Posted 12:14 PM by Mike
Getting ready for the opener of deer season this Saturday. According the Minnesota DNR, this should be a record harvest. And I hope so. My dad and I have been shut out for a long time now. I'm going up north for the first two weekends of the season. Every year, I hope and wish we get one on opening day so we can be done with it. It's not like I don't like hunting anymore, I do. But it's not the same as when I was first hunting. We used to hunt in a very large hunting party. It was always so much fun to hunt all day and then meet up at night to clean the deer and listen to all of the stories. But now, it's just me and my dad. He absolutely loves it being just him and I though. I appreciate it too, don't get me wrong. It's one of the few times that I can get him away and just hang out with him. But I still have very fond memories of our years of hunting in our party.

STATE OF MY TEAMS ADDRESS:

Can I just say I don't get the 49'ers!!! You never know which team is going to show up week to week. Destroy the TB Bucs one week, lose to Arizona the next. Destroy the St. Louis Rams (without Jeff Garcia mind you) this week. We'll see in two week when they play the Steelers. Very frustrating!

The Penguins are doing fairly well. 3-4-3 record, which for this team is pretty respectable. Two of the three wins were against two of the premier teams in the league, Detroit and Boston. Mario is sitting out tonight against Toronto with a strained hip muscle, but Marc Andre Fleury is keeping this team in games long enough for the offense to find itself. Again I say, this kid is the real deal!

Florida State......3rd in the new BSC rankings. Have an outside change to leapfrog USC into 2nd if they win out. Not likely if both teams win out, but anything can happen. The loss to Miami in the monsoon really hurt. That was a game they should have won. I'm pinning my hopes on UCLA upsetting USC in a couple of weeks. Fingers are crossed!!

Posted 11:57 AM by Mike
Well, it was a pretty hard week last week. My last grandparent died. I have always loved and respected all of my grandparents, but my Grandma Lemke was the most special to me. Since I grew up only 15 miles away from where she lived, I obviously got to see her more often than any of my grandparents. My Grandpa Lemke died when I was only four and my Grandma and Grandpa Anson lived 12 hours away so I really only got to see them once a year. She had a heart of gold. I don't ever remember her yelling or getting mad. She loved her grandchildren and great-grandchildren more than anything.

When my mom had called to tell me that she had died, I cried for about ten minutes. Then something very wierd, and wonderful, happend to me. I started thinking about her seeing my grandpa again. I also started thinking about her seeing her father whom she never really got to know since he died when she was only three. All of a sudden a very warm and calm feeling came over me. I instantly stopped crying and started to smile. It was almost like she had touched me to let me know that everything was going to be alright. From that moment on, with the exception of a few during the funeral, I haven't shed a tear. I don't feel sad anymore. Whenever I start to think about her, I smile now. She is in a better place now. And considering her health towards the end, I'm glad she is.