Actually, the correct spelling is "postcard."
Monday, November 30, 2009
Also, for no apparent reason:
Found on a flier (or is it a flyer? Grammar has failed me again!) from my days at Environmental:
Actually, the correct spelling is "postcard."
Actually, the correct spelling is "postcard."
He's a chameleon, that one.
How is Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Caldwell feeling today? Is he ...
... happy?
... pensive?
... surprised?
... irate?
... frightened?
... ecstatic?
... nervous?
He is the Man of One Face. He is Jim Caldwell, head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
... happy?
... pensive?
... surprised?
... irate?
... frightened?
... ecstatic?
... nervous?
He is the Man of One Face. He is Jim Caldwell, head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thoughts while patronizing a circus
My Son Cool remarked after meeting SpongeBob, "He's bigger than what I thought he'd be."
We've replaced this trainer's normal tigers with tigers that have been equipped with laser vision. Let's see if he notices.
(Cause when the tigers are not only standing on their hind legs but also equipped with laser vision, we are all fucked)
Gratuitous
THE GIANT GLOBE OF DEATH LOVES AMERICA
(and out of the 60-odd pics I took, these were the only ones that were worth a shit. Got lots of arms, backs/heads, darkness, etc. So I will include this again:)
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Even if I didn't bleed blue for the Colts, I still would have had no problem with Bill Belichick's call to go for it on 4th-and-2. If you roll up 450 yards of offense and have shown the Colts' defense to be positively sieve-like, you reach for the dagger. Indy had seized the momentum at that point, and there's very little chance that the Patriots would have held on, even if Peyton Manning had to go 70-80 yards instead of 29. Manning got into a rhythm on the previous touchdown drive, and with one timeout and the two-minute warning remaining, I would have put my money on him regardless of the distance.
All that being said, it did backfire on New England, and the Colts are firmly entrenched in the driver's seat for a #1 seed in the playoffs. You can say whatever you want about the Patriots' poor clock management on their last drive, how they gift-wrapped the victory for the Colts, but great times find the way and the will to win, and I think it's safe to assume that the 2009 edition of the Indianapolis Colts are a great team.
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All that being said, it did backfire on New England, and the Colts are firmly entrenched in the driver's seat for a #1 seed in the playoffs. You can say whatever you want about the Patriots' poor clock management on their last drive, how they gift-wrapped the victory for the Colts, but great times find the way and the will to win, and I think it's safe to assume that the 2009 edition of the Indianapolis Colts are a great team.
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Saturday, November 14, 2009
Corrections.
OH MY GOD. I can't believe what I wrote.
In the shooting match post just two posts below, I made two errors:
1. It's a bore sighter, not a "board sighter." Forgiveable.
2. My gun is NOT a Winchester 870. It is a Remington 870.
Egregious.
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Cologne and Farts: The absolutely true story of one man's Vegas experience. (Part 1.)
Much to the consternation of those I am married to and my offspring, I spent the last three days in Las Vegas. Ahhhh, the Windy City.
My mom had been haranguing and nagging me for years about me and her coming out here, and since she retired last year and is about to finally slip into full-on fixed income mode, I relented, as this was the last chance to do it.
There's not much I can add to the generally accepted narrative about Vegas that you can't find on the Internet. I can't write anything sexy or moving or deep about it - "a mirage in the Nevada desert built on the backs of dreamers and their busted dreams" and all that shit. That song has already been sung by people who can write better than I, and if I tried to write or add to it, I'd come off sounding like a hack.
Regardless, I'll hack away here.
SUNDAY: I'm ok with flying. Had never done it before my trip to San Diego for work a couple of years ago, but once I didn't die, I determined flying to be a completely safe mode of cross-country transit.
Mom, on the other hand, is like a white, blonde B.A. Baracus (Mr. T's character on "The A-Team). Without the mohawk and bling, of course. She got some Xanax to take before getting on the plane. I suggested a mallet to the head instead - cheaper and non-prescription. And non-addictive too!
She had never experienced turbulence before Sunday night. She has now. Good times. It was fairly insignificant, but still noticeable.
