Service.

At my work there is a patient named Travis trying to regain the ability to walk. He had a spinal cord injury from falling out of a second story window and broken his upper back. For four months he had to wear a TLSO which is kind of like a hard plastic turtle shell to support and brace his back while it healed. From his injuries he has paralyzed but miraculously he regained sensation, and since April he has been working on regaining his ability to walk. It has been a long road of recovery I remember when I first worked with him he never complained of the pain and was always so positive and thankful to all of those who would help him in some way. He uses a device to help his right leg come into dorsi flexion (being about to lift his foot during walking) so that he can walk. The problem is these are very costly ranging in the thousands of dollars, and even more simpler models are hundreds of dollars because they have to be medical grade. Because Travis's insurance won't cover it he isn't able the afford this he has a hard time trying to move around when he is home. Without this device his toes drag behind and he can't swing his leg forward without tripping, and more importantly he isn't able to do this therapy at his home so his rehabilitation is slowed down.

I wanted to help in some way, so I went to the hardware store and found the necessary things to make this dorsi assist device. I put the it together and tested it our and it worked really well in all actuality. When I presented him with this gift he looked in the bag for a receipt, to pay me back. But I told him it was a Christmas present and his face lit up and he said it was the most thoughtful gift he had ever received. He and his wife graciously thanked me graciously.

I know it wasn't a huge thing that I did but I was grateful to be able to help in some way. I know he still has a long road ahead of him and the chances of actually regaining all of his ability to walk is uncertain. I am glad that I could help him out in some way, because he has been such a great example to me of being positive and focusing on the things that matter most in life.

lants

Sweeping the snow away!

I looked for opportunities to do so some service, and with the fall of snow i had my opportunity to do so. So when it came I set out to clear my neighbors snow. When I looked around for a shovel I realized that I didn't have a shovel...but I had a broom. So I swept away the snow. It wasn't too bad because there was only two inches of snow. But the next morning there was more just about six inches, and I soon realized that my broom was not the most efficient method of snow removal, but it got the job done. So with the weather predictions calling for more snow that evening I went to the store and bought a sturdy looking shovel. Sure enough the snow came and I was anxious to put my new shovel to use, but when I looked out I saw that all of my snow had been shoveled. My neighbor had beat me to the job. Looks like i'm not the only going to get the blessings, but we'll see what happens the next time it snows, it'll be a race for the blessings.

-lants

Saving Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving huh. What a great time to be able to eat and be with friends and family. I went and played in the turkey bowl this year. It was big time. We had recruits from Boston, Winnamuka, Colorado and more. The ground was frozen solid so it was like playing on concrete but we didn’t have any traction. I was an intense brawl and we fought hard. I caught a few touchdown passes and accidentally took out some player, but in the end we lost. But it was good times. We were in charge of making mashed potatoes two pies, yams, and stuffing. So the potatoes, pies and yams all were made without any incident. But after the stuffing had been in the oven for about thirty minutes to started looking like a firework was going off in side the oven! Unfortunately it wasn’t a firework it was the bake element. So here we were stuck with a half cooked stuffing and sparking element. What could we do? Give up on the stuffing?
Could Thanksgiving survive without stuffing? Well I came to the conclusion that as long as nothing caught on fire then I could keep the cooking going. It worked and nine out of ten prefer my stuffing over Stovetop.

-lants

INnOUT?

So In N Out wasn't quite so easy as that. Friday Night me and some buddies were board and so we went to In N Out and had to wait in a line that went outside and around the building to get the infamous In N Out food. The lines were nuts and everyone always claims how In N Out is so great. The truth is it really isn't. It's a fast food place and is pretty much the same as all of them. We were listening to talk radio on the way there and we were trying to call in because one of guys I was with, his Dad was on. And they were talking about In N Out. He was saying how one of his sons was so great because he waited in line for two hours and bought him a double double. So the son I was with was going to call in and say he wasn't going to get him a burger because he was playing favorites with his sons. Anyway some of the people that called in said how everyone in Utah is trying to be like California by having this incredible chain, and that we all wish we were californian because they are so cool. I doubt that I like to visit CA but I don't want to live there. Another caller said it well, that all of the Californians are moving here because our economy isn't 85 billion in the whole and they are trying to bring their californian things here but we could care less. Bottom line if you want good fries and burger fast, go to Five Guys. It's way better and there are lines a million miles long.

lants.

