WOW WHAT A LONG TIME SINCE I'VE UPDATED MY XANGA BUT HEY GUYS ALL IS WELL HERE ON MY END!! THIS PAST YEAR WAS KINDA CRAZY BUT I FEEL LIKE I'VE GROWN UP ALOT I'M REALLY NOT SURE WHY...

    MOST OF MY FREINDS KNOW I HAD KIND OF A ROUGH SUMMER CAUSE I HAVE THIS DREAM OF BUYING A DODGE CUMMINS AND BUILDING IT FOR DRAG RACEING AND THAT WAS MY GOAL FOR THIS PAST SUMMER SO I DEVOTED EVERY MINUTE OF MY TIME TO MY WORK IN HOPE OF MAKEING ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY THIS TRUCK OF MY DREAMS AND HAVE IT ON THE TRACK BY THIS PAST FALL. LONG STORY SHORT I WAS WORKING FOR A MECANICE THAT WAS STRUGGLEING TO GET HIS BUISINESS GOING AND NEEDED FINANCIAL HELP AND SO AS ALWAYS I'M MORE THAN WILLING TO HELP A FREIND IN NEED SO I STARTED WORKING WITHOUT GETTING PAID AND ALSO MADE HIM A FEW LOANS THAT WERE ALL CASH AND HAD NO CONTRACS SIGHNED WHICH WAS A VERY BAD IDEA BUT I GUESS YOU HAVE TO LEARN THE HARD WAY ALOT OF TIMES AND SO THERE WENT ALL MY MONEY THAT I HAD AND I WAS STUPIDLY LEAD TO BELIEVE THAT HEY NEXT MONTH I'LL PAY YOU UP AND NEXT WEEK I'LL PAY YOU UP ON AND ON AND ON FOR A TOTAL OF FIVE MONTHS PRETTY MUCH ALL I GOT FROM THIS MAN WAS ENOUGH TO PAY MY RENT AND PHONE BILL.  AFTER OCTOBER I STARTED WORKING FOR FRONT RANGE STRUCTURES AND HAD TO START ALL OVER AGAIN FINANCIALY BUT I'M GAINING GROUND AND GOT ALMOST ALL OF MY BACKED UP BILLS PAID UP THANK GOD AND THE DREAM OF MY TRUCK IS NOT FAR AWAY ANYMORE, I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT BUILDING IT WHEN I GET IT SOON AND AM HOPING TO HAVE IT ON THE TRACK NEXT FALL.

    OVER ALL ALOT OF GOOD THINGS HAVE CAME MY WAY SINCE I'VE SWITCHED JOBS AND BEEN WORKING WITH DIFFERENT PEOPLE AND A DIFFERENT WORK ATMOSFERE I'VE LEARNED THAT HEY YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORK EVERY WEEKEND AND SOMTIMES ALL NIGHT TO PAY THE BILLS OR TO GET YOUR DREAM TRUCK. I'VE ALSO MEAT AN AWSOME GIRL (KATIE) AND HAVE BEEN HANGING OUT WITH HER AND TOTALLY LOVE IT!!! I'VE ALSO BEEN ABLE TO START ATENDING A CHURCH HERE REGULARLY AND WILL BE GOING THERE IN JUST A FEW SHORT HOURS!!  I'VE GOT AN ACCTUALL LIFE NOW WERE I'M LIKE HAPPY AND NOT ALWAYS DRAGING BUTT CAUSE I'M TIRED AND WORN OUT DON'T GET ME WRONG HERE I STILL WORK ALOT OF HOURS BUT NOT NEAR WHAT I WAS SO ANYWAY I'LL QUITE CHATTERING ON AND ON AND GO TO SLEEP SO I CAN GET UP AND GO TO CHURCH.... GOODNIGHT - MIKE

No kidding... We took off and drove srait through 16 hours what a drive let me tell you thank god meg drove 2/3 of the way down!! The next morning the alarm screewed us and so we missed a small part of the airmans run but got to see the last part of it thank god.. I was looking forward to 75 degrees, hey why else would you go to TX right. Anyway the first two days werent that great (rain cold wind) get the picture.... Not to plesant. Friday Loren got town pass for the afternoon so they wanted the day alone in the hotel room... So I take off to go see some sites you know you gotta do something right... I get out on the interstate and the speed limit is like 65 and so I'm running with what I thought was the fast traffic doing 85.... Suddenly I look in my rearveiw and this guy comes flying up behind me and I was like hey dude you have the honors go ahead so he passed me and I thought somewhere down in that stupid little heart of mine that I was going to follow this guy, he took off like a bat out of hell and I did too only when I hit 105 and he was running on the shoulder in constuction did I realise that God himself knew that I could never keep up with him!!! For some dang reason my car doesn't have enough gears I keep forgetting that it doesn't have a chip on it to remove that piece of crap speed limiter.. Some of you young guys know what I mean right you've been there done that.. (I know 105 isn't really that fast besides nobody will ever know how fast I was going) On top of everything I got stuck in traffic made a wrong and totally got lost.. Anyway saturday I went to town and got a DVD player and a movie because Loren really wanted to see this movie called Full Metal Jacket its about boot camp.. On the way back from walmart I got stuck in traffic and had to sit in my little boom box listening to Papa Roach with all these texan country boys looking at me like I'm some piece of crap punk (LOL).. Sunday we all went to the IMAX theatre.. That night after we droped Loren off we headed strait back to CO.. At around 12.00 we stoped and slept 3 hours and took off again... In those early morning hours is the hardest time to stay awake, I was driving and going in and out of a light sleep, Meg woke up one time and I was totally sleeping, so she quit sleeping and kept me awake till we got back....

So much for now I gotta go help Meg get some stuff from her old house..

My aunt sent this e-mail to me and yes, it's a true story.

Roping A Deer
..(Names have been removed to protect the stupid!)

Actual Letter from someone who writes, and farms. .. ________________________________________________________

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it
up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.

The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since
they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me
when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the
bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should
not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to
calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope.

The cattle, hav ing se en the r oping thing before, stayed well back.
They were not having any of it.

After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them. I picked out.. ..a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw.. .my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me.

I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a
good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it
was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation.

I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little tension on
the rope and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there
looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you
start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger
than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt i n that weight range I could fight
down with a rope and with some dignity.

A deer-- no chance.

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling
it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and
started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer
on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.

The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other
animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me
off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes
to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the
big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed
venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it
would likel y die slow and painfully somewhere.

At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that
moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was
mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly
arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks
as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to
recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of
responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to
have it suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between
my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like
a squeeze chute.

I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope
back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have
thought that a deer w ould b ite somebody, so I was very surprised when I
reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist.

Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they
just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head --almost
like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw
back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was
ineffective.

It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it
was likely only several seconds.

I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by
now) tricked it.

While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up
with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final
lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front fee t. The y rear right up on their
back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves
are surprisingly sharp.

I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -- like a horse --strikes at
you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is
try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal.
This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not
work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy.

I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.

The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse
that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the
back of the head.

Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as
strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run , it hit me
right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately
leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they
do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying
there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a
scope so that they can be somewhat equal to the Prey.. ..