I know I’m not the easiest person to shop for, but this year I’m going to make it easy. Please, please, please get me one of these.
Archive for the 'Guns' Category
I learned to shoot a gun when I was 4 years old. I used to be pretty handy with a rifle or shotgun in a variety of different situations, but sadly I have no place to easily go shooting since I’ve been in the state of Indiana. I never took a hunter’s safety course or anything like that. I never really felt like I needed it.
I’ve sometimes laughed at people who get all the “gear” to do something. Once I was helping a guy tear off a roof and the owner of the house was trying to help us. He looked like Bob Villa. Brand new jeans, boots, gloves, tool belt, tools, safety glasses, etc, etc. He also didn’t know what he was doing. I’ve seen similar things when I’ve been to shooting ranges. People wearing gloves and ear muffs and everything while they’re shooting trap or just plinking with a .22.
I do wear ear protection when I’m shooting something big or a handgun, but on Saturday I was just plinking with Liz in my mom’s backyard. I had my trusty Winchester 86a and my un-seasoned Taurus M63R. I was shooting with Federal. It was all I could find last time I bought ammo. I’ve normally used Winchester hollow-points in the past.
Well everything was going just fine. I was using the Taurus for a while then Liz wanted to try it and then she gave it back to me. I loaded her up, took one shot, aimed and then heard the loudest noise in a long time. About a second after that I quit hearing anything with my right ear. It was just ringing combined with that white-noise sound you get when the TV is turned up with just fuzz/static.
I eventually figured out my gun must have backfired or something. There’s currently a shell stuck in the barrel and another one all smashed to bits inside of the action. I’m guessing a spent shell didn’t eject and got smashed up. I tried to tap the jammed shell out with a cleaning rod and I couldn’t get my small needle-nosed pliers into the action to get anything out. I might have to take it somewhere. I’ll probably just wait until I go back home and have my grandpa take a look at it.
Every once in a while I check out the news alerts I get in my gmail account. This one was titled “One Million Ways to Die”. So I checked it out. I then just did a screen shot of the image they created. It’s pretty interesting. It’s sort like how I like guns and a lot of people get freaked out about them. More people die every year in this country through car accidents then by gunshot wounds. Sometimes people make a bigger deal out of things then they really need to.
|
S E V E R E |
|
H I G H |
|
E L E V A T E D |
|
G U A R D E D |
|
L O W |
This past weekend I took a trip home cause my mom was getting remarried. I was able to get Friday off and I was also able to get left a little early on Thursday because I got some extra hours in on Monday. The ride out went pretty well and we were able to stop at Culver’s and get some of their delicious wares.
Friday I was able to go shooting and taught Liz the basics of firing a rifle. I’m proud to say that she can hit a box at 20 yards with no problem now. I was also able to try out my new Taurus auto and put 300-400 rounds through it. It only jammed up a couple times which isn’t too bad. It shot pretty nicely, but I think I still like my Winchester bolt action better. It’s lighter and I can also get more than 10 shells through it in the time it takes me to load and fire 10 in the Taurus. It is nice to be able to pop off 10 at once, but if I was in a pinch I’d much rather have the single shot. The reload time just takes too long.
The wedding went really well. It was at their new house and there were only 16 or so of us there. It was nice and small. It was a good time. It was also great to be able to see people. My grandparents were there of course, along with Becky and Andy. I was also able to hang out with Josh, Tyler, Matt and CJ on Friday for a bit.
On the way back we got left a little later than we had planned for, but that wasn’t a big deal. I had a major craving for a Hardees Thick Burger, but apparently once you get a little into IL, there isn’t a single Hardees on 74 until you hit Indy. Let’s just say that by the time we got to Indy we were out of luck. I eventually stopped later and got a sack of 10 with cheese at White Castle. Soon after getting back on the interstate, I came upon a deer that a guy in a truck had just hit. I swerved and missed the body, but ran over a piece of bone that got caught in my tire and shredded it up. Luckily Liz has AAA so we called them and I didn’t have to change it myself in the dark at 2:30am. I was also lucky enough to get a used tire for $10 this morning and so my car is back to normal already.
