the search. Well, it's far worse than I knew at the time. A few weeks ago, I was doing some research on South Africa, so I did this Google search:

 Notice that my search term "Illinge," which was a very important word, was omitted from the search, as Google informed me. So then I put it in quotes to ensure that it would be included. The results infuriate me:

Not only did the same pages come up, they no longer even tell you they omitted the terms, even though I specified that's what I wanted! Don't guess what I want! If I didn't want it, I wouldn't have typed it! I hope someone at Google gets demoted to janitor for this. It would have been better if they simply said there weren't any results. I usually love Google. Not this time.

Another thing that infuriates me is some changes that Facebook has made through the years. Some changes have been good, but several have been horrendously, stupidly bad ideas. Once upon a time, there was an option to "Unsubscribe from comments and likes." It was brilliant. But now you no longer have that option. Most of my newsfeed is things that people like from people I don't know from Adam, or from pages that I care nothing about. It also makes me less inclined to "like" or comment on pages I follow, because I don't want everybody to see those comments. I wish they would bring the "Unsubscribe from Comments and Likes" back. Now I either have to unsubscribe from someone entirely, or get all their comments and likes along with the stuff I actually care about. Someone at Facebook needs to be demoted to kitty litter scooper.

They also changed their search feature to be very cumbersome. You used to be able to search for people based on where they live or other information. Not anymore. Now it just tries to guess who you might know. So if you wanted to find someone named John Smith from Killarney and you have no mutual friends, you're out of luck. Demote someone to window washer.

Also, on your own profile you can view your Activity Log, which basically records everything you've ever done on Facebook. It can be a very useful tool, especially when I use it to jog my memory for my memory blog. It used to be that you could jump to individual months. Not anymore. If I want to look at something in July, I have to click on the year, and then I have to scroll through December, November, October, September, and August before I get to July.

But it gets worse. If I want to look at something from January, I have to scroll through the entire year. If I want to look at, say, January 2013, I can't click on 2012 and simply scroll up from December. When I scroll up from December 2012, it will only take me to whatever month I was most recently looking at. Demote someone to lice remover.

I could understand if these things had been made this way in the first place, but the good features existed at one time. To get rid of them is either tremendously unintelligent or diabolically malevolent. (I, for one, would love an "Unsubscribe from shares" feature. I really don't care to see your food recipes or your Obama-hating up and down my feed. But such a feature never existed, so I'm not really mad that it doesn't now. Just the stuff that used to exist.)

Now that I've been using Windows 10 for about six months, I must say that I'm glad they had the intelligence of a parrot to bring the Start Menu back, but I find the new Start Menu to still be inferior to the Start Menu they always had. Why is the search one separate from the other one? I think it's easier to search documents now, but that's the only good thing. But it's so much better than Windows 8 that I guess I can't complain too much.

Last night I had a surprisingly realistic dream that I was back at BYU and I was taking a Spanish class. As I was sitting in my desk before the first class, I realized that I was in a high-enough Spanish class that I would probably have to introduce myself in Spanish, and I was trying to recite in my mind what I was going to say. I had studied French much more recently than Spanish, so I would have to remember to say "hace" instead of "il y a" for "ago." My grammatical reasoning was just as sound as it would have been in real life. Sometimes I miss college, but only very rarely do I miss homework.

Tonight my family took quizzes where we filled in blank maps of Utah's counties and America's states. I got all of them, although I almost mixed up Delaware and Connecticut, but I got them. Once I was almost a pseudo-geographer. But then I became a pseudo-geologist instead.

This is a picture I found on the internet this week where a third-grader had to use the word "geologist" in a sentence, and his sentence was "The geologist showed his rocks to a stranger." "Hey you, listen, this is feldspar!" I would have linked to the original, but there was another part that looked like an inappropriate joke, and I want to maintain my clean-cut image. So I didn't. Sorry.

