minutiae

 Since I tested negative for COVID last week, I just resumed my boring life of working in the day and improving my grad portfolio in the evening. I did a couple of short evening runs after work, but since there's still snow on the ground, I'm still avoiding the trails. If it's not going to snow, it might as well just melt all the snow we already have. 

I can't entirely say my life is boring, because I really do enjoy my job. I learn so many interesting things. My supervisors have asked me to reach out to other people in the department to ask for help on finding sources. But I feel so weird doing that. These people are experts in their fields, so they have better things to do than read emails from lowly interns like me! I need to work on not feeling that way. I have been reading letters from Brigham Young, which are available online, and one of them was a response to a man who asked Brigham Young to look for his lost mule. It amazes me that people would, and still do, send random letters to high-ranking people they don't know. It stresses me out to send emails even when I have a legitimate reason to do so!

A few weeks ago, my mom got a notification that an Amazon package had been delivered. But when I went to the door, the package was nowhere to be seen, so she got a refund. (The delivery driver had not taken a picture of the delivery, like they usually do.) Then yesterday, I looked at the decorative barrel in our garden and happened to notice a package sitting on top of it! Since it was grey, it kind of blended in with the snowy atmosphere. I'm trying to figure out why they put it there: it's nowhere near our front door, and it's not even that close to the side door. There's not a clear direction that would lead them to that one spot. So weird.

I'm feeling guilty for a grocery store incident. Last night I bought some beets, and I put them in my reusable produce bag, which is not see-through. Then I picked out some avocados and absentmindedly put them in the same bag. I was going to use the self-checkout, but there was a line, so they opened up a regular till for me. I didn't even pay attention to the cashier weighing my beets, since I was still loading groceries, and I declined a receipt. And then when I got home I realized the beets and avocados were together, and I don't know what they charged me. They might have weighed the costlier avocados with the cheaper beets! I feel so guilty that I might have cheated them! But I didn't do it on purpose. Oh well.

For my Sunday School lesson for the fifteen-year-olds today, I talked about the importance of keeping a book of remembrance. To illustrate, I took a journal, then I asked them to give me a date within the range of the journal (October 2015 to August 2016). I would see what I could remember about the date, then turn to the journal to fill in the gaps. They picked the date of November 21, which was a Saturday, but I didn't remember what else happened that day until I checked out what I wrote in my journal. (It turns out that was the day I went to a play and someone with my same name had already picked up my tickets.) When I had finished the content of my lesson, they were all fascinated that I remembered the day of the week, so then they began pulling out random dates, including their birthdates, to ask what day of the week it was. My method is fairly simple: I just happen to remember the day of the week of various holidays in a particular year, and then I work from that. So in the case of November 21, 2015, I remembered that Halloween was a Saturday, so November 21 was exactly three weeks after that.

I also gave the kids little boxes of conversation hearts, since I had also talked about being "of one heart and one mind." They seemed to appreciate that.

For someone who obsesses over seasonally appropriate foods, it is a great time to be alive, and I think that I actually won't be able to try all the Valentine's offerings from various dessert shops. That is a great problem to have! Such a thing would have been unthinkable ten, fifteen years ago, though I also paid less attention then. Sometimes I wonder, "Are my eating habits sustainable?" But I have been eating this way for at least seven years, so I suppose they are.

Here are two Valentine's flavors from Baskin-Robbins. On the bottom is the classic Love Potion #31, with raspberry-filled hearts, but on the top is the new Secret Admirer, which has rose-flavored ice cream, but it didn't taste like flower to me.