Those long days at work

What do you do during work to keep your sanity? I honestly feel that if at work you do not venture out of your work tasks and expand your creative thinking you can go insane. I do have some unique time passing projects that I do to make work time more enjoyable. Sure I will send out text messages or doodle or make stick figure movies with note pads. One activity is I do enjoy reading or writing lyrics to my favorite songs (like the Killers, Counting Crow, and Ben Fold just to name a few).

Today I did something different, I composed my bucket list.

Things to do before I die:

1) Run a marathon

2) Be an extra in a movie

3) Throw a grenade

4) Visit Ireland

5) Scuba Dive in the Red Sea

6) Write a book

7) Own my own cabin

8) Ride in a police car (hopefully just as a ride-along)

9) Half-time challenge (one of those guys that do an activity during the half-time of a sporting event to win a prize)

10) Do a backpacking trip that last more than 4 days (Havasupai does not count)

11) Coach a little league Soccer team

12) Have a backyard BBQ patio

13) Learn to play guitar and write a new song

14) Go Hunting

15) Get a black belt in Karate

Was there anything that I left out?

Rusty Roger Lifferth

On Saturday September 18 I was at home enjoying a quite morning watching Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, as the credits started to roll I got a call from my wife who was involved with an animal adoption charity event. She told me that I needed to come see all of the cute puppies that were there. So I put our 4 pound dog, Tony, in my backpack and rode my bike to the charity event. I arrived to a fashion show runway with the models showing off modest and casual fashion walking down the runway with a canine counterpart.

After the show my wife Carla ran up to me and presented a young beagle with a soft fur, and was featured on the runway as well, and asked if we could keep him. Now I have developed a heart of stone when it comes to my wife asking for different purchases, however, this was not some arbitrary piece of clothing that I had programmed myself to decline her request. When Carla asked with her puppy dog eyes and I saw this beagles puppy dog eyes longingly look at me I could not utter the word “No”.

I did not answer yes initially and I tried to avoid the confirmation of agreement by trying to find reasons why we could not have another dog. But nothing I said could convince Carla or myself not to keep this dog. I still was not completely willing to take another dog home, so I tried one more thing—I knelt down padded my knee a couple of times and said “Come here Rusty” and he did! That was all that I needed.

Let me tell you about the name Rusty. I must have been in high school when I decided that I wanted to someday name my dog “Rusty” and I decided that when I get my own dog that I would give him that name. So it meant a lot when he responded to that name.

On Rusty’s paper work his name was “Barney” but that name has too much of a big purple dinosaur connotation.

Left to right: Rusty, Cooper & Tony

Here is Rusty’s story: he is a four-year-old stray found in Springville. After an extensive search he was taken to the Utah Animal Adoption Center and put up for adoption. We did not know this but he was actually on death-row—scheduled to be put down on September 23 (Carla’s birthday).

So he is a Lifferth now. I was pondering the name “Rusty Fireball Lifferth” from the Herriman Fire, and in reference to my childhood dog “Nicholas Snowball Lifferth.” However, the name Rusty Roger Lifferth has a pleasant sound to it. Rusty Roger Lifferth is here and part of our family.

Blah Blah Book

I am completely done with Facebook! I deleted my account just a few days ago and I have this sense of freedom back. I had several reasons for wanting to delete my account: Too many unknown “Friends,” the guilty feeling that I got when I declined an event invite, the self absorbed status updates and the list goes on.

The biggest reason I had for deactivating my Facebook account were the studies that show that the average FB user spends an hour every day browsing the status updates. I was terrified when I first heard this statistic—how could I have become a statistic? It did not keep me up at night but the fact that I was part of a social network that was influencing my subconscious through my voluntary submitted “Likes” terrified me.

Here is a fine example: my relationship status was once set as “Single” and I noticed that I was getting ad to “meet local hotties” and “She is searching for you!” Then my status changed to “in a relationship” and I still got the dating services ads my page also displayed flower delivery ads and jeweler ads. The biggie was when I got engaged and my page was flooded with wedding ads from photography to reception halls to a few items that would make me blush.

Okay let’s face it, advertisement is not a bad thing, in fact it has many economical benefits. However, from my experience most of the FB ads are scams or companies using me to advertise their product like I’m a billboard.

There was another problem—my phone had a Facebook application. I could check Facebook anywhere at the store, on the road, when I first wake up, camping and…well…my bathroom breaks lasted a lot longer as well (something about sitting on the toilet would always draw me to that darn app). Side note: I put my scripture app in place of the Facebook app and now it is second nature to click right on my scriptures and start reading almost without me knowing.

So I’ll miss out of the hilarious status updates and I will have to go back to making small talk (my cousin Mark made a great statement that the best thing about Facebook is that it eliminates small talk). I will no longer get to make my voice heard through Facebook however…

Bloggers I’M BACK!!!

P.S. Sorry for the Random Photos but I did have any relevant photos and I thought it would be best to just put in a little visual enjoyment.