Ash Valentine's Day

Of the nine holidays I formally celebrate, Valentine's Day is my least favorite. But that doesn't mean I don't like it. This was an enjoyable week.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very physical week. The weather was indecisive, and I had some minor problems with my knee and my calf. But I did get to explore parts of a trail near Ensign Peak. It kind of disappeared on a ridge near City Creek Canyon. I wasn't impressed.

After the snow melts, I find all sorts of deer body parts. I also found part of a leg that still had fur and a hoof on it, but I didn't take a picture.

On Valentine's Day, I went out doing errands, including stopping at Winegars grocery store, which is closing. It's been there my whole life, so I'm a little sad. But I can't really say I'm surprised. In 2009 I noticed they had gone downhill, and I can't say they've improved since then. I often prefer going to the new Smith's, Dick's, and Lee's MarketPlace because they're all nicer stores. I saw a random comment on Facebook with a rumor of what the store would become. I find the rumor unlikely, so I won't spread it here--but if it's true, I will be very excited.

Valentine's Day was pretty low-key. I cleaned the kitchen while playing my Valentine's playlist on repeat (it only has sixteen songs). My family had pizza in honor of four years ago, when my mom broke her leg while carrying pizza, and we just watched the Olympics. Some friends dropped off a Valentine card signed by a bunch of friends. It was very thoughtful. Thank you!

Valentine's Day was also Ash Wednesday. I decided to count calories for Lent. You might recall that I counted calories from July 2016 to July 2017, and I gained weight over Christmas and California, so I'm counting again. But forty days is a lot easier/less daunting than a year.

I had several strange, spooky dreams, though I wouldn't necessarily call them nightmares. In the first, I was going up North Canyon, and at the trailhead (at the end of the dirt road), there was a building where I had a job interview. Once I had finished my interview and eaten lunch, I ran up the canyon, wondering if I would catch up with people from my ward who had just walked up. But before I got to Rudy's Flat, I found that a new resort building had been erected there. (There was also a pile of snow with bear tracks in it.) I went in the resort, and even though it was new, it seemed rather old, like the building at the bottom of the trail. But there was a scary clown that lived in mirrors and stalked people. My mind more-or-less consciously created characteristics of this clown. He could travel outside of mirrors, but only for a maximum of thirty minutes. The longer he was out of the mirror, the weaker he would get, and as he got weaker, he would turn into an octopus. He could travel from mirror to mirror, but he could only travel to the next-closest mirror. If you broke a mirror, it just meant there were lots of tiny, jagged mirrors he could travel through. He could also travel to shiny metal, such as handles, but not to reflections in clear windows. He began chasing me (via mirrors) throughout the resort, and even as I ran back down the canyon. (There was a wasp stinging me in there somewhere.)

In the second strange dream, there was a stream that flowed through our backyard. There had recently been a murder, and bones from the victim were carried by the stream. I took some of the smaller bones out, but then I realized I shouldn't do that, because they might test for DNA and I might be a suspect. So when I saw the skull and torso (ribs and backbone) in the stream, I decided to leave them there. I left and came back, and the stream had turned to a mudslide, and the skull and torso were no longer visible. I didn't know if they were buried or if they floated away, but I realized I couldn't leave any more bones in the stream. There were some fires under the mud, and a friend started playing with one, and it turned out the pelvis was on fire. I was deciding whether I should use a stick to fish it out of the stream of flow.

In the third dream, I was stuck at Smith's Marketplace, which was on lockdown because there was a shooter or bomber on the loose. (Isn't it sad I would have dreams like that? I wrote a relevant post five years ago--it's a little dated, but I still mostly agree with it.) The police eventually decided that it was late enough at night that it would be better for us to leave and go home, rather than all be together in one location. But we still had to make our way home with the shooter on the loose. I was with my parents, and after we had driven a little, they decided that the oil in the car was too old, so we couldn't drive it. So we began slowly walking home, and my niece, my aunt, and my grandparents all joined in at some point. At one point I was driving them all on a little kiddie trike, but it was still super slow. I learned that the shooter was a neighborhood kid at Orchard Elementary, and I was worried because we were still going so slow, and to go home we would have to go closer to the volatile zone.

