Remembering Grandpa

 I have always been a little surprised by the concept of eulogies. We say all these nice things about people, but they're not around to hear them. Why don't we say these things while they're still alive?

As my grandfather lives out his final days, I thought I would write out my memories of him while he is still alive. Even so, I don't know if he will know what I'm saying, since he is blind and mostly deaf. 

Foundations

David Ebbert grew up in Ohio. Eventually he joined the Air Force, and he served in North Korea during the Korean War. 

In 1959, he met and married my grandmother, a divorcée with three young children. A few years later, he officially adopted my mom and her siblings. My mom remembers that when they told her they were going to change her name so she would have her dad's name, she was skeptical about having her name be David. 

In the 1960s, they moved to the Air Force base on Guam, and while they were there, they converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was a significant shift, since Grandpa was a heavy smoker and a borderline alcoholic. Ever since, my grandparents have been the most devout of the devout. One of the highlights of my career in Mormon history is when their story was featured on the Keepapitchinin blog. 

Then they moved to Nebraska and eventually to Utah in the early 1970s, where they have been ever since. 

My Memories

By the time I came along, they already had ten grandchildren. There was the older set of grandkids and the younger set of grandkids, and I am squarely in the younger cohort. 

They lived in a house in Holladay, and this was a special place. It had four levels, an above-ground pool, an ice cream parlor, and a pool table that I never got to use. I remember some of the house's idiosyncracies: the floor that turned purple under the rug next to the glass doors, the couch that made a boing noise, the wallpaper of vintage cars. They had glass display cases with their very niche decorations: expensive castles, Lladró figures, and 1980s Relief Society projects. Every time I smell the kind of shrub they had in their front yard, I think of that house. I loved playing with maple "helicopter" seeds. 

We had family parties there at least once a month, and they gave very generous gifts to all the grandkids for their birthdays and Christmas. They always had a supply of fruit snacks for the grandkids, which we called Turtle Snacks, since some of the time they were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Grandpa was a bishop, so he had many church meetings in the '90s. One time when I was five, my mom picked up their friend from the airport, and she was very drunk. Since Grandpa was still having bishopric meetings, my mom wasn't going to drop off this drunk lady at their house, so we hung out with her, and I thought she was mean and weird.

I turned eight right before general conference, so I was going to have to wait more than a month before I was baptized. But because Grandpa was a bishop, we got to use his church building conference weekend so I could be baptized. 

The following summer, G'ma and G'pa left on a mission to Samoa. Since they were converts, they never served a mission in their youth, but they loved their time in Samoa (I think), which was a life-changing event for them. They dutifully called on our birthdays and sent us gifts. When we picked them up at the airport, I gave Grandpa the leftover carrots from my lunch that day, since I erroneously believed they hadn't had carrots in Samoa (and because I didn't want to eat them).

Soon thereafter, they moved from the Holladay house and into a condo called Old Farm.

At the turn of the millennium, they were new great-grandparents and loved that role. I remember G'pa taking my cousin's daughter Anna to the window to look at birds when we visited. 

At Old Farm, Grandpa once again served as a bishop and in a stake presidency. They also had a service mission at the Church Office Building. When I was in eleventh grade, he took me to a high school production of his favorite musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, so I could get credit for my theater class. And one July evening, he took me and a few of my cousins to his ward's fathers-and-sons activity. I remember him telling the people there that most of his grandsons were very quiet, but there were two who made up for the rest of us. 

During this time, he began to lose his hearing. 

My Adult Life

When I was in college, they would attend various BYU activities. He loved BYU, even though he didn't attend himself. They would always take me to dinner when they came down to Provo. 

One time in 2012, we were playing the Ungame with my cousin Jesse, and he got the question, "Who is your hero?" He said Grandpa, even though Grandpa wasn't there at the time.

They also began a service mission at a high school for troubled girls.

After I graduated from college, they moved again to a different condo, this time in Centerville. Now that they were in Davis County, I got to see them more often. There were many Sundays when I would bake something and take it over to them. 

They opted to supply the turkey every Thanksgiving. One time my mom made a comment about hopefully having the pies done in time, and G'pa quipped, "If I don't get pie, you don't get turkey!" (I never was a fan of G'pa's undercooked meats, however.)

In recent years, G'pa also began to lose his sight. This was devastating, since he already struggled to hear, and he loved to drive. G'ma and G'pa loved to travel. They even drove from Utah to New York and back in 2017, when he was eighty-five. But his lack of sight prevented travel in recent years. He had to have his right eye removed on Halloween night.

Last spring, as they faced declining health, my grandparents decided to move in with my sister, a built-in nurse. I think we will all be forever grateful for my sister's sacrifice. And they even decided to get a puppy, something that was unexpected, as they had never had a dog when they were adults.

Final Days

A few weeks ago, Grandpa entered the hospital with erratic heartbeat and blood pressure. Even though he was hospitalized, he remained alert and cracked jokes. For example, he asked me to come and bless the sacrament for him and Grandma. He said that after the sacrament, he would ask me some questions. I was expecting him to grill me about something serious. But he said to me, "Why do editors hate April?" He had been listening to a Book of Mormon institute manual (which is not something I would choose to listen to when I only had a few weeks left), and he noticed that the robot voice would pronounce April (in citations) as A-P-R, but it would say all the other months. I told him that I guessed the robot was just not trained to say Apr., even though it was trained to fully say Oct. and Nov. A week later, he assured me that he was listening to another book, and this time it did actually say April.