Reddy to beet you

It's kind of hard to believe that Martin Luther King Day was less than a week ago. It seems longer, even though it shouldn't. Since I have paid holidays, I try to do fun things on those days, but the snow prevented me from doing anything fun. I got my brake light fixed.

In the evening, I wanted to watch Inside Out because I hadn't seen it. However, I have a rule that I don't sit idly watching TV and movies. Usually I lift weights while watching horrible 1960s sitcoms. But I can do language study, so I turned on French subtitles to watch the movie. (The translation was not literal at all.) It was a really good movie; I understand all the hype. It was the most imaginative movie since The Lego Movie.

On Wednesday my mom had surgery. She's recovering pretty well.

On Saturday, while everyone else was taking pointless stick figure quizzes, I ran seven miles and made veggie burgers.

In 2015, my first run was on New Year's Day, but in 2016 I didn't get my first run until yesterday. I was really excited to use my new Fitbit. I have been a little disappointed with my Fitbit, because it doesn't show the date or seconds, and because I have to charge it a lot more than the promised seven days. But I really liked it yesterday on my run! It has a GPS so it keeps track of how many miles I run, and it vibrates every time I hit a mile, and it shows my pace. I have an eleven-minute pace--I knew I was slow, but I didn't know that slow. But hopefully this will help me get faster. I ran for an hour and twenty-four minutes and ran 7.4 miles. And when I got home and synced it with the app on my phone, it even showed me how fast I ran at each mile. I was fastest between four and five miles, probably because that was flattest. It even showed a map of where I went, and it showed that I had a six-hundred-foot elevation change. (I think it only counts going up, not going down.) I only do street running for exercise, but I do trail running for fun. I'm very anxious for spring to come and the trails to thaw out.

(I would have run faster yesterday if people did a better job of clearing snow and ice off their sidewalks. Smh.)

Then after I came home, I made hearty winter vegetable burgers using beets, prunes, almonds, bulgur, ginger root, and some other things. I was glad to have a food processor to help grate and mix. I like beets, especially their vibrant color. I can't take pictures of them, though, because I don't want to turn my phone red. I did take pictures of the final result:

(Those are beet burgers, not beef burgers.). They were pretty good, but not as good as the spicy autumn vegetable burgers with sweet potatoes, kale, beans, and spices.

And lest you think I'm some health nut trying to make you feel bad about yourself, don't worry. It's red velvet season, so I've been eating plenty of red velvet cake, cupcakes, Oreos, Pop-Tarts, and pancakes. All these things leave a lovely red color in the sink when I brush my teeth.

Between the red velvet and the beets, if I were bleeding, I would have no idea.

A new phone

This week I got a new phone.

One of my last adventures with my old phone was after work Monday, when I stopped at Warm Springs Park so I could see the steam rising off the warm springs. I'd been there two times before, but it was in warmer weather. The steam doesn't really show up in the picture, but it did in real life. There were also some small fish in the spring. I don't know how they got there, because they certainly didn't come out of the earth.

On Tuesday I had to teach a family history institute class for my stake calling. It went much better than I had expected. After teaching doctrines from the scriptures, I shared some insights I've learned from my own study of family history.

I talked about my Grandma Judy, who wasn't your typical cookie-baking, story-reading grandma. Although I knew she loved us, I knew we weren't her favorites. Nerdy, obese city folks were not her ideal relatives. But then I learned about her rough growing-up years, being raised by my great-grandparents who don't sound like they were very good people. And I gained more sympathy for my grandma and even feel flattered that I knew she loved us, because I don't know if she felt that from her parents.

Through that line there was also my great-great-great-great-grandfather Frederick Kesler, who was a prominent, illustrious pioneer. It made me wonder what went wrong between the time of Frederick Kesler and great-grandpa Raymond, because Raymond doesn't sound like a model citizen. (Maybe Frederick wasn't the greatest person, because two of his wives divorced him, but he still was very industrious in early Utah, building mills, serving as prison warden, etc.) I want to be more like Frederick than Raymond. (I said, "I think Raymond was the only bad guy in this line" [referring to my direct line, as I think there were some bad uncles], and one girl said, "Until Mark! Ooh, burn!")