We landed safely and soundly at McCarran around 8-something local in the evening. And ooooh, they have slots in the airport! So I was down 20 bucks before we ever got out of the terminal.
So we took the shuttle from the airport to Circus Circus.
Fun fact: The Circus Circus was built in 1968. Fun observation: The hotel rooms have not been updated since then.
We got our room and I immediately christened the hotel the Shithole Shithole. Having stayed in Days Inns that were nicer, I'd have to say that I was disappointed in:
1. Having to actually plug in the lamps and the TV - and one lamp did not work at all, nor did the switch on the wall upon entering the room. Fumbled around in the dark for 4 or 5 solid minutes.
2. The safe in the room was missing the lock. Valuables were protected by a door, easily opened by putting your finger into the hole where the lock was supposed to be and pulling.
3. The obvious water damage along the trim near the ceiling.
And through it all, the only thing I could think of - as I suggested on Twitter - was that Ol' Blue Eyes himself had christened this room with a hooker or a stripper or something, as he surely did all the rooms in Vegas. I think it was the law when a new hotel was built, but I think it passed off the books after the Rat Pack started dying off.
Upon exiting the room and touring the Shithole Shithole complex, I made note of the heavy CSI merchandising efforts in the gift shops. It's a shame I'm not half-retard, else everyone back home would have gotten a CSI t-shirt or hat or magnet or shot glass or bumper sticker or letter opener or postcard or two t-shirts. I guess, to me, it screams "tacky" - yet I'm in Vegas, and what exactly did I expect?
Because of the lateness of the hour - even though it was just after 10pm local, it was after 1am EST when we finally ventured out of the room - we stayed close to the hotel and casino Sunday night into Monday morning. And I did well - everything I tossed against the wall stuck, from the constant cashes out of the Wheel of Fortune slots (topping out at a $250 win - 1000 coins on the Wheel bonus!), to playing Three Card Poker to much profit (helped by a three of a kind - pulled approximately $280 off the table) to a small $30 win on the blackjack/Wheel of Madness table (where you place a $1 side bet in addition to your normal blackjack bet, and if you get a blackjack on your first two cards, you get to spin a wheel that pays you anywhere from 10 to 1000 times your $1 side bet). I'd probably netted about $400 in profit the first 8 hours, all told.
"Ready to go back to Indiana?" I asked my mom.
She wasn't.
MONDAY. I wish she was ready to go back to Indiana. I donated a good portion of what I had netted the previous evening. Thing is, once you start having good luck, you either have the good sense to stop, or you press it. And usually, you get whammied.
As I did.
Wandered around the immediate environs, from Shithole Shithole to the adjoining Slots-A-Fun (the smallest casino on the Strip) and across the street to the Riviera, and put in my share of the light bill at all three places. The only notable thing about the early morning - other than that I was still up from the previous evening - was that the open-air entrance to Slots-A-Fun was an invitation for pigeons to wander in and walk around. (Since this is Vegas, I need to clarify: I don't mean "pigeons" in the mob sense. I mean actual birds with beaks and feathers.)
And they startled the hell out of sleep-deprived wired me.
Finally decided to go back to the room and get some shut-eye, and slept about 4 hours till roughly 1pm EST.
After waking, Mom and I decided to go have a drink and then head further down the Strip. The bulk of our time Monday afternoon was spent at Caesar's.
I'm terrible at estimating heights and weights, but I would guess that this sign is, conservatively, 15 stories tall. And weighs about 72 pounds.
As you might expect, lots of this shit at Caesar's:
Mom: "Get in front of it, let me take your picture!"
Me: "Why the FUCK would I want to do that? No. You stand in front of it and take my picture from there."
OK.
Walking through the casino, I would occasionally detect an odor that can only be described as "cologne and farts." The more time I spent in Vegas, the more I realized that the odor was almost ubiquitous, and if I had but one lasting memory of the trip, that would be it, for better or worse.
We walked through the casino to the shopping area. It was as grand and overwrought as you'd expect.
(I can't resist reading the name of this restaurant with a lisp.)
The main free attraction at Caesar's was the statue show "Atlantis."