He is back home on hospice now, and he decided to no longer take medicine to regulate his heart. It could be a matter of days, maybe weeks. We still visit him, and he still has moments of alertness and humor. When Grandma accidentally spilled milk on him, he remarked he was getting a milk bath. Tonight he said, "Part of why I know it's time to go is because I finally found a Grisham book I don't like" (he has been listening to audiobooks) 

At this point, it is hard to feel sad for him. As he has lost his hearing and especially his sight, he simply isn't the same person he once was. I feel like we have already been mourning him for several years now.

Even though he isn't biologically related to me, you would never know that with the way he treats his family. Blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood. 

I can't say that I'm very much like him. I will never share his love of football, golf, and Lladrós. He was a bishop twice, and it is extremely unlikely I will ever be a bishop, for several reasons. But hey, we both like cats and pie!

This is a hastily written post that does not do justice to his life. But there will never be such a post. He cannot be reduced to a mere blog. He made our family what it is, and it won't be the same without him.

Blog historiography

I started this blog twelve years ago, on May 1, 2011. Ever since that time, I have always enjoyed doing some kind of retrospective post on the blog's anniversary. 

For this year's post, I want to highlight some of the most important posts I have made over the years. These are not necessarily the best posts, but posts that are significant in one way or another.

Here I am! (May 1, 2011)

This is the post that started it all, in which I explained my purposes for blogging. I had been reading my mission emails, and I was glad to have that record of my life. This blog has continued that legacy of keeping a public record. I picked the URL badsettlement (as in, a bad town) because that's what Melville means. If I were making my blog today, I would have picked a different URL. Oh well. (I feel like I really became who I am in 2012, and I'm embarrassed by many things I did prior to that year.)

The Ghost of Independence Days Past (June 12, 2011)

This was the first of a series of posts in which I picked a holiday, then remembered every detail I could about every holiday of my life. I made it through the entire calendar, and then I created another blog devoted entirely to remembering things. I wrote on that blog consistently for almost four years, but I got burned out doing it every week, and I ran out of topics to remember. I published my mission emails for two years for the tenth anniversary of my mission. That blog is dormant now.
 

Ring out the Old, Ring in the New (January 1, 2012)

This was the first New Year's post, in which I went month by month to remember what happened that year, just like many news organizations do. I do this every year, and it's one of my favorite posts to make.

One year of blogging (May 1, 2012)

This was my first anniversary blog. In this case, I did a brief recap of every post from my first year of blogging (similar to this very post, except I did every one). I have taken a different approach every year, but I have blogged every May 1.

Geology 210, week one (August 25, 2013)

One of my most memorable college classes was Geology 201, a field studies class where we spent two weeks camping and learning about geology. This post is the first of two that describe what we did and learned in that "class."

Leaves are falling (September 20, 2015)

The beginning of this post was a mediocre recap of trail running in the fall, but it was really significant because it marked the first installment of Pumpkinundation Roundup, in which I document the pumpkin and other fall flavors that come out every year. This segment has proved surprisingly popular. I have often toyed with the idea of creating another blog or social media account devoted exclusively to seasonal foods all year round, but that would not be healthy for me.

The Failures of the Pioneers (July 24, 2016)

Working for the Church History Department gave me insights about pioneers, so when I saw that Pioneer Day was on a Sunday, I volunteered to speak in sacrament meeting, because I thought I had some profound insights. This post is that talk. I was pleased with how it turned out, and I received many compliments, even from people I didn't know.

Goal accomplished! (September 9, 2018)

When I was twenty-nine, I visited all twenty-nine county seats in Utah. This blog post describes my visit to the last two, Moab (Grand County) and Monticello (San Juan County), as well as a brief recap of the other twenty-seven counties and seats.

The big 3-0 (September 30, 2018)

Visiting all the county seats was part of a larger project of doing fun things before I turned thirty. This blog post recounted forty fun and/or unusual bucket-list items I did while I was twenty-nine.

The end of a decade (December 29, 2019)

This was the usual year-end blog post, except that I also did a recap of every year of the 2010s. But I have always regretted that I forgot an important event from 2017, visiting Wyoming to see the solar eclipse.

Bad dates (February 13, 2022)

In honor of Valentine's Day, I recounted four awkward dates I had been on over the years. At the time I made this post, I was still planning on marrying a woman, and I hoped this post would enable me to continue to pass as straight. 

Coming Out; or, There's Always Been a Rainbow Hanging over Your Head (October 11, 2022)

This post recounts my experiences as a closeted gay boy/man throughout my life. Some people have told me this was my best post ever, and I don't disagree. But I had a lot of time to think about it. Back in the spring of 2012, there was a viral post by Josh Weed about being in a mixed-orientation marriage. I planned on doing that as well. (I was so disappointed when they announced they were divorcing in 2018.) Because of his blog post, I thought that one day I would be writing my own coming-out post. But I figured the post would be once I was married, or at least while I was still planning to marry a woman. Then last spring (2022), I realized that every time I thought about dating or marrying women, it just stressed me out. The thought of coming home from work every day and having to care for the emotional needs of a woman is more than I can bear, and it wouldn't be fair to my wife to be married to someone who couldn't love her authentically. I spent a few months trying to convince myself I was asexual and/or aromantic, but by late July/early August, I finally came to terms with being gay. Once I came to that realization, I knew I was going to come out publicly on National Coming Out Day. So I had two months to mentally draft my post, and I finally wrote it down almost two weeks before I published it. But really, the idea had been germinating in my mind for ten years already.