Since I was teaching Tuesday, I couldn't pick up my new phone until Wednesday. I got an LG G4. It's always an adjustment getting a new phone, but I already like my new one better than my old one. It seems a lot more intuitive. There are some things I don't like as much, but overall it's a better phone. I really wanted a new phone, because my old one didn't vibrate properly, and it wouldn't sync with my Fitbit. (Between all the snow and ice, I still haven't been able to test out the running GPS on my watch. Ice is my arch nemesis.)  My first subject for a picture on my phone was our teenage cat.

My new phone has games on it, unlike my old one, but I don't plan on playing any of them. At this point in my life, I'm not really interested in games, and I don't want to start and get addicted. I have so many better things to do.

Like blogging.

The holidays of the calendar

It's no secret that I really like holidays. But that doesn't mean that I like every holiday. There are only eight or nine holidays that I formally celebrate (I'm still undecided about Pioneer Day), but there are lots of other holidays that show up on calendars and in other settings.

Since nothing worthwhile happens in the early part of January, I'm going to review the holidays that I know exist. In order for this to be a surmountable task, I'm not going to do any research. That would take too long.

New Year's (Eve and Day). When I was a young kid, I didn't consider this a holiday--probably because I wasn't in school to hear about it, since the New Year season happens over Christmas break. I added it to the canon of holidays I celebrate when I was ten or eleven. I count it separate from Christmas. There may be some overlap with Christmas--for example, I listen to any music that came out during the dying year, including Christmas music, and I eat anything I want, including leftover Christmas candy--but I try to keep the holidays separate.

Epiphany. This is the traditional end of Christmas, but since I'm a twenty-first-century American, it doesn't mean anything to me.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day. MLK was a great guy. I just don't know how to celebrate this day other than it being a day off. I also don't really like the shift from "Civil Rights Day" to "Martin Luther King Jr. Day." MLK certainly deserves his own holiday, but dedicating it solely to him seems unappreciative of the efforts of other people. As "Civil Rights Day," it still primarily honors him, but it honors others as well.

Groundhog Day. I don't mind that this holiday exists. I do mind that otherwise respectable calendars waste ink on this holiday. If I lived in Pennsylvania, it would be another story, but I don't. What can you do on this holiday? Absolutely nothing. It's not a day off. It's grounded solely in a superstition. I don't think I've ever even seen a groundhog. In fact, I hate to even acknowledge it; yet I must because some people seem to think it matters. It does not.

Chinese New Year. There actually was a time when I added Chinese New Year to the canon of holidays I formally celebrate, due primarily to the fact that my sister-in-law is from Taiwan. However, it is very difficult to celebrate an Asian holiday in America. You usually forget it's even happening, and no one's doing anything about it. Also, my usual style of celebration is to celebrate the holiday before it comes but not after, but Asians do it the other way around. And since it jumps around on the calendar in January and February, it just complicates things.

Mardi Gras. Since I'm neither Catholic nor Louisianan, Mardi Gras means nothing to me.

Lincoln's Birthday, Presidents' Day, Washington's Birthday. I lumped these together because I don't think it's possible to really analyze them separately. I think they created Presidents' Day because it was a little silly to commemorate two different presidents so close together. Why couldn't one of them have had a birthday in August? Presidents' Day is kind of MLK Day Part II: a much-needed Monday off during the most depressing time of the year. There's not really much you can do to celebrate the day. I certainly don't want to put up decorations of Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon.

Valentine's Day. This is probably my least favorite of the holidays I formally celebrate. Some people call it Singles Awareness Day (SAD). I'm not that cynical (usually), so I don't call it that. But I have to admit that in many ways, that's what it is, which is probably why it's not my favorite. For me, it's just a day of candy. But I'm all for candy. I also get excited for it to come, because there's been no major holiday since New Year's. But it is a poor substitute for Christmastime.