The statues above would be lowered into the pit and replaced by these animatronic figures that told the story of Atlantis. Very clearly based on a true story, as the king and his two brats who were fighting over who got to succeed him went to Cheesecake Factory afterwards to further hash out an agreement. (I shot video, but it sucked ass and I don't know how to fix the lighting issues on it.)
Part 2 coming soon ........
My mom had been haranguing and nagging me for years about me and her coming out here, and since she retired last year and is about to finally slip into full-on fixed income mode, I relented, as this was the last chance to do it.
There's not much I can add to the generally accepted narrative about Vegas that you can't find on the Internet. I can't write anything sexy or moving or deep about it - "a mirage in the Nevada desert built on the backs of dreamers and their busted dreams" and all that shit. That song has already been sung by people who can write better than I, and if I tried to write or add to it, I'd come off sounding like a hack.
Regardless, I'll hack away here.
SUNDAY: I'm ok with flying. Had never done it before my trip to San Diego for work a couple of years ago, but once I didn't die, I determined flying to be a completely safe mode of cross-country transit.
Mom, on the other hand, is like a white, blonde B.A. Baracus (Mr. T's character on "The A-Team). Without the mohawk and bling, of course. She got some Xanax to take before getting on the plane. I suggested a mallet to the head instead - cheaper and non-prescription. And non-addictive too!
She had never experienced turbulence before Sunday night. She has now. Good times. It was fairly insignificant, but still noticeable.
We landed safely and soundly at McCarran around 8-something local in the evening. And ooooh, they have slots in the airport! So I was down 20 bucks before we ever got out of the terminal.
So we took the shuttle from the airport to Circus Circus.
Fun fact: The Circus Circus was built in 1968. Fun observation: The hotel rooms have not been updated since then.
We got our room and I immediately christened the hotel the Shithole Shithole. Having stayed in Days Inns that were nicer, I'd have to say that I was disappointed in:
1. Having to actually plug in the lamps and the TV - and one lamp did not work at all, nor did the switch on the wall upon entering the room. Fumbled around in the dark for 4 or 5 solid minutes.
2. The safe in the room was missing the lock. Valuables were protected by a door, easily opened by putting your finger into the hole where the lock was supposed to be and pulling.
3. The obvious water damage along the trim near the ceiling.
And through it all, the only thing I could think of - as I suggested on Twitter - was that Ol' Blue Eyes himself had christened this room with a hooker or a stripper or something, as he surely did all the rooms in Vegas. I think it was the law when a new hotel was built, but I think it passed off the books after the Rat Pack started dying off.
Upon exiting the room and touring the Shithole Shithole complex, I made note of the heavy CSI merchandising efforts in the gift shops. It's a shame I'm not half-retard, else everyone back home would have gotten a CSI t-shirt or hat or magnet or shot glass or bumper sticker or letter opener or postcard or two t-shirts. I guess, to me, it screams "tacky" - yet I'm in Vegas, and what exactly did I expect?
Because of the lateness of the hour - even though it was just after 10pm local, it was after 1am EST when we finally ventured out of the room - we stayed close to the hotel and casino Sunday night into Monday morning. And I did well - everything I tossed against the wall stuck, from the constant cashes out of the Wheel of Fortune slots (topping out at a $250 win - 1000 coins on the Wheel bonus!), to playing Three Card Poker to much profit (helped by a three of a kind - pulled approximately $280 off the table) to a small $30 win on the blackjack/Wheel of Madness table (where you place a $1 side bet in addition to your normal blackjack bet, and if you get a blackjack on your first two cards, you get to spin a wheel that pays you anywhere from 10 to 1000 times your $1 side bet). I'd probably netted about $400 in profit the first 8 hours, all told.
"Ready to go back to Indiana?" I asked my mom.
She wasn't.
MONDAY. I wish she was ready to go back to Indiana. I donated a good portion of what I had netted the previous evening. Thing is, once you start having good luck, you either have the good sense to stop, or you press it. And usually, you get whammied.
As I did.