Four Pillars of Faith (February 26, 2023)

Last year I joined a singles ward again, and in February they asked me to speak, basically letting me choose what I said. I was really pleased with this talk I wrote, and I have received many compliments on it. I really appreciate talks that keep it real, so I tried to do the same.

I have blogged every Sunday since I began, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Blogging was already on its way out when I began, and very few people regularly blog anymore. Many people just put their stuff on social media, but I think a blog is a more accessible record of my life. And there are some things that I don't want to put on social media, but I'm happy to put them on a blog, where only the people who care enough to click will see them.

The end of a decade

Since 2011, I have done an annual year in review on the last Sunday of December (or on January 1, when it falls on a Sunday). So here we are. Time to review 2019.

January. I wrapped up my job at the Sundance Film Festival, and then I got to attend with the ten free tickets I got (that spilled over into February). I spoke in sacrament meeting, thereby missing President Nelson speaking in my home ward.

Apollo 11 was the first film I saw at the Festival, and it was a good one.

February. After the Festival, I had lots of free time, so I began spending time at the Church History Library to do research for my Pioneer Day book. I spent a week in California with my nephews, who were on a February break.

March. At the end of the month, I accompanied my parents to various state parks, national parks, and national monuments in southern Utah. The season began at This Is the Place, but I had helped out there for weeks, doing field trips, cleaning, scheduling, and other things.

This was the first time I saw Delicate Arch.

April. I saw P!nk in concert with my sister, niece, and cousin. I got my copy of The Saints Abroad, the book I coedited, but it officially came out in May.

On the day before Easter, I wanted to run up Mueller Park Canyon. I got a mile up the trail and had absolutely no desire to finish the run, which is not characteristic. Turns out it was the beginning of a sickness, and I had to take off an entire week of work. I usually don't get that sick! I spent some time purging myrtle spurge from the Wild Rose Trail.

May. I did my second Splash 'N' Sprint Triathlon, and my time was worse than last year, but I was recovering from sickness, and the bike route was much harder.

It was an unusually cold and rainy (and snowy) May, which meant I often got off work early from This Is the Place, which gave me more time for research. But I did have to work late on May 10, the sesquicentennial of the transcontinental railroad.

June. I went to see the Mormon Miracle Pageant in Manti for its final run; it was a kitschy performance, and I understand why it's ending.

I decided I should apply for grad school, so I bought a GRE practice book to study at work. Near the end of the month, some Tongan kids got overheated on a day trek at the park, and the EMTs told them they couldn't push handcarts anymore, so all of us employees had to go get them. For my mom's birthday, I took her to see a cat circus. And on June 30, I wore my American flag suit to church, while my friend Shane wore his Canada suit.

July. I camped with my family at Lake Washington in the Uintas.

This Is the Place dedicated a monument to pioneer children, but I had to direct traffic. It was a miserable day, but it got better when I attended the Tabernacle Choir Pioneer Day concert featuring Sissel. On Pioneer Day itself, I tried to find a Pie 'n' Beer Day event, thereby learning that it really isn't a thing. On the last day of the month, I went with my parents to camp at Moosehorn Lake, again in the Uintas.

August. I hiked with my dad up Bald Mountain in the Uintas.

I received a free sample of Zombie Skittles to review. And I fed the sister missionaries, giving them tomato zucchini cobbler and grape bread, some of my favorite summertime dishes.

September. I took the GRE and did very well on the verbal part and OK on the other parts. I turned thirty-one. On the day after my birthday, I got bit by a leashed dog on a trail, further cementing my general hatred of dogs.

October. I enjoyed running through the autumn leaves.

This Is the Place had Little Haunts, and I played Alice the Dragon a few times. My work there wrapped up for the season, but I started back at Sundance Institute on October 30. On Halloween, I invited friends over, and we watched The Mummy.

November. I enjoyed running on certain trails in Park City (and North Salt Lake) before the snow stuck around.

I saw Holiday Inn with my grandparents and made sweet potato pie and mincemeat pie for Thanksgiving.

December. I attended three Christmas concerts: JD McPherson, Tabernacle Choir, and the Lower Lights.

JD McPherson's Socks is one of best Christmas albums ever.

I worked lots and lots of overtime, but the craziness subsided right before Christmas, allowing me to enjoy more time with family. I age out of the YSA ward.

But this is not an ordinary year. Not only is it the end of a year, it's the end of a decade. (I know some of you pedants are out there saying it's not the end until the end of 2020, but we refer to decades by their digits, so for all practical purposes, it's a new decade.)

Ten years is a long time, and I certainly have changed. I think I worry less, and I'm more confident. I'm more athletic, with much more impressive calves, but I'm also more obsessed with seasonal junk food.

Anyway, it's time for a review of the entire decade as well.

