December 30

Today is December 30, so I'm going to remember the December 30s of the past.

2013. It was our last full day in California, and I was wearing my red-orange pants. While the other adults had gone someplace, Ya-ping wanted me to accompany the boys to the park at their apartment complex. They showed me how to get there, and I supervised them playing, particularly Nathaniel.

Suddenly, there was a hubbub around one of the park's garbage cans, as one of the janitors was freaking out. There was a rat in the trash can, and it was trying to jump out. My nephews wanted me to hold them so they could see it, and some of the other people worried about me doing so, since the rat was trying to jump out, and it got close on occasion. I took a picture on my phone, and then another janitor showed up, and I was able to show him the picture, because I don't know if he believed the story.

He made fun of the first janitor for being afraid. Eventually they put a stick in the garbage, and the rat was able to climb out, and it ran into the bushes. I think Preston was trying to coax it out of the bushes. Then we had to make a stop in the apartment again, and Preston was trying to come up with an excuse not to go back. He said he was scared of the rat running loose, but I knew that was an excuse, because he sure wasn't afraid of it when we were there. When we went back, Nathaniel brought his little bike. He left it on the playground while he went playing, and then Preston said, "Uh oh," because we noticed a woman pushing a little girl on it. Of course, Qi-en didn't like that--"I don't want her riding it." I said, "Then go tell her," and he said, "No, I want you to," and I thought it was more of the job of the adult, so I took him and I went up and said, "Can he ride on it?" She got off, but then Preston told me that he could tell the woman was mad because she was talking angrily with a friend (they weren't speaking English). It was weird enough to ride someone else's bike, but to be mad when you get kicked off--that's excessively odd. Although Franklin had been good for most of our visit, I think he had a screaming fit that afternoon. That evening we were going to go out to eat, and I think Franklin wanted to go to McDonald's, but we were going to a Chinese buffet. Franklin was upset about that and felt entitled to his way. I remember talking about some of the events of December 30, 2010, concerning Franklin, while we were at dinner. When we got back to the apartment, Preston wanted to sleep in the living room with my parents--and since he was given permission to do so, the other boys wanted to too. They then began to get every blanket and stuffed animal they could find and pile it on the couch.
David told them that there wasn't enough room for all of them to sleep on the couch with all their stuff. Preston was willing to sleep on the floor, but something triggered Franklin that he got possessed, all because his dad said there wasn't room for all of them on the couch. He had a screaming, crying fit. David told him to go to his room and that he had five minutes to calm down, or else he wouldn't be able to sleep in the living room. He screamed and cried on his bed for a long time. Eventually David went in to talk to him, and said, "You've been crying a long time." Franklin was coming up with some excuse: "When you were five years old..." David had to say, "If being five years old means that you're too young not to have a fit, then being five years old means that you're too young to sleep in the living room. Do you understand?" He did end up letting Franklin go back to the living room, and Ya-ping said to him, "You're too nice." In the meantime, I was trying to find my phone's charger, and David found every one in his house, but none of them were mine. It turned out that I hadn't brought mine, so I don't know I had been charging it while I was there.

2012. My parents and I were driving home from California with my grandparents. It was very early in the morning, so I spent a lot of the time sleeping. Donner Pass was snowy, but I slept through much of it. At one point, my mom asked if it would disrupt Grandpa's hearing if they listened to music; Grandma said it didn't matter. At one point they turned on the weird CD my dad had bought my mom, "The Best of the 80s." I didn't like that choice for a Sunday, so I listened to churchy music on my new MP3 player, including the Lower Lights and Jan Terri's "Follow Jesus." We made a stop at a Nevada gas station/casino, and we had to make a stop in Winnemucca to get gas. We also had to stop at the hotel we had stayed at on our way there; Grandpa said, "Why are we stopping here?" and it was because I had left my shoes at the hotel. When he saw that, he realized why I had worn "red tennis shoes" (they were actually Vans) at Preston's baptism they day before. I think our last stop was in Nevada not far from the Utah border, and I had snacked on enough snacks that I didn't need to get to get food. We dropped off my grandparents and then drove to our snowy, icy driveway. As we were bringing stuff in, we discovered that Grandpa had left his hearing aid stuff in our car. That really disappointed my mom, because it was late and she didn't want to have to drive out again. She called Grandma and asked if it was OK if she returned it the next day; it was OK. I stayed up late writing my year-in-review post.

2011. This time, the visit with my nephews took place in Utah. We all got in the Suburban and drove to the Utah Museum of Natural History. Ya-ping had some gummy bears she was sharing with the boys, and I had one too. I carried Nathaniel through much of the museum. He kept pointing to dinosaur skulls and saying, "Wehh, wehh." I thought he liked the skulls, but later he did the same thing with pictures of archaeological finds. Those surely could not have interested him, so I think he was "talking" just for the sake of talking. We picked up pizza on our way home for dinner. Once we got home, I went running; it seems like it was for 53 minutes. I was astonished to see a "Welcome Home" sign for a missionary (it was up a few days early); the dates of his mission were 2010 to 2012, and I was weirded out that someone who left after I came home was coming home. I got home and reported on my running; Peter was at our house, and he said that running 53 minutes sounded horrible. That night, Nathaniel had fun creating a bridge between the couch and the table.

2010. Once again visiting my nephews, this time in Nashville. We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner; it was kind of a buffet style. They had some spicy food; I remember my mom saying, "If you grew up eating this, can you imagine how bland American food would be?" Franklin was not quite three. They fed him some spicy stuff, and he would convulse because it was so hot, but then he would beg for more. My mom said, "Why does he do that?" Preston said, "Look at Nathaniel!" because he was staring at a baby girl.

2008. Elder Love was being transferred out of Ritzville and Davenport. We drove out of Davenport in the morning, and in Washington, they don't believe in clearing the roads. A car had turned into the middle turning lane and was coming in traffic but apparently didn't look in his blind spot and hit the car in front of us. They pulled off on the side and we kept driving. Elder Love went to his new area in Spokane's South Hill. We went into the apartment, and Elder Love said, "Who's our district leader?" The other elders told him it was him; he was stunned. I can't remember where I met Elder Wilson, but then we drove back to Davenport. We got gas at the Indian-run gas station in Airway Heights. Elder Wilson got a hot dog, so I thereby learned he wasn't a health nut, although he was fairly healthy. I drove slow because it was all snowpacked. When we got back to the Herrons' house, the couple we stayed with, I told Sister Herron about the wreck we had seen. This is my journal for the day:
"This morning almost to Airway Heights we saw a wreck. A car was turning on to the highway from the median. He didn't look and their sides hit. It looked like they were dancing with the way they moved across the snow-packed road.
"The roads in Spokane were crazy. Snow was piled up in the center of one way streets, and lanes were narrow with all the snow. I was nervous to have to drive. Elder Love asked who the district leader was in his new area, and he was shocked when they said, "You." President hadn't told him he would be district leader.
"We traveled safely to Davenport, with a nice long procession behind my slow driving. We went to the Stackhouses and the Adamses to introduce Elder Wilson."

2007. When we taught Sunday School, this may have been the time I brought up my reading of Job. When we taught the youth, Elder Chun said, "What is a missionary's favorite thing?" The youth all guessed things, including cookies, but the answer was "referrals." This is my journal for the day:
"Today Debbie and the kids came to church, and the bishop of the Northpointe ward committed everyone to bring one person into the Church in 2008.*
"Then Kristy Whalen came to the Greenbluff ward, which was exciting. We had to teach Gospel Essentials, and then we had to teach the youth. Those both went well.
"*That is, invite one person to hear a lesson."

2006. I was invited to a YSA activity, since I was 18. We met at the Jones home. I was wearing pink socks because I was very OCD about what clothes I wore around New Year's. We took off our shoes, so my socks were very obvious, but no one said anything. We went down to the Joneses' basement to play Scene It. Not having seen many movies, I wasn't very good at it. But there was one sequence that involved a picture that gradually faded in and you had to guess the movie. I knew it was It's a Wonderful Life immediately. In another part of the game, I knew Inherit the Wind when no one else did, because I had watched it in Mr. Glover's AP US History class; I told everyone that it was airing on channel 11 soon. We went to Clark Planetarium to see a laser music show. They played Christmas music while showing lasers and animated clips. They played overplayed songs like "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." I thought it was cheesy, and it was worse because Christmas was over.

December 31, 2013-January 1, 2014

Another year is coming to an end, so it's time to remember what happened at last New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

On December 31, we got ready to leave my brother's house after a weeklong visit there. For some reason, Nathaniel rode in the car with us to the airport while David drove. I did the old pretend-my-hand-is-a-spider with him, and he kept smacking my hand when I got close. When we got to the airport, I said, "Goodbye, Qi-en!" While we were waiting to board the plane, I checked my grades for the fall 2013 semester. I saw that I got an A- in Groundwater and a B+ in Field Studies, which was a little disappointing, but a little pleasantly surprising. The rest were A's. My mom told me we would be sitting in row 16. I said "hixteeng," since that was how Nathaniel said it, and that seemed to be his favorite number at that time. My mom caught on to my "hixteeng" reference, and said, "He's so cute." On the plane, I put my phone on airplane mode, but I listened to the songs that were saved on the phone, listening to songs that were popular in 2013, came out in 2013, or were New Year songs. When the flight attendant came by, my dad and I got ginger ale; my dad said he always got it on planes. When we arrived in Salt Lake, Susanne took us home; I entered the house through the garage door, and our cat had made a mess of the basement, so I had to clean it up later. I came up and saw our leftover candy canes, and I was glad that I could still eat them. We looked on my mom's new computer at the pictures from California, and I used an unflattering one for my profile picture.

