>Now, I can understand the deadlock mechanism. but where the source and destination databases are concerned, I AM THE ONLY USER. Can a SP deadlock with itself???

SQL Server is supposed to recognize that a lock is being held by the same connection and ignore it. The only time I seen strange things like this is when I was creating temporary tables using SELECT INTO. SELECT INTO will place locks on some of the system tables in tempdb. If you issue the SELECT INTO within an explicit transaction, SQL Server will hold the locks until the transaction is terminated. The problem is that the locks interfer with the CHECKPOINT process.

Are you using SELECT INTO?

-Mike