Yesterday, my friend Susan and I went to southern Utah so I could get some more counties off my bucket list for this year: Beaver, Iron, and Washington. We went to the Cedar City Temple, which had a grayish-blue and rust-colored motif.

Cedar City has a great view.

 We also went to the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site, where a major dinosaur trackway was discovered during construction in 2000. I remember 2000 pretty well! It's amazing that such big finds are still happening in my lifetime. It was fascinating to see all the tracks, especially the skin impressions. But I'm not a paleontologist, so I can't see all the tracks and marks they do.

Sometimes it can be challenging to work on my computer, because my cat will come up needing some love. Today he sat on my laptop. I was listening to music, yet he somehow got more music playing at the same time. Then he turned the volume full blast, and he got a look on his face like, "What is that noise? What's going on?!" Then he muted it and walked away. 😆

Second week of February

I was thinking about making a list of things I don't like (such as ice, feta, and throw pillows) since I didn't have a very interesting week. Yet somehow, each week I get between 50 and 90 pageviews, and I get positive reactions. I even get people thinking my posts are funny, even when I'm not trying to be funny. (Are they laughing at me?) So my list of things I don't like will wait for another time.

It has been on my bucket list to visit every city in Davis County, and I only had one left, South Weber. So I decided to drive up to check it off my list. First I stopped at Layton Hills Mall to get a new Valentine's Day tie, since I had one I hated. (It was very gaudy and covered with hearts and lips. I got it in fifth grade, but it seems a little too romantic for that age.) I also ended up with an Easter tie that I liked more than another one I have.

Then I decided to stop at Kays Creek Parkway, a paved running trail in Layton. It was a fun diversion, with views of Hobbs Reservoir, but it wouldn't be worth the drive just to go there. But I can't judge it very fairly, because nothing is pretty in February.

Then I drove through South Weber. It seemed like a pretty little town. And I had that checked off my list.

On Tuesday, I went downtown to meet a former coworker for lunch. He had heard about this blog from another coworker, so I gave him the URL. So, uh, hi Scott!

I wanted to go to the Capitol, which is also on my bucket list, but it looked very busy, so I didn't.

I went home and biked to the Bountiful Temple from my house. It's much easier than running, even though I went a little farther (because I chose a route that seemed less trafficked).

Jimmy continues to be an adorable, affectionate, and hilarious cat, sitting in and on anything he can.

Since this February is like it was in 2015, the snow has mostly melted and I've been able to hit the trails again, this week the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. On Wednesday I ran to Ensign Peak, about nine miles roundtrip.

On Thursday it was past the last radio tower (about eight miles).

And Friday was a new portion of the trail, and I ended up by a Miocene (I think) conglomerate outcrop, which I saw from the other direction when I ended up in City Creek Canyon on Thanksgiving Day. (This was also about nine miles. I might have gone farther, but I had to get back home for a phone interview.)

This week also brought back the Olympics, the only sports I'm interested in watching. I've found that team spirit and sportsmanship is a lot more friendly in Olympics than it is in team sports. The Olympics have a "We're all in this together" feel. (I heard some of Philadelphia's Superbowl celebrations ended in crime. If you commit crimes to celebrate, you are a horrible person.)

Winter Olympics are intense. With the summer Olympics, I feel like I could do most (or many) of the sports, just on a much slower/weaker scale. I could row a boat, run a race, or lift weights. Not so with winter Olympics. I have never been skiing or snowboarding, and I doubt I would like it. Ice is my archnemesis, so skating is out. Maybe I could do curling?

During the winter Olympics four years ago, my mom was laid up with a broken leg, so these are more favorable circumstances. I got to go to the Olympics sixteen years ago. There's talk of them coming back in twelve years, but if we keep having Februarys like this one, that might not be a viable option.

