August slipped away into a moment in time

This week, I couldn't help but thinking, "Ugh. Is this month ever going to end?" This might be the hottest August ever. Easter was four and a half months ago, but it seems soo much looonger! And this week, I have had the worst part of summer (heat) with the worst part of fall (school and homework), without the beauties of fall, my favorite season.

But we're close!

I ran up North Canyon five days this week. Since I go up there so often, sometimes I take it for granted. But it really is a wonderful, beautiful place.

There are some shrubs that have been red since the beginning of the month, but they always change color way before anything else, so I don't feel like they count as fall foliage.

But when the maple leaves start turning red, then you know it's starting. And I saw some this week!

This tiny oak leaf is not pretty or noteworthy, except that I watched it fall from the tree directly in front of me.

There are also a few apple trees planted along the dirt road in North Canyon, and it has started to smell like fall as the unripe apples have fallen from the trees and started to rot.

Back in June, I had the first time I ever tripped and fell on a trail run, and it was on a mostly buried rock on the North Canyon dirt road. This month, I noticed that one of the rocks had dislodged itself from the dirt and tumbled away. It's interesting but also sad to observe erosion at work.

I am happy that I am still able to go on my runs before my Zoom classes. I have class meetings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 4:30 to 7:30. My other class is entirely online on my own schedule, with prerecorded lectures. 

It seems that all of my homework for all my classes is the same: lots of reading and then writing about what we read. The only real difference is what we're reading, so I hope I can keep it all straight. One of my classes is about American history 1600–1877, another is about borderlands, and another is about the US West. 

When possible, I read the books online, but not all are available online. (They're not textbooks, like I used in undergrad classes, but actual historical monographs.) I like to support brick-and-mortar stores and especially small businesses, so I've bought some from Barnes and Noble, but this week I went to get one from Book Garden on Bountiful's Main Street. Not only did I walk out with my book for class, I also bought a vintage book of Halloween kitsch, even though it was expensive, because I love that kind of thing. I'm more interested in looking at it than in reading it.

For some reason, the simplistic Halloween visuals of the 1940s, 50s, 60s are more appealing to me than some of the more elaborate (and less orange) visuals of today.

Even the tops of the pages are orange!

They also had an old Easter book from the same series that was priced much more reasonably, but I didn't get it. But I might have to go back to pick it up.

First day of 17th grade!

When I'm sitting on my chair with my laptop, Jimmy likes to come up to sit on my lap. It's only a matter of time before he crashes one of my class meetings.

I just adore him!

Since last week I was talking about school, I never showed you what I did with the last of our plums. I made plum pie,

 plum bread,

 and chocolate chip cookies with plum puree. (You couldn't really taste the plum.)

Now we're in zucchini mode. I've made zucchini bread,

 corn and zucchini veggie "burgers" (but I used them as taco filling because it's a hassle to make them into patties),

 and zucchini and grape oatmeal cookies.

I was startled when I looked in the Kitchenaid. I could have made grasshopper cookies (literally) instead!

I'm excited to keep making things with zucchini and grapes before apple season arrives.

Back to School

A new chapter in my life is beginning. I am officially starting my master's US history program at the University of Utah.

Well, with would be a more appropriate preposition than at. All my classes are done online, so I might very well make it through the whole semester without ever setting foot on campus.

I am a little disappointed that I don't really get the satisfaction of a first day of school. Classes officially begin tomorrow, August 24, but my first Zoom class is on Tuesday. But I also had new student orientation this week, talked with the director of graduate studies and one of my professors, and began some of my homework and readings.

On the other hand, I am relieved that I don't have to worry about commuting or parking. That will save me money, and it will also give me more free time. I hope to continue my almost-daily runs up North Canyon. (The smoke and the heat meant that I only went up North Canyon twice this week.)

When I graduated from BYU six years ago, I had no plans on grad school. I didn't need a graduate degree. But I think it was always in the back of my mind that someday, I could go back to school, even if I didn't plan on it. But I certainly never imagined that I would be starting grad school during a pandemic!

Two years ago, I applied to some editing jobs for which I was underqualified. I'm hoping that a master's degree will give me more qualifications.

I keep second-guessing my decision to go back to school, but I think it is a wise choice. Sometimes I wonder if I should have picked a different major than history. Maybe it's not a perfect choice, but it is still a good choice. And I chose history because I thought it was my best option for getting accepted: I'm already published in history, and my letters of recommendation were mainly from history.