I also picked up a machete last night at Wal-Mart for $6. That’s right. Only six George Washingtons. How much cheaper can a kid get a weapon of mass destruction these days? I’m planning on using it to hack a path next time I go exploring. It should be fun.
Friday night I hit up some art shows and then did a Taco Bell/Pac-a-sac run. Saturday I tried to find the public shooting area south of Muncie. I was able to find it, but it was gated and locked. So much for an open, public area. My faith in Indiana was restored however when I got some free complementary bread sticks with cheese sauce at Pizza Hut. Today I’ve been able to chill, filled out some retirement fund paperwork stuff and got a letter written.
I got me a new gun. My grandpa gave it to me while I was back home over the weekend. It’s a Taurus M63R . It’s pretty sweet looking. It has a pretty nice Walnut stock with blue finishing. It’s a semi-auto and loads from the stock. If you’re not familiar with these styles there’s a plug you take out of the butt of the stock and then load your shells in from a hole in the side of the stock. It’ll hold 10 rounds and you can get speed loader tubes if you’re into that sort of thing. Haven’t gotten a chance to shoot it yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to it.
Drove to Iowa today. I was going to leave at a reasonable time in the morning but I ended up being awake uber-early so I got left a little after 6am. Met up with the guys and went shooting today, which was a lot of fun. Downside is theres something wrong with my Savage. In the middle of shooting it just quit working. It seems like the firing pin isn’t engaging. The shells are tight in the chamber and you hear the click and stuff. We’re hoping it’s nothing big. Something like there’s a little bit of something stuck in there or something. We’ll need to find Roger to find out for sure.
So we did that, and then got some Harris. Good pizza as always but we had a new waitress and she was taking FOREVER to get things to/for us. We felt kinda bad but then again it seemed like she could have been doing a better job. Oh well, I hope she learns the ropes soon.
Tomorrow’s the wedding and then maybe get my gun working afterwards.
Well, got home and everything…extremely tired of course, but I am functioning. My place is kind of a mess at the moment with mail strewn all over as I’ve opened it and left it to deal with later. I also never really unpacked from the last trip as I will be leaving soon again. The plan for tomorrow is to get off work, maybe go workout, get some food, make sure everything is ready to go, go to sleep, wake up, drive to Kansas. It’s gonna be like 11hrs according to RandMcNally.com but I’m also going to have to make stops to find food and just get out and move around. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it did take that long. Found out that Kat is quite close to my destination so the plan is to get left in the wee hours in the morning to go hang out with her first and then meet up with Bente later. Next weekend I get to run around in the woods, duck behind fallen trees and brush and shoot at people. In layman’s terms they call this paintballing. I was talking to Bleu the other day and he told me he’s not into that cause it’s too realistic and violence is over-glorified in this country. I agree with him that violence gets too much spotlight, however, I feel like I have a handle on reality in that department and still love to go shoot people in the woods. Maybe this has something to do with me growing up with guns, learning to shoot when I was 4, and getting a BB gun when I was 5. Maybe this also has something to do with me being taught to respect firearms and not be foolish and stupid with them. Or maybe it’s just the way I am.
Tomorrow we’re also having another Technology Workshop which means lots of setup and tear-down. They’re really good and informative though so I’m glad to help with them. We’re also working on surveying the entire faculty in reference to classroom technology, how we can improve, what they would like to see, what they don’t like, etc , etc. It’s been a lot of fun. I love just hanging out with some of the profs around here. They have so many interesting stories about places they’ve been, things they’ve seen, things they’re thinking about. They have so many perspectives on so many things that are so different from my worldview. This afternoon I was having a chat with Dan and Chin came walking by and decided to join the crowd. So afterwards I chatted with Chin and it was almost completely in spanish. I’d have to say I kinda surprised myself because I don’t really do that kind of stuff very often. I sometimes wish I was back in junior high or high school with those couple friends I could just randomly talk spanish to just to annoy teachers or people around us. Those were the days when practicing with people wasn’t really something I had to make an effort to do.
