Recinutah

Thank you helmet.

2012-02-08T13:11:00.001-08:00

I found a snowboarding helmet at the DI last year, super cheap too, and I was so glad to have it on Monday when I crashed into some small quakies. I hit the back of my helmet on a tree pretty hard and the helmet worked perfectly. What a blessing to have found that.

I had been looking for a helmet ever since my concussion while snowboarding with Betty that one time in college. People still gasp when I tell them the events of that fateful day.

Don't drink to your health...

2012-02-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

Medical treatments and medical health have been on my mind lately. For one, Jeralynn is wisely trying to help our family eat healthier. For another, I have two friends undergoing cancer treatment. Lastly, I am in the middle of a 16 hour course on Wilderness First Aid, part of my scout leader training. Practicing first aid always gets me thinking about all the tragic things that COULD happen and makes me appreciate more the good health and blessings I currently enjoy.

So I feel grateful and overwhelmed at the same time. I feel a need to slow down the pace and make sure my priorities are aligned properly, with family ahead of work and scout training courses and yes, sadly, even racquetball.

Whenever I get ponderous like this, my first instinct is always to try and find more time to spend with my family. But time alone isn't the answer. I've actually enjoyed some unplanned, unconstructed time with my family in the past month, mainly over the holidays. And frankly, I felt the time was mostly wasted. I was boring. I had the constantly nagging feeling that I should be more productive when I wasn't doing much more than reading books or watching TV with the kids. And maybe that feeling comes with good reason.

So this time, I want to do something different. I want to learn with my kids. More specifically, I want to designate one night a week just for this purpose. Monday is already family night, but the focus there should be spiritual and relaxed; recreational and fun. So I want to make Tuesday night my learning night with the kids. And it can be anything from helping Cale pass off something for cub scouts, to making a science project with Trey, to teaching car maintenance or first aid skills to all four of them. No limitations except that it be educational. Even better if we learn something together.

There will be a few time conflicts, like cub scout pack meeting one Tuesday every month, but I'm ready to fill in the remaining Tuesdays on our calendar with fun things to learn with my family.

Comment and tell me what you think of my idea?

Blog Idea #11 - Thanks sis.

2012-01-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, I never have anything to post, so I usually never blog, but my sister, Janet, just posted a nice list of what to blog when you're stuck for ideas over on her blog, Musings of a Children's Writer.

So idea number 11 seems easy enough. Ask me any question and I'll answer it honestly and openly in my next blog.

2011-12-12T15:27:00.001-08:00

I think I hate writing blogs.

Alone Time Shouldn't Be This Busy

2011-08-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm now on day 3 of being alone at home. My family is on vacation for a week while I stay home because I couldn't get work off.

This isn't the first time. They've left before while I've stayed. But it is the first time I've been so busy while they were gone. Even if they were here, they would not have seen me that much. Every night there are things to do. Work and sleep fill in the rest of my time just as they always do.

I guess it makes the time alone fly faster, so I won't complain. The thing I miss most while they are gone is the hugs from my 2 youngest. I also miss reading with Cale and I even miss they way Trey continually talks about video games. I also really miss all the bowling. That has been just the funnest thing this summer. We've been bowling on the cheap with the Kids Bowl Free program. I tried to bowl a couple games over Skype with them last night, but it just wasn't the same.

Take care, fam. I miss you.

Changing Your Desire

2011-08-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

I recently re-read Dallin H. Oaks' talk on Desire from the most recent General Conference. This talk intrigued me because I have been thinking a lot about making some changes in my life. Not major changes, just small healthy changes, like eating better and exercising more.

In his talk, Oaks affirms that "Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming." I've always sort of seen desire as the first seed to a future reality. A smoker cannot quit until he actually desires to do so—-really desires it; not just to please someone else, but for himself.

But I've come to suspect that desire alone won't get you there. I've had this desire for a long time to drop 20 or 30 pounds. I do really want it. I know I want the benefits of being healthier and feeling healthier. It will improve my racquetball game, allow me to rock climb tougher climbs, give me the energy and strength to keep up with my kids. I really want this.

But's let's be honest. I have wanted this for years and I'm not any closer to my goal than when I started. So what's my problem? I know, I know, you're already laughing at me because its so obvious. But before I get to that, I want to run another tangent into the thread.