The New Moon

So my wife got tickets to a VIP premier of the new twilight movie "New Moon" we had official lanyards and everything. So being the good guy that I am I went with her. I was fully expecting to be one of five guys there, but I was wrong. Surprisingly about 25% to 33% of those in attendance were male. So we had to wait in line for a couple of hours in the cold so I told my wife to wait in the car. I was surprised that this movie would draw this big of a crowd. There were tons of people and all of the theaters were both being used and sold out. I don’t know what it is but girls go crazy over “Jacob.” There is a scene where he takes off his shirt to wipe away some blood from Belle, and all of the females went nuts and screamed! They all have secret crushes on him, well maybe not so secret some even exclaimed “I love you Jacob!” Anyway it was all an interesting ordeal being there I have never been in the middle of female hysteria over a movie, but the movie wasn’t half bad because the werewolves were awesome they are way cooler than vampires so Belle should pick Jacob.

lants.

Bow down to Google the Great God of the Internet

So me and my friend we having a conversation how Google has become so wide spread that is it is taking over the Internet. Just to prove the point. Look at your google dashboard. You can access blogs, youtube videos, email, weather, document readers, translators, news, you can use it as a drop box, a history, a friend linking site. You can look up on google just how much information that they have on you. Your address, nationality, search trends, when you access the internet most, what time of day, what day of the week what month. Your top ten web sites, top ten searches. It has your blog, the blogs you are following. Who you have talked to using the internet, who you have chatted with. Google makes 12 cents each search that you make using their search engine. Ironicly I have given 56 cents while writing this blogs. I know that doesn’t sound like much but multiply that by 400 million searches a day. That is 4.8 billion dollars in one day. I don't even need to calculate that out over a year to know it will be monstrous. And just to prove the point the Google is taking over the internet. I used translationparty.com, which is powered by Google to translate a phrase into Japanese and back into English and see what it becomes:

Google is taking over my life.
=>into Japanese
Googleの私の人生を引き継いでいる。
=>back into English
Google has taking over my life.
=>back into Japanese
Googleの私の人生を引き継ぎました。
=>back into English
Google has taken over my life.

As you can see Google has already taken over the internet and your life too. But isn’t it great? You can do everything with it. (I didn’t mean that sarcastically, it IS great)

lants.

23

Well it was my birthday last week. I am now 23. That is kind of weird to me. It reminds me of the lyrics of a song from one of my all time favorite bands Jimmy Eat World. The song is entitled “23”

Amazing still it seems
I'll be 23
I won't always love what I'll never have
I won't always live in my regrets
You'll sit alone forever
If you wait for the right time
What are you hoping for?
I'm here I'm now I'm ready
Holding on tight
Don't give away the end
The one thing that stays mine

I guess this will be my theme for the next year of my life. To me the song seems like it is a turning point in his life and he doesn’t know if he’s ready to move on. So it seems that in the 23 year will be a nebulous state of existence for me. I am adjusting to married life. It is strange to make the adjustment from single life to married life, and I’m not saying I don’t like married life, because I love it! But it is an interesting transition to let go of things I once aspired to do. But I’ll be 23.

lants.

Look up...

Walking to school today everyone was in a rush. Everyone had their heads down as to avoid the snowflakes. What a wonderful scene to be seen if we just look up. The first snow of the year is here. Isn't it a miracle? It gently falls to the ground silently. I got out of my car and stood still with my hand spread and my head tilted to heaven letting the flakes hit me in the face. So many people spend all winter complaining about the snow. Why don't we just appreciate it and enjoy the beauty that it brings? I wish that I had time to just lay out on the ground and let myself be covered in the snow. I hope this storm proves to be bigger than expected—some areas are expecting one to two feet of snow. How great would that be? I think I’m jealous that Colorado already has two ski resorts open. I’m getting anxious. I went and watched the Warren Miller Ski video last week (I actually watched it twice). It is considered the first day of winter and now the snow is backing it up. I’m tired of just wearing my skis in my living room. I’ll keep day dreaming until I can put them on in the snow.

lants.

The game

Ouch. Saturday hurt my heart. The game was ugly. I feel that we need to start recruiting offensive players who have speed and them put them on defense. It worked well for Utah last year. Their start defender, Paul Kruger, got drafted into the NFL as a sophomore. He was originally supposed to be a quarter back. But they used his speed and helped him bulk up and put him on defense. We got worked all game long. Hall never got protection, and their offense walked all over our defense. It’ll take time to gain the speed we need. But that is why we are losing so bad to teams with speed like Florida State and TCU. I just want to forget about the game. It is time to win the rest of our games and especially Utah. I want to dominate them. That win makes everything better and leaves a good taste in our mouths for next year.

lants.