But I am very nervous about this! History was literally my worst subject in high school and undergrad. I only got a 2 on the AP US history test! Even people who study vastly different things got better scores than I did! I hope that I can keep up on the readings. (One thing I wish I had known during undergrad is that you don't have to read every word.) I feel like I will be at a disadvantage since I didn't previously major in history. But I'm hoping grad school will be better because I will have more flexibility in what I study. Part of my problem with more general history classes might be that they tend to center around wars: Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish American War, World War I, World War II. I find military history sooo b o r i n g !

Since I've been out of school six years, I have to figure out how to budget my time. In college I carried around a Parker Planner (similar to a missionary planner), but it's been many years since I've done that. I used to spend a lot of time on campus and do homework while I was there, but obviously that's not happening now.

I have three classes this semester. Proseminar in US History to 1877 and Colloquium in American History are graduate classes with weekly Zoom meetings. History of the US West is an undergraduate class, but I'm taking it with a few different requirements as a grad student. This will enable me to make progress on my Pioneer Day research.

In order to succeed in grad school, I will have to work past a lot of my insecurities. I don't like commenting (either on video or on forums) or emailing because I don't want to bother people. Also, I see lots of people in life who go on and on, talking about themselves or about things that no one else cares about, and I don't want to be one of those people. But I have to remember that people probably aren't bothered if I send them an email or make reasonable comments.

Well, thanks for reading through all the school thoughts that have been running through my head!

Bear Lake, produce, phone

This week offered some reprieves from the usual, and rather than going strictly chronologically, I'm going to go thematically.

Bear Lake

Last month, I rode with my sister and niece up to Bear Lake, but we didn't do anything in the water. This week, we returned with my mom and grandparents, but we were prepared for swimming. We went to an unofficial beach that was pretty rocky, which meant that I was slipping all over the place as I went out into the water. But once I was out deep enough, I didn't need to step on the rocks anymore, and eventually it became less rocky. What a wonderful lake! So clear and clean! I was able to see a large fish swimming with me. I enjoyed swimming out where my toes could barely touch the bottom. Back in February, I was going to the pool several days a week, but I haven't been swimming since March. A former swim coach at the pool offered me some pointers to swim better, and I was happy to see that my muscle memory still retained the more efficient swimming.

Over the last few years—thanks largely to YSA ward excursions—I have learned that I really enjoy lakes. I just don't go to them very often. In fact, I think this week was the first time I ever swam in a Utah lake with my family. When we went to lakes, it was either in New York, or the lakes were too cold for swimming. I should spend more time at lakes and reservoirs.

Home-grown produce

One of the most wonderful things about August is the abundance of fresh produce. We have a plum tree in our backyard, which has taken a hiatus for the last few years. But this year we had a bumper crop. Unfortunately, many of the lower branches have died or been broken over the years, but there have still been plenty to pick. I love standing out under the tree, picking the plums and eating them straight off the tree.

 With our abundance of plums—certainly more than we could eat plain before they went bad—I have enjoyed making various dishes,

 like roasted plum and pudding tart,

plum crisp,

 plum rosemary upside-down cake,

 plum cobbler,

 and baked plum sweet omelets.

And I still have a big bowl of plums, so I hope to make a few things more. But I doubt I'll pick any more; their season is just about over, and I've picked all the plums I can easily get to.

But plums aren't the only thing! In the spring, my dad constructed a garden, and my mom has enjoyed planting vegetables. We have tons and tons of tomatoes. So this week I made my own spaghetti sauce from our own tomatoes, which I have never done before. It was relatively simple: onions, carrots, tomatoes, basil, and rosemary. Oh, and some olive oil for cooking the vegetables. But despite its simplicity, it was amazing! It was even sweet, though I didn't add any sugar. It was so much better than I expected!

All of the above recipes come from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. I got this cookbook for my birthday five years ago, and I love it! There are so many unusual recipes in it (some are truly terrible, but most are great), and so many of the recipes have variations with different fruits or vegetables. It has made me more confident and comfortable experimenting with recipes.

Earlier this summer, my friend sent me a recipe for tomato pie, and I made it last week. But I didn't take any pictures because my phone was charging in the other room. The topping was a mixture of mayonnaise and cheese—and I hated it. I couldn't even finish a whole piece. But luckily, my mom loved it, so it wasn't a waste. I'll stick to my beloved tomato cobbler instead.

Our garden also has several pumpkins growing, some of which are already fully orange. I don't know if they'll last until Halloween.

New phone

I have had a big hassle getting a new phone. On Tuesday, I went to a Sprint-turned-T-Mobile store to get my desired new phone, a Samsung Galaxy a71. They had it in stock, but they wouldn't sell it to me because I wasn't an authorized user on the account. Ugh! So instead we just ordered it online (and made sure to change the account settings so I can buy a phone in person in the future). From the beginning, I haven't loved my Motorola, and it's nice to see Samsung is so much better. But it always takes time to get used to a new phone. One of my biggest gripes is that every new phone vibrates for every notification, and this new one is very nonintuitive to turn the vibrating off for individual apps. I'm still figuring everything out.