I recently read an article in the news about how presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann was taking slack because her family Christian counseling business had advised gay clients that they could "pray away the gay". Sarah Palin was in similar hot water for saying the same thing. This phrase has been battered about the internet recently, with gay advocacy groups up in arms at the very idea. But let's talk about it for a minute. If a person has a desire to not be gay, is it possible to change their orientation? If that's what they really want, is it possible?

LGBT advocates would say it is going against your nature to even try. Christian's would say it would be going against your nature not to. But I'm not so much interested in whether a person should as whether they could. The scriptures talk of repentant souls losing their desire to sin. In his talk, Oaks quotes Joseph Smith speaking of people who have "overcome the evils of [their lives] and lost every desire for sin." But have you ever heard of a gay person completely doing this? I've heard anecdotal evidence about people who have gone from gay to straight, but I've also heard that those people later admit that they have only deeply suppressed their same sex attraction, not actually changed it. I've not yet heard convincing evidence that anyone has ever completely changed such a desire.

We know that desires do change over time. When I was younger, I had a real desire to travel the world. I still would do it if I had the chance, but that desire has been replaced with the desire to settle down and raise a family. Okay, maybe that's not quite the same thing, but I think most people would agree that our true desires change over time. As we mature, we desire more to get along with others, quit being so selfish, and contribute to a peaceful world. Understanding of consequences changes desire.

To the contrary, there's also certainly plenty of evidence that a person can live in opposition to their desires, such as a gay or same sex attracted man who gets married and his kids. That's easy to visualize and it probably happens more than we know. One desire (to have a family) over-rides the other desire (to be gay). Which brings us back to my desire to diet. I am living in opposition to my desire to be more healthy. My desire to eat whatever I want over-rides my desire to be healthy.

As you were no doubt about to point out earlier, my problem is not HOW BADLY I desire to be more healthy, but what I'm actually doing about it. The problem is habit. Food is addicting and I've habituated myself to certain foods (and amounts of food). I've heard successful dieters say that once you start on a diet, it needs to become a permanent change, otherwise you'll just gain all that weight back.

So in summary, we have scriptures and prophets telling us we can change our desires. We have evidence that desires can gradually change. We know that habits can change as well. Yet people, all people it would seem, continually struggle to align their desires with their actions. So how do I align my behavior with my desire? Or stated another way, how do I convince my body to actually desire only healthy amounts of food to make achieving my goal easier? Or is it not supposed to be easy? Maybe, like C-3PO said in Star Wars, "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life."

2011-02-16T12:00:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted in a while. That's a problem.

Problem solved. How about that?

2010-12-26T06:56:00.000-08:00

2010 Nativity at Grandma and Grandpa Randall's house.

I just want to wish everyone a merry Christmas. I have been thinking a lot this year about how to have the Christmas spirit. I used to think it had to do with giving. I had to find the perfect gift for other people and they had to know the perfect thing to give me. Then we all had the Christmas spirit together.

Then one year I got a bunch of presents that weren't right at all. I wondered how my loved ones could possibly have given such wrong gifts. Didn't they know me at all? I didn't think I was being selfish in my indignation. I didn't care what I got, after all. I just cared that people knew me well enough to give the right gifts. But I see now, many years later, how selfish I really was. I was selfish with my relationships. It mattered to me too much how other people showed their love to me. What I should have been more concerned with was how I show my love for them. What gifts had I given?

What gifts have I ever given? I'm terrible at giving gifts. If my loved ones were as selfish as I had been, they would think I didn't love them at all, which isn't true. This year is yet another year I have not had perfect gifts for my loved ones. I hope they all know how much I love them.

My mother-in-law asked me this year what gift I would give the Savior. The first thing that came to mind was service. I hope I can give it this year by serving my loved ones. I can't buy them stuff, but that hardly matters. I can always serve, and that's the best gift of all.

Face the World

2010-04-27T08:12:00.001-07:00

Time once again, for Mike's Poetry Corner.

This edition of Mike's Poetry Corner features a short poem I wrote nearly two decades ago while serving an LDS mission in Phoenix, Arizona.

"Face the world," He said.
I said, "No, I'll die."
Says He, "You're never dead,
Unless you never try."

So I did,
and I died.
Now I'm dead,
'cause I tried.

