Sunday, March 28, 2021

So much to do

It really wasn't that eventful of a week, because I had so much schoolwork to do. I had to read five books for school. 

Fortunately, I'm not expected to read every word of the books—just enough to get the basic arguments. But that's still a lot of reading, and I did read basically every word of one of the books because it was so interesting.

This meant that I was only able to exercise two days this week, which is a problem, because all I want to do is eat Easter candy. Fortunately, the lack of time for exercising also meant a lack of time for buying much sugar.

Surprisingly, I slept through the night better than usual. Except that my body decided a few times to wake up at 6:30 or 7 (my usual wake up is 8) and then not go back to sleep. That was after I was up late reading. Why?? Some of that had to do with dreams. In one dream, I was a passenger when my grandma drove her car into standing water, and we all had to get out, and I was pushing the floating car toward the shore. In another dream, I was a passenger in a car (along with a cat) when the driver went over a cliff.

Schoolwork has calmed down for a little bit, except that I still have an essay to complete by Wednesday morning. But I should be able to pound it out in the next couple of days.

The one thing that was less usual was that I got to attend the open house for the new Pioneer Center at This Is the Place. Previously, you bought tickets to the park in the gift shop, but now they have made the visitor center where you buy tickets separate from the gift shop, which really does make sense. The new building showcases the This Is the Place Monument from 1947. I like the monument, but it is very much a product of its time. It is full of Euro-Americans and Europeans, many of whom had a very little impact on Utah and its history. It has exactly one Native American, Shoshone Chief Washakie, even though, you know, the Indians are more Utahn than anyone else. I wrote a paper last semester that explored why Washakie was remembered in the early twentieth century more than any other Native. He and many of his tribe were baptized in the 1880s, and there were not one but two settlements named for him. Of course, the monument does not include the three black slaves who were part of the vanguard company, though they are mentioned on a 1987 plaque that listed all the pioneer names. 

The new pioneer center is very nice, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't make any effort to retell the story of the monument. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, per se, but I wish it would have provided a bit more nuance.

What is really frustrating is that I learned this week that the park will now be fully operating on Sundays, which means that we employees will have to occasionally work Sundays. I thought seriously about quitting, but I reluctantly decided not to. It's just so frustrating that the new center continues to promote the Mormon-centric narrative (which I don't object to), and yet the new policy goes directly against that narrative. So please don't come to the park on Sundays. I want them to make no money so they reverse this poor decision.

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Pandemic Paddy

 St. Patrick's Day means that we are now in our second round of COVID holidays. Last spring, I remember thinking, "It's good that we are having these spring holidays during the pandemic, because it would be really sad to have the fall holidays and Christmas during a pandemic, and at least in the spring we can still go outside." Welp, here we are.

Since approximately 2015, I have really come to enjoy St. Patrick's Day more than I used to, because I actually do more things for it. And it's the beginning of springtime.

Usually Wednesdays are my busy day. I have a class at noon and then an evening class that lasts almost three hours. But the professor for the Wednesday class felt bad that we didn't get a spring break this year, so she gave us the week off. (I think it was as much for herself as it was for us.) And since I don't know when I will get another St. Patrick's Day like this year, I decided to take full advantage of it.

Growing up, we always added green food coloring to food. That's fun, but the food tastes the same as it does every other day of the year. I think it's much more fun to have actual flavors that go with the green. Then it doesn't taste like what you have every other time of the year. So anything green goes. (I still think of my ridiculous roommate seven years ago who claimed that lime wasn't a St. Patrick's Day flavor but mint was, and then he struggled to defend his position.)

My mom made an avocado pie after I mentioned that they exist. One of my roommates eight years ago made one, but he didn't share it. So this was the first time I had one. It was tart, similar to a key lime pie. I wouldn't say I loved it, but I did like it enough to possibly have it again.


Recently, Kneaders published their recipe for Irish stew, so I decided to make Irish stew on Tuesday. I took some liberties with the recipe, and it didn't turn out nearly as good as the Kneaders version. It was OK. My parents liked it more than I did. I doubt it's very Irish, especially since I used beef instead of lamb. (I don't even know where you buy lamb!)