Well, as usual, people like to get married and once again it turns out there’s a lot of weddings I’m supposed to go to this year. This past weekend was Josh’s wedding and I was in this one. Twas a lot of fun. Got to hang out with Josh, Matt, Tyler and even CJ a bit. Got to drink 5x the legal limit of Mt Dew while watching Star Wars and eating cheese curls, not cheesy poofs. Oh yeah, I also brought up the fact that I hate cheesy poofs to everybody in the parking lot of the restaurant where the rehearsal dinner was at. That was pretty funny cause all these years all my friends have always been chowing away at those things and I have usually abstained because they just don’t taste good. Apparently nobody realized. So when Tyler lamented that he was out of cheesy poofs, but his parents had an abundance of cheese curls they were all surprised to hear me announce I never liked cheesy poofs anyways.
It was good to be around Josh and Erin a bit because I wasn’t quite sure what I really thought of her. My only interaction with her prior to this past weekend had been back in 2002 I think….the summer I took that class up at Iowa and pseudo lived at Josh and CJ’s apartment. Anyways, Erin is cool and I think things’ll work out well between them.
The best man was supposed to be Brett, but unfortunately he isn’t around anymore. Brett was epileptic. When we were in high school he was at this party once and had a seizure and rolled into a campfire. The results weren’t that great, but luckily he survived. Well last year, Brett had a seizure and this time the outcome wasn’t so great. So Josh asked his then fiance if she would stand in for him. None of us really knew her too well and didn’t really know what to expect. Her name was Sarah and she ended up being awesome. She was definitely “one of the guys”. She also lifts regularly, likes to shoot guns (and knows more than just which end the bullet comes out), plays a lot of the same videogames we do, was getting annoyed with the giddy bridesmaids, etc, etc, etc. Brett had definitely found himself a winner and I applaud him in that respect.
So the wedding went pretty well, there were a few hiccups with the catering and stuff but nothing horrible. I was also really happy to be able to just spend time with the guys. I have made a lot of friends here from college and stuff. Some of them I’m much closer to in certain aspects then I’ll ever be with these guys, but it’s just not the same. These guys back home have history with me that can’t ever be gained elsewhere. We played 4 years of football together. We learned to drive cars. We shot up lots and lots and lots of stuff. We also lit off loads and loads of illegal fireworks….which is also something we did the other night. It’s already been decided that I will be picking up the next load on my way home for CJ’s wedding in June. I also need to make sure to take all my guns back so we can have a little fun with that as well.
The ride back home wasn’t too bad. There were tons of radio stations playing long blocks of the same band. I got to hear 6 Petty songs in a row. That rocked. Well now I get to try and not be tired and get stuff back on track at work all so I can take off on Thursday again and head to Kansas next weekend for yet another wedding.
Do you like fire? I’ve always loved it. Not exactly sure why. It’s just cool to burn/melt things. I remember when I was a little tike and my friends and I would burn stuff with a fisher price magnifying glass in his backyard in Phoenix. Then there were those time Levi and I would play with fire back in those junior high days. Once we found a bunch of half empty/full paint cans in the woods we shook them all up and them put them all in this dead tree. Levi kept trying to light them. In the end I shot them and we sorta blew the tree up. Well, I’ve done many smart and not so smart things with fire since then. Tonight I sorta had an incident with a candle.
Candles are so much fun. I bought this huge one at Wal-Mart that was like 6″ across or so. Well, the wicks kinda burned out but there was a lot of candle left. Frugal me wanted to try and burn the rest of that candle. So I lit some matches and just kinda set them in the burned out hull and started melting some of the sides to create a pool in the middle. Then I stuck more matches in the middle in that wax and later lit them and they would act like wicks soaking up the wax. This works great until you light about 10 of these homemade wicks then walk away for 15 min. Well my spidy-sense luckily kicked in. It said, “Chalupa! Go look at your candle!”. So I did and found one side had melted all the way through and there was wax all over in my bathroom. Luckily it was on tile and it hadn’t cemented yet so I could peel most of it up. Maybe I should just stick to candles self-contained in jars….but where’s the fun in that? Luckily I didn’t burn anything down or get wax all over the carpet.
Oh, and happy birthday to Liz.
Recent Comments