I turned on my New Year music while we did that. That evening, I turned on all my 2013 music on shuffle. My dad told me he liked the mix, but that may have been because there was a fair amount of religious music. My mom kept laughing at the Jan Terri songs. Then I was surprised when Kelly Clarkson's cover of "Run Run Rudolph" came on, and my dad said, "Is this the singer you and your mother make fun of?" Later I told that to my mom and he said maybe he couldn't tell when people were off pitch. In the evening, my mom and I went to Temple Square because Cherie Call was singing in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We went in and sat down, and lots of people were talking to a man behind us. It was apparent he was a pretty well-known person, and I remember one person criticizing another musician who was Mormon for singing Bruno Mars. I predicted some of the songs Cherie would sing, and I think I got all of them right. I was especially glad she sang her New Year song, "Starting Again, Again." She had live accompaniment, but she just used a minus track on "Marry Me." After we left, my mom wondered who had been sitting behind us. I told her I wondered if it was Jon Schmidt (I don't remember how I came to that conclusion), and my mom said she had heard him say that, so she knew I was right. Rather than  go home and be bored (since my dad probably went to bed), we called my sister to see if we should go visit them and ring in the New Year with them. She agreed to have us come, so we went down to their basement. We might have put on silly party hats. After 2014 arrived, we went upstairs and had sparkling cider, and Nan, Matt, and I cheesily clinked our glasses together "to 2014." (We didn't know that it would be 2014 when Matt would leave them.) Allie showed off her karaoke machine, but I think she was too shy to sing. Susanne gave me some cinnamon rolls that I took home. On our way home, I wanted to see if 99.5 was playing the top 2013 songs yet, but that wouldn't start until the next day. I think they played "Sweater Weather." I liked the golden-lit trees near Susanne's house.

The next morning, January 1 (which technically began the night before), I got up and my dad had eaten a cinnamon roll, which was fine by me. I remember getting on my computer and listening to my New Year and 2013 music again. I journalized as follows:

"New Year's Day, just sitting in my room, waiting for us to leave for our traditional New Year dinner. This is going to be a big year. I'm nervous. I will graduate, and therefore I have to find a job. I thought I would be able to stay at BYU Studies until August, but it turns out I can't. I hope the semester won't be too difficult so that I can spend time looking for jobs."

We drove out to 7200 South to go to Golden Corral, my grandparents' favorite. I think my dad was sick, so he didn't come with us. The radio station 99.5 was playing the top songs from 2013, so I turned that on. I was surprised when Owl City's "Good Time" came on, since that was more of a 2012 song. I wasn't social at dinner and didn't want to talk to many other people. My grandparents wanted to take pictures of everyone there, which got a little awkward. I remember Sue saying she wanted Jesse and Lisa to have kids because she didn't want Chancey to have any more. On our way home, we stopped at Toys 'R' Us to look at their Christmas clearance stuff (in California, we had seen some Rudolph toys, but they didn't have them in Utah). Allie had been promised a bicycle for Christmas, but she didn't want one, so she picked out Legos instead. I was disappointed she didn't want a bike. On our way back to Susanne's house, we got into a conversation about P!nk. Susanne said she loved the song "Just Give Me a Reason," and I said I hated it. And then it came on a minute later. They dropped Matt off and did some things in the house, while I waited in the car and listened to the radio. We went to Maverik to get gas when they announced the "number one song"--Kelly Clarkson's "Catch My Breath," which surprised me. Then we went to Target. I remember looking at the clearance candy, thinking I could have it for just a few more hours (before candy became forbidden again), but I wasn't really hungry for it since I had eaten lots of desserts at Golden Corral.

Early Christmastime memories

In this blog, I will try to remember some of my earliest Christmas-associated memories. I'm going to try to stick to memories that happened before I entered elementary school--meaning I was five or younger.

(I was going to post this last week, but I forgot. It was the first week I missed posting on this blog. But that's OK, because this isn't my priority blog.)

I remember a visit to Temple Square with my cousins and grandparents. Some of the lights had little flowery coverings surrounding the lights--I think that was a 90s thing. I remember walking up the ramp to see the Christus statue and being fascinated with the planets on the mural. I think it was this same trip when I remember driving home in my grandparents' van, and there was a plate of Christmas sugar cookies.

I can remember looking out the window in our living room overlooking our driveway and watching my family bring in our Christmas tree.

I can remember making a homemade garland with cranberries, and I think my cousin Tammy was there; the next year I wondered where it was when we got out our decorations.

Once in preschool, we went to an old folks home and danced, I think the Mexican Hat Dance. Afterwards, they gave us those red suckers with white powder on them. Then I went to the Festival of Trees (I can't remember whether it was with them or with my family) and they had giant plastic suckers like the ones we had gotten. (I'm not sure whether the decorations were meant to look like those suckers, but I thought they did.)

Perhaps that same year, I also went to the Festival of Trees with my family and got an anthropomorphic Christmas tree filled with candy. My brother got a snake with 24 pieces of candy so you could eat one a day until Christmas. We came home and caught the tail end of a cartoon about the Twelve Days of Christmas, and then my cousins had to go home. I think that the adults said, "It's over" when it was at a commercial break, but we kids didn't believe them. But when the commercial break was over, it was only the credits, so they had been right.

I liked to watch my Christmas Sing-Along, and I remember asking my dad when Christmas was, in part because I wanted to watch it.

One time I went to my friend David Christensen's house, and his dad had drawn a picture of a stick of holly, a present, and a candle. We were impressed with how he had drawn the holly leaves. So I decided that I wanted to draw one myself. So I lay down on the kitchen floor with my crayons and drew the picture. I couldn't draw the points on the holly leaves, so they were just regular leaves. I figured it didn't matter what color the present was, so it had pink ribbon. My mom was very impressed.

One time I was playing with our neighbor, Taryn Pay, on the day we were bringing out our Christmas decorations. She found two wreaths, one made out of cloth and one made out of twigs. She suggested we put the wreaths around our faces and walk around like that. I was annoyed that she kept the cloth wreath and made me use the scratchy one.

I remember getting in our car one December and driving down the hill. The stars were literally twinkling in the sky in a flashy cartoony manner. I'm pretty sure this was a dream.

My sister was tutored by Coach Wangsguard from South Davis Junior High when I was just a little kid. One time during tutoring, my mom and I went outside and played in the snow. One of us threw a snowball at the window. When we went inside, Wangs said she had said, "Who threw that snowball?" We had a puzzle-piece reindeer on our fireplace, and Wangs asked me what its name was. I said it was Rudolph, and she said, "It can't be Rudolph if it doesn't have a red nose!"

I remember hearing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" on the radio a few days after Christmas, and I wondered why they were playing a Christmas song after Christmas, but I think I deduced it was because Christmas was over and the song was only relevant after Christmas (because it was past tense).

I loved playing with our plastic nativity, and one angel for a long time was separated from the rest of the nativity.

My mom made little Christmas mice that held candy canes in them as the tail. I remember being at my grandparents' office in their old house with my cousin April and there were leftover candy cane mice.

My grandparents had a garland with musical bells in it. I loved hearing it, and I fell in love with "The Little Drummer Boy." I thought the "rum pum pum pum" was hilarious.

We had a little paper with flaps that described Santa Claus traditions in other countries. That paper made me think of Santa Claus differently than most people. When I heard people say that Santa Claus went around the world in one night, I thought they were wrong. Our Santa Claus only had to travel across America. Other countries had their own Santa (Father Christmas, Père Noël, etc.). If you ask me, that makes a little more sense than there being only one Santa for the whole world.

December 21-27, 2013

It's time to remember last year's Christmas week.

December 21. I remember lying in bed while I heard my mom talking on the phone. She relayed stories about Nathaniel to Sue, and she was talking to her friend Jackie and I heard her say she would have to tell me something. I found out that what she needed to tell me was a funny ambiguous statement that Jackie had misinterpreted the night before; my mom had texted her something like, "We are in Fillmore for a wedding, and the reception is terrible." She meant the cell service was terrible. Sometime that day, we went to Chuck-A-Rama. At the table, there was conversation about gay marriage being legal in Utah. My mom said she didn't think gay marriage should be illegal but she didn't like the way the law had been handled. My dad said her opinion was because she had listened too much to David; Susanne said she had lots of gay friends ("well, not a lot"), including a couple with an adopted kid, who Allie said was really cute. There was also talk about the movie Elf, which I don't watch. Allie asked why not, and I said it was because of language. She said, "There's not any inappropriate language in that movie," and Matt chimed in and said there was some. My mom also talked about a person in their primary having to give a heartrending lesson because she had a toddler die. I got a brownie covered with Christmas sprinkles, and I noticed that some of them had fall sprinkles. I got some peppermint hot chocolate as well. I think Jackie came to our house that day and asked if my mom had told me the "reception" story. Jackie said she thought, "That poor girl, having a terrible reception!" That night we got Arctic Circle for dinner. My mom got eggnog and gingerbread shakes, which looked identical, even though the advertising showed that the gingerbread one was a chocolatey color. We watched Miracle on 34th Street. Allie was with us, and said, "This reminds me of Saving Mr. Gates, even though I've never seen it." I mouthed to my mom what an incredibly weird thing that was to say.

December 22. In the morning, my parents pointed out to me an ad in the newspaper with a hilarious typo:

That afternoon, I made gingerbread, using both a special Christmas cookie sheet and Christmas cookie cutters. Frosting was made and I used it to add details to the gingerbread cookies. I also made wassail. Then we watched the DVD of the MoTab/King's Singers concert.

