Earth Day, etc.

Last summer, I was looking forward to a bumper crop of apricots after our tree took a hiatus in 2020. We had a ton of blossoms and a ton of fruit on the tree.

And then...July came. And the apricots never ripened. Instead, the tree just up and died. We had it for my entire life. That means it was an old tree, and maybe it was its time to go, but I think the drought had something to do with it. That is one way that climate change has personally affected me. So many apricot memories. And what's really sad is that not only did our own tree die, but our neighbors cut down their apricot tree that hung into our yard. And some neighbors around the block redid their landscape and cut down their apricot tree. Will I ever eat an apricot again?

Anyway, my dad cut down the tree this week. I didn't help because I was at work. But I got to see his daily progress cutting down the tree. Sigh.

Our plum tree had a lot of blossoms this year. But that tree is also old and ailing, and given this year's water supply, I wouldn't be surprised if it died too.

On Wednesday, I was feeling a little bored with the usual nearby trails, so I decided to run up the Sessions Mountain Trail by the Bountiful Temple, which I haven't been to in six years. I only ran about a half hour. It reminded me why I don't go there—not only is it farther, but it is very steep, and the trail is not in good shape. Parts of it are slippery, and parts of it are more of a ravine. But it looks like there might be a new trail there that I didn't notice before, so I might have to go back sometime. It's just not a priority when I already know that I like the closer trails.

I recently noticed a large growth on my face (temple), but it's behind the frame of my glasses, so it's not someplace I pay much attention to. I thought it might be good to get it looked at, so I made an appointment with a dermatologist. The copay was $40, since it was a specialist. The doctor came in with a light and told me it was a pimple growing on top of a mole. Completely benign. The doctor quipped that it took me longer to park my car than it took him to look at it. I feel silly that I spent all that money to have him look at something that ended up being nothing. Oh well, at least I know I don't have skin cancer.

Friday was Earth Day, but I didn't do anything actually beneficial to the earth, partly because it was rainy. (It was a good excuse to watch the new Earth Day Peanuts specials.) But I did make veggie burgers, since meat is detrimental, though they had egg so they weren't vegan. I try to do my part every day, and I have made a lot of decisions to reduce my carbon footprint. But it is frustrating that I spend so much effort doing my part, but my efforts will mainly be fruitless without the help of others.

For example: when I was in Primary, we once had an Earth Day activity where we had worms-and-dirt dessert. This year, Dairy Queen has a dirt pie Blizzard. Even though Earth Day isn't one of my canonized holidays, I decided I could go get the Blizzard. I specifically told them I didn't need a spoon, because I brought my own. And yet I still ended up with a spoon, since the person taking my order was not the one making it. That made it kind of an anti–Earth Day. This happens a lot of the time, perhaps even a majority of the time, and it is very, very frustrating. But it isn't my fault. If the companies quit dispensing single-use plastic, I wouldn't have to ask and then have my efforts frustrated. I can't do this alone.

Not very egg-citing

Since it snowed this week, which was very welcome, it wasn't an overly exciting week. I find it sad that Easter doesn't get as much attention, hype, or excitement as the other holidays. Oh well.

I only went running on Saturday, and I ran to Ensign Peak, which I do a few times a year, usually after a period of wet weather, since the trail dries faster. There is a steep trail above Ensign Peak, and the last few times I have gone down it, then taken a different way back. This time, I ran up the steep trail after I reached the peak. I've done that before, but it's been a few years, so I was happy to see that I could run up the whole hill without stopping. I haven't always been able to do that, and it was comparatively easy this time. (It helped that it was cool and overcast.)

Not a great picture, but you can see the trail I ran up.

Looking down at Ensign Peak after I ran up the hill

I was also happy to see the flowers of early spring and mid-spring.

Glacier lilies, one of the early flowers

The pink flowers are longleaf phlox. 

The first arrowleaf balsamroot I have seen this season. It is more common after Easter.

In the afternoon, I raked up some pine needles from the front yard, and I found a few bones.

Last fall (I think November), I found an owl pellet in the driveway, and I'm sure the bones are the leftovers from that pellet. It was in the driveway until it snowed, and then I found the bones where we pile the snow. I thought I took pictures of the pellet last fall, but now I can't find them.