2010. As a socially awkward, freshly returned missionary, I started my studies at Brigham Young University. I declared a major in English language (linguistics, not literature!) and a minor in editing. I joined a dinner group, and I took up running so that I wouldn't gain back the sixty pounds I lost on my mission. During summer term, I took a Dinosaurs! class, and I got to go with my professor on a dinosaur dig in the days before Pioneer Day.

This was during the Great Recession, and try as I might to get a job in Provo, I couldn't find one. So I took the fall off to find a job at home. It took two months of applying before I got a job at the Church Distribution Center, where I put orders in boxes. It was a good thing I took that fall off. If I had attended that fall, I wouldn't have had a scholarship, but with the way scholarships worked in those days, I got one because I took the fall off. (And I didn't even know that at the time!) My youngest nephew, Nathaniel, was born in January, but I didn't first see him until December.

2011. In winter semester, I got a job cleaning up after sporting events. But I don't think my boss liked me, and I wasn't invited back. (Good thing I don't want to be a janitor!) In the spring, I got to go to Disneyland for the first time with my family.

My niece, Allie, at Disneyland

On May 1, I started this blog! During summer term, I had no roommates, and my air conditioning was out for six weeks. I declared a geology minor, but I didn't have any geology classes that year. In the spring, my dad had to work in Chicago, and then he was laid off. Since funds were tight, I once again took fall semester off, and I got back my job at the Distribution Center. And then my dad got another job and all was well again.

2012. For some reason, 2012 seems to be one of the most memorable and important years of my life. When I think back on things, I often think, "When was that? Oh, 2012, of course it was." I feel like I really became who I am in 2012. I made many friends, including some whom I referred to as "horses" after I had a dream about a horse that took a liking to me. I took my first real editing and geology classes, including one that took me on a field trip to Death Valley. In April, I fainted while running and ended up scraped up. The next week, I got an editing internship with BYU Studies, which changed the direction of my life. I was obsessed with YouTube singer Jan Terri. Even though I took classes every semester and term, I had an enjoyable August, during which I spent some time with my nephews, who had recently moved to California.

This is my youngest nephew, Nathaniel, or Qi-en, but we called him Baby at the time. I absolutely adore this picture of him.

2013. This year wasn't quite as memorable as 2012, its twin, but it's still a major year in my memory. On January 24, we had freezing rain, and I slipped and landed on my teeth. They were chipped and cracked, and I had to get a root canal. That initiated a tremendous fear and hatred of ice, which persists to this day. (At least I no longer have recurring nightmares about ice.) I had a relaxing summer term because I only worked part-time, with no classes, and I got to go to Disneyland with my family again, but my nephews were not impressed. I took many memorable classes, including geology of planets, structure of English (all about ambiguity), the editing capstone, groundwater, swimming for non-swimmers, and Old English. But most memorable of all was geology field studies, during which time we spent two weeks camping, making geologic maps, and exploring the rocks of Utah.

I didn't shave during those two weeks, because when else would it be acceptable to have a beard in a BYU class?

2014. When I think back on 2014, I think of it as a sad year, even though good things happened. On Valentine's Day, I went home to visit, only to witness my mom destroy her leg on the stairs. On Mother's Day, my sister's husband left her. Even the good things were bittersweet times of transition. I got a job with the Church History Department, but that meant I had to leave BYU Studies. I worked for the Church remotely from Provo for a few months after I graduated, but then I moved home in August, bidding Provo and the life I knew goodbye. I began to explore trail running, and running thereby became a hobby rather than simply exercise.

The first and last time I hiked the Y was the day I graduated.

Our cat Jenny sleeping in an interesting position

 2015. This really wasn't a very interesting year. I kept working at the Church History Department, but I transitioned to the team that worked on the book that ultimately became At the Pulpit in 2017. This was the first year I formally celebrated Pioneer Day.

2016. The book A Historian in Zion, which I had coedited, was published. 

 In the summer I went on a family trip to several national parks in California and Oregon. In the fall I was called as executive secretary. And I got my reviewing gig over at The Impulsive Buy.

2017. While 2017 wasn't as fantastic as 2012 or 2013, it was still a wonderful year, because I made it that way. I made bucket lists for every holiday, which led me to do things I wouldn't otherwise do. When I turned 29, I began completing a bucket list of things before I turned 30. So I bought a car (2017 Toyota Rav4 hybrid, which is now paid off!), ran a half marathon, and did other things. In July, my family went to New York City. On July 10, we had to put down our 15-year-old cat Jenny. That was the last time I cried. On October 21, I adopted an 8-year-old cat and named him Jimmy.

I just adore him!

 My job at the Church History Library ended.

2018. I spent months applying to jobs before I landed one at This Is the Place Heritage Park, a job for which I am vastly overqualified.

Here I am with my niece and nephews on the Fourth of July in the print shop.

 As part of my bucket list, I visited all 29 county seats in Utah while I was 29. My family visited New York and New England in June. On Halloween, I began working for the Sundance Film Festival.

2019. I attended the Sundance Film Festival after my job with them ended. I resumed my job at This Is the Place, began spending lots of time doing research for my Pioneer Day book, took the GRE, and applied to grad school. I returned to Sundance Institute in the fall.

In June, I got my copy of The Annals of the Southern Mission. I spent the summer of 2014 making sure every handwritten word was transcribed correctly. It finally got published, so I added it to my shelf of books I've worked on.