December 23. I went with my mom to perform various Christmas tasks. (I know Allie was with us at some point, but I don't remember her being with us at the beginning.) We went to a mall in Salt Lake because my mom wanted to get slippers for my grandma. She asked a saleslady, "Where is the lingerie?" and I thought "Where are the slippers?" would have been a more appropriate and more accurate question. We met up with Sue, Nicole, and their two boys. We traipsed all over the mall, including stopping in a store with earrings in case I wanted to get them for Allie. There was a guy working for an LDS DVD company who tried to offer us a free movie; I felt bad that everyone ignored him. When we went to the Hallmark store, Nathan/Wallace was playing in fake snow and yelling at anyone else who tried to play in it. We admired their monthly Peanuts ornaments and I ended up getting an ornament of Jack Skellington on his little automobile from Christmas Town. Allie, ever obsessed with playing with Wallace, rode with Sue while my mom and I went some other places. I remember having some minty candies in the car, and we went to a shoe store to see if they had slippers that my mom wanted to get for Grandma. Then we went to a Sprint store to get my Grandpa a smartphone. They didn't have any blue phone covers, so my mom got a green one instead. It seems they also gave us some headphones. The rest of the family went to go see Saving Mr. Banks at the theater, but since the movie doesn't fit my standards, I didn't want to see it. I went to Walmart and Target. Walmart was very busy, and I think I was annoyed at a cart in the parking spot. I had to park the car, move the cart, then pull completely in the spot. It seems that as I was taking the cart back to the store, a lady took it from me, since there weren't any carts there (I wasn't planning on using a cart anyway). I looked at Christmas CDs, but I didn't get any. Then I went to Target, where I got earrings for Allie. I was delighted to see a set of holiday socks--socks for Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and the Fourth of July. Of course I had to buy it. I also bought some red and green Goldfish crackers. Then I waited around in the car while I waited for the movie to be over, trying to watch YouTube music videos. After the movie, we all went to Sears and looked at clearance Christmas stuff; Sue gave us the Lego set Peter had bought for my nephews. Then we wanted to go somewhere for dinner; since my grandparents were with us we went to Zupas. My mom got a dessert to share, but there weren't any seasonal desserts. I showed Wallace my Nightmare before Christmas shirt, and my mom mentioned that when I was a kid I would have my thumb in my mouth, my finger in my nose, and another finger in my belly button. We watched my grandparents drive off, my grandpa driving somewhat recklessly, not using his blinker and such. My mom said, "What do you wanna bet they die while he's driving?" My dad had had some kind of dental work that day, so on our way home my mom went to Orange Leaf so we could get frozen yogurt, one of his favorite things. Of course, I was delighted to see that not only were there three Christmas flavors of yogurt, there was an abundance of Christmas toppings. We went home and gave the yogurt to my dad. That night my mom and I watched Christmas for a Dollar, and I was ashamed to admit that I liked it.

December 24. Strangely, I don't remember what happened this day. I know we watched White Christmas, and I certainly was packing for California.

December 25. In the morning I turned on my Christmas playlist, but I just turned it on from the beginning. But one of my presents was Kelly Clarkson's Greatest Hits: Chapter One, which had "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on it, so I stopped my playlist, put the new song in it, and then put it on shuffle. When the Lower Lights' bluegrass version of "Once in Royal David's City" came on, my sister said that a famous actor was good at playing the banjo and tried to find it on Spotify on her phone. I think she tried to find other songs, and Matt said to her, "There's already music on." She tried to advertise Spotify to me; I said I heard that Google Play was the same idea, and Matt said that Spotify was better. I saw she had a Halloween playlist, and I said, "Wow, your Halloween playlist is bigger than mine," but I think most of the songs weren't actually Halloween songs. We finished our preparations to go to California, and then we went to my grandparents' house for brunch, where Nan snapped this picture:

Among other breakfast items, my grandparents made spiced apple cider. I was astonished that it tasted like the powdered kind, even though it wasn't. Peter remembered me quibbling about the usage of cider and wassail, but he got it backwards--I think wassail refers to the drink with apple and citrus, while cider is just apple cider. Jesse asked me what I got for Christmas, and I told him I got a slow cooker. He asked if I was going to make anything special in the slow cooker; I told him that I might make corned beef and cabbage at St. Patrick's Day, and he said, "That sounds terrible." Then we went to the airport. While we were waiting to board our plane, I was listening to Christmas music on my phone and experimenting with saving music in Google Play. I noticed a little thumbtack icon at the top of my phone, but at this time I didn't realize that I could swipe down from the top and see app notifications. On the plane, my dad told me that he had put a peppermint candy bar in my stocking because he thought I would like it because it was seasonal; he had gotten it from work. I was eating it and he asked if he could try some of it. When we landed, Ya-ping picked us up and drove us to their new apartment. Baby was excited to talk to us, but we couldn't call him "Baby" for long; it was on this trip that he told us he wasn't a baby and we couldn't call him that. In their room, he said, "That's brudden's bed," and I said, "That's your brother's bed?" to which he said "Uh huh!" I thought "brudden" was how he said "brother," but I soon learned it was how he said "Preston." He told me that he had "hixteeng buses," and for the rest of the visit he told us about his sixteen ("hixteeng") new houses and moms. He kept talking to us, and David said, "He's not usually this talkative." He took a Wii game to show us, and Preston yelled, "Don't shake it!" Nathaniel kicked him, and my mom said, "Oh, no," and he had to go to time out in his room and cried. Later, he jumped on his dad and said, "I almost [unintelligible] my dad." I said, "You almost what your dad?" to which he said, "Uh huh!" That made everyone laugh. (Apparently he said "killed.") That night we watched Monsters University (David had to keep telling Preston not to give things away) and then It's a Wonderful Life. Preston kept asking what was going on in It's a Wonderful Life.

December 26. When I got up, Ya-ping had made me a Jack Skellington hat. We took BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, to go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where my mom bought passes for us to be able to return to the museum and be more economic. We drank from the toilet drinking fountain and played with the other exhibits, including the spinning chairs, the ball jump that does math, the peg board where you can make marble ramps, and others. There were a lot of people there. We then went to a park across the street, in the middle of the city. My mom and Ya-ping walked to Subway to get us dinner while the boys played on the playground. I watched Nathaniel to make sure he was safe. Then we ate our dinner. We saw a man running shirtless, and my mom said he must be cold, but it really wasn't cold. David wanted to do running races with Preston, me, and my dad. I won every time. We walked past a place where people were ice skating, and I reflected that I probably will never go ice skating in my life. Then we returned to the BART station; David said to Franklin, "What's on Uncle Mark's shirt?" He said, "A cat in a space suit." David said, "Can cats really wear suits like that?"

December 27. I think I remember sitting on David's couch, listening to my music from 2013 and sharing my Facebook Year in Review.

Three days before Thanksgiving

This time, I'm going to remember what I can about the Monday before Thanksgiving.

2013. In the evening, I watched the "Turkey Day" episode of The Beverly Hilbillies. After it was over, my roommate Scott said, "Except for the terrible cigarette commercial, that was the best Thanksgiving episode we've watched"; I told him it was better than the show's previous Thanksgiving episode. I wanted to go running, since I was super excited that I had later classes the next morning. I ran up 900 East, since it was too dark to go in darker neighborhoods. I only ran for about half an hour, since that's all I had time for. I wanted to see what an always-decorated house looked like. They were all decked out for Christmas, which wasn't too surprising, since they put up Easter stuff right after Valentine's Day. I was surprised to see a new intersection and new stoplight patterns.

2012. In the evening I was watching the Thanksgiving episode of Bewitched when there was a knock at the door. I paused the show to answer the door, and it was two of my horse friends, Kristen and Carissa. They came in, and after a minute Carissa asked if they could watch Bewitched with me. I told them, "They've been transported back to the first Thanksgiving," and I think they thought the episode was over before it was. They stayed and visited. My roommate Cameron came home and visited as well. The horses told him we were getting into the Thanksgiving spirit; he said, "By watching Bewitched?" and I said it was the Thanksgiving ep. There was talk about going to Gygi's in Salt Lake (I clued them into the pronunciation) and about going to bars--even though they wouldn't drink, I still thought that was inappropriate. Cameron said he had gone to a bar and someone had snapped his suspenders. As it got close to midnight, I told them they needed to leave, since it was almost curfew.

2009. For dinner, we ate at the Bartschi family's house. There was conversation about me going home (I'm not sure how they found that out). I told them of a video I had seen on my brother's blog where Franklin was putting a stuffed alligator to bed, and my mom had commented that she hoped he wouldn't fall on the new baby. That made me suspect that they were trying to keep the announcement of a new baby a surprise. (I found out later it wasn't meant to be a surprise; they just forgot to tell me.) We visited a former investigator named Jordan (a girl). Then we met our zone leaders at the stake center to go on an exchange. They told me I needed to take warm clothes, even though it was warm in Lewiston, so I think we drove back to our apartment so I could get a coat and some warm things. I put in my retainer, which made me speak with a slight lisp, and somehow the word "ferocioulicious" got coined, which sounded especially funny with my lisp. Elder Keddington wrote "ferocioulicious" on the picture I had drawn of Elder LaPratt, but he wrote it as "Froiouslious," which isn't even close. Elder Hansen mentioned the "Wicked Witch of the West."

On our way up to Pullman, Elder Hansen was listening to a CD of covers of seminary songs. I began talking about my Cherie Call Ocean in Me album and the lyric, "Now the Great and Spacious Building has me scrubbing up the floors; I've got to find a way to tell them I can't work there anymore." Elder Hansen made a remark about me liking LDS music. This might have been the time there were tumbleweeds all over the road out of Lewiston. It was really cold in Pullman, and there was snow on the ground.