On Saturday, I was way more lazy than I would have liked to be. And Saturday evening, I happened to catch an episode of Star Trek, which I don't usually watch. It just happened to have a prebirth guest appearance by Lady Gaga.

The desert shall blossom as the hibiscus

Since I'm unemployed, every day is basically a weekend, and I got to do some fun things this week.

I had an interview out in Dugway, a military base in Tooele County. I find it unlikely I would accept a job where I had to go there every day, but I figured it couldn't hurt to interview, and it would be a fun road trip.

It was kind of strange being in Dugway. It looked like any other small desert town you might visit, but I had to get security clearance to go in, and I wasn't allowed to take any pictures.

On my way back, I had to stop in Iosepa, which I had heard of but never visited. I don't know if I'll ever have a reason to go out that direction again, so I had to take my chance.

Iosepa was a town for Hawaiian Saints between 1889 and 1917. They gathered to Utah to be closer to a temple, and the town was named for Joseph F. Smith, one of the first missionaries to Hawaii in the 1850s. I don't know enough about this period to know why all the Hawaiians were sent to the middle of the desert, since it didn't look like what I imagine Hawaii looks like. After a few decades of hardship, most returned to Hawaii when the temple was built in Laie.

As I pulled into the empty parking lot, a single tattered Utah flag fluttered in the wind. The Hawaiian community has a big gathering in Iosepa every Memorial Day weekend, and there were plenty of chairs, staging areas, grills, and restrooms to accommodate crowds. But otherwise it seems very isolated. I signed the guest register and was surprised to see that someone else had been there earlier that day, because I really felt like it was a place people wouldn't go. It was fun to go while I was out there, but I don't think it's worth making a special trip, unless you happen to be traveling west on I-80.

I have also wanted to try my hand at snowshoeing. (I mean try my foot.) My sister had some old snowshoes sitting in our garage, so I decided to try them on and went up to North Canyon, my default running spot during the summer and fall. I don't know if what I did there could technically be considered snowshoeing, because there were plenty of footprints where people hiked it without snowshoes. But I appreciated the extra security, since I'm terrified of slipping. Since I'm used to running up North Canyon, snowshoeing was very slow paced for me. It was more than twice as slow as running. It might make a good exercise backup during the winter, but I don't think it will become my favorite hobby.

It was a warm day, so I didn't worry about temperature. Since it was my first time snowshoeing, I wasn't well prepared. I didn't wear layers like you're supposed to, and I didn't have any snow pants. But I was fine. The worst part was that my heels kept rubbing against the back of my boots, so I have big sores on them now.

I got a robot vacuum on Wednesday. I think the model I got is a little low-tech compared to the others (e.g. I can't program it, and I can't control it with an app), but it appeared to be the best for cat hair. It's a fun little gadget. (I would show you a video, but Blogger and Google have joined forces to make it extremely cumbersome to put videos on here, unless I upload it to YouTube, but it's not special enough for that.)

Since my heels were still recovering from snowshoeing, I decided it would be a good opportunity to use my bike. Since I grew up on a steep hill, and I still live there, biking has never been convenient for me. When I got my car back in September, my two qualifications were good MPG and all-wheel drive, but having room for a bike was also a plus. On Wednesday I had a very short ride up our steep hill, but on Thursday I drove my bike down to the Legacy Parkway Trail. It's very flat, so I put my bike in the highest gear, and off I went. It was delightful. Before I knew it, I found myself in Centerville, so I made my way over to 7-Eleven, where I got a red velvet donut and organic Gatorade. (I don't know what organic Gatorade is, but I thought I'd try it. Water, milk, and Gatorade are the only non-seasonal drinks I can have.) 

After I had downed my Gatorade, it was time to get back on the bike. But what about the bottle? I couldn't bring myself to just throw it in the regular garbage. (Seriously, how do people live with themselves when they buy bottled water and just throw it in the garbage?!) So I tucked my shirt into my pants and stuck the bottle in my shirt so I could transport it home to put in the recycling.