"It's the end of a decade.
In another ten years' time,
Who can say what we'll find,
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of [twenty]-nine?"
—ABBA

July catch-up

July was a very busy month, with my nephews visiting, the Fourth of July, my cat dying, and my trip to New York. Now that it's August, I want to catch up on some of the thoughts I had during July but wasn't able to blog about earlier.

Calories
July 18 marked the last day of a year of counting calories. Last summer, I gained three pounds on vacation, and I realized my eating habits weren't sustainable, so I began to track calories on my Fitbit app. At first, I thought I could do it indefinitely, but by January, I was tired of it, so I decided to make it an even year. During the year, I only went over my calorie budget on two days, my birthday and Thanksgiving (and Thanksgiving was deliberate). There was only one day, June 30, when I did not count them at all. The Fitbit app has it so you can set a target weight, and you can either set a calorie deficit or set calories to maintain your weight. I did some of both. I did manage to lose between thirteen and fifteen pounds during that year, though the first three pounds were ones I had gained during that vacation, so I might not have kept them on anyway.

Anyway, I found it a great, easy way to lose weight. It literally has never been easier to count calories, because the app allows you to search foods, and if the exact food (name brand) isn't in there, it has lots of estimates of calories. However, I recognize that everyone has their own method; I always hear, "I lost [amount] pounds on this vegetarian/vegan/sugar-free/gluten-free/juice/low-carb diet, so you should try it." I think you will lose weight anytime you are conscious about what you are eating, regardless of what diet it is. For simply counting calories, I could eat whatever I wanted, as long as I was in calorie range. And the Fitbit app gives you the option of having more calories the more you exercise, so it was a great incentive to exercise more. If I ran six miles or more, I usually had unlimited calories. (I've heard that the more you exercise, the less accurate the calorie count is, but I still acted like it was accurate.) There were some times, though, I had to do some late-night frantic exercising to stay in my calorie budget.

Though my calorie-counting has ended, I hope it will continue to benefit me, as I have learned various things about portion size and kinds of food. Here are some of the things I learned:

• I used to pack two sandwiches in my lunch. That was great six years ago when I had a job where I was on my feet. But now I sit at a desk all day, and I only need to pack one sandwich (with a few snack-y items).
• Vegetables have almost no calories. With dill pickles, the nutrition facts literally say zero calories (this is not the case with sweet pickles). Fruits have more calories, but still not a ton. Avocados are the exception; they are loaded with calories.
• Butter and oils are the most calorie dense foods.
• French fries and potato chips are generally not worth the calories. I like them, but not that much. I plan to quit, or severely limit, getting French fries when I go out to eat. (The exception is Chick-fil-A waffle fries. Those are worth it.) But this is just as well; usually when I go to places that serve fries, it's because they have seasonal shakes (pumpkin, eggnog, peppermint, shamrock), so I certainly don't need the extra food anyway.
• I was shocked at the calorie counts of Oreos and Cheesecake Factory. Two Oreos (which, let's be honest, are never enough) have 140 calories, which is more than a banana. Depending on the flavor, a piece of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake has more than 1,000 calories!

Facebook
Over the last few years, I feel like Facebook has gotten continually worse. They used to have an "unsubscribe from comments and likes" feature, but then they got rid of it, and now I see all sorts of posts from people and pages I don't care about, just because my friends liked them. It's infuriating. Things got awful when they invented the "share" button, which is the darling of old ladies who don't do Pinterest but should. At least they gave me the unsubscribe feature. But in the last few weeks, they have been showing me posts from pages and people where I am 100 percent certain that I unsubscribed from them. If there is no longer a way for me to choose what I see, what's the point of being on there? I will only look at a few posts at a time now, instead of trying to see all the posts like I used to. Ultimately, though, this will be a good thing, because I think Facebook is the only thing I do where I feel like I've wasted time.

I'd like to punch Mark Zuckerberg in the face for all these obnoxious changes, but I think he'll get what's coming to him regardless. As Facebook continues to deteriorate, its users will abandon it, and it will become the next MySpace.

(I don't want to join another social media site, like Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, because that would be another thing to suck away my time; though I have considered starting an account for my pumpkinundation roundup rather than continuing it on this blog.)

Pioneer Day
For 2017, I made a bucket list of items I wanted to accomplish for each holiday, including Pioneer Day. When my mom told me that our trip to New York was planned for Pioneer Day, I was very disappointed. I really missed out on it this year, since they don't celebrate it in New York. This was only the third year I have formally celebrated it, and I wasn't even here for it!

I only had three items on the list. One was to light fireworks. I was able to light them a few days after Independence Day, so that counted for the Pioneer Day season. Another item was to attend a parade. Fortunately for me, Draper had its Draper Days parade the week before Pioneer Day, so I was able to attend it. It wasn't very pioneer-y, but they had plenty of saltwater taffy, which I consider a Pioneer Day candy. The third item was to attend a Utah historic place, so I went to the Bountiful Historic Museum. But they were in the process of moving, so it was a mess. I wasn't in town for the opening of their new museum.

