About Me

EARLY LIFE:
I was born on June, 14 (Flag Day), 1972, in Austin Minnesota. Austin is known far and wide as the location of the corporate offices for Hormel foods...that's right, the people who make Spam. I lived on a farm outside of Austin for the first fifteen years of my life, along with my parents, two older brothers, an older sister, and a younger sister. The farm I lived on was out in the boonies. It was only about five miles from another small town, Brownsdale, where I went to elementary school at. But still, it seemed like a long way out because I wasn't able to hang out with my friends after school, during the weekends or summer vacations.

But living on a farm wasn't all bad. We had plenty of room to roam around in and explore, and we didn't have to worry about traffic a whole lot. We had plenty of room to go snowmobiling at during the winter. And we always had a dog, and several cats--they all lived outdoors though, and like most animals in the countryside, would roam freely where ever they choose, but would always come back home again. On the farm, there were two sets of woods...well, actually, the farm was surrounded by woods on two sides of it, with only a field way seperating the two portions. One of the portions was called the "skunk woods"...LOL like only the one part of the woods had skunks in it, and they knew not to cross the field way...yeah, right. But that's what it was called. The other section didn't have any name. Another thing I remember from my childhood, is that we would go up into the top of the corn crib and walk through the corn that was up there. I don't really remember why we wanted to play up there...I just remember that I wanted to go up there because my older brothers and sister would go up there to play. And the same went with the loft above the barn--but that was later taken over by us kids as a hang-out type place, and we had a ping pong table up there. And my mom would hate it when we would play on the roofs of some of the smaller buildings.

I lived half a mile away from a village known as Mayville. Although you would never know it from driving through it, because there are no signs bringing that to your attention. The only place that you are likely to find the name of Mayville is on the property maps that show where everyone's property is. Mayville today consists of a group of three houses. That's it. If you blink, you miss it. But at one point in time, Mayville had a train station, a cheese factory, and a blacksmith shop. And it had a Fourth of July celebration that would bring people from all around for. But all that was long before my time.

Growing up on a farm meant being around animals, and belonging to 4-H. One year, I took New Zealand black rabbits to the fair to show...that was the first experience I had with taking animals to the fair. I don't remember how well I did, but I don't think it was very good. What disappointed me the most about my rabbits was that after the female one had it's babies, they were all dead before we realized it. Then when I was in the 5th grade, the rabbits were too big for me to handle anymore, and I had grown tired of having taken care of them for about two years, so I sold them. I also took pigs to the fair one year. I did better with that than the rabbits, but I didn't really care for that very much. Another experience with growing up on the farm is having helped butcher chickens--which was quite fun, but I never liked having to carry the live chickens by their legs, upside down, half way across the farm from their shed to where we butchered them at.

SCHOOL:
When I was little, I loved going to school. LOL don't ask me why...I wouldn't want to now, and I'm glad that I'm done with that part of my life. But I loved learning things, and when I'd get home from school, I'd do some things that maybe weren't characteristic of kids my age. I would love sitting down and watching Peter Jennings and ABC News. And from time to time, when I was sick from school, I would gather up my stuffed animals and would play school.

My elementary school was located in Brownsdale, Minnesota. My class size while I was in elementary school would fluctuate, but was usually around the 14-15 student mark. We were a really small class. Because of that, when we entered 6th grade, we were bussed up to our counterparts in Hayfield, MN (same school district, and where we would have gone for Junior High and High School anyway), a year ahead of when we normally would have been. This was done so that the school district could save money.

And that's where I spend my final year of elementary school, my two years of junior high, and one year of high school. And the high school wasn't much to it either. Again, it was a small town school. The only foriegn language it offered was Spanish, and it didn't really have any good electives to take either. Needless to say, I really didn't care for this school very much.

Fortunately, my family moved into Austin when I was 15, and I was able to finish the last three years of my high school experience at Austin High School. Granted, the school itself wasn't much better, but they did offer better classes (such as Fish & Wildlife management--a super easy class, Radio Communications, Science Fiction, and a choose of Spanish, French, German, or Latin for foriegn languages (I took German)), and more opportunities were opened up to me, such as participating in the Citizenship Bee. I did that for one year, and was going to a second year, but because I had started to work, I just didn't have the time I needed to study for that, so I didn't do it. The instructor who oversaw it was disappointed that I didn't, but I didn't see any other options. I tried taking the class "Current Events" because that was one of my passions, but the school wouldn't let me take it because it was designed to be more for the stupid people...errrrr, intellectually challenged, I mean.

