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!