But I remember what He said and He is not a liar.
So though my body may be dead, my spirit's lifted higher.

Mike's Poetry Corner has been brought to by the letters M and S and the number 36.

2010-04-11T22:21:00.001-07:00

Recent History of Protests: A Musical Perspective

2010-03-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

I was born near the end of an era of small uprising. A time when people were mad at the government. From the war in Vietnam to a new brand of environmentalism, there was plenty to be mad about. Popular music often reflected this anger. You had John Lennon singing "give peace a chance" and who could forget Bob Dylan "Blowin' in the Wind"?

But I grew up in the 80s. There was nothing to be mad about in the 80s. Maybe it was just my youth, but I don't remember there being anything to be mad about. Not like today, with greedy corporate CEOs, tough economic times, and huge back and forth political swings, from the right to the left.

However, the 80s weren't totally devoid of protest songs and rock'n'roll political statements. Smaltzy love ballads, foreign aid tributes, and new age wasn't the only music to come out in the 80s. I've put together a smattering of lyrics from the 80s that illustrate this.

One of the most common forms of protest was against the banality of middle-class suburbia and the increasing influence of government in the lives of the common man. Who could forget Twisted Sister singing "We're not gonna take it"?

"we've Got The Right To Choose And
there Ain't No Way We'll Lose It
this Is Our Life, This Is Our Song
we'll Fight The Powers That Be Just
don't Pick Our Destiny 'cause
you Don't Know Us, You Don't Belong"

And of course there are always going to be anti-war songs, even if there is no war to oppose. For example, Guns'n'Roses, "Civil War". It stirred up such graphic imagery as:

"Your power hungry sellin' soldiers
In a human grocery store"

Or

"But still the wars go on as the years go by
With no love of God or human rights
'Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide"

"What's so civil 'bout war anyway?"

More often than not, however, protest could be found in songs we didn't even recognize as protest songs. Who knew that when the Boss sang Born in the USA, he was really protesting the treatment of Vietnam vets.

"Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said "Son don't you understand"

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go"

And how many of us knew that the perky 99 Red Balloons song by Nena was really about the cold war? The idea behind the song was what if a bunch of balloons floated over the Berlin wall to the Soviet sector. Could a tragic over-reaction trigger a nuclear war?

"99 red balloons.
floating in the summer sky.
Panic bells, it's red alert.
There's something here from somewhere else.
The war machine springs to life.

99 Decision Street.
99 ministers meet.
To worry, worry, super-scurry.
Call the troops out in a hurry.
This is what we've waited for.
This is it boys, this is war.
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 Knights of the air
Ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero.
Everyone's a Captain Kirk."

Anyway, you get the point. Okay, I've meandered around this post too long. Now go out and dust off your old cassette tapes.

Haunted House Last Night

2010-03-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

After I fell asleep last night, Trey called for his mommy. Jeralynn found him wide awake and scared. He told her that he heard a voice. According to the frightened little boy, the voice said "I will kill you." Disturbed by this, Jeralynn did her best to comfort him. Trey often claims to have nightmares and frequently uses the "I'm scared" routine to get attention when he doesn't want to go to sleep. But something about the specificity of Trey hearing the voice didn't seem normal.

Back in the living room, Jeralynn mentioned the incident to her sister who is staying over this week. Josie immediately claimed to have heard it too, a male voice saying, "I don't want to kill you, but I will."

By this time, Jeralynn was getting a bit scared herself. She searched Trey's room for any sign of a toy or something that might sound like that. Upon finding nothing and still having the problem of Trey wide awake, she prayed with him to try and calm him down enough to be able to sleep.

Next, she came back into our room where I still lay, sound asleep, and saw my laptop on the desk. Immediately she remembered about all the strange alert sounds I had set on my computer, including one movie quote that says, "I don't want to kill you, but I will." After 45 minutes of near panic, the mystery was solved and the offending computer was put on mute.

I guess I'm lucky I didn't wake up with her fingers around my throat saying, "I don't want to kill you, but I will, if you don't change your computer audio alerts."

2010-03-23T12:05:00.001-07:00

I wonder if SMS blogging will be any easier.

2010-02-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

I finally posted a video I made a long time ago on my YouTube site.

Aren't we just a bunch of sillyheads?

All the time in the world...