I went about fourteen miles round trip, the farthest I have ever gone on a bike, and since it was so flat, it was astonishingly easy. I barely broke a sweat. A few weeks ago I talked about Facebook stalking an old mission companion who is an unpleasant person. In addition to his Trump-esque comments, he kept bragging about his bike rides, including ones that were a mere eleven miles. True, I'm sure he was going much faster than I did, and I don't know what his terrain was, but if I, as a non-cyclist, can easily bike fourteen miles, then eleven isn't anything to brag about.

The next day I did a nine-mile ride on hillier terrain, and it was considerably more difficult, but it still wasn't that hard. (Every time you go up a hill, it means you get to ride down, which takes no exertion whatsoever.) 

My initial observations are that biking is funner than running. But I think running is safer (it's slower, you're not sharing the same space with cars, it's easier to get out of the way), and it's better exercise (it's harder, and you still have to exercise going down hill). I need to treat biking as a supplement to running, not as a replacement. My heels were sufficiently healed on Saturday to do my new standard winter run, eleven miles round trip to and from the Bountiful Temple.

This week I also had that moment when you read a Mormon blog and the professional historian doesn't know the answer to a question, but you just happen to know it.

Some friends this week asked me if I was going to blog about my rant about Groundhog Day, so here it is. Groundhog Day is fake, you know. It's silly, of course, to think that an animal seeing its shadow changes the season. Also, they are saying that either winter ends in six weeks (the end of astronomical winter), or it ends in early February. But when you think of winter ending, you think of the weather, and if the weather is your definition of winter, then meteorological winter ends on March 1, not March 20. The March 20 "first day of spring" only relates to the length of days, not the weather. But the worst part of Groundhog Day is that Punxsutawney Phil's "decision" is predetermined beforehand. They don't wait to see if he sees his shadow, or even say "it's sunny, so let's assume he sees his shadow." No, they decide it beforehand. Groundhog Day is literally faker than fake.

I don't care that it exists. I mean, we have all sorts of strange holidays and traditions, and it comes from German folklore, and there's a place for that. What gets me, though, is that people think it's actually a big deal. When my niece was in first grade, I remember her saying her favorite February holidays were Valentine's Day and Groundhog Day. Now really, what is there for a first-grader to like about Groundhog Day? Candy? Nope. Music? Nope. Presents? N-O. A day off from school? Not likely. Kids think it's a real holiday only because other people tell them it is.

As far as I'm concerned, Groundhog Day is only a Pennsylvanian regional holiday. And there are lots of regional holidays that are more legitimate, important, and meaningful than Groundhog Day: Arbor Day (Nebraska), Pioneer Day (Utah), Patriots' Day (Massachusetts), Mardi Gras (Louisiana), and more. Yet there are plenty of calendars that include Groundhog Day but none of the others. It makes me madder than it probably should. If you're going to include this garbage Groundhog Day, you need to include the others. 

OK, I'm done.

What about the egg house?

I have returned home from California.

The week mostly consisted of attending class with my nephew Franklin, who turned 10 this week. I mostly tried to act as though I wasn't there in his class, just trying to be out of the way. His teacher is a month older than I am, but I wonder if she thought I was a useless person.

One day, one student's English grandmother visited and shared her childhood memories of World War II and the ensuing years. I found it fascinating to hear the British side of things, since I mostly hear the American perspective. She brought WWII British foods of Spam (6/10), digestive biscuits (7/10), and Marmite (2/10), which I was able to sample after all the students. (I was excited to sample digestive biscuits, because I remember an episode of Arthur that referenced them: "I guess it's like Reader's Digest or something." "What a weird flavor.") The grandmother talked about "Mickey Mouse" gas masks, bomb shelters, and rations. Then there was a Q&A session. Some of the questions were very good. Some of them were unimportant or irrelevant: "I'm part Scottish." (Cool story, bro.) "We watched this movie where..." I found myself with the same impatient feeling I get when the various autistic people in my ward go on and on during Sunday School. Franklin is very shy and quiet, so he doesn't speak up a lot in class.

