Four times seven

As some of you know, I turned twenty-eight on Thursday this week.

A few weeks ago, I was awakened early in the morning. (My niece is a student body officer, and she was being "kidnapped" and taken to breakfast.) While I was lying in bed awake, I was thinking about this birthday, and it kind of scared me. Two years ago doesn't seem that long ago; I had just moved home from Provo, and I had to get my own insurance. Yet in two years from now, the same length of time, I will be thirty! And I got scared, not just because it will be a new decade of age, but because I worry about my prospects of being forever alone. While I have many friends of varying levels of casualness, I don't have any best friends. I'm just very good at convincing myself that people don't like me.

But lying in bed early in the morning is not a good time to think deeply about things, and birthdays are a time to focus on the positive, right?

My birthday wasn't extremely interesting. I got a few random gifts. On Thursdays I help tutor some Tongan youth in Glendale (sometimes I feel guilty being born privileged, so this helps alleviate that), so that's where I went. It's a good thing I went, because I was the only tutor there, just like the week before.

Back in July, I began tracking my calories on my FitBit app. It's been an interesting and surprisingly satisfying experience. But my birthday was the first day I've exceeded my calories. I was actually being very careful not to. But at tutoring they had cookies and ice cream, and I still had cake and ice cream at home. I figured it was OK to go over on my birthday--and I went way over. Ice cream has a lot of calories. But I don't want to go over again until Thanksgiving.

On Friday, I saw some weird things. I was driving to work when I saw a car behind me that was very similar to my own, including the same kind of license plate and the same ding on the front. I had a bit of an out-of-body experience, wondering if I was in the wrong car. Then I went to the City Creek food court for lunch and saw a woman with a mustache. I'm not talking about the little bit of fuzz that some socially awkward girls have, but a genuine, fully grown brown mustache. It was creepy. And then on a six-mile sidewalk run, I saw a dead snake laid out in a circle.

Between conference sessions yesterday, I went up to the second radio tower from Tunnel Springs Park. I wanted to go farther (there are multiple towers), but I didn't have the time, or the energy, since it was steep and I'd run six and a half miles the night before.

My very favorite project I've ever done for work--whereby I learned so much about the pioneers, annotation, research, and transcription verification--is now available for pre-order. So that's exciting.

And last night I was very busy in Dreamland. First I helped Batman and Robin apprehend a shadowy criminal. Then I moved to Lithuania, where I almost got attacked by a wild moose.

***

This week's pumpkinundation roundup isn't too big. I could eat whatever I wanted for my birthday week, so I tried to reserve my calories for things I wouldn't otherwise have.

 For as fancy and expensive as this Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Pumpkin Spice Truffle was, it should not have been disappointing. But it was. First of all, it was broken, but that's not too big of a deal. The chocolate is good; I had no problem eating the whole thing (not all at once, mind you). But as a pumpkin item, it's not great. I always thought "natural and artificial flavors" was the vaguest thing you could possibly have on an ingredient label, but they go one step further with an added conjunction: "Natural and/or artificial flavor." There's some vague spiciness to it, but it doesn't taste like fall, and I don't note any pumpkin at all. It doesn't even look like pumpkin. 3/5.

 Next I had this Pumpkin Noosa Finest Yoghurt. This company's way too fancy for me if they spell it "yoghurt." This was a fruit-on-the-bottom type, so I had to stir it. I'm not a big yogurt person, and I didn't really care for it at first, but it grew on me. Definitely better than the Chobani pumpkin yogurt. 3.5/5.

 I was excited to try these Caramel Apple Mike and Ikes. These aren't one flavor, but two different flavors in one box. The caramel ones don't really taste like much. The apple ones are good. They're best eaten together, but the apple is more overpowering. 4/5.

 I made pumpkin waffles. The recipe didn't call for spices, but I added some, but I didn't taste them. The waffles were good, but I think that's because they were homemade waffles, not so much because of the pumpkin. The sauce is made of maple syrup and cream cheese. 4.5/5. (I also made sweet potato waffles, which were equally good, but I think I did them wrong. Sweet potatoes are a perplexing vegetable.)

It's been probably seven years since I've had a pumpkin roll, which seems like a fairly iconic thing. This Father's Table Pumpkin Cake Roll seemed like a good solution, because I didn't want to commit to buying (or making!) a whole roll. But a homemade one would have been better. This one was tasty, but probably not worth the calories or the tremendously long list of ingredients. 3.5/5.