Normal...Kinda (I'll come up with better titles some day)

Alright, the week went pretty well. I'm just about half way through this semester, and I still have energy. Wait till Rodeo hits, I keep telling myself.

Speaking of rodeo, there's a small rodeo coming into town and I'm going to see if I can cover it for the newspaper. I might get to go interview a bunch of bull riders or something.

I put in about 38-39 hours at work.

I bought a camera, so pictures will be coming in future updates :)

First real picture



I also went to a church to cover that for the newspaper....that's the first time I ever dropped an article volentarily.

The reason I write articles about churches in my area is because I felt God tell me one day in church, "be a voice for my people."

I already put a significant amount of time and energy into putting it together, but once I went to the church to interview the people in the church that had split, I just didn't feel right about it. There are too many hurt people there right now. I would be causing a lot more damage if I did write it. So, that's over.

On to cherier news, I had a funny thing happen to me today. I've been meaning to talk to a man at my church named Jim Farmer at my church (CCSA) about going on a missions trip to Africa next summer.

I went to the paintball course today to interview people there about another article (seeing a trend in my updates? lol) and did my work, was about to leave, when I felt God telling me to stick around a bit. I did.

When I turned around after a few minutes, I saw Jim Farmer, of all people, sitting at a table and getting ready to play soft air! I talked to him about the trip, and learned a few things.

I went to a friend's house in the afternoon to target practise. I also did some welding (or cutting, was exactly what I was doing)

This is him when I walked up.


I wanted to know how it worked



Me shooting (notice the scope FAR from my face. Also, Jared, I got an Alaskan belt buckle just to upset the natives in Texas ;)



Both of us shooting (don't worry. there's not a single bullet between all 4 guns :)


Some sunset/moon shots I took on the way back from Ballinger.

Week of...I'm not sure. Normal life I guess

Let me give you a few highlights of my week.

I started it off right by going paintballing with a bunch of friends. Went pretty good, though I found out later that I had 4 guys gunning for me the whole time on the other team! And I stuck my hand in a pile of ants and didn't notice till I had them all over my hand. lol

I did classes on Tuesday and Thursday. I am REALLY lucky my math teacher decided to give a group quiz (everyone gets the same grade) instead of a normal quiz. I would have gotten like 10% because I worked extra time on Wednsday and didn't have the drive to study passed 11 pm that night.

I went to House of Faith (a ministry I volunteer for) and had a blast as the only guy at the school I help out at. I got the privilege of keeping 10-20 boys entertained in a game of street football. That's actually a blast!

I feel like I'm getting to know a lot of these kids faster than I ever have in past years....maybe that has something to do with my fam moving away and I'm more interested in getting to know them now? Don't know. :)

Celebrated a friend's 18th birthday!

Worked all day Friday...worked all day Saturday.

I got into a boxing round on Saturday night. My brother told this other guy at work that I had been sparing with one of my friends and had taken him out, so my coworker wanted to give it a shot.

He and I had fun, but then this other guy wanted to go a round. Good grieve! In retrospect it might have been a good idea to explain the difference between sparing and hitting the other dude as hard as you can. haha had fun anyway.

That's about my life for the week. At this point, I can say I am working full time at college, overtime at work, volunteering at some ministry stuff, and writing the newspaper. The time it took to write this post might be the most time I get to goof around all week! lol jk

Anyhow, good night!

What's New

I know, I know. It's been a while since I've posted. I'll give you a few of the highlights of what's been happening to me.

I went on a hike in CO with a group of friends. I really enjoyed getting out and hiking around the mountains for a whole week! We couldn't get a cell phone reception, which made it better in my opinion. We usually hiked about 5 miles a day or so with large packs and then we went for smaller hikes after setting up camp.

Myself and some other guys jumped into a lake up in the mountains....Glad we had a fire going when we got out! Most refreshing though, if I do say so myself.

On the last night I put some yellow dye in one of my fellow camper's canteen, and he actually believed I'd used his water bottle instead of a tree!

Here are a few pictures of the trip.












After I got home, I only had a couple weeks till college started, but I started and am doing pretty well. That's my competely unbiased opinion. :)

I'm going to try to update every Sunday or so, just to make sure I'm staying fairly current. BTW, I have skype now. I am Jamin.Goecker on skype! People tried getting me to do it before, but having family in Japan has really motivated me to get now. LOL

The Media, Trip Home, Plasma

I'm not sure if I said this in my last post, but we got the van back. And among the things the thieves took was a camera with a picture of me riding a pig in Seattle with my cowboy hat and everything. That guy who took the van just made it personal :)

Cy and I made it back to Texas alright after we said bye to the family...wait. Let me talk about the media in Seattle real quick.

As a reporter, I'm not used to being the one interviewed. THAT was kinda different. It annoyed me to no end when I heard one of the reporters walked into a room where Jared and the younger ones were and said the equivalent of, "Alright, now that your parents aren't here, what would you like to say?"

