Catch 22s

 I try to choose the right and do good things. But sometimes it is literally impossible to do everything good.

During this pandemic, we are told we should (1) avoid dining in restaurants, in order to stop the spread of the virus; (2) support local businesses, including restaurants; and (3) avoid single-use plastic. (Well, this last one is all the time, not just in a pandemic.) But since so many restaurants use plastic containers and plastic utensils, it is only possible to do two of those three things. If I dine at a restaurant, I am doing 2 and 3 but not 1. If I get takeout, I am doing 1 and 2 but not 3. And if I don't eat out, I am doing 1 and 3 but not 2. 

Often, I will specifically tell them that I don't need a spoon or a straw (which can be a little awkward), yet they still give them to me. It drives me crazy! I feel so guilty using plastic! (Seriously, how do people live with themselves when they drink bottled water?) I went to Bahama Buck's yesterday and told them I didn't need a spoon or a little umbrella. But since the person filling my order was not the one taking my order, I still ended up with a spoon and an umbrella. The umbrella is not plastic at least, but it's entirely wasteful because it doesn't even serve a purpose. (It wasn't even raining!)

But this is not the only time I feel like there are opposing things I should be doing that are good. While I'm in school, my exercising has been reduced (at least in the winter). It is a little comforting to know that no matter what I do (homework or exercise), I'm doing something good. 

But these are not the only examples. Here are many ways that I feel conflicted in trying to do the right thing:

Reduce, reuse, recycle BUT Don’t hoard. Declutter.

Use plants that don’t use much water BUT Grow your own garden to reduce transportation.

Don’t let your money burn a hole in your pocket BUT A penny saved is a penny earned/Save for a rainy day.

Help other people BUT Take care of yourself first.

Help other people BUT Don’t enable other people.

Don’t judge people or jump to conclusions BUT If something seems suspicious, report it.

Replace incandescent Christmas bulbs with energy-efficient LEDs BUT It’s wasteful to replace Christmas lights.

Be friends with everyone, including those who are different from you BUT Be friends with people who support you and your values; don’t spend time with toxic people.

(I know I will think of more examples after I post this.)

Then, of course, there are all the foods and nutrients that are either good or bad, depending on who you ask (and depending on whether they make money from them): wheat, milk, eggs, meat, fats, sugar, chocolate, potatoes, corn, carbs, etc.

I know there is a balance between all these conflicting ideas, but it can be hard to find that balance.

It is distressing to know that no matter my efforts, I'm not doing everything right. But at least I'm probably doing something right.

Periodontal, presidential

 My five-week break is over. Spring semester began on Tuesday.

I'm taking Utah history, environmental history, and US history since 1877. The first two are undergrad classes, so there's more than thirty people in each class. That makes me feel less inclined to participate, since it's hard to interject via Zoom, and I don't want to steal the thunder from undergrad students. But the third class is only for grad students, and it's required. I had the professor for my borderlands history class last semester, and she's pretty lenient. She's also removed some of the regular requirements to help us cope with COVID, so I'm not too concerned about that class. 

I am a little sad that most of my time once again will be devoted to reading. It can be exhausting. Last semester, I looked forward to the end of the semester, because it would be festive Christmastime. This semester will end in May. May is a fabulous month, but it's just kind of...open ended. But then I will have all of the summer to look forward to. Or maybe I won't look forward to summer. Who knows what summer 2021 will look like?

On Tuesday afternoon, I had a dental appointment. I was supposed to have one in September, but my old dentist stopped taking my insurance. If I upgraded my insurance to keep going there, it would more than double my monthly payment, so I just picked a new dentist, and it took me a few months to get that worked out. 

It's a good thing I did, because the new dental office diagnosed me with periodontal disease. They seemed surprised that the last office hadn't noticed when I went in March. The hygienist (who was the most friendly/least socially awkward of all the office staff) listed off possible causes of the bone loss when I asked. The only one that seems to fit is genetics. I don't have any other diseases (that I know of), and I have good oral hygiene. (I didn't have good oral hygiene when I was a kid, since my parents didn't enforce teeth brushing, but I do now.)

They didn't do my cleaning on Tuesday, since they weren't prepared for my necessary deep clean. So I have to go back this week.

On Wednesday, I was happy to watch the inauguration. I was going to do my strength training in my pajamas with the inauguration in the background, but it seemed important enough that I take it more seriously and put on my Biden/Harris t-shirt.