I have a few other thoughts about Pioneer Day, though maybe I've talked about them before. Some non-Mormons feel like it's a Mormon holiday rather than a Utah holiday. Is there reason for them to feel this way? I'm afraid there is. When your stake float includes blue-bound Book of Mormons, black missionary name tags, or temples from the Pacific, that is a religious theme that has nothing to do with the pioneers. Of course people will feel alienated! You should stick to things that are actually about Utah's history, not just about the religion of most of Utah's citizens.

That said, though, there are some people who think it shouldn't be a holiday because the pioneers were Mormons. That somehow that automatically makes it a religious holiday that shouldn't be public. Well, like it or not, the history of Utah is tied to Mormon pioneers. You take them out and you have almost no history or state. I've thought about defending the holiday to such persons, but then I realized that they are just bigots who aren't worth my time or consideration. I should leave them to wallow in their own negativity.

Reunion
The same day I went to the Draper Days parade, I also had a ten-year high school reunion. While some people drove up from all over the state, and at least one person came in from Texas, it was less than two miles from my house. Even though it was a really hot day, I rode my bike to the park where it was. When I got there and was locking it up, there was a kid, probably between nine and eleven, with a bike who started talking to me about mine, how we had similarly colored bikes. He asked me how many gears it had and asked if I could jump it down stairs. (I can barely ride it!) Soon I realized that I was in the wrong part of the park, so I told the kid that I had to go ride to someplace else to find the people I was meeting. He asked if he could follow me. I said he could if he wanted, but I didn't know how long I would be biking. I very quickly found my reunion, and he seemed disappointed when I told him that was where I was stopping. It was really random.

Anyway, it was interesting to see the different people from ten years ago. Many of them did not recognize me, since I'm 60-80 pounds lighter than I was in high school. Many of them have multiple children; I think one was pregnant with her fifth. Here I am forever alone. But I would rather be single than have the nasty divorces many of them have had.

I remember being sad to think about high school ending, but I don't know why, because I wasn't particularly happy then. I was always so bogged down in homework that it was a good thing I didn't have any friends. I was internally emo and wanted to be a vampire. In 2011, I remember marveling at my four-year anniversary. But now that it's been ten years, it's not really a big deal. I've moved on from that time of my life.

Highlights from the memory box

When I was in sixth grade, the house of one of my classmates burned down. Our principal told us that if we had any pictures including the kids of that family, we should donate them to them.

I only had one, and it was a picture of our entire fifth-grade class on Halloween. (Well, technically it was October 29, because Halloween was a Sunday that year, but that's beside the point.) I remembered the picture, but I selfishly held on to it. "It's not a picture just of him," I reasoned.

But I have felt guilty about that for the past decade and a half. So I thought I would try to find it so I could send it to him all these years later and alleviate my guilt. So I pulled out my memory box, a box  in my mom's closet full of random papers from my life, to see if I could find it.

Spoiler alert: I didn't find it, unfortunately. I'll have to look elsewhere. But I did find some interesting things in the box.

I found a paper that my mom filled out prior to my entering kindergarten. In some ways I have changed a lot, as I no longer cry easily. But in other ways I haven't changed a whole lot. My mom said I was insecure, and today "Stressed Out" could be my theme song. She also said I was a "fanatic" about holidays. I knew my holiday fetish went back to kindergarten, but I didn't know it started before then.

My first day of kindergarten I learned to spell "the." Five months later, I was able to write this:

"IT is ThE LAST MON. OF Jan IM SO IG SIDED For FEBrrauy"

When I was six, I had a thing about Indians (Native Americans). But I knew nothing about race, reservations, or the Trail of Tears. To me, being an Indian meant living off the land with tepees and loincloths. On a visit to Yellowstone, my family pointed out an Indian family next to us, and I was disappointed that they were driving a minivan and wearing jeans. On a hike I got separated from my family and imagined having to live on the mountain, and I said to myself, "I don't want to be a wild Indian!" At the beginning of first grade, we read The Wild Things and had to say what we would do if we were wild. While most of my classmates did some monstrous idea like eating houses, I said, "I would be a wild Indian and wear naked clothes." By "naked clothes," I meant a loincloth. My teacher edited that part out. I drew myself with an amalgamation of Indian stereotypes from all over the country: feather headband, bow and arrow, loincloth, totem poles, and tepee with feathers on it. (Please don't get after me for cultural appropriation. I was six years old.)

In first grade we made a little book of leprechaun stories. Last year I made a post about leprechaun stories I made up as a kid, and I alluded to this one, but I didn't know where it was, so here it is:

"Once upon there was a leprechaun. A wizard casted a spell on him. He turned into a human. That human took his sword and killed the wizard's spells. He turned into a leprechaun. the end"

 "Once upon a time there was a leprechaun. He didn't have any magical powers. Because a witch used black magic and took it away. The next day he was getting brimstones [I meant "Blarney stone"] and horseshoes. Sudenly he found some black magic dust on" [continued below]

 "a brimstone. He put it in his pocket. He turned black. Then he turned white. And he knew that he had found his magical powers. the end."

"The leprechaun lost his gold. because it turned into a shamrock. the next day he was pickin' shamrocks and clovers to pass the time away. when he picked the right one Pooooph! He found it. Oh! He was so happy. the end"

I was a pretty good writer for a seven-year-old, if I do say so myself.

I found a second-grade picture of myself with David Christensen, my elementary school best friend, and Trevor Edwards, my current home teaching companion!