2008. We traded our car with the elders in Medical Lake, and there was a jewelry charm hanging on the rearview mirror of the car we got. That night we had dinner with the Zellers, a part-member family. I think we had lasagna with elk meat, which I didn't like. The previous night we had had elk meat taco salad (or something), and I could tell it didn't taste like beef. When I ate the lasagna, I thought, "Maybe elk does taste like beef," since I thought it was beef lasagna, but then I found out it was elk, and I didn't like it. I shared the scripture in Alma about living in tdaily.  This is my journal entry:
"Today was an ordinary P-day with shopping, e-mail, bowling, and such. We had dinner with the Zellers. The greatest anomaly was trading our car. It's almost the same on the inside so it's hard to get used to the white. It's older than our old one but has fewer miles. I don't think Elder LaPratt, with whom we traded, likes me that much." (Elder LaPratt was just an evil person.)

2007. In the morning, I was sad to say goodbye to three-year-old Preston, knowing that I wouldn't see him for two years. I asked at the Nashville airport if they could arrange for a wheelchair to meet me at the Dallas airport, since I had a sprained ankle. When I got on the plane, we had to wait because there had been a power outage in Dallas. Eventually we left, and indeed there was a wheelchair waiting for me in Dallas. Then I got on one of the airport vehicles, driven by an Indian (as in from India) who didn't seem like he knew what he was doing. We picked up some other handicapped people, and we went all over the place and had to keep switching vehicles. It was ridiculous. At one point I went and sat on the floor because I hated standing on one foot. Their lack of efficiency made me miss my flight. I went and talked to the lady at the desk and she told me that I might be able to get on a flight that night, but if I didn't get on that one, I would have to wait even longer. I got some coins (since I had no cell phone) and was able to get a hold of Susanne to tell her my situation. While I waited I read the sixth Harry Potter, since I hadn't finished it yet. I might have finished the book on the plane. I was able to get on the next flight, for which I was grateful. When I got on the plane, a man was in my seat. But a flight attendant let me sit in his seat, which worked out well because it was an aisle seat while my original one was a middle seat. They put my crutches in the overhead storage. When we landed, a man asked me if I wanted him to take down my crutches. As I was walking through the Salt Lake airport, some people said, "That's a terrible way to travel!" When I exited the terminal, my mom was holding sleeping four-year-old Allie and had a wheelchair. I sat down and she gave me Allie to hold while she went to find my luggage. I think she said she had just taken the wheelchair, and I might get in trouble for holding Allie. I was excited when I got home that I got my DVD of The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas, but I don't think I watched it that night.

2006. It seems that I might have been working on a Thanksgiving paper for AP English. It was a late-night writing session, since it was due the next day.

2005. There was a Thanksgiving seminary lesson that day. We made origami turkeys and read a Psalm about thanksgiving.

2003. I think I went to Kmart with my dad because I needed to get tortilla chips for a seminary "extended devotional" (party) the next day. I also wanted some Christmas candy for the Christmas season, so my dad got Christmas Peanut M&Ms. I actually wrote a journal entry that day, stylized with decorative letters:
"Thanksgiving is this week. It will be Thanksgiving vacation, so tomorrow is Friday and today is Thursday. Gee, the week went by quickly. Tomorrow is extended devotional and since I'm on the activities committee, I signed up for devotional. We went to see You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown at the High School on Saturday, and tomorrow we're seeing Annie at Hale Centre Theatre."

 

The Sunday before Thanksgiving

I'm going to remember what I can about four days before Thanksgiving, which is always a Sunday.

2013. Oddly enough, I don't remember much about this day. I would have had to be at tithing settlement, I'm sure. I think I went home teaching, and we took turns saying what we were thankful for. I think Autumn Tullis told me she liked my turkey tie--which is always a favorite.

2012. My home teachee, Zach, who was also the Sunday School president, asked me to teach the marriage and family prep class with Laura Molnar. I went over to Laura's apartment, Elite 6; I hadn't met her before. I asked her the typical where-are-you-from-what-are-you-studying questions, and then we discussed our lesson plan. When we gave our lesson, we mostly just asked a lot of questions. That night, my roommate Scott and I went over to Elite 5 to see our home teachees, Emily and Natausha. Someone else was there who Scott knew but I didn't; he called me Mr. Turkey Tie. After we had been there for some time, Megan Ward said, "You're wearing a turkey tie!" Her roommates thought it was funny that she just noticed that, since their friend had drawn attention to it when we got there.

2011. After church, we had a linger-longer Thanksgiving dinner. I think I talked with Meleea Larsen while we were in line. I was happy to have pecan pie, but it was a little hard to cut with a plastic knife. That night we had a fireside with Sheri Dew. She made reference to the time she almost got married, but she didn't tell us the whole story. Jon Schmidt played his own version of "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief."

2010. I wore my turkey tie to church, even though I hadn't planned to, and I was glad I did. I blessed the sacrament, and afterward the Wortleys, who were a married mentoring couple, noticed my tie. That night I went to Peter Moosman's house for home teaching, as we home taught someone who was his home teacher. His mom had Thanksgiving decorations up, and she had a lot of the same things I had, including the Fisher Price Little People Mayflower. I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who considered candy corn suitable for Thanksgiving. Our home teachee asked Peter if his mom decorated that much for Christmas. Peter said no, but his sister Michelle corrected him.

2009. We had dinner with the Hastings family, and their daughter Sammy was throwing up in another room. I think Sister Hastings wasn't there for some reason. The other kids were laughing about the throwing up. This might have been the time I pointed out a funny blurb in the Ensign--one issue had shown a picture of a man being sucked into a TV because of a video game addiction, and another issue told of a kid who had seen that picture and said to his friend, "Let's go outside so we don't get sucked into the TV!"

2008. We attended the Davenport Branch. The Corrigan family spoke; Sister Corrigan she hated Thanksgiving, even more than St. Patrick's Day. That night we had dinner at the Kieffers'; they had a bowl full of tree seeds that looked like tiny pumpkins. We went downstairs in their house to show them our promotional video for Christmas around the World. This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today was a good sacrament meeting. We sang Thanksgiving hymns, and the new family, the Corrigans, gave excellent talks.
 "After church we saw a few people, including Sister Henrietta Camel, and the part-active family the Moores, whom we can teach. We had dinner with the Kieffers, and a member visit with the Wilkersons.
"Two years ago today was Thanksgiving. In the morning we went to the store and bought crackers for my niece, then had Thanksgiving in Fillmore in an empty house. I remember watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on a portable DVD player."

2007. I was in Nashville, and I was preparing for church with my new mission slacks. The water just beaded up on the pants when I was ironing them. I thought that was impressive, but I was not impressed that they literally tailored the pants three inches too big. We loaded up in the car to go to their stake conference near the Nashville Temple. When we got in the car, I helped buckle three-year-old Preston, and I told him he couldn't do something. He said sadly to his parents, "Shu-shu [uncle] talk to me!" I think this was the day when Ya-ping was getting after David for something, and Preston said, "Mommy! Don't talk to Ba-ba!" We all found that funny, and David said something about him defending him. We got to the conference late, so we had to sit on a stage at the very back of the last overflow. I liked the speaker's talk about him talking to a guy who attended church in blue jeans and later got baptized. As we left the stake center, their friend called out "Melvilles!" On our drive home, David was asking me questions that he thought I needed to answer before I went on my mission. I was annoyed by them. That afternoon, we took bikes to go let me practice. We were at a school parking lot, and I was doing a fair job riding around. I wanted to take one last jaunt behind the school, and I tried to turn and fell. My ankle really hurt, and I couldn't move it. I was hoping David would come around, since he was on the other side of the school, and see that I couldn't move. I seem to remember seeing a nickel on the ground. David eventually came around and saw that I was hurt, so then he got the car and helped me into it. Then we drove back to their apartment. He was trying to call our parents to get insurance information, while I sat in the car thinking. I was supposed to go into the MTC in a week and a half. Could I go with a broken leg? It was nice to think that I might be able to stick around home for the holidays--but that meant that when I came home, I would come home around the bleak time of February. Eventually we went to a medical place. In the waiting room, Preston saw Peanuts on a comics section of a newspaper, and said, "Is that Charlie Brown?" None of us knew that he knew who that was. Some teenage boys were making funny noises at him, which made him laugh. I felt like a bad uncle, that strangers were entertaining him but I wasn't. Then we went to a hospital. One of the doctors was in David's ward; when I said I was worried I might have to postpone my mission, he said they would probably let me go with a broken leg. Eventually, they came and told me that my ankle was sprained, and I felt silly for having to go through all that for just a sprain. She wanted me to try to walk on it, but I couldn't, so she said, "That's not going to work," and they got me crutches. Then we returned to the car. Preston had noticed that they had taken off my shoe, and he was worried about that--"Shu-shu shoe?" he repeated several times. At one point, Ya-ping got a little impatient with him asking, so she made a frustrated noise, and he started crying. On our way home, they stopped at the store because they needed milk for Preston, even though it was Sunday. At home, I wanted to watch the Thanksgiving episode of That Girl, which I had brought. I remember being able to maneuver around enough to take a one-footed shower and get down on the air mattress. We made arrangements for me to go to the airport the next day.

2006. I remember sitting in my room doing homework while watching a documentary on the Pilgrims. My mom had made some pumpkin cake cookies, which I was delighted to have.