Pi Day. I think it's a remarkable coincidence that pi sounds like pie, and pies are round, which is what pi is used for. I guess I don't know why we need a day for pi when we don't have one for other mathematical constants. If pi were instead called livernunions, it probably wouldn't be anything special.

The Ides of March. If you hadn't read Julius Caesar in high school, you wouldn't even know this existed.

St. Patrick's Day. This is the most pointless of the holidays I formally celebrate. I'm not Irish. I've never been to Ireland. Yet I like it. I like thinking about leprechauns and pots of gold and eating green food. I just wish people didn't use it as beer day, because nothing good ever came of drunkenness. There have been lots of Irish immigrants, which is why we have the holiday, but it's weird we single out a single culture for a semi-big holiday.

April Fool's Day. I've never been big on pranks, other than your typical "There's a spider on your back!" I do like seeing what Google does every year, but it's not a meaningful day to me. And since I'm a boring person, nobody ever plays pranks on me. Which I appreciate.

Passover. Not being Jewish nor from a Jewish culture, I've never had any need to celebrate Passover.

Easter. What a peculiar holiday. There are two aspects to it: the Christian, Resurrection aspect, and the secular, eggs and bunnies aspect. They are very different. And having a day devoted to baby animals and colored eggs is very random. Sometimes I think, "That holiday actually exists?" But it's a fun day, so I formally celebrate it.

Earth Day. Held on April 22, Earth Day has only been around since the 1970s. This is a holiday that I think could become big, but at the moment it's not that big. It's important to have a day to think about our planet and what we can do to be better stewards of it.

Arbor Day. I primarily know about this holiday, the last Friday in April, because of It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown. It's really a Nebraska holiday, so if I lived there I might care more about it. It used to be a bigger holiday in Utah (in at least the 1930s, the LDS Church offices were closed on Arbor Day), but I think Earth Day has stolen the attention away from Arbor Day. Which is probably a good thing, because trees aren't the only important thing on our planet. But I do like to spend time among trees on Arbor Day.

May Day. You only hear about this day in elementary school. I did come across a mention of it being celebrated in a town in pioneer Utah, but today it has no relevance to us.

Cinco de Mayo. This holiday's bigger here than it is in Mexico, but I do suspect that it's gotten bigger there because it's bigger here. I love Mexican food, but this isn't really a day I celebrate. I can foresee it becoming a new St. Patrick's Day years from now, but for now I'll just use it as a reason to eat burritos.

Mother's Day. There was a time when I added Mother's Day to my holiday canon, but since all you do is give presents to your mom, there's not really much you can do to celebrate it. Also, every day should be Mother's Day.

Memorial Day. We often visit my grandparents' graves at Memorial Day. I like Memorial Day because it marks the beginning of the patriotic/Fourth of July season. Then there are those memes that make you feel guilty for having fun on Memorial Day. Pssh. Those who have departed would want you to have fun on the day. Don't make me feel like a terrible person for simply having a barbecue.

Flag Day. I mostly know about this holiday because it's my cousin's birthday, but it's very convenient that it falls between Memorial Day and Independence Day, making a continuously patriotic period.

Father's Day. Like Mother's Day, at one point I formally celebrated this one too, but it's even harder to celebrate than Mother's Day.

Canada Day. I'm not Canadian. Niagara Falls is the only part of Canada I've ever been to. It doesn't mean anything to me.

Fourth of July. My opinion of Independence Day has increased in recent years. I've always liked it and celebrated it, but I like it more now. It's an all-American holiday. And I don't mean that in the obvious sense. I mean that, while other holidays have become popular in more recent times, the Fourth of July has been a major celebration in America for almost as long as America's been around. I'm no historian, but my impression is that Independence Day was the biggest holiday of nineteenth-century America. My opinion of the holiday has gone up along with my opinion of summer.

Bastille Day. I shouldn't even mention this, because I only know about it because I studied French.