Last month, I was excited that Google Play Music was going away to be replaced by YouTube Music. I was excited because YouTube lets you have more than 1,000 songs in a playlist. But I am no longer excited, because YouTube is worse than Google Play in almost every other way. One of the most egregious problems is that you can't cast your own music to your own Google devices without a subscription! I mean, that's Apple-level evilness. 

See, I still buy music. I use Spotify Free and the radio to discover new music, but I like owning my own music. And I refuse to pay a subscription fee for Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc. I understand why others like the subscription model, but it's not for me. I can either pay ten dollars (roughly equivalent to an album or ten songs) a month to a company for the right to listen to music, while the artists get fractions of pennies, or I can spend money for the right to do whatever I want with the music file forever, and the artist gets more of the share. I usually buy Amazon MP3s, which maybe isn't a wise investment, but I still like it. I don't usually buy CDs, because I don't really have a CD player and I don't like storing them, but I do still buy them if they are unavailable digitally or if there's an exclusive version with bonus tracks (e.g. Chromatica, which has been my summer soundtrack). I especially love adding to my holiday playlists, and much of my holiday playlists is not available at all on streaming services.

So I'm stuck finding an alternative to Google Play Music. So far, iBroadcast seems most promising, but it's still very clunky. For example, you can't add songs to playlists online; you can only do that on the app, which is quite cumbersome. Really though, Google Play Music has been the best option, and Google is just throwing it away, and I haven't heard a reason why. Sigh. I think it's too late for them to change their mind, but I hope they suffer negative consequences for this dumb decision.

New trailer

 Last month, I reported that my parents traded in their trailer for a new tent trailer. This week (Wednesday to Friday), we took it up to Moosehorn Lake for our first camping trip in it.

It is very big for a tent trailer. When we open it up, it is very tall; my parents bought a ladder to use in it. I'm the tallest member of the family, and sometimes even I have a hard time reaching the tops of the zip-up windows or hanging the door on the ceiling.

My family has been going to Moosehorn for longer than I have been around. It's been an August tradition, though there were many years that I could not go (school and work).

The pink flowers are fireweed.

 Our campsite was not very shady, as many trees had been cut down. There were little plastic cone things to protect saplings.

There's really not much to say about our trip. We spent a lot more time inside the trailer than we did in the last trailer, since the tent trailer is more spacious and open than the regular trailer was. And that's really why my parents wanted a tent trailer.

 My dad didn't feel like hiking Bald Mountain, but on Thursday evening we walked along the Fehr Lake trail, which is across the road from Moosehorn. We didn't go as far on this trail as we did last trip.

 As we walked along, I noticed what I'm pretty sure are glacial striations. These are parallel lines in a rock where pebbles were stuck underneath a glacier, and as the glacier moved along, it scratched the rock.

 We also saw a fox, but I didn't get a good picture of it because it was running away from us. We saw deer, too, but we see deer in our yard and neighborhood all the time. Seeing a deer is like seeing a spider. Who cares?

I went out on Moosehorn Lake in our inflatable boat a few times. 

That's my dad on our boat.

One of the tiny trees in a protective cone.

Since it was our first trip, we didn't know that we would run out of water in our tank. But we also weren't very careful with our water.

Trailers really have gotten nicer over the years. The first one we had had a pump faucet; now we have regular faucets with hot water. Ours has an oven, a microwave, a fridge, a sound system, floor lights and ceiling lights, a heater, an air conditioner (which we didn't use), and I know it has other things. Sorry I don't have pictures to show you this time. My mom wanted to make a dessert to try out our oven, and the only desserts I have right now are made from our own fruit, so she made a cherry pie. Right before she put it in the oven, I remembered that fruit pies spill over and make a mess. I put aluminum foil in the oven to prevent spilling, and it helped, but we still did get some burned on the new oven, which my dad wasn't too happy about.

Because of camping, I didn't do as much running this week. On Tuesday, I was running down North Canyon when I heard a rattlesnake rattling in the brush. Since it wasn't on the trail, I just kept going to get away from it—I thought it might be riskier to stop and find it, as long as I knew that I wasn't going to step on it. As I kept going, the rattling got louder! Ack! But I made it past. I guess I think that if it's in the vegetation, and I'm on the trail, there's a barrier of plants between it and me. If it wants to attack me, it will have to go through the plants. And hopefully it will feel less threatened because it is shielded by plants.