Wandered around the immediate environs, from Shithole Shithole to the adjoining Slots-A-Fun (the smallest casino on the Strip) and across the street to the Riviera, and put in my share of the light bill at all three places. The only notable thing about the early morning - other than that I was still up from the previous evening - was that the open-air entrance to Slots-A-Fun was an invitation for pigeons to wander in and walk around. (Since this is Vegas, I need to clarify: I don't mean "pigeons" in the mob sense. I mean actual birds with beaks and feathers.)
And they startled the hell out of sleep-deprived wired me.
Finally decided to go back to the room and get some shut-eye, and slept about 4 hours till roughly 1pm EST.
After waking, Mom and I decided to go have a drink and then head further down the Strip. The bulk of our time Monday afternoon was spent at Caesar's.
I'm terrible at estimating heights and weights, but I would guess that this sign is, conservatively, 15 stories tall. And weighs about 72 pounds.
As you might expect, lots of this shit at Caesar's:
Mom: "Get in front of it, let me take your picture!"
Me: "Why the FUCK would I want to do that? No. You stand in front of it and take my picture from there."
OK.Walking through the casino, I would occasionally detect an odor that can only be described as "cologne and farts." The more time I spent in Vegas, the more I realized that the odor was almost ubiquitous, and if I had but one lasting memory of the trip, that would be it, for better or worse.
We walked through the casino to the shopping area. It was as grand and overwrought as you'd expect.
(I can't resist reading the name of this restaurant with a lisp.)
The main free attraction at Caesar's was the statue show "Atlantis."
The statues above would be lowered into the pit and replaced by these animatronic figures that told the story of Atlantis. Very clearly based on a true story, as the king and his two brats who were fighting over who got to succeed him went to Cheesecake Factory afterwards to further hash out an agreement. (I shot video, but it sucked ass and I don't know how to fix the lighting issues on it.)
Part 2 coming soon ........
I enjoy beef-flavored meat. Don't you?
All of the expense and frustration and aggravation finally paid off last weekend.
Your Author had been on a bit of a dry spell at shooting matches since taking 11th and 19th in consecutive weeks at Dubois in late September/early October. Still, when you compare my results with what I was turning in during the latter part of last season - well, there is no comparison, really. Aside from a couple of good results early on in the year, my shooting was embarrassing, so much so that I really had no interest in going back to them this season.
There's a certain amount of pride in being able to take a factory gun with a factory barrel (with the only accoutrement being an extra-full choke screwed into the end of the barrel) and still have success at these things, especially when you're going up against folks with their 60-inch custom barrels, gun rests that will hold up both ends of your gun so all you have to do is look through your scope and shoot, and scopes that enable you to count the amount of BBs on your board from 47 yards away. I felt like I was fighting the good fight against people who were pouring ridiculous amounts of money into this endeavor, and any meat I won last year was extra sweet as a result.
Thing is, I'm just not very good. Try as he did, my dad wasn't terribly successful at immersing me in gun/hunting culture. Sure, I shot a BB gun when I was a kid, and occasionally a .22 - I can't begin to tell you how many EVIL DASTARDLY aluminum cans I killed in my formative years - but due to my comparative lack of interest, shooting was never really a priority with me.
As time went on last season and my original run of beginner's luck (several positive results - a couple of meat finishes in the lower top 10) ran out, my shooting got steadily worse, to the point where it was an embarrassment to show my boards to my more experienced brothers-in-law, and every adjustment (and readjustment and unadjustment) just made the situation worse. My 12-shot boards had very little shot on them; they looked more like 5-shot boards. I would have had better luck standing there and throwing the shells at my board.
And going to shooting matches stopped being fun. I'm a competitor; it's only fun for me if I turn in a respectable performance. No one likes to embarrass themselves, and even if the group I went with didn't think it was that bad, I did. And that was a very difficult thing to take; ask my wife, who endured many rides home from shooting matches last season with me being stone-cold silent.
Don't get me wrong. Going to shooting matches is much like going to the casino - if you go there expecting to win, then you will, 99 times out of 100, be sorely disappointed. But "expecting to win" and "giving yourself every opportunity to win" - much like lessening the house edge by playing perfect blackjack - are two different things. And I was coming up terribly short in the latter.
