I had several new Facebook friends this week, so if this is your first time to my blog, welcome! I hope you like it here, though most of the content is pretty vapid.
Since Pioneer Day is both a Church and a state holiday, I had the day off for both my Church job and my state job. But I think I had some kind of mild illness: unusually tired, achy, etc. So I took the day very easy: no exercising, no cleaning, no cooking. It was honestly a little boring—how do people do nothing all day? But after being so busy the last several weeks, it was nice to have a day to do nothing. And it was fitting, since Brigham Young was sick on July 24, 1847.
Back in January, when Top Hat Video went out of business, I bought multiple cheap holiday DVDs. One of them was a 2002 movie called Handcart, so I watched it for Pioneer Day. It wasn't a good movie, but it's hard to be hard on it when it was obviously so sincere. Parts of it were filmed at This Is the Place, so that was very distracting for me. I couldn't get into the feel of the story when I knew they were at my former place of employment. (It sure took them a long time to travel one thousand feet!) In my research, handcarts didn't become a substantial part of Pioneer Day until the 1890s (and even then, they were separate from the pioneers of 1847), but by the mid-twentieth century, handcarts were synonymous with pioneers.
One thing I did opt to do to celebrate the day was to see the drone show at Liberty Park. Last year they did a laser show, and I wasn't impressed, but I wanted to see the drones. I invited a few ward friends, and we went to the hill at the park. They had the radio station NOW 97.9* providing the music.
As they started, 97.9 played "Utah, This Is the Place" while they showed various Utah symbols. That's the state song, but no one else has recorded it, which means we're stuck with obnoxious children's music. And then they played the Tabernacle Choir version of "The Handcart Song" while the drones showed an image of a handcart (again with the handcarts!). Then they played various pop songs while showing various images. I think some of them were Native American symbols, but I don't know their significance. So here they are, in reverse order, because in 2020 Blogger changed the way you do images and made it worse.
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| "Happy Pioneer Day" |
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| The 9th and 9th whale 😆 |
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| Moon, earth, and sun. The moon actually revolved around the earth, and the earth went around the sun (until it was time for the next image) |
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| This eagle was red, white, and blue, then turned golden |
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| The new Utah flag |
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| Salt Lake City's flag. I wish the new Utah flag had incorporated the sego lily. |
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| Handcart |
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| Honeybee |
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| The Beehive State |
It was honestly better than I expected. And I liked them better than fireworks. I hope this becomes a tradition!
*97.9 is, like, the worst radio station. They play the same songs over and over, and they're old songs. "Today's best music," if by "today" you mean 2016. Oh, and they always say the artists' names, but they mispronounce Taio Cruz and Camilla Cabello.
The rest of the week, for the most part, wasn't that eventful. Once the holidays are over, July isn't that great of a month. It's just hot and boring.
However, I did make Friday night fun. As I was thinking about what I wanted to do for cardio, I thought it was too hot for running. But then I had the idea to go to Farmington Pond. I checked the water quality, and it was safe for recreating! So I took my paddleboard and invited some friends who I knew enjoyed paddleboarding. I did some swimming while one friend used my board, and then I got on my board. I stood up for forty-five minutes before I fell in. It was easy when there wasn't a wake on the pond. I didn't grow up going to lakes or ponds very often, and I have learned that I really enjoy them.
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