A month or two ago, I noticed that my phone's screen is coming off, and since I've had it more than two and a half years, it's time for a new one. But getting a new one has been a hassle. The Sprint store in Bountiful closed. So I went to one in Salt Lake, where the salesman wasn't very helpful. I am planning to get a Samsung Galaxy a71 (because of his suggestion, and because I need a good camera for my candy reviews), but that store was out of stock at the time—and I didn't want to go back to the unhelpful salesman. Then I learned that T-Mobile stores will start servicing Sprint, and there's a T-Mobile near my house. So I went on July 31, but they couldn't do Sprint until August 3. So I went back on August 3, but they didn't have the phone in stock. I went back yesterday, but they were unable to get my phone activated through the Sprint account. At one point, the manager called Sprint on my phone pretending to be me, then he gave me the phone to talk to their sales rep to see if I could get my phone activated at the T-Mobile store or get it sent to me. Actually, I'm really not sure why he was calling them. Call centers are a universally negative experience. The sales rep had an Asian accent, and it sounded like her headset kept getting away from her mouth, so it was very quiet and hard to understand. I think it's great that nonnative English speakers can learn English and get jobs, but it certainly makes for a difficult experience. But when I would ask questions, she would go off on things that were unrelated. For example, when I asked how I would activate my phone once I received it, she was going off about transferring my information with a USB and getting a protection plan. That's not what I asked! And I couldn't understand half of what she was saying anyway! Finally I told her just to cancel it, that I would go to a store in person and get a phone. But even then she kept going on about adding more lines to the account. It was so frustrating! After an hour and forty minutes in the store, I still left without a new phone. I'm not mad at anyone; it was basically the first time the T-Mobile employees were trying to activate a Sprint phone. The call center woman, I'm sure, was just doing what she had been trained to do. So I guess if I'm mad at anyone, it's the Sprint policymakers who give their call center employees big lists of things to ask and say. They are not helpful! It's also frustrating that the Sprint/T-Mobile merger is supposed to be in effect, yet the process is still so clunky. So hopefully this coming week I'll finally get a new phone, somehow.

Summertime randomness

I am happy to report that I had a snake-free week this week! I ran up North Canyon four times (MTWF), and there were no rattlesnakes that I saw or heard. There was a woman on a mountain bike who said, "It's good to see you again" as she biked past, and she called to her friend, "He's always up here!" Yes, yes I am. It's been several weeks since I've seen her. I've been going up North Canyon so much that it has gotten less exciting than it used to be. However, it's still my favorite trail, and it makes me so happy that such a wonderful spot is so close to my house. I don't understand why Mueller Park is so much more popular, but I'm not complaining—it keeps North Canyon nice and empty.

This "tombstone" has been there about a month now.

I don't know what these gross things were on the trail, but there were lots of flies on them.

As you know, I structure my life around holidays. There is plenty to enjoy about this time of year—shaved ice shacks, fresh fruit, monsoonal thunderstorms, etc.—but I get a little impatient for the fall so we can have holidays again. It's too early for Halloween, but if I am reviewing something for The Impulsive Buy, I can have it early. On Wednesday I drove out to Dollar General in Rose Park to search for Witch's Brew Kit Kats. Dollar General puts stuff out way early. I was delighted and surprised they actually had them! And the review went up today.

On Thursday, I was preparing for a typical day (which consists of a North Canyon run in the morning, strength exercises in the afternoon, some kind of chore, and then whatever I want). But my sister texted me to ask if I wanted to go up to Bear Lake with her and my niece. So I said yes! We drove up through Logan Canyon, then stopped at a beach on the lake.

We put our feet in the water, but we weren't prepared for swimming or anything. We drove back into Garden City to get lunch. We saw some polygamists playing in the water in their dresses, and I had to feel bad for them. We drove home through Randolph and Mountain Green. The adventure wasn't anything special, but it was nice to get out of the quaran-routine.

I have also enjoyed picking plums from our tree. Last year we didn't really have any plums, so I'm happy we have them this year. (But this year we didn't have any apricots.) Of all the fruits we get, plums are the best for straight eating. Apricots are best for jam, apples and cherries are most versatile, and grapes are best for juice.

Since I collect music for every holiday, last month I ordered a CD from Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts to add to my Pioneer Day playlist. It didn't arrive, so last night I emailed the organizer, Clive Romney, to see if my order had been received. He is the author of "Scripture Power," the head of the band Enoch Train, and otherwise prominent in the local music scene. He responded and wanted to bring it to me in person today! I thought that would be inconvenient for him, but it's probably no less convenient than shipping it to me. So that was a little intimidating to have him come over, but it was nice. He signed the new CD, and I asked him to sign all the other copies I have of his projects.