I haven't spent much time on Facebook this week, which is a good thing. But its algorithm wants to show me more posts on my phone than on my laptop. I rarely look at posts on my phone (in 2016 I kept accidentally clicking things, including sending friend requests to strangers), but the computer only shows me a few posts from several days ago. I wouldn't mind if Facebook dug its own grave, even though most of my pageviews for this blog come from there.

My parents got back from their three-week trip Saturday, so Easter was a little more subdued this year. Which is fine. We got lots of Easter candy. It used to be that I would make myself sick on Easter because I wouldn't eat any candy after the holiday. So I only had Easter weekend to eat all the contents of my Easter basket. But four years ago, I decided to allow myself to have leftovers. That has made Easter itself less sickening, and it also makes the rest of April less depressing because I still have candy.

We colored eggs, and I did six.

Most of them didn't turn out quite how I hoped

I also was in charge of dessert for our small family Easter dinner. I made apple crisp using the apples we canned from our (neighbor's) tree last fall. For the topping, I put in carrots, nutmeg, and cloves in addition to the usual cinnamon. It was good, but I didn't like it as much with the bottled apples. (Last spring I made the same carrot topping for a crisp made from frozen cherries, and I liked it better.) 

I also used my ice cream maker to make carrot ice cream. I added more carrots than the recipe called for, and it definitely tasted like carrots. It was OK. I don't think I'll make it again, at least not this recipe. But I'll still work my way through the rest of it.

And I ended the Easter season by watching Rise of the Guardians, which is very clearly an Easter movie even though people forget that.

The spring of the leaf

 Ah, springtime!

While it was still cold at the beginning of the week, I took the time to do that necessary springtime ritual: filing taxes. Though I don't like doing the paperwork (via TurboTax), I don't really mind paying taxes, because I benefit from them. I find it strange that during WWII, it was seen as a patriotic duty—but these days, those who claim they are the most patriotic are the ones who most resent paying taxes. Huh.

Anyway, I am delighted that trail season has resumed. We are in the early part of the season, which means that the wildflowers available now are springbeauties, yellowbells, and glacier lilies.

Bonneville Shoreline Trail

Yellowbells

I have gotten good at identifying the more noticeable flowers, but I'm pleased that I can now also identify the leaves of some of the flowers before they even blossom. For example, this picture shows this year's new crop of mulesears. But I was also able to detect the decayed remnants of last year's crop (not really visible in the picture).

springbeauties

Interesting how a new trail has developed to bypass the old one, which collects water 

Glacier lilies

We haven't reached peak spring yet, but even so, it is a wonderful time of year.

I am also grateful that Easter is late this year. Easter would already be over in 2021, 2018, 2016, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2008...and so on. (I did all of those by memory.) Since my life revolves around holidays, I'm always sad when we are in periods of no holidays. So even though spring is a wonderful time in and of itself, it's kind of depressing when Easter is over.

Of course, this means that I can eat all the Easter desserts I want. In 2012 was the first time I thought of carrot cake as an Easter dessert, and I came up with that on my own. But ten years later, the association is strong, and carrot cake cookies are the flavor du jour (or rather, flavor du mois). The following interesting desserts are ones that I have had in the last few weeks. They are not all from this week, so you shouldn't worry about me. But also, you should worry about me, because I'm not showing you all the desserts I have had, just the more interesting ones.

Normal Ice Cream Carrot Cake Ice Cream...is not very good.

Kneaders carrot muffin top

Chip Cadbury Egg Cookie

Twisted Sugar carrot cake cookie

Cutler's carrot cake cookie

Coldstone Peeps shake. Since I have an incurable sweet tooth, I don't understand when people say something is "too sweet." I think I met my match here. But I still finished it all.

Sugar Fix carrot cake cookie

We have one more week for me to gorge myself on carrot sweets before the holiday is over! But, not all the carrot stuff is bad for me.

Homemade carrot soup

Campus! Carol! Completion! Cat!

After weeks of boredom, I had some more exciting things happen this week.

On Monday, I had to go down to BYU for work. I had to look at some sources at their library that we didn't have at the Church History Library. It was fun to go down to my old stomping grounds.

