I don't love the last week of July. It's just hot and boring. But it's over now! This week was relatively uninteresting.
At work, I continue to go through boxes of old files from my predecessors. One of the most surprising finds this week was that in 1985, a Nigerian high school student wrote to the Utah State Historical Society, sending money for trousers, cap, shirt, and bag. I have so many questions: (1) How did the student find the Historical Society's address, and (2) why did he think they would sell clothing? The man who answered the letter sent the money back. It is fun to get paid to go through old things.
On July 3, I wondered if I could get rid of 250 things in honor of America 250. That took longer than expected, and I didn't make it. I had added things to it over the last few weeks. On Monday, my parents and I went through our DVD shelves and got rid of DVDs we don't care to keep. So I was able to reach my 250 goal! It wasn't in time for the Fourth of July, but it was still in July. Independence from clutter (in theory at least).
Because of the heat, I went swimming Tuesday and Thursday. Wednesday's forecast was cooler, so I hoped to go running, but it was cooler because of a big thunderstorm, so no running. But yay for thunderstorms!
On Friday, I thought it would be fun to make progress on my Independent Bookstore Crawl, so I drove out to Eagle Mountain to go to Spellbound Books, which is in a trailer. There's just this random lot with food trucks, a mobile convenience store, and this mobile bookstore. This bookstore was entirely fiction, mostly romance novels, so I didn't buy anything. But I got my map stamped!
I also went to Walmart while I was in Eagle Mountain. It's fun to see different parts of the state, even if I'm not doing anything special there.
Saturday, August 1, I ran up North Canyon before it got too hot for the day.
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| chicory |
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| Richardson's geraniums |
Though I finished before it got too hot, the rest of the day was really hot, and just driving around made me hot. I drove down to Mapleton to see my cousin Tammy's new house. Then I went to Provo to go to another bookstore from my map, Planted in Pages, which sells both plants and books. I don't know how to care for plants, and most of the books were fiction again (though I did eye some cookie cookbooks), so I didn't buy anything. I know I'll be in Provo again this year, but I wanted to get that bookstore out of the way. (And it occurred to me I should have gone to this bookstore when I went to the Spanish Fork and Springville stores, but oh well.)
And it's August now! I don't love August, with its heat and dearth of holidays, but I have so many fond memories that happened in August. (There's still more than a month before Labor Day this year, and Labor Day isn't even one of my canonized holidays.)
