On September 28, I woke up completely freezing in my tent in Great Basin National Park. I hadn't slept well because it was so cold, and only in the last little bit had I slept well, and it was time to get up. So I got up and ate a cold apple and my pumpkin pie Pop-Tarts. I put away my tent. I found the campsite's bathroom, and we loaded up in the van to go to Lehman's Cave.
We got there, and a park ranger talked to us before we went in the cave. Upon learning that we were geology students, she said that we probably knew more about cave formation than she did, as she wasn't a geologist. (She might have been a biologist.)
At some point, I asked one of my classmates to take a picture of me:
We marveled at some of the practices of early explorers, such as writing their names on the walls and breaking off stalactites to use in building a wall.
When we got done, I looked briefly in both of the gift shops, not realizing that one was run by my sister's then-mother-in-law. We were all standing outside the visitors center, watching a little stinkbug on the ground. One girl obliviously stepped backwards onto it, and it was obviously injured. Realizing that it wasn't going to survive anyway, I went ahead and smashed it, with some of my classmates going "eww!" One person, who might have been a park employee, said somewhat facetiously, "Did you just kill a bug in a national park?" I explained that I hadn't been the first to step on it and that I was just putting it out of its misery.
We met up with a PhD student in biology from BYU who knew some things about the groundwater of the area. We went to different places and looked at the wells, which were basically PVC pipes that went really deep in the ground. They used some measuring instruments. We went to a little stream that had some watercress growing in it; there we measured the oxygen in the water. We also drove past some Indian drawings, and we might have stopped at some other places.
Then we drove back into Utah to an area known as Snake Valley. We stopped to look at a place where the Utah Geological Survey had installed a meter, but it was on private property and we had to crawl under a barbed wire fence to get there. There were two horses, a black one and a white one, that followed us around. The white one was friendlier. I didn't want to be at the edge of people, because I worried about the horses hurting us, particularly the black one, who was more skittish. One of the horses bit one of the plastic boxes that held measuring equipment. We stopped at a spring on the property, then we walked up a small hill to see the UGS meter. The horses stayed back at the spring for a bit before they followed us up to the meter. Then we had to climb under barbed wire again to leave the property, and the horses watched us, seemingly sad to see us leave. We walked across the road to another spring where the ground was so saturated that it felt like an earthquake when someone jumped on it. I think we saw some ducks on the little lake that resulted from the spring. Then we drove to a little stream and looked at the mudcracks. We took measurements at one place, then walked downstream and took more measurements. We went back to the van, but before we got in, some of us began playing catch with a mudcrack.
Then we drove to a gas station before we drove up a road to some hot springs. I think we got a little lost on our way there, but we found it. As we pulled up, we saw some people going up to the spring, and some people were worried they might be naked, but they had swimsuits. We got to a stream we had to cross, so we took off our shoes and rolled up our pants. My classmate Geoff complained about tapered pants being hard to roll up. There was a little stream carrying water from the hot spring down to the regular stream, and I asked our professor if all the rock in that stream was tufa. He confirmed that it was, and I was happy I knew it. We had to climb up the mountain stepping on reeds and tufa, and one of them cut my foot. We stepped briefly in the hot spring before coming down again. One of my classmates, who I think was named Jeff (not Geoff), was saying he didn't want to listen to Jeremiah's iPod with Bon Jovi, so I said that when we got in the car I wanted to listen to mine, since we hadn't listened to mine and I was the one who had brought the auxiliary cord. He sarcastically said, "I don't think that entitles you," and then he asked what kind of music I liked. I said the Mamas and the Papas and Lady Gaga, and he said he liked Gaga's first album. Geoff asked whether I preferred Katy Perry or Lady Gaga, and he might have also asked about Kesha. Jeff said he thought Gaga was a better songwriter than Katy. When we got in the van, I realized this group might be hostile to some of my music, so I settled on my new Mideau album. As the first song, "Hejduk," was playing, my classmate Matt got in and said, "This sounds very familiar," and I told him it was Mideau, since he had been to their album release show like I had. Jeff hadn't heard Mideau, but he knew that one of them had been with the band Fictionist. Matt asked me what my favorite song was. I said I liked "Benny" and "Way with Words"; when "Feet to the Sun" was playing, Matt said it was his favorite. My album lasted just long enough for us to get back to the gas station, where we briefly stopped.