Pioneer Day. I'm still undecided on whether to formally celebrate this one, because it's not a national holiday. But I did have fun celebrating it last year. For years I didn't really celebrate it, and I scoffed at the notion of using patriotic decorations. After all, the pioneers of 1847 fled the United States for what was then Mexican Territory. But then I learned that at the very first Pioneer Day celebration in 1849, they used American flags and other patriotic American things, even though they didn't even have territorial status yet. (Utah's land became part of the U.S. in 1848. The pioneers didn't celebrate July 24 in 1848 because Brigham Young and many others had returned to Iowa.) Pioneer Day is therefore a valid continuation of the patriotic season. I think the recent trend of "Pie and Beer Day," commemorated by non-Mormons, is silly. It is a historic fact that Utah was founded by pioneers who just happened to be Mormon. You don't need to be religious to appreciate the pioneers. I think part of the problem is caused by Mormons who seem to make it Mormon Day. Your ward and stake floats about Book of Mormon stories and worldwide temples really have nothing to do with the pioneers or July 24. This needs to be a nonsectarian holiday.

Rosh Hashanah. Again, I'm not Jewish. I don't even know what people do at Rosh Hashanah.

Labor Day. I know someone who says this is his favorite holiday because you don't have to do anything to celebrate it. He's right. I don't formally celebrate it, but I greatly appreciate it because it heralds in fall.

National Talk like a Pirate Day. Oh, you mean Free Krispie Kream Donuts Day. I don't care about this day. I would only eat Halloween-themed donuts anyway.

Leif Ericson Day. I learned about this October 9 holiday when I was in high school and loved the idea of it. After all, he discovered America before Columbus, so why does Columbus get all the credit? Well...

Columbus Day. Although Leif Ericson might have discovered America first, his discovery didn't change the world. Columbus did. I'm amazed at how cynical people are about Columbus Day. First of all, it's hard to judge a person from 500 years ago. And even if he were just a completely evil person (and people rarely are), the fact remains that the world as we know it exists because of Columbus. Whether he was a good or bad person is irrelevant to that. Nevertheless, it isn't much of a holiday.

Halloween. I lied earlier. Halloween is the most pointless holiday I formally celebrate. But it doesn't seem pointless when it's so fun! I've found that people tend to love holidays near their birthdays. Maybe I love Halloween because my birthday's in late September. But part of what I love about Halloween is that it brings in the big holiday season. (There was also that phase I went through when I wanted to be a vampire...) Halloween is my third favorite holiday.

Election Day. This day is less of a deal now that you can vote by mail. I mean, last Election Day I couldn't even go to a polling place.

Veterans' Day. Thanks to the veterans for sacrificing so much--even everything--for our country. Too bad Veterans' Day isn't as fun as Memorial Day.

Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday! I love the food, the earthy colors, the stereotypical Pilgrim hats, the cool but not cold November weather, the days off, and the festivities in general. It's just wonderful.

Hanukkah. I think Hanukkah would be more like Purim and Rosh Hashanah if it weren't for Christmas and everyone feeling bad for the Jewish people. I wouldn't mind celebrating Hanukkah, but I don't know anyone who does.

Christmas. Some people say they don't like Christmas, but I think they're lying. I do think it's overrated, but it's rated so highly because it's so wonderful. I get sad when it's over. Christmas is second only to Thanksgiving in being delightful. I don't get, however, why it needs to start in early November (or earlier) and extend well into January (or later). Christmas already gets more decorations, candy, music, movies, and attention than any other holiday. Why does it also need more time?

Kwanzaa/Boxing Day. Here are two holidays I know nothing about that fall on the same day.

Here is my ranking of the eight holidays in my canon:
Thanksgiving
Christmas
Halloween
Fourth of July
Easter
New Year
St. Patrick's Day
Valentine's Day

Pioneer Day would probably be between Fourth of July and Easter, since it's really just Fourth of July Jr.

Merry times

As I sit writing this on a January Sunday morning, I feel a little sad for this time of year. You get everything that's bad about Christmas (except perhaps for stress and mess), but you don't get any of the good. It's a depressing time.

