The start of a lull

Six months ago, my parents left on a weeks-long road trip, leaving me alone in the house with Jimmy. I was by myself for my birthday and general conference.

This week, they once again left on a weeks-long road trip, leaving me alone in the house with Reggie. I will be by myself for my half-birthday and general conference.

He is a sweet companion.

As you know, I have spent the last two and a half months working on my graduate portfolio. This week I made significant progress, and I emailed my advisor with some questions about it. He answered my questions and told me he wanted to see a draft of my portfolio before my defense. So yesterday, I decided to pound out the remainder of my portfolio so I could get it to him. Phew! I know that he will have feedback for me, and I will have to make additional changes. But at the moment, I am done with it! Hooray! That will give me more time to focus on my paper for internship credit. And also for fun things. And also for less fun things that I have been putting off.

I am just super nervous to get feedback from him. It's always hard to see what you could do better. And I feel super weird contacting my professors, or anyone in authority, or anyone for that matter. Having been raised as the youngest in my family, I have this perception that I'm always annoying people.

Now I will have more time just in time for trail season. I have a rule that I can start going on the trails when all the snow is gone from our yard. Yesterday there was still some snow in the yard, so I ran on streets in the morning. But by the afternoon, it was all gone. So this week I should be back on the trails!

A few weeks ago the U had spring break, but it wasn't any kind of a break for me, since I still worked and I'm not in classes. They didn't have spring break last year because everything was online. BYU didn't have spring break when I was there. So I have never really had a university-level spring break.

So, yeah, that's my week. I'm excited for more exciting things to happen again!

St(range) Patrick's Day

During the spring and summer (and sometimes fall), North Salt Lake has food trucks on Monday nights. Since I like to support local businesses, I sometimes enjoy going over to the food trucks.

They have resumed for the year, so I decided to grab dinner from them on Monday. I got reuben sandwiches for me and my parents, since I like to eat corned beef at this time of year,

I feel a little weird making this picture the first one, because it will show upon Facebook, and I think some of my blog "readers" don't actually read and will think I made it. And also, I worry that people will judge me for not being vegetarian, even though I probably eat less meat than the average person.

and I also got a green-colored key lime cheesecake, because I like to eat anything green during March. (Well, as long as there's an accompanying green flavor, like mint, lime, pistachio, etc.)

I often wake up in the wee hours of the morning and remain awake for a couple of hours. So between Monday and Tuesday, I awoke at 5 a.m. feeling a bit nauseated, then I fell asleep again later.

Then, at 7:45, shortly before my alarm went off, I woke up feeling even worse. I ran into the bathroom and began forcefully vomiting the remains of my sandwich. There were little bits of corned beef and little seeds that were probably from the bread, but the most common element was the purple sauerkraut, which I kept blowing out of my nose. I hadn't thrown up since Thanksgiving 2015.

So what do I do now? It didn't seem like I should go into work, but I thought I would work from home. But first, I wanted to go back to bed, since I slept poorly.

Well, it turned out that all I wanted to do all day was sleep. I was too tired to work at all, and I ended up throwing up two other times, one of which was mostly water. I probably slept more than I have slept during any other illness. All I had was water and some Gatorade. My parents believe the cheesecake poisoned me, since they ate the same sandwiches but not the cheesecake, but I think there are too many variables to know what caused it.

On Wednesday, I felt much better, and though my appetite was smaller, I could actually eat. But I still didn't feel 100 percent, so I opted to work from home.

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, so I wore my shamrock tie, green glasses, green pants, orange belt, and shamrock socks. I was ready to return to my office computer—but my office computer wasn't ready for me. I unlocked my computer as usual, but it was being unusually slow when all I was doing was looking on File Explorer to open my documents for the day. So I restarted my computer. But the restart was taking an irrationally long time. So finally I just turned the button off. When I turned the computer on again, it was totally broken. I tried a few troubleshooting options, but they didn't work. I was going to reset it, but I didn't know if the IT folks would approve of that, so I called them. They made a ticket for me, and then I waited for them to call. I couldn't do any work on my computer, so I did some low-priority reading while I waited. And waited. They finally got back to me when there wasn't much time left in the day, and they did tell me to reset it. I could have done that myself. Oh well.