It was the first time I ever watched an inauguration (I worked in 2017, was on a mission in 2009, and was young before that). I felt so happy while watching it! First of all, I was happy that Amy Klobuchar was MC, since she was my first choice for president. I hope we haven't seen the last of her. Then I was so happy to see Joe Biden cross himself for the prayer. It's refreshing to see someone (especially a Democrat) who is deeply committed to his faith. I was especially happy that the prayer quoted James 1:5, that most significant of Bible verses in Latter-day Saint theology. And regular blog readers know how I feel about Lady Gaga, so I was delighted to see her sing the national anthem wearing a giant dove brooch. She did a beautiful job, as expected. And then, how exciting to have our first female/black/Asian vice president! (My first year at Sundance, I had a coworker named Kamala, so I know she must be happy now.) And of course, it was refreshing to have the president tell us that he will fight for those who didn't support him. So much better than the last four years of us versus them.

Unfortunately, I did have to temper my enthusiasm. I realized that the joy I felt was not so much because I'm wildly enthusiastic about this president or think this will be a spectacular administration. It's just a relief to be done with the last one! The fact that Mike Pence and George Bush attended but Trump did not is a testament to the fact that he is a narcissistic, selfish, evil man. I hope we never hear about him ever again, except if he is convicted of a crime or when he dies. Well, it would be nice to hear if he had a change of heart, but in that case, I think the news stories would be more focused on the airborne swine and Mephistopheles's snowballs. 

In other news, I have continued running on new streets in North Salt Lake. I ran down Redwood Road to the southern end of North Salt Lake. I have most of the eastern part of the city done, but I have a lot in the western part still to do. I have driven down there for some of the roads, since I don't love running through traffic. 

I often talk about my dislike for January. But I do love being able to see six-pointed snowflakes with my naked eye. 

I love to experiment with variations on recipes, so today I wanted to try cherry chocolate pancakes, using the cherries we have in the freezer. They were a challenge to make; I wasn't used to the cocoa consistency, and the cherries made the pancakes thick, which made them harder to cook all the way through. They were OK.

When I'm in school, I feel guilty anytime I'm not working on school stuff. You might think I'm stressing myself out, but really I just try to get ahead and stay on top of everything so I'm not stressed. I'm hoping I get into a new groove this semester so I can be even more productive than last semester!

Science fair

Hmm. Since it's January, there wasn't a whole lot that was interesting this week. I've just been enjoying my last full week off before spring semester starts. 

One thing that was out of the ordinary was that my mom asked me to help judge elementary school science projects. Along with two other judges, I judged five projects: one kid created boxes with lightbulbs and different kinds of insulation; some girls tested how to prevent berries from rotting; some girls tested how long it took different kinds of soda cans to explode in the freezer; two boys tested whether basketball, soccer, or running burned the most calories; one boy tested different amounts of hydrogen peroxide in "elephant toothpaste." I was also supposed to judge a girl seeing whether salt or a heater melted ice faster, but she didn't show up.

This was all online, of course, and science fairs have changed a lot since I was a kid. I don't know if today's presentations would have been more traditional if there weren't a pandemic going on, but an online science fair would have been impractical back at the turn of the millennium. Our dial-up AOL couldn't have handled video streaming, even if the technology had been around. Apparently PowerPoints existed, but I hadn't heard of them. 

When I was in school, everyone was graded by first, second, or third place. In fifth grade, I remember one of my classmates only got third place, and I remember thinking that was unfair, because his science was sound (at least as far as I could tell as a fifth-grader). His display board was sloppy, with pencil-written captions. But he did the project all by himself, not having a supportive family and probably not having a home computer. (He was a troubled kid. He once slashed a teacher's tires, and in sixth grade he was expelled.) But before we began making our projects, they presented us with an example of what not to do: a demonstration and explanation (not an experiment) about volcanoes. One kid in another grade did that exact project (the bad example!) and still got second or first place. I remember thinking that was so unfair and ridiculous.

All of this is to say that I tried to be fair and impartial in judging.

One evening this week, I was sitting in my room, petting Jimmy, when suddenly I heard a crash and the sound of shattering glass from the living room. For years, our tall lamp in the living room has been crooked. Finally the strain of being crooked became too much, and it crashed to the ground with no provocation. So my parents ordered a new one. 

Never mind the clutter of our house.

I've also been pursuing my goal of running on all of North Salt Lake's streets and visiting all of its parks. 

