I was able to go trail running six days in a row this week. Monday through Thursday, I was on the Wild Rose Trail every day, and I was able to see the leaves on the trees grow over the course of a few days. And the season of arrowleaf balsamroot has begun—I saw my first specimens on Monday, and there were quite a few more by Thursday.
Monday
And here's the same plant on Thursday
These were from Thursday, and I don't recall seeing them in bloom on Monday
Still lots of glacier lilies
On Saturday evening, I went on a six-mile run that I don't do too often, but I have done it before. It has a rather steep portion east of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail from Tunnel Springs Park, and sometimes I will do the steep portion when I have less time so it's a good workout in a short amount of time. But for some reason, it was harder this time, and I had to stop a lot. I did one mile in twenty-three minutes, which is exceedingly slow! But oh well, there are a variety of valid reasons why it was harder for me. I don't have to be at full capacity all the time.
The lighting at this time of day made the Depression-era terraces especially visible
Yesterday, the City of North Salt Lake hosted a community event to purge myrtle spurge from Springhill Geologic Park. Since I use that trail all the time, and I have an intense disdain for invasive plants, I went and participated, which seemed like a fun thing to do on the day before Easter and the Saturday before Earth Day. It was a good turnout, especially since there was a youth mountain biking club there, and they have to get hours maintaining trails. I personally pulled up four bags of spurge, and collectively we volunteers filled up the back up a pickup. But there is so much spurge there that we barely made a dent.
It was fun to be among the igneous rocks, since most rocks around here are sedimentary. All those flowery bright green plants are spurge, which is native to the Mediterranean and takes over the foothills here.
And there were plenty Eastery activities this week—I colored eggs with my family.
These are all the eggs I did. I was first introduced to using regular crayons on eggs in 2010, and I really like doing so.
This is super silly, but I bought some eggnog that came in Easter packaging, mostly because I thought it was funny. I mean, eggs are more associated with Easter than Christmas. And there was a 1965 Easter episode of McHale's Navy that revolved around eggnog—but McHale's Navy was a terrible show that I rate 3/10.
We had Easter dinner with my mom's family. I recently had a dream about chocolate carrot cookies, so I thought it would be fun to make a chocolate carrot cake. My mom found a recipe on Pinterest and sent it to me, so I made and decorated this cake. It was amazing! Carrot cake is my favorite dessert, but I might like this chocolate version even more. The frosting is chocolate cream cheese.
I'm in the choir in my ward, and today we sang the three newly added Easter songs. There were seven women and two men in the choir today, so I was the only tenor. For years, I have loved the song "Were You There?," and I was delighted that they added it. I asked the choir if we could sing it, and during practice, they asked me to sing it so they could hear it. Then they asked me if I would sing a solo for the first verse. So I did! And it went well. It was the first time I've sung a solo. But I didn't sing the "ohh-O-o-ohh . . . tremble" by myself; the choir joined for that part. I think I got the rest of the choir to love the song too. Here's one of my favorite versions of this lovely song. As I've been on a faith journey over the last three years, in many ways I'm more comfortable with the Jesus aspect of Easter now than I used to be. The messaging I always picked up was "You need to know this is true, and if you don't, then you need to pray harder / study better / do more." But now I think, Of course it's preposterous. Of course it's hard to believe. That's the whole point of faith, and Christians have been practicing faith for nearly two thousand years.
And I have enjoyed my Easter playlist more this year because I made an abridged version in which I took out the terrible songs. Last year I added three albums for Lent/Easter/Pentecost by the Soil and the Seed Project, which have enjoyable Christian songs in a variety of genres. And of course, the newly released soundtrack for It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown has helped too.
Anyway, people have told me they like my AI dream images, so here's this week's to close.
Mark tries to sell CDs for charity from a cart at Walmart, and Christian organizations try to sell Christmas cards
a motivational speaker sells Addams Family vinyl records
a hot tub next to the podium of a church
the street is flooded because a family drained their swimming pool
Mark walks next to a girl on a snowy sidewalk, and a dog follows them, so Mark wants to throw snow at it
Mark hopes to buy a New Year shirt at Walmart
Mark keeps a sewing machine on the lower bunk bed
Mark rides a slow train to a gift shop that sells sweaters with bison and saguaro
Mark worries he dislocated the jaw of a baby bear that has latched on to him with his mouth
during work hours, Mark sits on a boulder in a stream
Now that springtime has returned and the snow has melted, I was able to get back on the trails this week.