I went home and had our meal of corned beef and cabbage. I didn't know that was a thing until I was an adult, and I only made it part of my celebrations beginning in 2015. I do like it better than merely adding green food coloring to rice or potatoes.

Also pictured is a (dried out) piece of Trader Joe's Irish soda bread. I didn't have the time or appetite to make my own this year.

But that evening I couldn't do much fun, because I had to "attend" a Zoom meeting for church instructors. Oh well, I don't know that my St. Patrick's Day would have been that interesting anyway. And since February 15, I have been eating green food and watching Irish-ish shows, so it's not like I missed out on any one-day-only festivities.

I'm feeling much better, though I didn't feel up to running yesterday, especially since I'm still working on my portfolio. I had to take three days off the portfolio this week: one because the food trucks took longer than expected, one because I was sick, and one because of the holiday and teacher meeting. I'm still working on it, but I can see the end now!

A few Reggie pics

Huh. I really don't know what to write about this week. I don't do a lot of interesting stuff these days. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for my portfolio, but I'm still not done. I still enjoy my job, and I got some positive compliments on my work this week, so that was nice.

I've had my new Garmin watch for a week now, and I'm still getting used to it and seeing what kinds of features it has. My impression so far is that Garmin is capable of more things, but Fitbit is more designed to be fun and motivational. 

Though it took a long time for him to warm up, Reggie has become quite the affectionate, sweet cat. He likes to jump onto my bed and then sit on me for long periods of time, just like Jimmy used to do. And he even slept on my bed part of one night. But he slept directly next to me, so I felt like I couldn't roll over or anything. Jimmy knew to sleep far enough away from me that we wouldn't disturb each other.

Cats are amazing. Sometimes we like to imagine fanciful things could be real, like a stuffed animal coming to life. But cats are a fanciful thing that really exists! They have faces that we find adorable, and they choose to spend time with us and love us unconditionally, and they make funny noises and do funny things. I just can't believe they're real!

It's just as well that it's still snowy, since I have to devote so much time to school. I haven't been able to go to See's Candies this year for their St. Patrick's Day Potato, which is my all-time favorite candy. 

Thnks fr th mmrs, Fitbit

 My life continues to be relatively uneventful. I did make some satisfying finds doing research at work, but it would be dull to explain it, especially with as vague as I need to be.

Every day when I come home, I work an hour and a half on my portfolio, with a half hour devoted to each of three sections I've been working on: two annotated syllabi and one annotated bibliography. Yesterday I finally finished the bibliography. So now I have to decide whether I keep working an hour and a half every day, devoting the extra half hour to the syllabi, or whether I only devote an hour each day, rewarding myself with the extra free time.

It's March now, which is the month when trail season resumes. I'm grateful for the snow we got today (I want wildflowers!), and in March the snow doesn't last as long, and it stays light later. So I might really appreciate extra free time on the trails.

While I was writing this blog, my new watch arrived. You might have heard this week that Fitbit recalled its Ionic watch because lots of people have been burned by its battery. Well, I have an Ionic. It has been fine, and only a small percentage of people have been burned, so I considered just ignoring the recall.

But then I thought if I can get a refund on it, it might be worth upgrading. And I decided to switch from Fitbit to Garmin, and I'll see how that works out.

It's less vibrant in real life.

I first got a Fitbit, the Surge watch, at the beginning of 2016, and I loved that watch. But it had a serious design flaw. Its watchband was very flimsy, like the flimsiest band I have ever seen, and yet it couldn't be replaced. When the cheapo band broke, the whole watch became unusable. I used Gorilla tape for a while, but then that didn't work. They no longer make the Surge, and it seems like a shady business practice to make a watch with an irreplaceable band.