2004. Sue's family came over to see newborn Preston. At one point, my mom was holding Allie and said to her, "Do you want Uncle Mark to take you out to look at the turkey?" That made Allie immediately put out her arms for me to take her, as she loved going out to the inflatable turkey. Sue was saying, "Are we going to watch a Christmas movie?" Jesse said we should watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, since it was "perfect" because it was between Halloween and Christmas. I wanted to watch an episode of The Munsters, "Grandpa Leaves Home," since I suspected it was a Christmas episode but wanted to be sure. Sue was referring to the show as "The Monsters," and my mom had to correct her. She liked the line, "There's a showbiz family for you; they even go home with their makeup on!"

2003. We had one of those meetings where you share your favorite hymn. I got up and told a story involving "Hum Your Favorite Hymn," and then I said I wanted to sing "I Believe in Christ." (I only remember this because I kept a journal at that time, but the journal entry is a little personal.)

November 26-30, 2013

Time to think about what went on last Thanksgiving time!

Tuesday, November 26.  My corpus linguistics class was cancelled, but when I went to my Old English class (I entered the building via a different door, since I didn't have class before it), there were only three of us there. Our professor told us that she would note that we were there that day and give us more points than the rest of the class, but she dismissed us. I might have gone to get pumpkin soup for lunch and get some Bookstore pumpkin fudge. Maybe I got the fudge after my writing class; I don't remember. Then I drove home. That night, I asked my mom if she wanted to watch Garfield's  Thansksgiving, but she didn't. That night before I went to bed, I made a Facebook post saying, "If you start your Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving, you can't be my friend anymore." I had had my smartphone for just over a week at that point, so I didn't have all the settings set how I wanted, so after I had gone to bed, my phone vibrated because someone had commented on the post. I think that was what made me figure out how to turn off the vibrating from Facebook, since I didn't want to keep being awakened at night.

Wednesday, November 27. My mom and I went to Costco in the morning, where we bought pumpkin and pecan pies. Then we drove out to West Valley because I wanted to go to Port of Subs so I could get a Pilgrim Griller, a sandwich with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. My mom liked hers, but they were expensive. Then we went to the Distribution Center, where I wanted to get a Pearl of Great Price manual and a MoTab CD, Sing Choirs of Angels, because I needed a recording of "Away in a Manger" for my hymns playlist. I was going to pay for them, but my mom did. Then we drove to Winegar's to grab a few more things. I wanted to listen to the Mamas and the Papas CD that was in the car, so I skipped to the album's later songs. As "Somebody Groovy" was playing, we saw a girl in another car dancing very energetically, and it seemed to match up with what we were listening to. Then we went home, and my mom took a nap while I updated my hymns playlist. Then I realized that I had two versions of "God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand"--one with an extra verse, and one with the verses out of order. That afternoon, I went running, and when I was going past the Bountiful golf course, I saw a bunch of wild turkeys. That made me so happy, and I decided that I would cross the street when I turned around so that I could see the turkeys better, but when I went back past them, the turkeys were all gone, even though they were close to my turning-around point. That night I turned on my Thanksgiving playlist while I helped clean. Allie and I helped peel apples for my mom to make apple pie. Eventually, she said we had peeled enough, so we could eat the apple that was peeled but not used. I was surprised when Allie immediately took the apple and took a bite out of it. I was going to cut it up to share.

Thursday, November 28. In the morning, my family had turned on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. One of the performers was Lady Antebellum, and they were singing songs from their Christmas album. Allie said, "Do you like her?" Later we had to go to my grandparents' house to pick up chairs. The 99.5 radio station seemed to only play commercials. I switched to 98.7, which was just talk, and the guy was talking about children's bodily functions. My mom told me I had struck out twice. Then I switched to 97.9, and Lady Gaga's "Applause" came on; my mom asked me who it was. A repairman came to take out our old, obsolete swamp cooler. While he was here, he agreed to do something else--maybe patch up the hole? I think he had been late. After he left, my dad asked me to help him turn the light fixture in the bathroom upside down, because it was too dark in the bathroom with the present configuration. He dropped one of the screws, and it landed in the sink, but fortunately I grabbed it before it went down the drain. My dad said he was glad I was there. Then I went running, and when I was near the Bountiful golf course, a kid, probably about 10, said, "Happy Thanksgiving!" I was a little disappointed not to see more turkeys, as it was Thanksgiving Day, but when I got home I made a Facebook post about seeing them the previous day. In the late afternoon, relatives started coming. When 2-year-old "Wallace"/Nathan came in, he called the Pilgrims on our front step "Grandma and Grandpa." Peter said, "Those are Pilgrims, not Grandma and Grandpa." They told me that Wallace knew the "This Is Halloween" song, so at one point he was lying on the floor, playing on an iPad, singing the song. I lay down on the floor to hear him, and as soon as I did, he got up and left, which Peter found funny. I think at one point he was "playing" the piano and singing "This Is Halloween." Peter was telling me that he had the Duck Dynasty Christmas album, and he told me I should listen to it to see if I thought it was so bad it was entertaining, or whether it was just bad, because he knew it was bad. Jesse and Lisa came, and Jesse told me how dismayed they were that his in-laws had their Christmas tree up and the kids there were watching a Christmas movie. The turkeys weren't quite done when we were ready to start, so we starting eating without turkey. Wallace ate my last candy corn sucker, and at one point he put his sucker down on Quin's shoulder--Quin was simultaneously amused and annoyed. (Later that evening, he asked where I had gotten the suckers, and when I told him Macey's, he said he wanted to go there.) After dinner, I was telling Susanne how much I liked the Buzzfeed article she had shared with all the GIFs. Susanne was showing them to my dad, and he was really laughing, even though he hardly ever laughs. Renee was looking and laughing as well. At one point I showed Susanne my roast turkey socks, and April was trying to get her attention and said something about "talking to your brother." After people had left, my mom and Susanne were saying that Renee was high on something. I turned on my Thanksgiving music while I did dishes, and my mom sat in the living room and sometimes sang along. She felt bad for not helping, but she had done a lot of work that day, and I was fine washing them. Then I went to bed.

Friday, November 29. I think that in the morning I started playing some of my new Christmas CDs. I loved the songs on the Lower Lights' latest album. That afternoon, we went to meet my aunt Sue and some of her family to go see Tangled, which was new in the theaters. When we got in the car, I put in the new Kelly Clarkson Christmas album. We were on the freeway when "Run Run Rudolph" came on, and my mom said it wasn't very Christmassy. Nan said she liked it, then asked who it was. When we were at the theater, waiting to go in, Wallace was identifying the animals on the display for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. We got in the theater early, as the previous showing was ending. I was looking at things on my phone, and my dad told me I needed to watch the credits so that I wouldn't watch them after the movie. We got to see the giant snow monster put Elsa's crown on after the credits. I was looking at pictures on Awkward Family Photos, and I was amused by another ugly Easter bunny picture. Throughout the movie, other viewers were laughing and overly enthusiastic; they clapped at the end. After the movie I went to the restroom, and Wallace asked where I had gone. Sue was telling my mom that one of the voices in the movie was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Nicole corrected her. Then we drove to my grandparents' for some reason. On our way there, we were having a conversation about American Idol winners--Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood have been the most successful, but sometimes you hear about Daughtry, and Phillip Phillips has had decent success. I was confused with Kelly's singing "Just one cigarette more" in "Baby It's Cold Outside," since I thought she was strongly anti-smoking. I wanted to go to Target because one of the ads the previous day advertised walrus lounge pants, which of course I had to have. On our way to Target, we went to Home Depot. While my parents were looking at boring things, Susanne and Allie and I looked in the Christmas stuff. I found a blue-dyed poinsettia, which I thought was awesome, so I got it. When we got to Target, I was talking about what I should do with my poinsettia once Christmas was over. My mom said I should throw it away, as it's hard to get them to bloom again; I said I could give it to the office where I worked. We looked for the walrus pants and couldn't find them, but Nan found walrus socks. My mom was going to ask at the clothes help desk, and she discovered there was a cart near the desk with some walrus pants in it, but there was no tag. They told us we could buy them. We looked through the Christmas stuff and got some teal and pink ornaments for my new pink tree. I also got some Christmas-shaped Goldfish and Wheat Thins, and I might have got some Christmas Tic-Tacs. My mom got mint chocolate and peppermint white chocolate M&Ms. At some point on our outings that night, a car was driving down the road with their headlights off. I said, "I hope they crash into a pole." My mom and Susanne said, "You would say that just for not turning on their headlights?" and I said, "That's why I just said a pole." (I now agree that was too harsh.) I think that night I watched the Addams Family Christmas episode, and I think I also watched a Beverly Hillbillies episode. My mom watched with me (and encouraged me to watch more), as she was working on something in the room.

Saturday, November 30. At our house, Susanne said we should hide the M&Ms so Allie wouldn't eat more. She was dismayed and said she wouldn't eat more. I asked her why, then, she would be unhappy with them being hidden, if she wasn't going to have any more. I helped put lights on our tree. Then I drove back to Provo. I showed my roommate Scott my blue poinsettia, and I said if we had red and white poinsettias, it would make Fourth of July poinsettias. He said you couldn't mix holidays like that. I started some laundry, and Scott asked me why I didn't do my laundry when I was at home. I think I told him that I had done some of it. He went out and got a live Christmas tree and set it up with a friend while listening to Christmas music, including Debra Fotheringham's "With Wondering Awe." I think he popped popcorn and had a friend string it. I had things I had to do--maybe homework. I listened to samples of the Duck Dynasty Christmas album and texted Peter to tell him I thought it was entertainingly bad. He asked if I was going to add it to my playlist; I said no because I didn't watch Duck Dynasty. I think I was listening to my own Christmas music. This was back when Scott was still a decent person and would talk to us.