2009-06-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

Chicago put it best.

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?

But we do care. We are kind of forced to care. If we don't manage our time, we can't do the things we want to do.

But what about the things you MUST do. You know, the things that must be done, whether you want to or not? Like sleep, for example. Sure, you can shave a little off the ends, but the more sleep you lose, the less productive the rest of your time it, so there is no savings. Or what about a job? You have to earn money or you can kiss leisure time goodbye. All of your time would be "free", but none of it would be doing what you want.

Lately, I've been in sort of a black hole, right on that event horizon, where time stops. Or at least my time seems to stop while everything else hurtles past. I can't get anything done, because every project I'm working on never ends. The basement is never finished. The house is never clean. The lawn never mowed. The kids never satisfied.

I need more time.

I've heard you can buy the stuff, but I have no budget to speak of for such an expensive commodity. You can trade for it. But that doesn't solve the problem. For example, I could get more sleep in exchange for my early morning racquetball league. I could trade in my church calling for more family time. I could have a ton more time for mountain biking, canyoneering, and writing my book if I quit my job. But like I said. That doesn't solve the problem.

I want more time, period. Not just more time for one of my priorities over another. I've spent the last few years whittling down my priority list to the bare essentials in order to accommodate the increasing demands on my time due to the increasing size of my family. Priorities aren't the problem. I have those arranged the way I want them (religion, family, health, etc.) and I devote an appropriate portion of my time to each.

No, what I need is just like I said...more time. Or do I? What time is it? Oh yeah, nobody really cares. Where was I?

More time, more time, let's see. Time machines probably won't be invented in my lifetime. The eternal youth gene isn't a likely bet.

I got it. Maybe I can just "pretend" each minute I have is spent doing exactly what I want to do with it. Then at least, it would "seem" like I had more time to do what I want. Example, I'm not wasting my time blogging just now. I'm writing because that is exactly what I want to do at the moment. You are merely reading the fruits of my pasttime.

Thank goodness for my active imagination. Bye everybody, I'm going to go pretend I really want to get back to work. Maybe I can even pretend I'm doing that work on a beach in the tropics.

2008-12-12T07:23:00.000-08:00

At long last, our basement bathroom is nearly complete. Witness the awesome power of this new fully operational battle station. Kidding aside, I'm glad we're almost done. This project has been almost 2 years in the making.

Now where did I put my October...

2008-11-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

Hey, did you realize the time? It's November already? I must have worked right through October and September. After finishing the first draft of a report to Congress I'm working on, I took the latter half of this past week off to reacquaint myself with my family. I just love them.

2008-08-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

Wes and Jen have motivated me to post something new to my blog.

I know, I know, it has been a couple years now. I guess I never saw the blog as a great communication tool. Anybody who knows me well knows I keep my YouTube site (www.youtube.com/recinutah) current, but none of my other websites. The Eagle of Moab site (www.theeagleofmoab.com) is now over 3 years out of date. The Yahoo family site is still working good, but nobody posts pictures or information to it, only requests for newsletter submittals. My geocities site (www.geocities.com/sl5k5) used to be how I kept people informed, but I have long since given that up, converting it to a redirect site only.

But what do you all think? Who here would like to see more Mike Sumner Family updates on my blog? Or who would rather be content wait for emails or phone calls? Our family newsletter keeps people updated best, although it has been suggested by other siblings that we could publish the same information to a blog. I was thinking about Picasa for picture posting, but it doesn't offer the real back and forth communication like a blog.

The real problem these days is there are amazing ways to communicate but not enough people interested in spending the time to do it.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

Am I truly happy?

2006-01-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

I don't know too many people who are truly happy.

There are plenty of people who are just around the corner from happiness. And plenty more who used to be happy. Why is that?

Maybe people don't really want to be happy. Maybe happiness is a goal for people to work toward and if they reach their goal, they quit working, grow bored and lose their happiness.

Maybe happiness has it's own uncertainty principle. Do you remember that principle from your college physics class? The one that says the more precisely the POSITION is determined,the less precisely the MOMENTUM is known. Or in this case, the happier you are, the less you realize how happy you are. Which makes sense, because what happy person has time to stop and realize they are happy? If you have to stop and think about it, you just lost it.

Which takes us back to where this started. Am I truly happy?

D'oh!