When we got back in the car, the grad student driving our van plugged in her iPod again. At some point on our drive, Geoff asked me how old I was, and I said, "I'll be twenty-five tomorrow." We stopped at Subway in Delta for dinner, where one of the workers gave us their apple slices, since she was going to have to throw them away and she thought college kids could use them.
When we left again, Jeremiah plugged in his iPod again with some standup comedy that wasn't funny and was vulgar. So then Jeff wanted to play his comedy, after I had said I didn't want to listen to more standup. Jeff's was funnier, but it was inappropriate. It seemed I was riding in the sinful van, and I feared man more than I feared God and didn't say how uncomfortable I was. I asked if they could hand me back my MP3 player from the front, at which point I turned on Lady Gaga the loudest I could get it to try to block out the foul comedy.
We arrived on campus, and Matt said he had left his bike in one of the rooms, but they were locked. I told him my ID card had access to the stream table room, so I gave him my card so he could get in. There was discussion about another geology student (who wasn't with us) that they didn't like.
Then I walked home.
On my birthday, I went to church in the Varsity Theater. This might have been the day that there were some heavy topics discussed in the combined third hour. I came home, and I think I ended a few-day Facebook fast by posting a video of moving wind-powered sculptures, and my mom used the link as a means to wish me a happy birthday, and my bishop then wished me happy birthday. I wrote my blog post of the week.
That night I went to a ward event where there were lots of cookies, and since I could eat them, I ate too many of them. While I was there, David called me, so I walked away and answered the phone. He asked me about what I thought of marriage, and he tried to get his boys to talk to me. I got a somewhat sarcastic "Happy Birthday" song from Preston, but that was all. While I was talking, I saw my friend Carrie walk by.
Then I walked up to the stake fireside in the Marriott Center. After it was over, I ate too many brownies and talked to some girls, Katria and Larissa. When I got home, my roommate Scott had made some cake or something, but he never told me I could have some, and I was sick from all the cookies and brownies I'd eaten.
Then Monday the 30th might have been the day I bought some cookies 'n' cream milk from a vending machine and was astounded at all the sugar and calories in one little bottle. That day, I was excited to see that both Cherie Call and the Lower Lights were working on new albums.
That takes care of last year's birthday. But although I have done a few birthday memory posts, I never wrote about my birthday in 2012, even though I wrote about September 28 and 30 of that year. So here is September 29, 2012:
I got up early to go help out with a service project, but I was very tired. I got dressed to help, but I couldn't find the place in my GPS, and I knew I would get lost, and since it was my birthday and I was very tired, I went back to bed. Eventually, I got up and drove home while eating a yellow Caramel Apple Pop. I think I was listening to my Owl City Midsummer Station CD, and then I switched to the radio. Lady Gaga's "You and I" came on. When I got home, I got various gifts from my parents: fall-colored M&Ms, a giant spider decoration, a Hogan's Heroes DVD set, a Michael Vey book, and a cup with a skull on it. Then something reminded my mom that she had two other gifts for me, a Lower Lights CD and the Tabernacle Choir's latest Christmas album. I remarked that I did think it was funny that I wanted CDs most for my birthday and didn't get any. Then we went to Chili's for lunch, and then we went to Walmart. I wanted mint ice cream and pumpkin ice cream, which I could use after my birthday. I saw some pumpkin-shaped Reese's ice cream bars, but we didn't get any.
Then we went home and had cake and ice cream. I wanted to show my parents Mad Monster Party?, but Allie didn't want to watch it because it had monsters in it. Because the Relief Society broadcast would be starting, I skipped some less important scenes. The movie ended right in time for the broadcast to start. I gathered up my stuff to leave to go back to Provo, and I think I looked for my copy of Corpse Bride to take with me.
I listened to my new Lower Lights CD on my drive back to Provo. When I got home, my roommate Scott had rearranged the living room.
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