November 3

Since I've already remembered things that went on November 1 and November 2, it's time to move on to November 3. This date had some surprisingly significant memories--Death Valley, Taiwan, and a funeral.

2013. After church, I showed my roommates all the Thanksgiving candy I had bought. Scott said I was going to get diabetes. I was on Facebook when my roommate Jordan invited me to like the Provo YSA 2nd Stake Digital Mission page, so I did, and I was the very first one to like it, he said--I liked it even before he did. My roommates left, and I turned on the CES broadcast while eating a candy corn Blo-Pop. I think I also made spiced cider; it was a cold, rainy day.

2012. In the morning, we all piled into the geology department vans in Death Valley for our day's adventure. While we were sitting in the van getting gas, one of my classmates (whose name I can't remember, but I will call her Megan) said she learned from our classmate Rachel that I was an English language major, which she didn't know before. She said two of her roommates were ELang majors and told me her names. I told her I knew that Courtney Clarkson had been in one of my classes, because I remember our professor asking if she was related to "American Idol winner" (Kelly Clarkson). We stopped at the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, then broke up into groups and went around analyzing the dunes. It was a warm day. I remember my classmate Trevor picking up a pile of sand and saying, "It has lithics in it." I wrote that down in my notes, since I was collecting speech characteristics of the geology department. I also wrote down "Did you drop acid on it?" since putting hydrochloric acid is one way to determine rock types. We saw scorpion tracks and an animal burrow.

In one of the interdune areas, we licked the ground to determine the texture. We climbed to the top of the biggest sand dune, where we sat down as a class and heard a lecture. I had a hard time paying attention. I asked "Megan" to take my picture, and then we headed down the dunes, back to the vans. We saw another class out on the dunes. While we were having a bathroom break, we ate some little oranges. As we drove along the road, Dr. Radebaugh pointed out to us some clay textures. We later pulled off on a side of the road and ate lunch, where the ground was made of volcanic ash and crumbled easily. After lunch, we drove out on a rough gravel road to visit the Racetrack Playa. I ate a pumpkin Kashi bar on the way. There was a sign instructing people not to move the rocks, which had been moved naturally along the ground. We looked at the rocks and their tracks, and someone estimated how heavy one of the rocks was.

Dr. Radebaugh apologized to a guy out taking photographs, and he said he wanted us in his picture because he worked with a BYU grad. We climbed up to where the rocks came from; we were at a limestone outcrop with a sharp "rip your pants" texture. She explained the theories about what made the rocks move, the most likely one being wind pushing them along ice. (This was before they knew the real explanation.) When we went back to the vans, some other tourists were unable to start their car, so they rode back in one of the other vans. We drove to the Ubehebe (yoo-bee-hee-bee) Crater; one classmate was saying it gave him the "heebee geebies." We got there a little later than planned, so we didn't have much time. Dr. Radebaugh asked me if I had ever seen a volcano before; I don't remember what I told her.

When we got back in the vans, Dr. Radebaugh played her iPod. It had songs like "Just the Two of Us" (which took me back to third grade) and the unedited version of John Mayer's "Heartbreak Warfare." When "Shut Up and Let Me Go" came on, "Megan" said it was an interesting song and I said, "Good old Ting Tings"; she didn't know who the Ting Tings were. When we got back to camp, we ate fajitas, and a nomadic man from the next camp over ate with us. "Megan" asked him if he had read the Book of Mormon; he said he was Buddhist. I asked him if he had read the Dhammapada; he said he hadn't.

2011. It was a very long day. I remember working with my coworker Michelle, talking about how it was dark outside, and we had arrived at work when it was dark. She said we could say something like, "When I was young, I used to go to work before the sun rose and got home after it went down." I also was talking about how music from the previous year took me back to that year; she told me I could change the radio station to one that was like the music of the previous year. After I got home, I went to Winegar's. There was a "Happy Thanksgiving" sign out front, but lots of Christmas stuff inside. I bought some clearance candy corn Dots (which they don't make anymore) and a bag of bulk candy corn taffy. I had gone to the store to get tortillas for a work party the next day. It's possible this was the day  that when I got to the store, a lady and her daughter asked if I could pretend to be the daughter's boyfriend for some reason, but I declined.

2010. I was delighted to learn that I unexpectedly got a scholarship for when I returned to BYU in January. If I had been in school that fall, I wouldn't have had a scholarship for fall or winter, but because I took fall off, I got one for winter.

2009. I don't really remember this day, but this is what my journal says:
"Today was one of the first days in a long time that Elder Tamblyn was healthy for all of the day. Therefore, we were able to get a lot accomplished, visiting the Heaths and Sister Adair. We did some light tracting in the dark, which I hate. We had dinner with the Larsens and my back tire got flat. We met with the Piquets. Michael told me I should become a professor or a teacher because I'm a great teacher, which surprised me, since I don't feel like I'm too good at teaching over there."

2008. I remember going to Walmart and looking at their clearance Halloween stuff. I think I got some decorative gourds. I remember wondering out loud if there was any chocolate left, and another customer said it was all gone at that point. I got lots of candy corn: regular, Indian, and chocolate caramel, and I think I got candy corn taffy as well. Elder Love got a big bag of sugar-based candy. At the elders' house in Cheney, Elder Love cut his hair before cutting mine. He forgot to put the right size comb thing on the end of the clippers, so he started before he realized what he had done. At that point, it was too late, so he gave me a super short haircut. He told me I was going to be mad. I looked in the mirror and had to look away in shock. I remembered the episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan proclaimed, "I'm bald!" As we were getting in the car, I found a giant leaf and put it on my head to cover my baldness. I vaguely remember dinner with the Moores--the wife was active but the husband wasn't. This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today Elder Love helped a lot with the Herrons' tile while I studied and such. We went up to our typical P-day places. I bought a huge amount of Thanksgiving stuff, including four bags of candy. And the Moores gave us candy. Between what we bought, the Herrons' candy, the Moores' candy, and Amber's candy, I am going to get so fat.
 "We bowled briefly. Then Elder Love cut his hair, then mine. But he put the wrong comb on the clippers, and my hair is the shortest it's ever been in my life."

2006. We drove down to Fillmore for my Grandma Judy's viewing. Around this time, my mom's friend Jackie's son's wife's mom had died from falling down stairs, so Susanne told me that the third person (since they always happen in threes) was one of Ya-ping's friends' baby. At the viewing, Susanne held up three-year-old Allie to view Grandma Judy and said, "Pretty, huh." Ya-ping told Preston (not quite two) she was sleeping, so he waved "Night night!"

2003. I think I was watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving while doing my homework, and I didn't focus well, so I vowed that I could no longer watch TV while doing homework. My mom was kind of frustrated with me with me not taking my homework seriously.

2002. It was a Sunday in Taiwan. It was "Elder Melville's" last Sunday there, so they had him speak. They asked my dad to bear his testimony, but he mostly just told about our family, with David translating. When talking about me, he said I liked to put lots of lights up, and David clearly said something that wasn't what he said--it sounded like explosions. At one point when he was speaking, he said, "Frankfurt, stand up," and all the Taiwanese were surprised I was fourteen--since I was both fat and taller than they were. Another speaker talked about him in her talk and talked about the way he did Taiwanese signs with both hands. I went to the youth Sunday School, where a youth translated for me (I think they had lived in Colorado). It was awkward for him, because the teacher was talking about the world's standards on chastity and how wrong they were. After church, I remember Susanne saying she wished we knew what David was really saying. I remember a few different gatherings, and at least one of them occurred on a Sunday. There was one with a large supply of food, including Domino's seafood pizza, fried squid tentacles, and duck. I didn't like the duck and didn't try the others. At another gathering with the deaf branch, there was an American-style chocolate cake, which wasn't overly sweet, but the Taiwanese didn't touch it, except for one guy who kept going back to it.

Halloween costumes

I'm going to remember all the Halloween costumes I've worn through the years. Usually I start from most recent and work back to the oldest, but this time I will do the opposite.

1989. Family pictures indicate that I was a panda bear. But obviously I don't remember that, since I was only one.

1990. Again, family pictures indicate that I was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but I don't remember what one. Just today, I was thinking how TMNT was a sizeable part of my childhood, even though I remember hardly anything about it now.

1991. My mom insists that I was a green butterfly, but I don't remember it.

1992 or 1993. One of these years, I was a ladybug. I remember one kid saying, "A little ladybug!" and I was offended because I thought he was making fun of me. My mom told me he wasn't.

1994. I was Santa Claus, but my beard didn't look good. I had pillows to make me fat. I had a purple arm cast, so some kids told me I should say that I fell out of my sleigh and broke my arm. I loved to wear that costume again at Christmas.

1995. I was a mummy, so when we went to Boo at the Zoo, I wanted my face painted with a mummy on it. During my school's costume parade, I held my arms out in front of me the whole time, so when we went outside and no one was watching us, I was relieved to put my arms down.

1996. I was a grim reaper in a felt costume my mom had made. I think my face was painted white; my robe was black with red trim. I carried around a little plastic scythe. I don't know how I managed that in elementary school; they probably wouldn't allow that today.

1997.  I was a jack-o-lantern, with leaves on my shoulders and orange and black curly vine things. I put pillows in the orange shirt to round it out. I remember my cousin Peter walking around in it, and the pillows dragged the shirt down and stretched it out.

1998. I was obsessed with the Wallace and Gromit shows, so I was Wallace, with a bald cap, a green sweater vest and red tie, and a stuffed dog that I carried around with me. Seeing the bald and the dog, someone thought I was Charlie Brown, but Ann Palmer, who was standing next to her, recognized me as Wallace. A few people knew who I was.