Something had to be done. Either improve my game by any means necessary, or devote my time and monetary resources to something a little more productive and less embarrassing, like that midget porn film I've been wanting to make.
Well, since my wife isn't amenable to the latter, I broke down and bought a scope in late February. And it tore me up. It was a heartbreaking admission that I wasn't a very good shooter and needed a crutch.
But even with the scope, the last handful of matches in the season showed no notable improvement in my performance - in fact, the scope made things so much worse that I ended up looking under my scope to try and improve - and I was angry about it. I resolved to just not go to them this season. It was, in my mind, a pointless exercise. And no matter how much my wife asked, we were NOT going this year. I didn't care how much she or her brothers were disappointed; I had what was left of my pride to maintain.
Well, we ended up going. (Like this really surprises you.) And, just like last season, the first night out was a whole handful of nothing. But I was determined to make the best of it.
Things started turning around that night. My brother-in-law has what is called a "board sighter." You stick it into the end of your gun and look through the scope - it's set for 47 yards - and then you can adjust your scope based on what you see through the board sighter. We got it sighted in, and the next week, I took 11th at Dubois. Then the next week, I took 19th at Dubois. The aggregate of the two finishes was a half a hog (front quarter one week, hind quarter the next, or vice versa).
And - lo and behold! - shooting matches started being fun again. I was covering my boards with shot, and even if they weren't "in the money," so to speak, it was still great to shoot some boards that other folks would say was about as good as what you could get out of a factory gun.
As I said earlier - if you go *expecting* to win, you're going to be let down. But I was comfortable with the subsequent dry spell that I endured, lasting a bit over a month, because I was giving myself every opportunity to place well - sometimes your X just isn't in the right spot, and sometimes you pepper your entire board with shot except for the X, and that's OK.
Which brings us to last Friday night. It was the last Friday night match of the year that Ireland was having, and nothing had really come of the previous three Friday nights that I'd been there. My wife (bless her heart) shot a board and did pretty well with it - it got tossed, but she was proud of it because it was as good as, if not better than, many of mine from the last month.
Then I shot a board a couple of rounds later, with no result.
Then another, with the same "OUT" stamped on it.
Then another ...
Went in to the judge's stand to wait for them to review and toss my board. He looked at it, looked at me, said "Are you Brandon G.?" I said, "Yes." He showed me the board and said, "That's pretty good." I looked at it for a moment, looked at him, looked back down at the board, and said, "..... Huh." And handed it back to him.
Was it dead center? By the naked eye at a drunken first glance, yes.
Upon further review - and verified by the judge's microscope - it was just a pecker hair off. But still good enough for meat of the red variety.
I'd photoshopped the finishing position of that board out of the closeup above. Here's how it looked. (And no, for some reason, they can't cut boards straight at Ireland this season. Don't know what's going on there.)
Please note the "2" denoting the near-dead-center shot. That means second place out of the 300-something boards shot that night. In shooting match terms, that translates to a hind quarter of beef. Yeah!
And still, the story is bittersweet. Sometime in between that board and my next board two rounds later - and it might have been sometime during the shooting of my second-place-winning board - my scope got nudged or bumped or hit or something. It was nothing malicious by someone else or careless by me - Winchester 870s kick pretty hard and can knock the hell out of a scope with enough shots, which is my theory for what turned my scope into unsalvageable junk. Maybe it was just meant to get one portion of beef, and it did its job and went quietly into the cool November night.
My wife and I decided to share a board later in the match, and with my scope now essentially junk, we had to borrow a gun from one of our friends. For comparison's sake, look at my board above and then look below to see how much more coverage there is on the below board that she and I shot together. That's how much difference a custom barrel makes (vs. a stock barrel).
All the same, though, I'm going to enjoy the inconvenience of trying to find a spot in my deep freeze for the hind quarter of beef coming my way. It's a nice problem to have.