Flash forward to high school. I was a great student. I was student of the month twice each in tenth and eleventh grades--foreign language (French) and math in tenth, and foreign language (French again) and English in eleventh. (I didn't make student of the month at all in twelfth, despite the fact that I was the best white kid in AP Spanish.)

But underneath my fantastic academics, I was internally emo. You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I was on the inside. And I had a thing about vampires. (In case you're wondering, yes, Twilight was popular at this time, but no, that had nothing to do with my fascination. To this day, I have never read nor seen it.) I really wanted to be a vampire when I died. I didn't want to be evil or suck people's blood, but I wanted to turn into a bat, wear a cape, talk with a funny accent, and be scary but nice. In French class, we had to make a poster about a day in the life of some future occupation. These didn't have to be realistic (one girl did a singer). Well, I chose a vampire.

It says (in elementary French), "I am a vampire. At midnight I got up. At 12:05 I changed into a bat. At 12:10 I flew through the window. I scared criminals at one. At one thirty, I flew to my house. I went to bed at four thirty."

I didn't find what I was looking for. But it was fun anyway.

***
It was a good week in pumpkinundation roundup.

 I had the Pumpkin Spice Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats last year, and I was equally disappointed this year. They have no pumpkin, just some vague spice flavor and annatto coloring. 3/5.

 I first had these Candy Corn Oreos in 2012, and I don't think I saw them last year. They're a Target exclusive. First of all, let me say that counting calories has taken some of the fun (but not guilt) out of this. I was astounded: two Oreos, which seems like a small portion, have 150 calories! That means four cookies has 300! Here's some perspective. One apple has 80 calories. A banana has about 100. A half cup of ice cream has 150. A tomato slice has 4. I don't want to blow 300 calories on four cookies. Calories aside, I like these. Candy corn doesn't really have a flavor, but these are very sweet, in a good way. 4/5.

 I had this Kneaders pumpkin cheesecake. I'm not a tremendous cheesecake fan, so someone else would like it more--but I find this less tangy and less rich than regular cheesecake, so it's better. 4/5.

 This was a repeat from last year of the Kodiak Cakes Pumpkin Dark Chocolate Minute Muffins. They're good enough for me to get again. You just put water in the cup and microwave for a minute and you have a muffin. But honestly, the chocolate pieces are the best part. 4/5.

 Trail mix is harder to eat when you're counting calories, but I wanted to try this Archer Farms (Target) Pumpkin Spice Monster Trail Mix. I don't really know what regular monster trail mix is. Years ago, they made this with pumpkin spice M&Ms, but they don't make those anymore. This mix has peanuts, chocolate chips, fall-colored fake M&Ms, raisins, and orange-colored spice-flavored coated peanuts. Supposedly there are pumpkin spice peanuts in addition to regular ones, but I haven't found any, unless the spices are just sprinkled on. This is more chocolatey than I'm used to in a trail mix, but it's tasty. 4/5.

 In January this year, I went to Baskin Robbins for the first time in probably twenty years. And I've gone back several times now, because they have an astounding selection of holiday-themed ice cream. They even have Fourth of July "America's Birthday Cake" ice cream! Earlier this year they had candy corn ice cream (or maybe sorbet stuff; I didn't have any), but they didn't now. However, there were still four seasonal flavors I could have, but that would be overkill, so I only had two. I had a scoop of Baskin Robbins pumpkin pie ice cream. It was tasty and had bits of crust in it. 5/5.

 The other flavor, Trick Oreo Treat Dark, doesn't really belong here, but it's seasonal. It has Oreos with orange creme and candy bar pieces in it. It was quite good, but I wished it were a bit more festive by having more orange pieces. 5/5.

 I don't really like oatmeal, but I find it to be a perfect pre-run breakfast, so I wanted to try this Nature's Path Pumpkin Spice with Chia oatmeal. It has pumpkin seeds, pumpkin powder, and spices, but it tastes pretty much the same as their other oatmeal flavors. Still better than the Quaker pumpkin spice oatmeal I had last year, which didn't even have pumpkin in it. 3/5.

 If you've never had a Larabar, it's just dates and nuts mashed together into a bar, with some other spices or fruits in it as well. Once I heard a roommate say that they're better than Clif bars, but I disagree--there's something about the dates and nuts that impart a bitterness. Nevertheless, I tried these Pumpkin Pie Larabars. Props to them for using real pumpkin (and I would expect nothing less from a hippie company), but I've had better pumpkin items, and I've had better Larabars. 3/5.

 Case in point for better pumpkin items: NutriGrain Pumpkin Spice bars. I honestly don't remember what my experience was like, except that I really liked them. Apparently they're not memorable enough for 5/5, so they get 4/5.

I wasn't expecting much from this Project 7 Pumpkin Spice Delight Gourmet Gum, since the Extra gum was disappointing. But I got a strong whiff when I opened the package. On the back it explains that they're supposed to be like pumpkin cheesecake (you don't get that on the cover). And indeed, as I chewed, I tasted cheesecake and pumpkin milkshakes. I don't love the flavor (not big on cheesecake, as I said earlier), but they nailed the taste so perfectly I give it 5/5.