On Monday, I ran about six miles to and from the radio towers on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. Unfortunately, I got a side stitch, which I haven't had in a long time. Usually that only happens if I eat a lot or if I have had dairy products recently, but that wasn't the case this time. But I pushed through the discomfort.
Then Tuesday, I went on the Wild Rose Trail, where glacier lilies were out. These are the first wildflowers of the season, so it's always good to see them.
Then that was the end of my free time for several days, because issue 5 of Wayfare magazine was ready for proofing. There are several editors on the team, but I get the final say on the proofs. I am probably the most experienced copyeditor on the team, which means that the articles I already read were cleaner than others.
The magazine has some great articles, and I'm glad to help out. But it does make a few difficult days where I work my state job, and then I work my BYU job, and then I spend my evening hours editing, even though that's what I've been doing all day.
On Friday, someone in my ward invited people to go see the Improvables, an improv group in Bountiful. It was good to have something to break up the hours and hours of editing. Some of the sketches were more entertaining than others. They were very talented, but sometimes it felt like watching a group of friends playing games.
Then Saturday, I pounded out the end of Wayfare. Whew! I did some shopping, since I had been so busy all week. And in the evening, I went on the Woodbriar Trail, which is short but steep. The trail had some glacier lilies, but it also had tons of springbeauties and yellow bells. Glacier lilies, springbeauties, and yellow bells are the trinity of early spring wildflowers. They aren't the most spectacular, but they kick off the wildflower season.
Later this month, we'll have arrowleaf balsamroot and longleaf phlox; in May, we'll have mulesears, western waterleaf, smallflower woodlandstar, Utah sweetpea, and various penstemons; and in June we'll have sego lilies and sticky geraniums.
I am happy that Easter is late this year, and I'm also glad that Easter seems to be getting more attention than it has for much of my life. For example, my mom just bought this Easter equivalent of a nativity.
And, of course, let me geek out about the seasonal foods and treats I've been able to have this week. I classify these foods as category 2A, which means they take iconic seasonal flavors and apply them to something else.
Near my office is a bakery called Pie Party, and I tried them for the first time this week. They had a carrot cake pie, which I have never heard of before! It has a carrot custard, then carrot cake, then kumquat jam, then cream cheese frosting. I love the idea of this pie, but I didn't think it tasted that great. It was just OK. It was also expensive (seventeen dollars for a five-inch pie).
And they also had an Easter quiche! (Well, that's what they called it on their Instagram post, but not in the store.) It has ham, peas, and green onions. It's rare for savory Easter foods to get much attention.
And there are two ice cream shops, Rockwell and Blacksmith, that have both carrot cake ice cream and Cadbury Mini Egg ice cream.
One of the most iconic Easter treats is the chocolate bunny, but how to you make that into something else that's not just chocolate? Well, there's a cupcake shop in Farmington called Sprinkles (a national chain) that made a special chocolate bunny cupcake. It's different from their regular chocolate cupcake, and it has a candy bunny on top.
And Target has a Peeps Icee, which doesn't taste much like anything, just like Peeps themselves. (Five years ago, 7-Eleven had a Peeps Slurpee.) When I bought this, the cashier was slow in more ways than one. I brought a reusable bag, and she put one item in that bag, then tried to put my other items, including milk, in plastic bags, even though there was plenty of room in the reusable bag. And she tipped my Icee sideways to scan it!
This week's dreams weren't that interesting, but here they are anyway.
Mark buys a chocolate carrot cookie that comes with an ornament, and he is annoyed that he gets fake money as change
the grocery store bakery has pink roscas de reyes, shamrock bagels, lime bread, and carrot cake
Mark closes the door on the naughty cat
Mark tells his coworkers the Mickey Mouse Squishmallow is his boyfriend
the receptionist at the dentist office can't hear Mark
On Monday, I had my weekly video call with my boss. As I mentioned previously, her two-year-old son likes to say hi to me and will often say "Want Mark." This week, he was very clingy to his mom, and at one point he was eating her hair, then saying "Icky." But someone else joined our call, and I could tell that the toddler was saying "Off." My boss later told me he was saying, "Want her off! Want Mark!" It was funny, but I could tell my boss was flustered.