He's a silly kid. One morning on the way to school, he kept saying, "What about the egg house? I don't know!" over and over again. One day during lunch, he drew a unicorn slug, a shooting car (make a wish!), and a rainbow walrus.

One day his parents took him to see a doctor for his headaches, so I was home with Preston (13) and Nathaniel (8). Preston put a picture of a creepy face on their sliding door. (I Googled "creepy face" to try to find the picture. I didn't find it, but I found all sorts of weird things.) Then he said to Nathaniel, "Can you open the blinds? I'm not good at it." So Nathaniel opened the blinds and saw the creepy face grinning at him. He yelled and ran away from it. It was pretty funny, actually, but he took it much too seriously. He began crying and told Preston, "You scared me! You need to lose all your game time." He cried for a long time. It was a great overreaction.

I looked at their grocery store's clearance section, and I have to make an out-of-season pumpkinundation paragraph. These Boulder Canyon Pumpkin Pie Flavored Kettle Cooked Potato Chips (whew!) are sweeter than typical potato chips. Mostly they're just sweet, but when I concentrate, I think, "Whoa, this really does taste like pumpkin pie." 8/10. (I can eat them out of season because they're potato chips, not candy or dessert.)

On Friday, Nathaniel found this rock at school. He said he thought it was granite, but it's too dark for that. I'm 90 percent certain it's a mafic intrusive igneous rock, so it might be gabbro or maybe even peridotite. It looks like it could be mostly pyroxene, but I'm no mineralogist.

Franklin had three friends over for a sleepover on Friday for his birthday celebration. One was from America, one was from Russia, and one was from Korea. The Bay Area is certainly more cosmopolitan than Utah. Franklin's class not only had a lot of non-white kids, but a lot of white kids with foreign names.

Saturday morning, it was time to leave. I hugged my nephews goodbye. Then they started giving me all sorts of stuffed animals ("fluffies"), pillows, blankets, toys, and even garbage to hug. I will miss them, even though all they talk about is video games, Legos, and fluffies.

On the plane ride home, I had what I thought was a waterproof water bottle. (I don't get water from the flight attendants, because it's wasteful to use bottled water and plastic cups.) I have yet to find a bottle that doesn't leak. With this bottle, the water somehow collects in empty spaces in the straw--not in the straw itself, but in the plastic straw structure. Then, somehow, a substantial amount of water leaked on me, and I was soaked. I worried people would think I was incontinent. [EDIT: I looked up "incontinent" when I made this post to make sure I was using it right. Now I keep getting ads for Depends. True story.]

I got home and found my parents mildly annoyed with my cat--my mom because of how needy and kneady he is, my dad because of the clumps of fur he leaves all over the house.

Today at church I mentioned I was searching for a job. A new guy asked me if I was willing to go out of my comfort zone and go door to door.

Big old NOPE. I ain't no bro.

Yadiloh Nhoj

Since I am unemployed, I figured there was no better time to go visit my nephews in California. So on Monday, I boarded a plane.

Monday was the birthday of my youngest nephew, Nathaniel, who turned eight. I remember so much about him as a little kid that it's weird he's getting older now. He was the most adorable, perfectly mild-mannered three-year-old you ever met.

One of the purposes of my coming to California was to help out with Franklin, who is turning ten this week. Franklin is a hilarious kid and says all sorts of funny things. When they visited at Christmastime, he saw me wearing a Christmas sweater and coined a nickname for me: Holiday John. (The "John" was just a generic name with no meaning. I bet you can guess why "Holiday.")

For a few months, Franklin has had bad headaches, so he usually goes to school late, and going to recess and lunch exacerbates his headaches. Therefore, one of his parents will go to school with him, and I was filling in at school this week. I couldn't be a grade-school teacher, because I get super stressed out when people interrupt conversations with irrelevant/unimportant tangents.