Then Friday, January 15, was my arbitrary date for beginning the Valentine's Day season. It's nice to have something going on this time of year, but Valentine's Day really isn't great. The best/most interesting thing about it is the candy and desserts, but even Valentine's Day sweets aren't as good as the other holidays, holidays where the candy is one of the lesser parts.

Last month, I made cherry crisp and modified the recipe to give it a gingerbread topping. So this month, I made cherry crisp but modified the recipe for a red velvet topping.

Ten of the twelve months of the year have their own wonderful things going on in the moment. But for all of January and February, I'm mostly looking forward to other times of the year, instead of what's going on at the moment.

Ridiculosity

 I started the week with some optimism. January 4 marked 125 years of Utah statehood! A lot of the media coverage talked about the celebrations that erupted on January 4, 1896, but they didn't mention that the formal celebrations took place on January 6. (It took some time to work out logistics!)

We welcomed a new Utah governor. Spencer Cox is a wonderful man of true character and integrity; the ceremony took place in St. George because he wants to represent all Utahns. The anti-maskers were protesting at the inauguration, which shows that we picked the right guy. The anti-maskers deserve to never be happy as long as they remain anti-maskers. In a world where you can be a Spencer Cox Republican or a Donald Trump Republican, you should always be a Spencer Cox Republican.

That evening, there was a celebratory broadcast on TV. I tuned in, but it wasn't great; it was just local performers and was meant to support them. I'm all for supporting local; I just didn't think it was must-see TV. 

Then, there were fireworks in all twenty-nine counties. I parked my car in Eaglewood so I could see Farmington's fireworks from a distance. I saw them, though it was a little boring watching them from such a distance alone in my car. (You just have to do things to make this bland time of year a little less bland!) The radio was supposed to provide a fireworks soundtrack, but the music started right as the fireworks ended.

Then the next day, I just happened to find my first-grade art project from Utah's centennial! Utah's birthday is the United States' half-birthday.

Rainbow trout and blue spruce are no longer state symbols!

On January 6, I was happy to learn that Democrats were winning Georgia. It's not like I'm a flaming liberal, and I'm generally happy with different parties being in control. But the Republicans have proved they are largely corrupt right now (Spencer Cox and Mitt Romney notwithstanding), what with supporting an evil, narcissistic bully and not taking a pandemic seriously.

Then the events of that day certainly bore out my opinion of Republicans. I don't have much to say about that day that hasn't already been said. It was clearly a day of the far-right doing bad things, yet it baffles me that there are still Republicans who are trying to make the left the bad guys. All this nonsense haunted me while I did a run that day in North Salt Lake's industrial areas.

This road was closed because the road was torn apart! I found a spot where I could safely cross a little stream.

The whole thing affected me. Lately I've been getting a lot of those car warranty robocalls, and on the morning of January 7, I got another call. Instead of hanging up, I actually pressed 2 to speak to a representative, and I told her off.

This act of sedition has made January an even worse month. January is the worst! And this January, we're not having snow. That could be nice, except that it's still cold, so we're still getting inversions, and there's still icy patches on the sidewalks (because of entitled jerks who don't clear them). If we're not going to have springlike weather, we should at least be getting helpful snow.

January has already blown its chance to be an improvement from 2020. Here's hoping for February.

While I'm typing this, I'm watching a mini-marathon on TV of Gilligan's Island in honor of Dawn Wells (Mary Ann), who died of COVID-19 just before the New Year. The show is absolutely ridiculous, and I absolutely love it. And it really isn't more ridiculous than real life these days!

In the Bleak Midwinter

 Since the last Sunday of December is usually when I do my entire year in review, the first Sunday in January is when I talk about both Christmas and New Year's. And I must say, two weeks ago seems like forever! We had two major holidays since then, so we'll see what I can remember about it.

December 21 was the solstice, but it was also the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. We could see it above our garage, but my dad also set up our spotting scope, and when I looked through that, I was able to see Jupiter's moons. My mom and I wanted to set up our telescope, but my dad for some reason didn't want to and had a very cynical attitude about it. He set it up (I guess because he didn't trust us), but he knowingly didn't set it up completely stable, so it was too shaky to be useful.  

You can see it above our garage.