And then came my senior year of high school. I choose to skip my senior year and instead enroll in the Post Secondary Enrollment Option Program and take a year of college--completely paid for by the state. It was suddenly strange to have more freedom at school...something that I wasn't used to at the high school. But even still, there were only a few times when I would skip classes...and surprisingly, even though I missed some of the people that I had met the previous two years, my senior year was probably the best year I had in school. I graduated from high school in June of 1991.

After graduating from high school, I moved to a small town near Rochester, Minnesota so that I could attend college in Rochester. I lived in that small town a little more than two years before I moved into Rochester, where I currently reside.

I attended a community college in Rochester for the next two years, studying law enforcement. For the most part, this time was uneventful to me, and I don't remember much of it. I had gotten used to the freedom given me wheter or not I'm in class, so it was no big deal anymore, although there would be times when I would skip a class or two. But I had to be careful now that I was in a specific program, because several of the classes were being taught by the same teacher, and I didn't want to be in one class, and missing from another. I graduated from the program at the end of fall quarter in 1993. At this point, I should have proceeded to the Law Enforcement Skills portion of my education, but I couldn't really afford that at the time, and I would've had to have gone to another city that was quite some distance from Rochester. So I waited a year, when I could better afford it, and they brought the program to Rochester, so I didn't have to go anywhere for it, and I could continue to work during the course, which was spread out over six months. We learned a variety of police work, from self-defense and handcuffing to drunk driving and speed detection and the driving course. And of course, we had our gun training. Oh, and I almost forgot...we got our training in pepper spray...yes, we had to be sprayed in the face with pepper spray so that we would be able to say we knew what it was like if we had to testify to that fact in court. I graduated from that program in June of 1995, and that was when my school life ended. I have been toying around with going back to school for Desktop publishing, but I don't know if I will or not...right now, I don't know if I'd have time to fit it into my schedule or even if it's offered here in Rochester.

MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY:

Christmas has to be my all-time favorite holiday. I can't really explain why I like it so much. I just like the whole atmosphere that surrounds the Christmas season, from shopping to holiday foods to Christmas carols to people coming together in the true meaning of Christmas.

MY CATS

I have two cats, a domestic short hair named Timer (DOB: 4-96) and a domestic long hair named Excalibur (DOB: 7-97). Timer was rescued from a local humane society when he was six months old, and thus I kept his name what it was. I don't know why he was named Timer, but he is a very loving cat. Timer is a lot of work though, because he has a digestive problem which requires a special diet (which is very expensive), and he will vomit frequently. And he has been very patient with me while I spent time on the computer instead of with him. I got Excalibur from a co-worker of a friend. I got him primarily so Timer would have someone to play with while I was away and on the computer. Of course, it hasn't worked out that way...now they both get jealous when I give the other one any kind of attention. It's been fun having him though, because I missed out on the kitten months with Timer, which is a fun time. In early December, my life with my cats changed drastically. When I took Excalibur in to get neutered, he was also tested for the feline leukemia virus. He tested positive. I had Timer tested the next day, and he also tested positive. Even though Timer is the older of the two cats, Excalibur is the bigger of the two, which I think is pretty wierd.

MY HOBBIES:

Some of my hobbies include: working on the computer and chatting on Yahoo!, plus watching television shows--especially Star Trek and Babylon 5, and sci-fi in general. I also enjoy walking and going on bike rides. I also enjoy collecting bald eagles and flags of foreign countries. I'm sorta into role playing games, although I haven't really played any since back in junior high when I played Dungeons and Dragons. I do have a role playing game like D&D on my Sega, and Heroes of Might and Magic II for the computer, though. I am usually up to date on world events as well.

WHAT I SUPPORT:

Every one has to believe in something. And if you believe in something, you should be willing to actively support that. Such support can be monetary, volunteering time, refusal to buy products or services pertaining to your issue, or even just raising awareness of a problem by telling people in person, over the radio, or on the internet. So what do I believe in and support? Well, I am an animal person, so I was hoping to be able to volunteer at the Minnesota Zoo on my one free weekend a month, but they weren't too keen on having a volunteer just work one weekend a month, and besides, the days that they wanted me to come up for orientation and training were days that didn't work very good with my schedule, so that didn't exactly work out. I am also against animal testing, but I haven't done much with this topic yet. But I did proudly wear a t-shirt proclaiming as such until the t-shirt was too raggedy to wear anymore.

What else do I support? Well, here's a list:

     World Wildlife Fund (WWF)--helping to ensure that we leave our children a living planet.

     B92--the independent radio station in Yugoslavia that was shut down, and then taken over
 by the Yugoslavian government illegally to help use the station's hard-earned reputation
 to spread lies and propaganda against NATO.

     People For the American Way (PFAW)--Helping to fight so that we can keep our freedoms 
as American citizens.

Learn more about me:

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