Perfect Saturday

Saturday was a great day! It all started with sleeping in. Then we ate a good breakfast, and lounged around a bit. Then we grabbed the climbing gear and headed up rock canyon. The canyon was gorgeous with all of the leaves changing colors! It was wonderful and the weather was perfect! We did a few climbs and it felt good to be on the rocks again. There is only one thing to climbing—go up. When we got home it was time for the BYU game! I barbequed some burgers and enjoyed them as we watched the cougars win! At half time I pulled out the slack line and we walked the line under a tree with brilliant red leaves and another tree with golden yellow leaves. The ground was carpeted by all the leaves and the mountains in the background were awe inspiring—it was picturesque! What a great day. Fall is the best time of year. It is too bad it is so short. But that is ok because winter is my second favorite season.

lants.

Snails

How many beautiful things in life do we miss because we are in such a rush? Sometimes having the ability to travel so quickly by planes, cars, scooters, skateboards, or long legs is a handicap that we have.

We pack our lives so tightly trying to fit as much in as possible, that we barely have time to breath. Many times we feel we much always be stressing over something. Understanding this, it doesn’t seem strange that we have reached escalated numbers of high blood pressure, ulcers and suicide trying to cope with the pressures of this high-speed life that is measured by MPH, upload speeds, download speed, mega hertz, and we stress if we can’t send a billion bites of information in a second, or that we are constrained to drive 35 MPH through a residential area when unknowingly we could travel to the middle of the North American content in one 24 hours period at the same speed only to miss millions of acres of the most beautiful landscapes known to man—and he grunt and the slow driver two bumpers ahead.

Everything that we do revolves around the same circular object. It is interesting to notice how many moments of the day people spend staring at the same object. We have clocks on the wall, microwaves, our wrists, in the car, on every electronic device known to man. How is it that looking at a clock and seeing where its arms are pointing causes innate anxiety? Who even invented the minute anyway?

People spend billions of dollars on finding ways to escape reality. Why is it that we seek to leave the life we’re living?

Maybe we’re going about life in the wrong direction—is a successful life really how much someone can accomplish with the time they have?

I envy the snail. We can learn so much from a snail—a small shelled gastropod that travels .03 MPH. Never hurrying, never overlooking a beautiful scene. Always surfacing after rain, when the earth is looking its best, to take a look and some deep breaths. Don’t they have the outlook on life that we should emulate? Sure, they may not be able to out run a predator, but it still seems desirable to me because I would rather die with a smile on my face, than a look of constant worry.

Just as I left class today I saw hundreds of students rushing off to the next class they had worrying about being on time or getting a good seat. Heads turned down to a race tilt for maximum walking speed I guess. In the mist of this rush-hour traffic on the sidewalk I stopped and lifted my gaze to the limestone stabs of the face of Rock Canyon dusted with new snow, and the highest peaks blazing with color from the rising sun. I slowed my breathing to take it in as zillions of people zoomed by so fast that they disappeared from my peripheral view. It was just me and the mountain beckoning each other higher, above the hassle of a pressure torn world.

I doubt any will read this but lets be snails because “Snails see the benefits, the beauty in every inch of life,” and shouldn’t we?

lants.

It is coming...I can feel it deep inside

The feeling is quickly spreading--it can be felt in the air, seen in the trees, and by what people are wearing. The crispness of the autumn air at dawn or dusk draws me to internally hope for something more. The leaves on the trees are beginning to rebel and fall from their places. The freshness to the air is beginning to encourage people to put on another layer to shield them from this change--but the change is inevitable. I can feel in all over, and it brings a smile to my face. I close my eyes and see...WHITE. It must be heaven for the whiteness fills my viscera to the point of over stimulation and I have to squint my eyes. Not only am I surrounded by this purity, but I am floating on top of it, traveling at great speeds, in and around trees in a fluid motion--like a bird. The whiteness below me buoyantly brings me up and down through this celestial color. Wind wisps past my face, and I feel the bite of cold, but it feels soothing--enticing me to go faster and harder. This must be heaven, for there is no greater feeling, and if it is so, I wish to die and live there forever.

~Pray for snow~
lants.

Week 3 - Dang you Matt...

Well, I now have a follower . . . now I have to write something of substance.  Or do I?

So, BYU lost.  FSU was just plain faster.  I observed (nothing racist) that on FSU's special teams they had all black guys and only the kicker was white; whereas on BYU's special teams all were white with the exception for the one of the kick returners--did it make a difference in speed?Maybe--they were just plain faster, but that isn't what caused the loss.  It was the five turn overs.  It is hard to do anything in a game when you can't keep the ball.  That game is over and done with, probably a good awakening, but we fall into the same tradition we have for years--talk of "this is BYU's year" then we fall shorter than our expectations wanted to believe.  Does this mean we despair?  No, we are still a great team, we just got humbled, as we did last year.  I think it is a great thing that we think that we can go all the way, and we get bummed each time we fall short, we are not settling for anything less than the best.  We have a good crew and a good motivation time to hurl our challenge to our next foe-->CSU

