Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Can't get anything done

Some days, it's cleaning by brownian motion around here. Task: strip the bed, remake the bed, and wash the bedding. Reality: realize the floor where the comforter would go is dirty, so sweep the floor. While sweeping the floor, note the foam toe-protector on a corner of the bedframe has been knocked loose. Head into garage to find electrical tape. Find four boxes that have been ripped open and never broken down or thrown out, and electrical tape. Throw out boxes. While throwing out boxes, notice that some books from the last convention never made it back to the bookshelf.

Grab tape, grab books, move books to bookshelf, realize it's badly organized and stack at base thereof for fixing later. Go back to the bedroom, secure foam back to bedframe, sweep floor, take off comforter, strip bed, and take dirty bedding and electrical tape back to garage. Put away tape, start laundry.

Come back to bedroom to find both cats sprawled in the middle of the stripped mattress, ready to "help" make the bed by pouncing on the sheets.

Think that it's taken fourty minutes and I still don't have the bed made and now have books to reshelve, too. Mutter something about sorcerer's apprentice and housework, and go to get a cuppa. Cats promptly follow, and start importuning to get into the closed garage since the washing machine is making noises. Let cats in, skip making cuppa, quickly make the bed.

Lets cats back in the house, and ignore pleas for sharing of the milk as I make tea, and think it a wonderful thing that I managed to make the bed. One task down!

...oh wait, still have to reshelve the books.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Range day!

Alma Boykin of Cat Rotator's Quarterly mentioned a few weeks ago that she was looking for a new carry gun. For her and I, this is a process as fraught as trying to find, say, a new pair of women's jeans that fit, allow enough movement, and look good, while having functional pockets. It's not impossible, it's just... rare, and usually involves trying out lots and lots and lots of disappointing variations first.

Actually, it's normally harder than jeans, because at least with jeans you can go to stores and try the fit and function. Where can you do that with a wide range of guns?


Oh, wait. I'm married to a Bayou Renaissance Man, and live just down the road from LawDog and OldNFO. And when it was mentioned that she was looking for a new carry gun that would fit her hand size, build, and needs, the gentlemen carpe'd the diem. This became A Project!

I can tell we're regulars at the gunshop when we walk in, and the owner says the following: "Hey, OldNFO. Morning, LawDog! Morning, ma'am, how can I help... Wing, where's Peter? You leave your husband at home?"

"I'm just here for moral support!"

"Moral or immoral?"
"Whatever Alma wants!"

We checked out the plastic fantastics and the other semi-automatics, and then rapidly migrated over to the revolver side of the store, where the nice young clerk was trying to be very helpful without sounding patronizing or condescending. (Very nice man. But if he'd been dancing any more carefully over his words, it'd have been a full two-step. Eventually rescued by the owner, with a "Son, OldNFO has forgotten more about guns than you'll ever learn.")

Old NFO loves Colts. He has some beautiful, magnificent specimens. He has the most peculiar grimace when he pulls the trigger on something else, like a Labrador that thought it was stealing bacon and got lemon rind instead. "Ugh! Smith trigger!"  

To be fair, Colt triggers are things of beauty and joy, and unless given a trigger job, Smith & Wessons are most definitely not. But I have to giggle a little when he makes that face.

After determining that nothing in the shop right then cried "Take me home with you!", we went back to OldNFO's and he opened up the cornucopia of wonders... ahem, the gun safe. And then we went to my house, and Peter started pulling out the "everything I've tried for my wife, so it's in tiny grips size for a lady's hand." (Alma and I have almost the same hand size. Not quite same glove size, but very close. We can grump to each other about the difficult of finding Mechanix gloves that fit.)

And then we went to the range (Well, Peter took a nap, but the rest of us went. This time, LawDog didn't have to shoo the cows off, either! Beautiful blue-sky day, cloudless and almost calm. (Very calm, for North Texas.) There had to be twelve planes flying past just in the times when I was chilling out and not concentrating on shooting. One of 'em was an L-19, still with the old Italian Air Force markings. (I happen to know that plane - and yes, the prior owner carefully masked off the control panel when painting, so it still has all the italian inside, too, as well as the english-required placards.)

I figured this was the perfect time to get some more practice in, as well as try out some of the guns broken out for Alma. The weightlifting has really helped with shoulder stability, to the point that I can now fire something a lot closer to snubbie - but it sure ain't fun! And I got a chance to try one of OldNFO's beautiful colts that was out of my abilities before... only to discover that it's beautiful, lovely in the hand, nice on the recoil, and the checkerboard grips tear the heck out of my soft no-callus palms. (Yes, I've been weightlifting for five months, and the only calluses I have are right where my wedding wing rubs when I grip the bar. I dunno either.)

On the extremely bright any shiny, you know when you've hit that point where you're finally good enough that the coach doesn't say anything on your lift, and you're kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop before you realize it's because you did everything right? I had a cylinder like that, with OldNFO & LawDog standing by and watching! Yay! If I could do cartwheels, well, I wouldn't have done one because of the cow patties on the range, but I felt like doing one!

Alma, meanwhile, went though quite a range of guns, and found that what she really liked was my carry gun - it's a Taurus .357 that I only shoot 38 special out of, because that's what I can take, with a nice squishy Hogue monogrip that takes a whole lot of bite out of its bark.

Clearly, she'll have to come back to try it out, as well as others we didn't get to, some more!

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Ding! New Level Achieved!

Autocorrect on my phone and I do not have a friendly relationship. (Who does?) Among other consistent "help", every time I texted a friend about lifting the 22-pound training bar while learning to weightlift, it would auto-correct to "training bra."

Fortunately, said friend is female, lifts weights, and understands the vagaries of Otto Corrupt, so there was simply eye rolling, laughter, and moving on with the conversation. And as I gre stronger, I moved from the 22-pound bar to the standard 45-pound bar, and could leaving that particular fight with Otto Corrupt behind.

Except...

I was still using the 5-pound plastic plates on deadlift, to put the bar at the right height. Big tough powerlifters, and everyone else, uses the 45-pound plates or higher, all of which are large enough to put the bar at the correct starting position - but 5, 10, and 25-pound plates are too small.

Yesterday, I finally managed to lift 135 pounds, for the first time. I even managed a set of 5 lifts! My coach happily told me that from now on, we're going to start with 135, and not use the plastic training plates again.

So of course, I go to text the good news. "Yay! Now I'm off the training bar AND the training plates!"

That is absolutely not what Otto Corrupt sent.