At the same time, I look back fondly on the holidays that just happened. Since my last blog post of the year is a year in review, Christmas is long over before I backtrack to write about it.

I worked December 21-23, but I got Christmas Eve off. On the 23rd, my mom had been kind enough to make gingerbread while I was at work so we could make gingerbread houses. I hadn't made a gingerbread house since 1996. (Graham cracker houses are not gingerbread houses.) They were a little difficult, but they worked out.

Notice how I used leftover pumpkinundation things--candy corn marshmallows for the roof, and pumpkin spice chips for the lines.

My mom did this one...

...and this one.

 On Christmas Eve, we took my grandparents to the Old Spaghetti Factory. Since I'm a sucker for anything seasonal, I got a chocolate peppermint creme soda, which would have been better without the chocolate. It was the third and final time I drank soda in 2015. (The other times were on St. Patrick's Day, when I had some kind of green drink that obviously had Sprite in it, and my niece's birthday, two days before Pioneer Day, when I had "Brigham's Brew" root beer.)

That night, while my mom made preparations for dinner at our house the next day, I made the rest of the gingerbread into cookies. I'm no artist, but these turned out better than last year's.

For Christmas I got a food processor, which should come in handy, especially in conjunction with the vegetarian cookbook I got for my birthday. So far I've only used it to cut up vegetables for a delightful carrot soup, but my mom used it to crush Oreos for a dessert. It should make things easier.

My other main gift was a FitBit Surge watch, which I didn't get until yesterday and is a combination birthday/Christmas/my own money present. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to set it up yet. I am quite annoyed that with 2015 technology, there are still compatibility issues. But I mostly want it for trail runs, and trails are all snowed over right now.

I also got a "Letters to Santa" game and a miniature "sandbox" with no sand.

I spent Christmas day in my H&M Christmas sweats. I was Vector for Halloween, but it was on Christmas that I had to keep telling everyone "These aren't pajamas." Christmas was very similar to last year in that it began snowing late on Christmas Eve and we had a white Christmas; but the difference this year was that there was already lots of snow on the ground.

During New Year's week, I had to work every day except for New Year's Day. That will make it less difficult to return to work tomorrow.

I was delighted on New Year's Eve to hear about the new law banning microbeads. I've had some face washes with the beads in them, and I just assumed the companies were intelligent and ethical enough to use some biodegradable material. I was furious when I learned they were simply plastic and were wreaking environmental havoc. What moron does that?! I'm glad the new law is in place. And if you don't like the new law, you're either a moron or a jerk.

I spent New Year's Eve at a friend's party. With the exception of my mission, it was the first time in my life I didn't spend New Year's Eve with my parents. Among other games, we played a game where we pretended to be at pseudo-academic conferences; I answered questions for "cow midwifery" and "my time on Hamburger Island." They asked me to propose a New Year toast with our sparkling cider. (What's the point of having a New Year's party if you can't remember it?) As I walked home that night in the less-than-10-degree weather, I had to play "Auld Lang Syne" on my phone.

I did pretty good with my 2015 New Year's resolutions, with the exception of my weightlifting one, my least favorite form of exercise. It started out fine, but then spring came and I switched to running and never went back to weights. So my 2016 goal is to do strength training at least once a week. I also had a goal to do hour-long runs, and I got all the way up to hour-and-a-half-long runs, so I'm satisfied with that. I was pretty good with my non-exercise goals as well.

On New Year's Day we had a traditional extended family meal at Golden Corral, my grandparents' favorite. I was astonished with how much food my cousins wasted, including an entire piece of carrot cake. How can you waste carrot cake!?

My stake also did a New Year's Day night party at the Bountiful Rec Center. The only fun activity I did there was swimming, because free swimming. You better believe I didn't set one foot in the ice skating rink.

And now it's the worst month of the year. I'm trying to live my life dwelling on the positives of the particular time of year. But it's hard for me to find positive things about early January. I guess if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.