----------------
Now playing: Marmoset - Pretty Girl [Pity]
via FoxyTunes
Your Author had been on a bit of a dry spell at shooting matches since taking 11th and 19th in consecutive weeks at Dubois in late September/early October. Still, when you compare my results with what I was turning in during the latter part of last season - well, there is no comparison, really. Aside from a couple of good results early on in the year, my shooting was embarrassing, so much so that I really had no interest in going back to them this season.
There's a certain amount of pride in being able to take a factory gun with a factory barrel (with the only accoutrement being an extra-full choke screwed into the end of the barrel) and still have success at these things, especially when you're going up against folks with their 60-inch custom barrels, gun rests that will hold up both ends of your gun so all you have to do is look through your scope and shoot, and scopes that enable you to count the amount of BBs on your board from 47 yards away. I felt like I was fighting the good fight against people who were pouring ridiculous amounts of money into this endeavor, and any meat I won last year was extra sweet as a result.
Thing is, I'm just not very good. Try as he did, my dad wasn't terribly successful at immersing me in gun/hunting culture. Sure, I shot a BB gun when I was a kid, and occasionally a .22 - I can't begin to tell you how many EVIL DASTARDLY aluminum cans I killed in my formative years - but due to my comparative lack of interest, shooting was never really a priority with me.
As time went on last season and my original run of beginner's luck (several positive results - a couple of meat finishes in the lower top 10) ran out, my shooting got steadily worse, to the point where it was an embarrassment to show my boards to my more experienced brothers-in-law, and every adjustment (and readjustment and unadjustment) just made the situation worse. My 12-shot boards had very little shot on them; they looked more like 5-shot boards. I would have had better luck standing there and throwing the shells at my board.
And going to shooting matches stopped being fun. I'm a competitor; it's only fun for me if I turn in a respectable performance. No one likes to embarrass themselves, and even if the group I went with didn't think it was that bad, I did. And that was a very difficult thing to take; ask my wife, who endured many rides home from shooting matches last season with me being stone-cold silent.
Don't get me wrong. Going to shooting matches is much like going to the casino - if you go there expecting to win, then you will, 99 times out of 100, be sorely disappointed. But "expecting to win" and "giving yourself every opportunity to win" - much like lessening the house edge by playing perfect blackjack - are two different things. And I was coming up terribly short in the latter.
Something had to be done. Either improve my game by any means necessary, or devote my time and monetary resources to something a little more productive and less embarrassing, like that midget porn film I've been wanting to make.
Well, since my wife isn't amenable to the latter, I broke down and bought a scope in late February. And it tore me up. It was a heartbreaking admission that I wasn't a very good shooter and needed a crutch.
But even with the scope, the last handful of matches in the season showed no notable improvement in my performance - in fact, the scope made things so much worse that I ended up looking under my scope to try and improve - and I was angry about it. I resolved to just not go to them this season. It was, in my mind, a pointless exercise. And no matter how much my wife asked, we were NOT going this year. I didn't care how much she or her brothers were disappointed; I had what was left of my pride to maintain.
Well, we ended up going. (Like this really surprises you.) And, just like last season, the first night out was a whole handful of nothing. But I was determined to make the best of it.
Things started turning around that night. My brother-in-law has what is called a "board sighter." You stick it into the end of your gun and look through the scope - it's set for 47 yards - and then you can adjust your scope based on what you see through the board sighter. We got it sighted in, and the next week, I took 11th at Dubois. Then the next week, I took 19th at Dubois. The aggregate of the two finishes was a half a hog (front quarter one week, hind quarter the next, or vice versa).
And - lo and behold! - shooting matches started being fun again. I was covering my boards with shot, and even if they weren't "in the money," so to speak, it was still great to shoot some boards that other folks would say was about as good as what you could get out of a factory gun.
As I said earlier - if you go *expecting* to win, you're going to be let down. But I was comfortable with the subsequent dry spell that I endured, lasting a bit over a month, because I was giving myself every opportunity to place well - sometimes your X just isn't in the right spot, and sometimes you pepper your entire board with shot except for the X, and that's OK.
