Once again I have shirked on my commitment to stay current on my blogging. To anyone remaining, I apologize.

In the past few weeks, I have been busy becoming a team roper. Before I start explaing the how, I suppose I should begin with a why or a how, as in how have you not been committed for losing your mind. You see, I am dating a team roper, and have been for over a year now. In fact, this nice young man even moved from Arizona to Texas after my internship. He is apparently quite smitten (coughgigglesnort). But he is a team roper and I love roping events (and my team roper), and after watching him rope many times, I decided it can't be that hard, right? I mean all you're doing is throwing a rope at a steers's head, or feet depending on which end you're facing. So I found a rope (Omega 3 if you're keeping up) and started swinging. Apparently this whole roping this is a little harder than I thought. With some coaching I got pretty darn good roping the dummy steer, from the ground. He got the bright idea to add a horse to the equation, and a moving animal. This changed everything, I now have to coordinate making a horse move forward, staying in my saddle, not falling off the horse, keeping her straight, not droping the reins and twirling my lasso. The final step is actually throwing the loop at the moving steer (or burro in my case) without falling off as the horse stops. Whew! It's a lot of work, and coordination. Did I previously mention I have no coordination or grace, well I don't, not even a small fragment buried somewhere deep inside. As a person who rides cutting horses, roping is hard. But to get back to the beginning, how did I become a roper? Since I haven't actually caught my prey with my rope, the only claim I have to being a roper is my roping glove. At least with my roping glove on and my Omega coiled up in my hand, I at least look like I know what I'm doing, giggle giggle snort.