On Wednesday, his teacher was sick, so she sent an email saying he could just stay home, since the sub was only showing the movie Goodnight Mister Tom. So we found it on YouTube and watched it. I was surprised she was showing it to the class, as many of the themes seemed a bit mature for fourth grade, including child abuse, suicide, mental illness, and theodicy. Later the teacher sent a frantic email saying that the sub had stopped it because it wasn't age-appropriate, that Franklin shouldn't watch it. Too late, he already did. But he said he didn't really pay attention.

Somehow my nephews learned that I could speak backwards, and they were very amused. Nathaniel almost seemed hurt that I had never told them before. Oh, you didn't know that either? OK. When I was in elementary school, I trained myself to speak backwards. All the words would be in the same order in the sentence, but I would pronounce them as if they were spelled backwards. I became quite fluent at it, but I've become rusty (and my brain tries to revert to French or Spanish when it's not speaking English). But it remains a hidden talent of mine. At one point they set a timer and said I could only speak backwards for fifty minutes. I slipped once when I responded "What?," but otherwise I did it. (It helped that a lot of it was just watching YouTube.)

One day in Franklin's class, their teacher instructed them to think of a person and then brainstorm facts about that person. Guess who Franklin chose?

He told his whole class about me speaking backwards and cooking pillows. (As a toddler, I pretended I was a baker and pretended that couch pillows were cakes, so I put them in the oven. Then my mom unknowingly preheated the oven.)

 Franklin was delighted by his early birthday gift of ear plugs, and they have been a great source of contention among his brothers, as they all want to play with them. (Preston got a toilet plunger for Christmas, and Nathaniel got a laundry basket--both gifts that they requested.)

 Even though I'm in CA, I've been keeping up on Utah news. I read an article on KSL about how even though it's January, some people in Bountiful turn on their Christmas lights in the snow. The next morning I woke up and thought, "That was a vivid dream, since they wouldn't actually make a dumb article like that and publish it online." But then I was surprised to see it wasn't a dream, they really did write that dumb story! People can do what they want, but to me, Christmas lights in January are just a sad reminder that Christmas is eleven months away. (They also aren't newsworthy.)

I love my Utah (I'm even wearing my 801 beehive shirt), but it's always nice to see a new place and culture. The Berkeley area is certainly more diverse than what I'm used to. I've enjoyed trying pho and pomelos.

I also like that my brother lives within close walking distance of both Trader Joe's and See's Candies, which are very holiday-friendly stores.

I attended a Berkeley student singles ward (even though I'm not a student). I like that I can go anywhere and it all seems familiar, even if the building is different.

We took Preston and Nathaniel to the Berkeley Adventure Playground, a hippie locale where you can help build the playground, which is made of old wood scraps. You know it's a hippie locale because they have a slackline.

Preston.

Nathaniel. Somehow I don't have any pictures of Franklin, even though he's the one I've been around the most this trip. 🤷‍♂️

My nephews are pretty different from me. Their favorite things are video games and Legos, which aren't my cup of tea. Nathaniel doesn't even know what St. Patrick's Day is. But I love being with them.

Random odds and ends

This week was full of random odds and ends.

On Monday I got a new phone, a Moto Z2 Force. I mainly got it because my last phone was very particular about how it was plugged in. I never felt like I could charge it in my car, because the slightest bump would disconnect it, and I didn't know if it would be dead or charged when I woke up in the morning. Every time you get a new piece of technology, it's a new adjustment. I've been annoyed by some things that I thought have been pointless, but as I think about it, I realize they might have a purpose. For example, I was mad that I didn't have a headphone jack. But then I learned that it did come with a headphone jack adapter; and on my last phone, the jack quit working, so at least I won't have to worry about that now. I am bugged, though, that the charging cord is not universal, working only with my phone, and it's short. Oh well. Nothing is perfect.

I went to the Midway Ice Castles for my first time this week. They were fun and I'm glad I went, but I don't think they're worth the drive more than once.

