More cool holsters, chocolate chip cookies, and range time

With a post header like that, there's no doubt it was a great weekend. With Stormageddon impending after a morning running errands, I did what any sensible person would - let the house be quiet for Calmer Half to take a nap by meeting Miss M. at a bachelor friend's house to bake chocolate chip cookies.

Of course, when said friend is Oleg Volk, I never know what or who I'll find at his house in the course of cookie making. This time his models were two great gentlemen. One of whom completely boggled my mind by showing a holster he makes out of transparent kydex! The very concept made me squeal a little in glee, and wish that I was fifteen pounds lighter and in shape to dance all night, because it looked like the most awesome accessory for clubbing clothes. That clearly wasn't what Chris had in mind when he designed and produced the holster, but he was a good sport about us girls gleeing over his holster and sadly noting that it was high-ride enough to thoroughly bruise our ribs. (If it had fit both me and any of my favorite handguns, I would have been offering cash and cookies for him to leave without it. Because it's just so cool!)

Oleg doesn't have a picture of the transparent holster up, but he does show the tiny small-of-back holster Chris makes here: http://olegvolk.net/blog/2012/02/17/custom-kydex/

Few things are funnier than the look of shock, horror, and utter disgust on Gremlin's face when he's been lamenting at the screen door that we need to let him aaaoouuuwt for half an hour - only to have Mother Nature spray him with hard rain rebounding off the deck. He couldn't believe that outside would fire a spray bottle back inside at him, and try to peg him with hail!

Today, Calmer Half, Miss M, and I got a late start to the range due to detours like Calmer Half's awesome omelettes, and the neighbor's big puppy (a Saint Bernard / English mastiff mix who is just beautiful, awesome, playful, sheddy, and drooly.) There wasn't much actual shooting time for all the time devoted to instruction on fit, stance, and recoil management - as both ladies present are part of the Concealed Crippling Injuries party.

Once again, I proved that .38 special in a Model 65 is right at the very limit of what I can tolerate - and that I'm a fair bit grouchy when the pain radiates from my shoulder down to my fingertips and my lower back, and up to my right temple. I know that slow is smooth and smooth is fast, but I only have a short span of time holding the gun at shoulder height in the weaver stance before the trembling muscles put a lie to smooth. It's either shoot fast and without careful aim or shoot slowly and start to shake by the time I've lined up on target.

I shot the Walther P22 left-handed after the right side started locking up, and it worked much better than expected. I was pointlessly grumpy at my own inaccuracy. Shooting off-handed is like learning to write with the wrong hand; expecting the same accuracy without years of training and muscle memory only leads to frustration with what's actually good progress.

Calmer Half also introduced a new concept - using the square end of the back of the slide to cover the target, and shooting that way, instead of trying to line up on the target with the sights. As he said, it's far less accurate at long range, but far faster at close range - no consistent bullseyes there, but a lot of lead got downrange much faster, in roughly the targets area. It doesn't provide the fine control I like by any means, but I really see the value if somebody was coming at me in a dark parking lot.

As for Matthew's rimfire-dud tracking project, today wasn't good for statistics, as I could only swear to one dud out of sixty shots - the rest of the failure to fires were either the round, a problematic extractor, or me not managing to be steady enough for the gun to use recoil to load the next round. I hate tap-rack drills; they wear me out. And the more worn out I get, the worse I get, until every single shot was followed with a failure to feed, even after switching from Federal bulk-pack to CCI Minimag.

Unsurprisingly, I came home and promptly faceplanted in bed for several hours. Think I'll get some ibuprofin and go back there now. Great weekend!