On December 23, I went to Benchmark Books, a bookstore specializing in Mormon writings from all faith perspectives, to get books for one of my classes for next semester. I'm taking an undergrad Utah history class, but as a grad student I have to read six extra books, and I had a long list of books I could choose from. I opted to read some books that I already have, but I went to Benchmark to get some others on my radar. This summer, I heard about this new book This Is the Plate, and I wanted to read it, and fortunately it was on the list of books I could choose from. It's certainly the most interesting (to me) of the books I will be reading. I'm a proud Utahn, and I'm kind of a foodie, so it's important to me. But it's especially important because one of the editors, Eric Eliason, has probably written more about Pioneer Day than anyone else. (Of course, I hope to surpass him one day.)

We have been very good at not socializing during the pandemic, though we have included my sister and my niece (but I think it's still been less often than pre-pandemic times). So they came over for our Christmas Eve. I finally made it through my entire Christmas playlist of 1,463 songs that day, after starting just after Thanksgiving. We made and decorated gingerbread cookies.

We also read Christmas trivia cards that I have. (I dominated, obviously.)

That evening, I watched Gremlins, which I hadn't seen since my brother showed it to me when I was five years old (!), and I was surprised that I still remembered the theme music. Well, I did see the beginning of the movie again when I was ten or eleven, but I think I remembered the music from my young kid days.

On Christmas morning, my sister and niece came over again to open presents. I got an inflatable paddleboard, which I'm excited to use in the summer; Easter dishes, since I don't have many of those; and TS's folklore on vinyl. Then I made gingerbread pancakes.

My mom and I took extra pies to my grandparents, making sure we kept our distance and wore masks. Then I went on a walk in the dark; it was fun to walk past all the lit houses. I should do that more often at Christmas, at least when it's not icy.

I couldn't help but feeling a little sad about Christmas this year, but I had to tell myself it's perfectly OK to be sad about holidays during a pandemic. Hopefully we'll have better holidays later this year.

My parents wanted to keep the Christmas stuff up through New Year's. To me, that makes New Year's less special, but oh well. But I did put up a few New Year decorations.

Jimmy has been needy and affectionate lately. Sometimes he's been sleeping on my bed the entire night! Here he is sitting on my New Year pillowcase. I just adore him.

On New Year's Eve, I wanted to support small businesses by getting a New Year kit from Brownies! Brownies! Brownies! I like that business, but I didn't love this particular brownie, especially since the sprinkles were literally hard to eat.

I found chestnuts at WinCo, and I've never had them before, so I decided to try them for New Year's Eve. You have to heat them up in order to peel them. Apparently a blight in the early twentieth century wiped them out from North America, which is ostensibly the reason they're not so common now (except in Christmas songs). But I think a more likely reason is that they are a lot of work to cook and peel for a small amount of mediocre nut. They had an umami flavor. 

My family put together a puzzle and played Drawful before midnight. I went outside after midnight to see and hear others' fireworks. Again, I felt sad about this New Year, but that's to be expected in a pandemic.

Of all the holidays, New Year's Day has the fewest food traditions, but apparently in the south it's traditional to eat black-eyed peas on January 1. So I decided to make some, the first time I ever did so. The recipe was good (even without the recommended ham or bacon), but it was a little heavy on thyme. 

I got a little jealous: why don't we have our own food traditions? Then I remembered that I just bought a book about the topic. But then I thought, why don't we have our own holiday traditions? Then I remembered that we have our own holiday. Don't forget what you have!

Usually on New Year's Day, my extended family goes out to eat to commemorate my grandparents' first date in 1959, but that couldn't happen this year. So we had a Zoom meeting with everyone instead. It was mostly a good thing, though there were some awkward parts where people overshared or didn't mute. (I don't think those who overshared read this blog, so I don't feel bad saying it.)

My only goal for the New Year is to finish running on every street on North Salt Lake. I don't necessarily have to run on every street in 2021, just the ones I haven't done before. But I don't plan to run in gated communities or on the freeway. I'm undecided about private streets (like condos or trailer parks), which use blue signs instead of green. During the winter, I have less motivation to run (since the trails are snowy/icy/muddy), so hopefully this should give me incentive. I'm also excited to see all the obscure corners of my hometown.

I didn't really set any other new goals or resolutions because (1) I'm already doing well at the most important things, (2) the pandemic has made everything unpredictable, and (3) school is my top priority.

And now that the holidays are over, we are in my absolute least favorite time of the year. There is so little good going on: no trails, no late sunsets, no road trips, no major holidays (and the next one is the worst one), no food trucks, no fresh produce, no lakes. It always takes me until March to quit being sad that Christmas is over. But I am looking forward to tomorrow's statehood celebration.