I also had my review for Hot & Spicy Cinnamon Oreos go up this week. I was nervous, because Oreos tend to be some of the highest-profile reviews, and I knew my 10/10 would be controversial. But most comments have been more supportive than I expected. Most.

"Just because you may not agree with the flavor of the cookie doesn’t mean they should dump the writer lol, but thanks for playing."

Perhaps most exciting this week, I had an interview at BYU on Friday. I thought it went pretty well, but we'll see. I spent some time walking around campus. Much of it seemed so familiar to me, yet I graduated nearly four years ago. Few, if any, people I knew would still be there. I went through the Life Sciences Building, which I consider to be a new building, because it wasn't finished (well, wasn't used) until after I left. But it has been in use for more than three years now! I walked past my old apartments, including my very first one. If we ever got locked out, it was easy to break in the apartment through the kitchen window. It looked like the window is the same after all these years, and I heard some typical college banter as I walked past. And I thought, "What if I stopped in and said I used to live here--eight years ago?" And I imagined the reaction would be, "Who's this old guy!?!?" 

If I did happen to move to Provo, the saddest thing is that I probably wouldn't take Jimmy with me, at least not initially. He hangs out with me on my bed while I'm applying to jobs. Sometimes he comes on my lap, which makes it hard to work on my laptop, so when he does that, I've been switching to watching Marlo Thomas in That Girl online. Is that how binge-watching works? 

I learned that the guest star in this episode was my grandpa's second cousin.

Thanks to my cat, I have a hairy chest even with my shirt on.

I should end, because I'm short on time, since I just literally spent an hour in line for hot chocolate, only to find it was all gone. Not one of my wisest moves. #LDSDevo

But I just want to say something else that perhaps isn't really nice. Of my eleven mission companions, ten of them are good people. There's one I blocked on Facebook years ago because I wanted to block out all the emotional anguish he had caused me. But last week I happened to be on a computer where my mom was signed in, so I used the opportunity to Facebook stalk him. As I scrolled through his posts, I realized why I found him so reprehensible: He has the exact personality of Donald Trump, just with different interests. Racist, misogynistic, Obama-hating, hypocritical, arrogant to the extreme, vulgar. It just bugs me that people I otherwise respect would be friends with him. He's one of the most horrible human beings I have ever known.

On that note: Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Merry. Happy. Blah.

If anyone ever tells you that January is their favorite month, either they are lying, or they are a stupid person. Either way, you shouldn't hang out with them.

I think part of January's problem is its place in the calendar next to December. Christmas can make even the most horrible things seem quaint. If it weren't for Christmastime, January wouldn't seem so bleak in comparison.

Anyway, since last week I was just reviewing the entire year, I thought I'd reflect on some of the merrier times of the last two weeks before describing my boring January.

On Christmas Eve, my mom's family all came over. Her family has gotten so large that it was very crowded. After everyone left, it was a very peaceful Christmas Eve. I was delighted that it was our fourth snowy Christmas in a row.

It was great to have my nephews here on Christmas morning. That hadn't happened since 2009, before the youngest was even born. They had fun opening presents. For me, I care less about the presents these days (even though, as I previously said, the joy of Christmas ultimately stems from the nostalgia of getting presents). I got bluetooth earbuds, a car first-aid kit, a headlamp, and a knock-off NES system. You remember a while back when Nintendo made a little NES device that had lots of games preloaded on it? Well, my sister got me an Asian fake version. They are actually pretty accurate with the Super Mario and Super Mario 3 games, but they had to take "Mario" out of the title. They have a game called "Mario 6" which is just a Tiny Toons game with Mario as the main character. I looked through all the games preloaded and found a Christmas one, which of course I had to play that night. It was one of the most basic games imaginable. I rarely play video games, but it's fun to have random gadgets and devices around, even if I don't use them much.

One of the last uses of this TV.