On Wednesday, I went on another steep bike ride to the top of Summerwood, but I went a different route this time that was just a little longer. It was really hard, and I thought, "I can't stop, because if I do, I'll never get going again." But I was still pleased that I was able to do it—and yet, while I was going up, another cyclist went fast past me. He said, "Have a good ride!" It was another reminder how I'm not a cyclist.
On Thursday, the Utah Historical Society hosted an event with the Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City. The winter 2024 issue of Utah Historical Quarterly is a collaboration with the consulate. To celebrate the 110th anniversary of the consulate (1911), there was a Spanish-language publication a few years ago in Mexico. For UHQ, we had the articles translated and then published them in English.
It was a real headache to edit this issue. There was one article that I was sure had been translated by a computer, because the translation was so bad, but apparently it was a human. (I don't know whether the translator was bad, or if the original publication was bad.) Some things had been mistranslated. For example, one article talked about "Marquis de Frazer Mont wheat," but that was actually marquis wheat from Frazer, Montana. One writer made a claim about Latter-day Saint business practices, but when I looked at the citation, it was a sarcastic anti-Mormon article from the Salt Lake Tribune, so the facts were wrong—but the writer, not having English as their native language and not having a background in Mormon history, didn't get that. With every article for every UHQ issue, I clean up the citations, which usually means finding the original sources. That's hard in English, but it was especially hard with Spanish sources. (I took four years of Spanish in high school, and I was really good at it, but I'm not fluent, and I only got a 2 on the AP Spanish test.)
Anyway, the event was to honor the publication. We got the print copies in the nick of time (and it still hasn't been published digitally). Some of the authors came, including one who flew in from Mexico, and the Mexican consul himself was there. I had a lot of impostor syndrome: I did do a lot of work on the issue, but it wasn't my idea, and I hadn't really communicated with all of the authors. I must admit that it was hard for me to pay attention during the presentations. But at the end my boss pointed to me as someone who helped out a lot with the issue, and the woman who kind of spearheaded the project seemed excited to meet me.
I found the image for the cover in the Utah Historical Society's digitized collection.
Since I worked on Saturday last week, I got to have Friday off, which also happened to be Good Friday and my half birthday, as well as the thirty-third anniversary of us moving into our house. I went to the pool, and there was a group of special-needs adults there. One of them came into the locker room meowing. Like, it sounded exactly like a cat.
It's on my bucket list to visit every state park in Utah, and I thought it would be a fun day to go to Utah Lake. Even though I lived in Provo for four years, I had never been there. Most state parks are reservoirs, so I want to save them for the summer so I can swim and paddleboard in them. But Utah Lake has so much algae that I don't anticipate swimming there anytime soon. I went with my mom, and I walked around the edge of the lake. It was a lovely place, and I'm glad I got to see it. But it makes me sad with all of the environmental problems it has. And I'm not a fisherman or a boater, so I don't have much reason to go back.
Yesterday (Saturday), I colored Easter eggs with my family, which is always fun. These are the ones I made.
The plain ones are actually from brown eggs, which colored better than we expected
And my mom—I mean, the Easter Bunny—still prepares Easter baskets for us, even though I'm a grown adult. I appreciate that. But only my niece and I got chocolate bunnies.
Then last night, my ward (among others) was asked to help with manual labor at the Bountiful Temple while it undergoes annual maintenance. I was in a group that tore up the carpet in the celestial room. We pulled up the carpet, then pulled up the black padding underneath. Then we had to scrape the glue off the concrete floor. This was difficult work, even though I think I'm more fit than the average person. It certainly was strange to be in the celestial room, with its white walls and chandeliers, but drenching myself in sweat while performing manual labor. We wore white jumpsuits with casual shoes. Probably the only time I'll wear Easter-egg socks in the celestial room.