So then I upgraded to my Ionic in October 2018. I appreciated that I could wear it swimming, and it had more features. But not everything was an upgrade. Worst of all was that the screen did not stay on all the time. I could set it to stay on, but that would eat up the battery. I hated that at first. Then I got more used to it, but I never fully liked it. I hated having to hold my wrist a certain way to see the time, instead of merely glancing down. I would often look for a clock in the room rather than look at my watch (I have consistently worn a watch since I was eight years old). And I especially hated when I was riding a bike. If I wanted to see the time or my distance, I would have to take my hand off the handle bar, then hold it steady in front of me. I just hated that!

So, now that I had a reason to switch watches, I decided to. My Garmin Instinct's screen will stay on all the time. It's not a touch screen, and I worry I won't like that. But I might like it more. With the touch screen, water droplets in the shower or the pool do weird things, and when I'm running when it's cold, I have to take my gloves off to manipulate the watch. I'm also hoping that the GPS will be better than on the Fitbit. This particular watch is geared more for trail running, which of course is my jam, and it also has a feature for stand-up paddleboarding, which I hope to do more of. The battery life is better. I hear the Garmin app isn't as good as Fitbit, but now I will see for myself.

Also, back in 2018, I chose to stay with Fitbit in part because I was doing step challenges with my cousins, but then that fizzled out. My Ionic had Fitbit Coach workouts on it, and I loved doing those workouts back in 2020. (Nearly every day that summer and fall, I would run up North Canyon in the morning, then come home and do a Fitbit workout. I miss those days when I could do whatever I wanted! Except be social, or go out in public, or...) But last summer, they quit the Fitbit Coach feature. They also used to send me badges when I hit a new milestone for lifetime miles or floors, but it has been years since I got one of those. So I really have less use for Fitbit these days.

I know there will be a learning curve with Garmin, but I'm excited to get started! 

In other news, I took the bus to work three days this week, since my UCard gives me free fare. I haven't taken it to work before because of COVID numbers, but I feel safer doing so now. I'm trying to save the planet here, and it also gives me time to keep reading the book on the history of St. Patrick's Day that I started last summer while working at This Is the Place.

Anyway, on Friday, I was standing at the bus stop after work. There was another woman waiting, and then out of the corner my eye I saw someone else come up. But she stayed standing on the sidewalk, rather than off to the side like we were, and she seemed to be facing toward us, rather than watching the road like we were. Evidently the first woman also found it a little strange, because she said hello to her, thinking that she must have said hello but wasn't sure because of masks. Then I looked at the second woman, and I realized that I knew her. She was in my junior high science class (and then in an adjoining YSA ward), and I knew she had some kind of mental challenge, ASD or something—she can still function as needed, but probably not going to go to college. I (re)introduced myself to her, and after we discussed our jobs, she randomly asked if I have any pets. (And of course I do!)

Anyway, that got me thinking about social norms. No one teaches you how to stand at a bus stop. It's just something you pick up. Clearly the girl I knew never picked that up. And I'm glad that, despite all my social awkwardness, I picked up how to wait at a bus stop.

Today I taught my youth Sunday School class. To illustrate the idea that we only have incomplete stories in the scriptures (especially the Old Testament), I had them guess Disney movies based on poor descriptions I came up with. Here they are:

• A sentient body of water can do anything but fight coconuts.
• A boy remembers his brother with a talking balloon.
• A woman turns into a dragon after she is not invited to a baby shower.
• A misfit lives in a magic house.
• An octopus is jealous of a fish.
• A woman sits in a pumpkin to find love.
• A girl falls in a hole and talks to flowers.
• Two pets eat pasta.
• A woman literally blows away her competition. (They struggled with this one.)
• A cowboy takes revenge on a boy who likes skulls.

I also showed clips from a wonderful recent devotional about unrealistic expectations of prophets. I highly recommend it.