1999. Oh boy. I've always been a nerd, and in fifth grade I was especially nerdy, having a fascination with chess, even though I was horrible at it. I decided I wanted to be a chess piece, so I decided on a white king--a white robe, white face paint, and a white cross on my head. I doubt anyone knew I was a chess piece. They either thought I was a religious nut or a member of the KKK. I'm glad I didn't get arrested.

2000.  Taking the idea from someone mistaking my costume two years earlier, and with my fairly new-found interest in Peanuts, it was only natural that I be Charlie Brown. I wore a baseball cap (because I didn't want a bald cap) and his shirt (which my mom had made), and carried around Snoopy, who had been Gromit two years earlier. (He really looked more like Snoopy than like Gromit.)

2001.  Since I no longer went trick-or-treating, and my school had uniforms, there was no point in dressing up.

2002. Since my family was going to be out of the country on Halloween night, I decided not to celebrate Halloween that year, which was probably a bit silly.

2003. I didn't have much opportunity to wear it, but I wore a Charlie Brown ghost costume. You know, with all the holes in it.

2004. During the spring, during South Davis Junior High's spirit week, my mom had constructed a Fred Flintstone costume for decade day, so I wore that for Halloween.

2005. I think I wore the Flintstone costume to the mutual party, but when I took Allie trick-or-treating, I was a traditional ghost (with only two eyeholes).

2006.  I was a vampire, with a suit, a medallion, and a beautiful cape.

2007. I was a vampire again, but I think I had some enhancements. I painted my nails black, and I had a red and black bowtie.

2008. Elder Love and I wore identical ties, and I switched our name tags, so we were each other for Halloween. Only at district meeting, though.

2009. Nothing.

2010.  I was a vampire yet again--but this time, I had teeth to go with the costume.

2011.  A vampire again, but this time I was younger. I first wore my costume to a Halloween 5k, with red athletic shorts and a scary red-and-black skull shirt, with a cheaper red and black cape. I wore red shoes on Halloween.

2012. I only dressed up one day, and I wore the same simple vampire costume, but with red regular shorts instead of athletic shorts.

2013. You guessed it. A vampire, but with no cape. At a Halloween party, I got my face painted rather scarily.

I like my vampire costume, but it's time to move on.

Elementary school Halloween projects

As Halloween creeps ever nearer, I think back on some of the memories of the holiday from my childhood. So, in remembrance, I will think of some of the projects we did in elementary school, as well as some other similar memories.

One of my earliest Halloween memories is getting a bunch of Halloween stuff from our basement. We had some plastic Halloween leaf bags and a plastic decoration you put over doors. I was super excited about them, and I put them on top of me. My aunt Sue and cousins were visiting, and Sue took the plastic off of me because she didn't want me to suffocate. I cried, because I wanted to lie underneath them and I could breathe just fine.

In kindergarten, we were given paper skeletons to cut out and assemble. Some kids colored theirs, but I thought that was dumb, because skeletons are white. I started mine, but then it got lost. Mrs. Christensen gave me the last one she had, where someone had started coloring one of the bones (a vertebra, or maybe the pelvis). It was red and blue, and I thought that was fitting, as they were colors of blood (I had heard about blood sometimes being blue). On Halloween, we made brown pom-pom spiders.

In first grade, we made jack-o-lantern construction paper "lanterns." I thought Dennis Jones's looked funny, so I laughed, and he told the teacher, who made me apologize. We also assembled skeletons on construction paper and gave them clothes--I gave mine a yellow baseball shirt.

In second grade, we put glue on strings and put them on tissue paper to make ghosts. I added a bat to my ghost. Another time, we drew a picture and then painted black/gray over it with watercolors. I drew a ghost with orange eyes. Of course, drawing with white crayon was difficult, but I was glad to see when I painted that I had colored the ghost pretty well. I had this picture until I cleaned things out in 2005.

On October 1, 1997, in third grade, we all got different Halloween art projects, depending on the table we were sitting at. One of the tables got to make haunted houses with math problems. Hillary Ulmer had a fit because she wanted to do one of those. One night during cub scouts at the Brenay house, we made Halloween treats with other treats. I used a Hostess Sno-Ball to make a spider, with licorice as the legs. After we made things, I asked if I could eat a Sno-Ball, and the other scouts seemed to judge me for it. Then we went downstairs and Sister Brenay played Halloween songs from the Picture Book of Songs while we went around in the dark making Halloween noises. We were recording a Halloween tape. My screams were audible on the tape, but my ghost sounds weren't. Mark Millard and Mark Brenay made more violent noises, and Mark Brenay made his mom stop playing and said, "I think I killed the piano teacher." When we played the tape at a monthly scout meeting, Mark Brenay liked rewinding the tape, as it sounded like rats.

In the summer between third and fourth grade, I learned that a primary or scout requirement had an option to make Halloween decorations. Since the Fourth of July was over, I wanted to make Halloween decorations. I made a small black pom-pom spider with only six pipe-cleaner legs. I took orange and black pom-poms and put eyes on them, calling them critters. My mom made a jack-o-lantern thing with plastic canvas in which you can put Hershey's Kisses.

In fourth grade, we were making pumpkins with orange construction paper. We had to use multiple colors to make patterns, and I wondered how others' pumpkins were more orange than mine. We made 3D bats out of one piece of paper. I remember having scouts at my house after I made mine, and Mark Millard and Mark Brenay told me that we would make similar bunnies at Easter. We had Halloween activity books. One of the activities was to write a limerick epitaph; this was mine:
"Here lies Castleberry, Paul,
Who walked down the hall,
 When down came a knife to take away his life
And this is where he happened to fall."
We also had one that required us to think of ingredients for a witches' brew, one from each letter. "X-ray soup" was all I could think of for x. I remember this song from fourth grade:


In fifth grade, we had to tear paper to make pictures. I made a hearse for my picture, but it was ugly.

In sixth grade, Mr. Williams had us make bats again. It became a bit of a fad--lots of us made more bats and other things with the same idea, such as owls and ghosts. Someone made one with a witch-face, which I thought was dumb, as witches aren't shaped like that.

I'm sure there were other things as well, but I can't think of them right now.

October 26

I have now remembered the last five days of October--so now it's time for October 26.

2013. My roommate Jordan had a girl over to watch a movie. He asked if I was going to watch a Halloween movie, and indeed I was watching the original Frankenweenie. After Sparky got run over, the girl said, "That's terrible!"

2012. This might have been the time I went running and ended up getting caught in post-game pedestrian traffic, but it might have been a different day. I was in my apartment that night when my friends Alex, Kristen, and someone else (maybe Carissa) stopped by. They wanted to see if I wanted to go get ice cream with them (someplace was giving it for free). I didn't. I asked them if they wanted to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but they didn't. I showed them my new copy of Mapping Mormonism, which had my name in it.

2010. I'm sure I would have been working, and at the end of our shift we would have swept the floor.

2008. I don't really remember the day, except that I liked the Zellers' Halloween decorations, but here is my journal entry:
"Think of me, thou ransomed one,
Think what I for thee havedone.
"I like sacrament songs.
"At branch council they gave us the home teaching list, and want us to see a lot of them, so that may increase our work in this branch. At church Bailey Christensen talked to me, glad that I didn't tease her, saying other missionaries tease her because she's cute.
"After church we met with Donna Tysz, a less-active who wants to do right. Before her we met Jeanne Saunders, who is married to a Baptist, and has a very anti daughter. We're doing service for her this week.
"We had dinner with the Zellers, an active PMF, and talked to the Divineys."

 2007. This was my last day working at Walmart. At one point in the day, I prepared rotisserie chickens (by smearing spices all over the raw chickens), and when I wrote the date on the plastic covering over the chicken cart, I think I wrote something like "goodbye," since I wouldn't be there anymore. My coworkers bought me a cake and wrote on it with frosting. I found some plastic silverware and cut the cake with a plastic knife, making a very messy cut. They also got me a very nice farewell card. After I was done with work, I was doing shopping. I got a pumpkin and some mint Oreos. I walked near the bakery to get the rest of my cake, and my coworker Alice saw my cart and said, "Are you having a party?" While I was out shopping, my coworker Ursula came up to me because she hadn't gotten any cake. I wanted to tell that Sea Witch she couldn't have any because she was mean, but I let her have some. When I was checking out, I told the cashier that the cake was already paid for (it had the receipt on it), and she asked if it was my birthday. I told her it was my last day working there. When I got home, my family had rented The Blob and High School Musical by Top Hat Video.

2005. This might have been the day I went to our school's Trunk-or-Treat, but I didn't dress up. I sat with my French classmates. Nate Dopp had his old VW beetle, and we gave the candy out of the "trunk," and one girl was kind of freaked out: "What happened to the car's engine?!"

2004. I know this was a Trunk-or-Treat day. I was wearing my Fred Flintstone costume with a flesh-colored shirt underneath. I was wearing shorts underneath as well, and Susanne said David wouldn't have worn shorts underneath.

1996. I would have been at Boo at the Zoo in my Grim Reaper costume. I think we saw a woman with a barn owl--I recognized it as such before she told us. We kids got most of the candy, but David got a chocolate licorice rope that he started eating immediately. Then I realized that I didn't have to wait to eat my candy, since he wasn't waiting. This was probably the day where we went to my grandparents' house afterwards. It was a little cold--there had been snow at the zoo--so they had a fire going, and we talked about how the balloon couldn't get near the fire, or it would pop.

1993. I think this was the time David was getting his birthday presents, and he got one of those hanging ghosts that wails and shakes when it is touched or hears noise.