Which brings us to last Friday night. It was the last Friday night match of the year that Ireland was having, and nothing had really come of the previous three Friday nights that I'd been there. My wife (bless her heart) shot a board and did pretty well with it - it got tossed, but she was proud of it because it was as good as, if not better than, many of mine from the last month.
Then I shot a board a couple of rounds later, with no result.
Then another, with the same "OUT" stamped on it.
Then another ...
Went in to the judge's stand to wait for them to review and toss my board. He looked at it, looked at me, said "Are you Brandon G.?" I said, "Yes." He showed me the board and said, "That's pretty good." I looked at it for a moment, looked at him, looked back down at the board, and said, "..... Huh." And handed it back to him.
Was it dead center? By the naked eye at a drunken first glance, yes.
Upon further review - and verified by the judge's microscope - it was just a pecker hair off. But still good enough for meat of the red variety.
I'd photoshopped the finishing position of that board out of the closeup above. Here's how it looked. (And no, for some reason, they can't cut boards straight at Ireland this season. Don't know what's going on there.)
Please note the "2" denoting the near-dead-center shot. That means second place out of the 300-something boards shot that night. In shooting match terms, that translates to a hind quarter of beef. Yeah!
And still, the story is bittersweet. Sometime in between that board and my next board two rounds later - and it might have been sometime during the shooting of my second-place-winning board - my scope got nudged or bumped or hit or something. It was nothing malicious by someone else or careless by me - Winchester 870s kick pretty hard and can knock the hell out of a scope with enough shots, which is my theory for what turned my scope into unsalvageable junk. Maybe it was just meant to get one portion of beef, and it did its job and went quietly into the cool November night.
My wife and I decided to share a board later in the match, and with my scope now essentially junk, we had to borrow a gun from one of our friends. For comparison's sake, look at my board above and then look below to see how much more coverage there is on the below board that she and I shot together. That's how much difference a custom barrel makes (vs. a stock barrel).
All the same, though, I'm going to enjoy the inconvenience of trying to find a spot in my deep freeze for the hind quarter of beef coming my way. It's a nice problem to have.
----------------
Now playing: Marmoset - Pretty Girl [Pity]
via FoxyTunes
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
New policy, effective immediately.
I have decided to enact a new policy in my life.
I am going to say the meanest, most judgmental things to someone, and it will all be OK because I will preface it with, "Now, I don't mean anything by it, but....."
For instance. If I see a woman walking around with 6 or 7 kids, I can tell her, "Now, I don't mean anything by it, but pooping out that many kids can really be a financial drain on you."
I say this because Nemesis and I were outside smoking at work this morning, minding our own business. This guy I've never seen before in my life was delivering bottled water, and he walks right up to us. "Now, I don't mean anything by it, but a few years ago, I got really bad sick. Had allergies. My esophagus closed up and I couldn't breathe. And it was because of those things." Pointed at my cigarette.
(Now, I don't mean anything by it, but maybe if he'd studied a little harder in school and knew the difference between an esophagus and a windpipe, then maybe he wouldn't be delivering bottled water for a living.)
See how easy it is? All of my meanest thoughts can come rolling out, and I can be guilt-free about it because I prefaced it as such, and you can't have hurt feelings.
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I am going to say the meanest, most judgmental things to someone, and it will all be OK because I will preface it with, "Now, I don't mean anything by it, but....."
For instance. If I see a woman walking around with 6 or 7 kids, I can tell her, "Now, I don't mean anything by it, but pooping out that many kids can really be a financial drain on you."
I say this because Nemesis and I were outside smoking at work this morning, minding our own business. This guy I've never seen before in my life was delivering bottled water, and he walks right up to us. "Now, I don't mean anything by it, but a few years ago, I got really bad sick. Had allergies. My esophagus closed up and I couldn't breathe. And it was because of those things." Pointed at my cigarette.
(Now, I don't mean anything by it, but maybe if he'd studied a little harder in school and knew the difference between an esophagus and a windpipe, then maybe he wouldn't be delivering bottled water for a living.)
See how easy it is? All of my meanest thoughts can come rolling out, and I can be guilt-free about it because I prefaced it as such, and you can't have hurt feelings.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
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