BIG red flag on the play! A reporter never sidesteps the parents of minors, or jokes about doing it. Some kids don't talk as well when parents are around, true, but it's better to avoid that whole issue and a bad reputation than...oh well. I didn't really like that TV station anyway. lol

Also, and this is just funny, a lady from a radio station interviewed us. I could tell she was from the school of thought that says when you're interviewing someone, you make eye contact and NEVER break it. THAT was scary! Her eyes grew, her cheeks sucked in, and she jabbed the microphone into my face whenever I said a word. Has a salmon interviewed you before? Because she looked like one a few times.

The trip home was pretty cool. For the sake of brevity, I'll say cops are aggresive about establishing their turf when they've been gone, and sticking your head out the window for a picture isn't the best way to put the driver at ease.

More recently, I gave plasma yesterday. It wasn't real scary or anything, and the process was relatively painless. Albeit, it was kinda weird having a needle in my arm for an hour and a half.

Let me tell you a quick story of when I was getting my physical, and then I'd better run. Let me state here and now that I have pretty good reflexes...

You know how doctors check your reflexes by hitting your knee with a mallet? She hit me in the left knee. My leg kicked without my permission (am I the only one who tries to be a rebel in the doc's office by trying to stay awake under drugs or refusing to kick when they test your reflexes?)

She moved over to the right knee. She drew back and tapped the right knee and...my left knee kicked again while the right one stayed home! I just try to give the docs something they don't expect every now and then to liven up their routine, honest. :)

Congratulations if you've read all the way to this point. You made it! lol

Vanishing Van!

Right now my family should be in Japan. After all, that's why my brother and I drove 1900 miles in 2 days. We wanted to see them before they boarded a plane and flew away.

They haven't left yet.

Reason why:

Someone stole the van. SERIOUSLY, who thinks it's a good idea to steal a red, 15-passenger van with Alaskan licence plates? But I guess we're in the northwest.

Here are some things we lost:

My older sister lost her credit card and the person has charged several things already.

Stacia's (youngest sister) little teddy bear :(

Jared's and I's portfolios for school, proofing we'd done a year the past year of work. We're working that out pretty well with the charter school.

And last and most important, the passports and birth certificates for those of us leaving for Japan.

Those last items are the most crippling. Without mentioning identity theft, it will give the family a lot of headaches because it takes about 3-12 weeks to get new birth certificates, which are required for passports.

It's looking like my dad will leave for Japan (he is required to report at his new station by a certain date) and my mom and younger siblings will be stuck state-side waiting for certificates and passports.

MEAN WHILE, my older brother and I will have to go back to Texas. There's no way in the world we can stay with them, nor could we do anything if we did...except form a posse and go after the dude who stole the van.

So right now we're pretty much Sleepless in Seattle.

We've gotten a lot of attention from the media in Seattle, but I'll talk about that in my next post.

Traveling Part II

A bit later in the day I was driving throw an Indian reservation...and padding the speed limit a bit. Like any law-abiding Texan, I slowed down as soon as I saw a cop on the side of the road.

I groaned inwardly as the guy started following me, wondering if my older brother and I were going to pay half for speeding tickets since we split the cost of gas money.

Finally, after a few tense miles, the guy passed me and I saw the side of his car: Police of the Nation of Navajo.

Yikes! So a Navajo had been trailing me for a couple miles? Glad he didn't give me a ticket...he would probably step out of the car completely painted with war paint and a feather. Then he'd dance around my vehicle and dent up the exterior with a tomahawk.

We arrived in Eugene, OR, the next day after driving over 1000 miles (talk about being delusional. we nearly fit in among northerners). By the way, the speed limit in Oregon is 55 mph. And if anyone asks, no, I did not go 30 over the limit down a circuitous road...29, 29.5, 29.51, etc., but NEVER 30.

I'll load pictures later.

Those aren't the highlights of this trip, though. TBC!

Cows, Mormons, and Najaho Cops

My brother and I left San Angelo to reach our destination pretty early on Sunday...maybe we should've spent time at a church or something. Bad luck skipping church to do something. Last time someone threw me out of a plane when I didn't show at a church.

Anyway, the day started bright and early and my brother let me drive his car till noon. That was...interesting. The clutch on his car springs up like a catapult whenever I took my foot off it. My brother probably uses it as a weapon against other drivers.

With my hands on the steering wheel and as America slid past me in a blur, I spotted a herd of cows in a green field. I'm sure there are lots of people who would do what I did next.

I rolled down my window, leaned out the window, and yelled at the top of my lungs, "Hey cow!"

The idea of the game is to see how many cows look up when you yell. I think a lot of them looked up because I nearly swerved off the road on accident and rammed them.

My brother relieved me of the steering wheel after a while, and we stopped at a nice little town called Moab in Idaho...Moab, the place with the FDZ's. Everywhere we go we seem to run into those people!

The next day we were driving through a reservation when...I'll finish writing this later. To be continued :)