October 27-November 2, 2013

I'm going to remember what I can of the days surrounding last year's Halloween--an entire week, Sunday through Saturday.

October 27. I wrote a blog post about overrated hymns, and as I was doing so, I was sitting in our living room. I asked my roommate Scott what hymns he thought were overrated. He felt bad saying so, but he got sick of singing "I Am a Child of God" at FHE-type settings. I think Scott was watching the World Series when my home teachers, Zach and Scott, came over. I told them the list I had made of overrated hymns, and Zach said he only disagreed with "Come Thou Fount." He said it's not in the hymnbook because Catholics forbade it, but I don't believe that. I showed my home teacher Scott the pictures on Facebook of my nephews in their improvised Halloween costumes; he was impressed with the "Santa." I think I told Zach that I was going to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas and Frankenweenie that week, and he seemed interested in watching them.

October 28. I went to my FHE, and our "dad," Eric, said we were going to have a pumpkin-carving contest, but we needed to go to a store to get pumpkins. I said that I had a pumpkin that I wanted to carve, which meant they would only need to buy one pumpkin. We drove to Smith's, and as we were walking in, I saw a lady at the RedBox, on the phone asking if Oz the Great and Powerful was good. (I wanted to tell her it wasn't.) I went and picked out a carving kit, but the only one I found had some extra things with it. As we were walking out, Eric was loudly playing Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." I was a little embarrassed. One of the group remembered that I had previously mentioned I had a Halloween playlist, so I went and got my laptop to play it on Eric's fancy sound system. There was a little problem at first with the volume. Of course, I started off with "Get Down Goblin." I wanted to do a Jack Skellington pumpkin, so I had my group members clean out the pumpkin for me to carve it. When "My Mechanical Friend" came on my playlist, my roommate Chad (who had come later, along with my other roommate, Jordan) asked, "Is this song about Frankenstein?" When Frankenweenie music was playing, they asked where it was from. As the incredibly annoying "Jack's Obsession" cover was playing, Eric said it seemed too laid back for Halloween. It was around then that the pumpkin contest ended, so Eric posted a picture on our ward Facebook page for people to vote for the better one.

I think the cat pumpkin was green--so there was a green pumpkin and a white one. My Halloween show for the day was The Nightmare Before Christmas, and so I went to Zach's apartment and told him I was about to watch it. He said he would come up after he was done cleaning up after his FHE, so I went up to my apartment and started watching it. My roommate Scott was watching it with me at first, but then he went to bed. Zach never came, so I assumed he decided not to--but he came up right when it was almost over. After it ended, I had to show him the "This Is Halloween" and "What's This?" songs--I think he made a remark about it being suitable for both Christmas and Halloween. Then Jordan came out and said he had a really bad headache and wanted a blessing. I asked whether he wanted the light turned on; he didn't, so we gave it by the light of the TV.

October 29. We weren't having Groundwater class this day, but I went into the classroom to work on a massive project we had--probably our flow chart. One of my classmates liked my Nightmare Before Christmas shirt. I had invited a friend, Carrie, to watch Frankenweenie that night, but she couldn't come. I went down to tell Zach that I was going to start the movie. His roommate Joel was there with his fiancée, Andee, and Andee said her nephews had watched the movie. Zach told me to start the movie and he would come up soon. Scott started watching with me and said Sparky was ugly even when he was alive. He went to the store to get some snacks, and then Zach came up. There was some commentary by Scott, but I don't want to give away any spoilers. Afterward, Zach was trying to identify the different voice actors, and Scott seemed to know a lot about actors. (All this was happening when Scott was still a decent person.)

October 30. At some point in the day, I got some pumpkin ice cream in the Cougareat and was eating it while the radio system was playing "Jack's Lament" from Nightmare Revisited. In the evening, I was in the geology computer lab working on my Groundwater project when I came across a news story about a woman fat-shaming trick-or-treaters. Someone had put posters in the room about a Geology Club Halloween party where they were showing Jurassic Park at the Museum of Paleontology. For "BYU," they used a stylized blue Y, and I thought it was a poor design, because the Y blended in and it just looked like "B U." Then I went home, and Scott was watching the last of the World Series. I remember thinking that it didn't seem right for a MLB player to win a free car. After the game, I put in Mad Monster Party?. In the opening sequence, when a crow started cawing, Jordan said his catch phrase, "Oh my word!" Jordan and Scott went home teaching, and they got back during the scene when all the monsters were arriving. I told Scott that the previous year, my roommates had gone home teaching on the same day and came back during the same scene. He was making origami Christmas ornaments while watching. After the movie, he said it was the strangest movie ever created, and he said it didn't need the musical numbers.

October 31. I went to my Groundwater class, and Dr. Carling was back. He went over our project with us (I think we were working on a flow chart). My classmate Chelsea was dressed in a homemade costume as Darkwing Duck. I went down to the RB for my swimming class, and there was a girl walking down the hall on a knee scooter. A guy sitting on a bench said, "I know what you're dressed as, a gimp!" After swimming, I went to work, and they were talking about all the costumes they had seen on campus. I told them about the "gimp" comment I had heard. My coworker Caitlin was leaving, so the office manager, Annette, said we should have a lunch for her. I said I would bring fruit. Annette made a vampire-themed flyer for the party, even though it was just for us in the office. I think the computer lady, Eden, said she had pumpkin bread, but I didn't have any, since she wasn't my boss. I looked at Halloween Pandora stations and settled on one called "Hipster Halloween." That afternoon, I went to LoLo's to buy a pineapple and strawberries. I also bought a donut with sprinkles on it. Then I went over to Shopko, where I got some small Jack Skellington pajama pants (there were no mediums) and some candy corn Jelly Bellys. Then I went home (listening to the Nightmare Revisited CD) and had Count Chocula in my Jack Skellington mug. While I was doing so, our neighbor Rory came by to ask how our home teaching was going. I think we had a discussion about Christmas music and Thanksgiving music. I was worried about my cereal getting soggy. I can't remember whether I cleaned the kitchen before or after I ate dinner. That evening, I went to a multi-stake Halloween party, and I got lost and had to turn around in a FrontRunner parking lot. I was wearing a simple vampire costume--sharp teeth, a black shirt with red skulls, red shorts, and red shoes, with skull socks. There weren't many people there yet, and it was too noisy, so I didn't stay long. Someone stopped me and asked if I wanted my face painted, so they did. The guy said he was a professional who had been flown in from Vegas. I was a little uncomfortable with them working around my eyes. Then I went to a party hosted by some friends, Katria and Larissa. There were several people who came that I didn't know. One of them was dressed as Adam Lambert; another was wearing a child-size Ironman costume (he had to cut it up to get it on). There was a donut-bobbing game, but I didn't eat glazed donuts, so I ate the Halloween donuts from the Krispy Kreme box. There was a game where we had to guess foods without looking, and I did worse than I expected. Then they were discussing watching a Halloween show, and I left. When I got home, Scott was watching Wait Until Dark on TV. I asked him to take a picture of my face paint:

When Scott's movie was over, I put in The Munsters' Revenge. Scott had to leave at some point, and when he came back, he asked what he missed. When I told him they had escaped from jail, he said, "Oh, they're fugitives now." When the movie was over he said, "That's the movie you save for Halloween?" The only reason is because it is the longest. Then I got in my new pajamas, washed my face off a little bit, and went to bed.

November 1. I got up early because I had some things I needed to do. I turned on my Thanksgiving playlist (which was smaller then) while I cut up the pineapple and strawberries for my work lunch. Then I needed to do some editing for my group project, but cutting fruit took longer than expected. I think I got it done, though. I was wearing my roast turkey socks and I think my yellow shoes. Then I took my bowl of fruit to work before going to class; I also threw in some leftover candy. After my Old English class, I had to meet with my group in the library. Then I went to my work lunch--I thought I would be late, but they were just starting. Caitlin had brought small apples. There was some discussion about auto-correct--Eden was laughing at some that she was reading on her phone, but she couldn't tell us because they weren't appropriate. I reminded them of the time our editor-in-chief meant to write an email that said, "How do you like our about-face?" and it came out "How do you like our snout face?" That afternoon, I drove home--but first, I stopped at a few places to find clearance Halloween/Thanksgiving candy. Allen's grocery store had lots, but it was expensive still. Then I went to Fresh Market, but I think it was all gone already. When I got to North Salt Lake, I stopped at Winegar's and got some candy corn M&Ms and Starburst candy corn. Then I went home, where my parents told me that Free Birds had bad reviews. That night, I went downstairs and watched a YouTube video of The Mouse on the Mayflower on the big TV.

November 2. My family all went out to Centerville to see Free Birds. It was better than we expected. After the movie, we went to lunch at Chuck-A-Rama, since the next day was Fast Sunday. In Centerville, we went to the Sprint store to look at a smartphone for me. They were out of stock of the free one I wanted. I had talked to David to see what he recommended, but those were too expensive. We talked about our opinions of the movie; my dad said he didn't like how our ancestor (Myles Standish) was portrayed as a villain. I ate brownies with fall sprinkles on them. Then I went back to our house and brought out Thanksgiving decorations while I listened to my regular playlist, to which I had added my Thanksgiving music. Then I drove back to Provo, and I went to Rite Aid and Macey's to look at their clearance fall candy. And then I went to Walgreen's as well for the same purpose, even though I was tired and wanted to get back to my apartment.

Related:
October 27
  October 28
October 29
All Hallows' Eve Eve
A Pillowcase Full of Trick-or-Treat Memories
All Saints' Day
Day of the Dead
October 30-November 1, 2012