I wanted to have a turkey dinner for Christmas. I wanted to cook a turkey, since I personally haven't before; and since Thanksgiving's turkey wasn't cooked to my liking, I felt kind of cheated out of turkey. Well, my mom was cutting up the celery to go in the stuffing, and she cut her finger fairly badly--not bad enough for stitches or anything, but not good. I don't do well with blood and pain and medical emergencies, so I began to feel woozy just thinking about it. As my nephews came out and said "Grandma's thumb lost so much blood it's flat," it just made it worse. I think the fact that I was really tired was part of why I got so woozy.

But that wasn't the end of it. After my mom recovered, she told me I needed to take out the turkey neck and giblets. And after my tiredness, and my experience with my mom's thumb, I just couldn't do it. I felt too woozy and disgusted. I'll have to try again a different year when I haven't just seen blood. Hats off to all the doctors and nurses out there, because I couldn't do it.

I still had to go caroling, but no one else wanted to, so I walked around the block singing quietly to myself.

It really was a lovely Christmas, probably the best I can remember.

On Boxing Day, I tried to go sledding with my nephews again, but the snow had become so hard and icy that it was no longer ideal. I went sledding down just on my coat, not even with a sled, and I was going fast enough that I couldn't stop myself. Then I had to climb back up the hill, and I was on my hands and knees doing so. At one point, Nathaniel (7) was coming up, and he slipped and slid all the way back down again.

My three nephews got little drones for Christmas. We went to a mall to look at the Lego Store, while I went to get 2018 calendars. Afterwards, we went to a park's parking lot so they could play with their drones, which were controlled by a phone app. Nathaniel's drone had a glitch where it flew out of range of the phone--and since the app could no longer control it, it kept going up and up and up. It went out of sight, and we never found it. Nathaniel was sad/mad and was plotting to get everyone to write one-star reviews of the company.

My cat likes my calendars. My dad, not so much.

 My parents decided to get an enormous TV for our exercise room. So enormous that I'm embarrassed to tell you the size. The giant box was a marvel to behold, but we had to cut it to get the TV out.

I had a few New Year's events to go to. My stake rented the Bountiful rec center the Friday before New Year's, and I went down the water slide a few dozen times. On New Year's Eve Eve, I saw BYU Vocal Point downtown at the Tabernacle.

As for New Year's Eve itself, it was pretty boring. No one invited me to their party (jerks!), and my family just put together a (difficult) puzzle. I lit some fireworks, but my family was generally somewhat apathetic, though they made it to midnight. The only thing on my New Year's bucket list that I didn't do was to use one of those noisemakers that's a flat piece on the end of a stick, and you spin it around and it makes clicky noises. I couldn't find one. (I do not have holiday bucket lists for 2018.)

On New Year's Day, we had my mom's family's traditional out-to-eat celebration of their first date six decades ago.

And then, all the holidays were over, and January returned with all its nastiness. My hands literally have cracks all over them because of winter dry skin.

Not only have the holidays ended, so has the life I knew. December 29, 2017, was my last day working for the Church History Department. I had been there since March 2014, and I had squeezed every last drop out of my contract.

So I have to spend these dreary January days looking for jobs and otherwise doing whatever I want, which isn't as fun or glamorous as it sounds. The trails are too snowy, so I've been running on the streets when the air has been clean enough. But I ran the eleven miles to and from the temple one day, and then I was too exhausted to run more than six miles the rest of the week.

One consolation is that since Christmastime, my kitty, Jimmy, has warmed up to me some more. I think I've trained him not to sit on my laptop anymore--it's hilarious and adorable when he does so, but also annoying. He sleeps on my bed while I'm doing stuff on my computer. But when he sees a speck of light reflected from my watch or computer screen, he goes after it.

When he sits on my computer, he opens new tabs and types things.

I love how much he sleeps on my bed. I do not love how much he sheds on my bed.

Anyway, this week looks to be more of the same, with job searching and hopefully reviewing more Valentine's candy for The Impulsive Buy. Next week I'll be going to California.

Because heaven knows Utah has nothing to offer me during January.