And in the spirit of supporting small businesses, I went to Top Hat Video, which is a rental store that still exists. I don't watch that many movies, but I wanted some for the holiday, so I rented three.

On Tuesday evening, I watched Song of the Sea, which is about the Irish folklore of selkies, beings that can be either humans or seals. I wanted a St. Patrick's Day movie and ended up with a Halloween movie—it takes place on Halloween, since that is when faerie folk are active in Irish folklore, but it's not what you expect from a Halloween movie. It was phenomenal! The animation and art are spectacular, the music is lovely, and the story is engaging. I really struggle to identify any flaws in the movie. 10/10. Why haven't more people heard of it?

Wednesday was the big holiday, and I took much of the day off. I attended my noon class (only my green glasses and shirt were visible on Zoom) and worked on my side gig for two hours, but other than that I had fun. I put corned beef and cabbage in the slow cooker in the morning. I first started doing that in 2015, and I really like it and look forward to it. The stew and the corned beef were probably the first time I have personally cooked with meat since last St. Patrick's Day. I also made Irish soda bread.



 And continuing the green theme, I made avocado milkshakes, which have been my tradition since 2016. It's fun to have something green without any food coloring.

It looks greener in real life.

That evening, I watched the other two movies I rented. First was Finian's Rainbow, an old Fred Astaire musical. It was terrible. If I'm going to watch a movie with a leprechaun, I want the leprechaun to be the main focus, not a random side character in a heavy-handed critique of racism. The only good parts were the voices and some of the songs. 3/10. Leprechauns are such an iconic part of pop culture, so why aren't there any high-quality movies about leprechauns?

The other movie was The Secret of Kells, made by the same studio that did Song of the Sea, and it seemed like a trial run for Song of the Sea (since Kells came first). The animation is pretty, but less so; and the story is less engaging. It's a fantastical origin story of the Book of Kells, a real-life medieval illuminated Bible. 7/10. 

Then the holiday was over until next year, but fortunately the rest of the holidays this year are better holidays. I'm so excited for Eastertime! It's such a wonderful time of the year.

The other exciting part of the week was that all the snow melted, so I was able to get back on the trails! But I wasn't able to spend as much time as I had hoped. And I was dismayed to wake up to more snow again this morning. Oh well. It won't stay long anymore. I didn't see any glacier lilies yet, but they're coming!

It won't be long before everything is green again!

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Vet

 I had to take Jimmy to the vet this week.

About two weeks ago, he jumped onto my mom's lap and immediately starting meowing and hissing in pain. He tucked his leg up and scampered off. We thought it might be a fluke, but my mom saw him get hurt a few more times when jumping up, and I saw it once. Clearly, something was wrong, so we had to take him in.

The last time I tried to take Jimmy to the vet, it did not go well. When I tried to put him in the kennel, he refused to get in, and then he hid from me for more than an hour, so I ended up missing the appointment. That was just for a checkup, so I figured that taking him to the vet just for a checkup was worse than not getting a checkup at all.

So this time around, I made the appointment, but I was super nervous about getting him into the kennel. He hates to be picked up or held, so it wasn't even an option to just hold him while I took him to the vet.

When the time came to take him, he was sitting on a chair in the spare bedroom. So we brought in the crate into the room and tipped it so the door was facing up. I picked him up and tried to place him into the kennel. He put his paws on the outside so that I couldn't place him inside. My mom helped, and it was still a challenge to get him in. Phew! We finally got him in and took him to the car; I drove while my mom sat with him in the backseat. He was making the saddest meows.

While I was driving, my sort-of boss who is a mission president called me, so I talked to him on Bluetooth. I am so awkward on the phone as it is, but when there's a meowing cat in the backseat, and my mom is listening to a Zoom meeting, and I'm driving, and I have to slow down for the school zone, I was very easily distracted and had a hard time hearing. And I always feel so bad using my boss's time, since mission presidents have so little of it.