This morning before church, I made carrot cake for our family's Easter lunch. I used a cookbook from the 1970s that is falling apart, but it was one of the best carrot cakes I've ever had, I think. Carrot cake is my all-time favorite dessert, but I only eat it at Eastertime.
I made the cake and the frosting, but my mom actually frosted it and put the decorative carrots on
I sang in the ward choir at church. I sing tenor—I think I'm better at bass, but I like tenor better (when I can hit the notes), and tenors are harder to find. For both our songs, the tenor line was really weird and unintuitive. But I think I got it down and it worked out—even though I had to sing falsetto because it was extra high.
I thought about explaining how I like to treat Christmas and Easter equally, and how various factors have made Christmas bigger than Easter, but I don't feel like it right now. Maybe another year. It makes me sad when Easter is in March, because it makes April less exciting, but next year it's late. I'll just leave you with this song, "I Wish I Was a Whisker on the Easter Bunny's Chin," which I genuinely, unironically love.
My three favorite TV shows recently are basically different variations on the same thing: Halloween Baking Championship, Holiday Baking Championship, and Spring Baking Championship. I began earnestly watching during COVID, and now they are the highlight of my Mondays.
In 2015, I got the cookbook How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which has inspired me to be more creative and experiment in cooking and baking. The book and the Food Network shows make me want to try new things. So I baked three Easter-inspired goodies this week.
First up was carrot oatmeal cookies.
I've actually been making these since 2016, since the recipe is in my cookbook. They are soft and not too sweet, and I love cookies with an oatmeal base. What was different this time was that I added Hershey's cream cheese baking chips, which are a relatively new product.
Of course, I'm not the only person to make carrot cookies at this time of year, and I'm happy to see so many places embracing the carrot.
Sugar Fix, which you can find at certain gas stations
Twisted Sugar
RubySnap. This one's a coconut carrot curry cookie.
Crumbl
Cutler's
Crave. Do you like how I took my own container to the store to avoid the single-use plastic containers?
Back in 2021, I had a hot cross bun from Parsons' Bakery for the first time. Of course, the song "Hot Cross Buns" is required playing for fifth-grade recorder symphonies, but I never actually knew what a hot cross bun was until I was an adult. They're a traditional Good Friday/Easter food in British-aligned countries. I decided I wanted to try to make my own, using a recipe I found online. But I omitted the orange zest because I didn't have any oranges, and I replaced some of the raisins with dried cranberries and cut-up prunes.
This was actually my first attempt at making a bread with yeast. The thought of letting my bread rise always scared me away. Unfortunately, I don't think my buns rose properly. I Googled causes for bread not rising, and these hot cross buns had many ingredients that can mess with yeast. All-purpose flour? Check. Cinnamon? Check. Dried fruit? Check. I guess if I want to bake a yeast bread, I should start with an easier, simpler bread recipe. But even though the texture is a little off, I like the way they look, and they have a nice flavor.
The ones I got from Parsons' Bakery (I went back this year) were better for eating. But they took the lazy way out by making the crosses out of icing, instead of baking it onto the rolls like I did.
Recently I was sitting in a group therapy session, and the other men were talking about their boyfriends; but since I don't have a boyfriend, my mind was wandering, and I was thinking about cookies. I was thinking about the different places that put Cadbury Mini Eggs in cookies.
Chip
Crave
Thirst
I like these cookies, but they're kind of boring, because they're similar to regular chocolate chip cookies. I wondered why more places don't use more flavorful candies like jelly beans. But then I remembered that my mom has a deteriorating Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from the 1970s that has a recipe for gumdrop cookies. I've wanted to try those at Christmastime. But gumdrops and jelly beans are confectionarily similar, so I decided to make the cookies with jelly beans instead.
At first, I started by cutting the jelly beans into smaller pieces. But jelly beans are small and hard, and they roll around, so cutting them up was a disaster waiting to happen. So I just put the rest of the jelly beans in whole.
I really was pleased with the result. They are flavorful, chewy cookies. I can see how they might be too chewy for some people, but I think I will have to make these again another Easter.
And speaking of Easter, here is the best secular Easter song ever made. Enjoy while you're home with the ones you love.