Parts of it are the same (such as the lowest level of the library), but other parts are so different, such as new buildings. Campus seems to be more pedestrian friendly. I got lunch in the Wilk. I'm accustomed to there being long lines at lunch there, but now all the orders are done on phones or on kiosks. I started at BYU in January 2010. Twelve years ago! Of course there were plenty of changes during my four years there. But I thought about the condition of the world when I started in early 2010:

• I still had a flip phone. People had smartphones, but they weren't the default. 
• iPads had not been released yet.
• Instagram did not exist.
• People didn't use Spotify.
• I first heard of cloud storage my first semester.

I also walked by my old apartments, and unlike campus, they mostly looked the same.

Do they ever remodel those? And how long did they look that way before I lived there? There was even a "Welcome" sign above a neighboring apartment that I think was there back in 2010. (Note: I'm not thinking "tisk, tisk," that they're the same. In fact, I think useless and merely aesthetic remodels are wasteful. I just find it unusual and surprising.)

It was good to have a day to go down to BYU. The Church History Library's catalog was down all week, which meant I couldn't look at digitized sources, and I also couldn't order books up to my desk. Those are both things I need to do my work. So I worked on some very low-priority assignments.

Monday evening I did something unusual. Back in 2020, I heard that Carol Burnett was supposed to come visit Salt Lake City, but then it was cancelled. Since I have this thing for 1960s sitcoms, I remember thinking that I should see her when she came back. Last Sunday, I learned that this was the week she was returning. So I invited my sister and bought tickets to Carol Burnett at the Eccles Theater! To prepare, I watched episodes where she guest-starred on The Lucy Show and Get Smart. 

The evening mainly focused on her series The Carol Burnett Show. I have watched some of that on TV, but it just feels incomplete because they don't show the whole show, instead just picking out select scenes, mostly from the 70s. For this show, they showed a lot of clips from her show. One of the highlights of her series is that at the beginning of the show, she would allow the audience to ask questions. So for this live performance, she answered audience questions when she wasn't showing clips. She is eighty-eight years old, and I don't think she has it in her to sing or act. She walked slow. She certainly wouldn't be able to do her signature Tarzan yell. But mentally she is still sharp. 

Some people asked weird questions, and I was embarrassed on behalf of my hometown. But then I realized she probably gets these awkward people wherever she goes. One woman just kept talking and talking, and I don't think she really even had a question. And another woman told Carol she had read her book, and she compiled a list of eighty-seven similarities they had in common, and she wanted to give the list to her. Sometimes I'm insecure about my social skills, but people like that make me feel better. 

It did surprise me that it focused so much on the Carol Burnett Show and comparatively little about other parts of her career. And I thought it must have been sad for her to focus on her accomplishments from fifty years ago—does she feel like a has-been? But it was amazing to me to think that in 2022 I was seeing someone who knew Lucille Ball and others personally. 

Last week you will recall that I submitted my portfolio to my advisor. I was happy to be done with my portfolio for the time being, but I expected that I would have to make a lot of revisions. I was very nervous to await his response. So I was relieved and delighted when he responded and praised my work! I only had a few minor tweaks to make. Phew! So I made those few changes and submitted everything to the rest of my committee, and we scheduled my defense for May 9. That's after commencement because one of the professors will be out of town. Oh well.

Now that I don't have as much to worry about in the evenings, I was delighted to get back on the trails: Bonneville Shoreline, Wild Rose, and Springhill Geologic Park. Last year I was disgusted with someone apparently making their own trail in Springhill Geologic, so I placed branches, etc., to discourage it (and I had permission from the city to do so). It seemed to work for a while, but I was annoyed to see that the logs had been moved since I was last there in the fall. So I put some of the logs back, and I hope the selfish people have a change of heart. 

It's a good thing I can get back to trail running, since I have this obsessive need to try all the Easter-themed flavors at local dessert shops.

Reggie has enjoyed sleeping on my bed this week, which he hasn't really done before. He likes to sleep touching me, whether that's my ankles, my shoulder, or my legs. It is endearing, but it also makes it harder to sleep because I don't want to roll over on him.

It is very hard to get anything done when he comes to sit on me, but I also love it. Is that a form of Stockholm Syndrome? He often jumps onto my bed, presumably because he wants me to get on my bed so he can sit on me. Jimmy used to do that too, and I was happy to oblige. But I'm reluctant to do it with Reggie because he stays a lot longer. Like, a half hour. I don't have time for that!