Anyway, story of the day.  I was sitting in elders quorum and Matt decides that it is a good idea to play RISK on his Ipod touch.  Logically I get a crappy squandering of territories, so I have next to no hope of winning so my attention is half on the game half on the lesson.  But then I start to feel bad that I'm not paying attention to the lesson, so my brain says "answer a question."  Right then the teacher asks for us to recount our first baptisms for the dead experience, but I hear not our own experience, but the first experience ever.  So my hand shoots into the air and the teacher calls on me.  I start recounting the story of the lady who was so anxious to have the work done for her ancestors that they have two horses be he witnesses.  After I answer another person starts to recount the first time they went to the temple to be baptized for their family ancestors, and I think, man this guy wasn't paying attention to what the teacher asked.  Then another person adds his own experience and then I realize I was the crazy one.  I raise my hand and the teacher hesitatingly calls on me and I clear my name so I don't get confused for the lady in my story a 180 years ago.

Well thats all, 

Matt have a good day.

-Lants. 

Week 2 Still no followers...

So due to the awesome pandamonium of BYU I put off writting my blog, but that is ok because BYU is way more important! So they have now moved up to number seven, which is awesome and I think that the players have the right attitude this year, and realized that last year when they cared about the rankings they blew it.I put a BYU sticker on my car to show my support this year, last year I bought a flag for my car, but I flew off when I tried to take it off while drivin fifty mph...yeah that didn't work and it got ran over. I talked to Bryan Kariya on Sunday, man he rocks, he says that they are all excited to play for their home opener. So as you can tell I am a fan, and I bleed blue.

Week 1...currently no followers

(When reading this you should use a monotone voice speaking relatively quickly in your head)

I am blond haired blued eyed male from Orem, Utah attending BYU...seems pretty typical of the steriotypical "happy valley" resident; not to memtion that i'm married at 22--which seems like the median age in theis environment. Well, that is pretty true, I just kind of blend in with the rest of the thousands like me. I even can blend into the background if I wear a white shirt under the right kind of light.

School has now started and things are out of control, well not really. I'm in Chemistry 105 and ninty percent of the class is filled with over zealous incoming freshman who think they are at a glorified EFY. I sat in my New Tesiment class and a new freshman took on the resposibility to answer every question the professor could think of, kind of like Hermone Granger from the infamous Harry Potter series except he didn't get all the answers right. But I am glad he took on the duty of being the class encylopedia, because I seemed to have lost half of the volumes. As school is starting I'm realizing that there is a very real invisible barier between the married folk and singles. I went to a party last night for one of my best friends Clay. The room was full of "singles" and the room seemed to part to make way for the "married" people, but that.is okay because I made Eric and his girlfriend embarassed becasue I because I let everyone know that they were cuddling. Clay came to the party in only his short shorts, the same shorts that got him in trubble with the honor code police during freshman year. But then put on a tux and gave a dashing speach until I put ice cream in his face. Jeff almost burnt the house down because he wanted to make paper towels in to candles...well they turned into balls of fame and he shook them in the air that made piece of burn paper towel play everywhere. Well no perminant damage was done, well that I know of, maybe his girlfriend Christie will dump for acting like a cretin (new word of the day which means time for a story).

So Wednesday I think should be titled prirate day. I went to my Finance class and sat next to Manookin (He spells his last name wrong. It should be spelled Manukyan. Its Armenian and it means baby. So I know Armenian, but my friends think that it really is a terrorist language...Քեզ ինչ) Back to the pirate story...Manookin used to have big dinasaur boat for a car and we called it the "green pearl" after the cursed pirateship "the Black Pearl." We used to drive around and pirate other cars and say ARR and other pirate things like"tis mutany to speak of such words" and "tis my booty." Anyway I notices that Manookin was wearing a prirate shirt and right at that is was moment the Professor used the word "cretin" and said it ment and smalll minded pirate. So wrote that down in my notes and my wife corrected me and said that the professor actually said it meant a small minded dwarf. Coincidence...? I think not, logically Manookin or Baby, is a pirate, he even has one leg. Well mostly, he broke his knee so maybe that leg is really a peg leg now.

Now you know who I am...and how I work...and what goes on inside of my head--Welcome to my Brain where thoughts go 1.2 million miles and hour (I wonder if some can measure that?) and sometime I say the wrong thing at the wrong time--ask any of my friends for some quotes--one (Dallas ) even made a quote book dedicated to such sayings he has recorded and trademared over 120 quotes. My wife says my mind doesn't make sense so I have to have my own blog page, As to not scare the relatives.

Thats me Lants.