Well, we made it to the vet. I'm always amazed at how easily vets and techs can handle animals. Jimmy has a strained leg muscle. They recommended that we give him antibiotics, but I knew that wouldn't work out, so they just gave him an extra-strong shot instead. We brought him back home, and he was meowing during the car ride, but his meowing wasn't as sad as at first.

He's not supposed to jump on the furniture, but he still has jumped up twice that we know of. He has certainly been less active, which is exactly as it should be, since his leg needs to heal.

For most of the time we have had him, it has been his morning ritual when he hears that I am awake to jump on my bed and sit on me. He has only done that once since he hurt his leg, and he hasn't done it at all since the vet appointment (though he did jump on my bed once). I hope that soon he will be back to normal and he will get his daily dose of affection.

I do adore him, but it puzzles me that I do and that I spent a vet bill on him. The vet bill was more than he cost. Cats are really expendable, and there's so many more out there waiting to be adopted. But we grow attached to individual ones.


This week I had to go back to This Is the Place to get a uniform and to practice driving the train. Since COVID has changed everything at the park, I will be spending a majority of May driving the train rather than doing what I'm used to. I am nervous that I will have tourists' safety in my hands. But it's pretty easy to drive.

I have mostly successfully adjusted my schedule so that I have time to work and to do homework. I don't know how daylight savings time will affect that, because I certainly don't want to sacrifice sleep. DST is so dumb. I love light in the evening as much as anyone, possibly even more than most. But if I want to take advantage of the light, it should be up to me, not to force everyone to do it. This morning, my phone automatically went ahead an hour, then went back an hour, then went ahead again. It's just such a deeply flawed system.

But I am very excited for springlike weather. Last I looked, there was a tiny spot of snow in the yard—like, less than an inch across. It for sure will be gone by the end of the day. And my guideline is that when all the snow is gone from the yard, I can start hitting the trails again! Hooray! Then I will actually look forward to running instead of it being an obligation. And then I can work off all the green desserts I have been/will be eating.

Sunday, March 7, 2021

$ Again

I haven't worked in a year, thanks to COVID and school, and now I find myself going from no jobs to two jobs. Kind of.

As coronavirus cases shrink, vaccines roll out, and the world reopens, This Is the Place is reopening as well. They've been open on a very limited basis, but they're having more things reopen this year. I received an email about coming back. I told them I could start fully after May, or I could work there earlier if I had a quiet site where I could do class readings.

At the same time I received this news, my old boss from the Church History Library called me. He is a mission president right now, but he has been working on a book project, and he wants me to edit it! I told him I needed time to think about it, since school takes most of my time right now.

As I thought about it, I remembered that when I first started working for him seven years ago, I was in school then, and I was in school during my first internship. I also realized that my life has been rather unstructured last semester and this semester. If I am working, it will force me to stick to a schedule, which really will be better for my schooling. (Not as good for my exercising schedule, but as the days get longer, I will have more time for running.)

So I accepted the editing job! It is fun to be editing history again. I haven't edited since Sundance 2020, and that was a very different kind of editing. (In case you're wondering, this editing gig is not an official job, and it is not connected with the Church History Department or anything like that.)

I told This Is the Place that I couldn't start until May, since I'm doing editing. But it's still something that occupies some of my time. Yesterday we had an orientation meeting. It felt so familiar and satisfying to drive up there again after a year! 

There have been a lot of changes over the last year and a half. There is a brand-new visitor center, which we got to see before it officially opens. It was lovely and impressive.


Even the old visitor center has a new entrance. 
They have this amazing diorama of the entire park!

There is a special window for looking at the monument.

I will also have to keep going to This Is the Place for uniforms and other trainings. 

It is exciting to know that I will once again be making money from both jobs, which will fund my seasonal eating habits. I will miss all the free time I had last summer, but that sometimes got boring.

I just hope I can stay on top of all my schoolwork now with all these new responsibilities!