[Edit]: I also had Pizza Pie Cafe's dessert pizza of the month, a pumpkin pizza. I was sure I took a picture, but I don't have one. It is basically a pumpkin cookie with icing and caramel on top. 5/5.

Rhyolitic, andesitic, basaltic weekend

Well, August is over. I spent some of its last hours running up to Elephant Rock, and I was out too late and had to run with my phone flashlight for the last bit of the trail. But it was fun, and leaves were changing. And there were some cyclists who were just starting the trail when I was just finishing it!

The real highlight of the week, though, was going out rockhounding with my family. They used to collect rocks before I was born and when I was a tiny kid, but I really missed out on most of it. Yet I'm the one who actually became a pseudo-geologist. However, I don't generally like rocks just because they're pretty, but I like to know where they came from or the story behind them. So I'm not the sort of person who would just buy a rock. (However, I do think it's cool that we have a rock from a rock shop that literally looks like a painting, even though it's just a rock.)

In many ways, this trip was reminiscent of August and September of 2013, in time of year, locale, and nature of the expedition. For those who don't know, I minored in geology in college. In August 2013, I had a two-week field studies class where we went out identifying rock formations and seeing various places. Three credit hours smashed into two weeks and camping. I was the only major from the college of humanities in the entire class. I wouldn't say it was my favorite class, but it's definitely the most unique one I took. I miss it. In fall 2013, I took a groundwater class. That probably sounds really boring to you, and it was somewhat, but I didn't expect it to be. Anyway, on September 27 and 28, 2013, we had a field trip to Great Basin National Park, Nevada, and Snake Valley, Utah. On this trip we went to the same Subway in Delta we went to on that field trip (twice, in fact, on that field trip).

My parents and niece and I headed out on Friday afternoon. Our first stop was at a place between Tooele and Delta, where we found these wonderstones, which are a beautiful form of rhyolitic tuff. I brought along my books Roadside Geology of Utah (Williams et al. 2014) and Geologic History of Utah (Hintze and Kowallis 2009) to help me identify. Now, I'm not a real geologist, but using these books, I'm guessing these rocks are part of the Salt Lake Group, which is Miocene in age. The Miocene Epoch was 5 to 23 million years ago.

(Since I'm being science-y, I used the APA citation style, even though I hate it and use Chicago for a living. Why does the American Psychological Association get to decide a style for all the sciences? I mean, the psychology major was the butt of all the jokes of one of my geology professors!)

That night we spent the night at the home of my uncle and aunt, who live in Delta. It's probably been twenty years since I was last at their house. The next morning, my dad showed us some cars that belonged to him, since you can keep old cars when you live outside of Delta. I'm not a car person, but I'm a very nostalgic person, so I liked seeing this Jeep, which we owned when I was between the ages of 7 and 14. My dad also showed us his first car from the 1960s.

We drove south from Delta and came across Fort Deseret, which was a fort that was made of adobe in 1865 during the Blackhawk War (an event I should know more about than I do). It was originally ten feet high. It's definitely not that tall anymore, but I'm still impressed at how much is still there after 150 years.

We made a stop at Great Stone Face, which also had some petroglyphs.

Then we headed down to our primary destination, the ghost town of Frisco in Beaver County. Frisco was a mining community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it was abandoned after the mine collapsed. 

The only place you can get to by car is the Frisco Cemetery. A few things surprised me. It's a ghost town cemetery, and yet there are still fake flowers and toys placed at the graves. I don't think anyone is alive today who would have known these people. There was a pinwheel and some other things that still looked very fresh and new.

 These miners must have been well to do, because there were lots of large tombstones for babies. Babies usually get small stones, but there were big ones. Also, most Utah mining towns were not Mormon communities, but there was someone buried here who was born in San Bernardino in 1852. Definitely a Mormon connection there.

You couldn't drive to the ruins, but you could walk up to them. Only one building still had a roof, and that was just barely--I was standing inside it when a big gust of wind came up, and I was paranoid it would collapse on me, so I got out. It was fun to see all the old places and wonder what it was like a hundred years ago. But I didn't see any ghosts. Sadly.

My best (educated) guess for the geology of this area is that it's the Horn Silver Andesite, 34 million years old from the Oligocene Epoch. Andesite is a volcanic rock that has more iron than rhyolite but less iron than basalt (the black rock that dominates west-central Utah). I was surprised it was that old. 

Then we headed to the desert between Milford and Kanosh, Utah, to find obsidian. Small pieces of it were everywhere. I like it because it's smooth without being polished. Obsidian, of course, forms when lava cools really fast, too fast for any crystals to form. There were lots of cool, glassy rocks in the area. I brought home an interesting brown specimen that had so many shiny parts it looked wet, even though it wasn't. I don't know how old these rocks were, I'm guessing between 700,000 and 1.5 million years, but they could be older or younger.

We made a brief stop at a cousin's house in Fillmore, and she had not one but two cats sleeping in plants. I love cats, because they don't even have to do anything and they're hilarious.

On our way home, we had a flat tire. But it was actually a propitious occurrence! In twelve years of driving, I've never learned how to change a tire, so it was a perfect opportunity to learn. I still don't know if I'll know what to do if I get a flat, but at least I'll be less clueless.

It was a great way to kick off September. And speaking of "kick off," how 'bout that game, amirite?

Actually, I don't know. I don't watch football.