Now I Understand

The Most Magnificent Pair of Glasses I've Ever Seen!

OK.  I admit it.  I really posted the picture because of her awesome set of hair.

Had No Idea

My Sister Escaped Again

Happy Thanksgiving

"Possible Modifications"

First of all, I have to admit that I didn't realize that attaching a bayonet was a modification to a rifle unless the rifle had to be modified to attach it in the first place.  I mean, if it has a bayonet lug, how is attaching a bayonet to the lug a modification?  

Be that as it may, I saw this chart of "possible modifications" that goes just a little beyond the USA Today list. 

I simply could not decide whether to go with the Mini-AR 15 bayonet that has a Micro-AR15 bayonet that has a Micro-Chain Saw Bayonet  on it or the Corgi Bayonet.

About the time I realized I already had the solution because The Elfin Niece is a Corgi Freak; I find that these are available.

How can you NOT go with a 45,000 ton bayonet on your rifle? 

Yes, I know.  There's also an Imperial Death Star Bayonet available but those are special order items and shipping and handling is just not even close to reasonable. Besides that, all I need is for a spent casing to fall down that ventilator shaft and blow the whole thing up in my face.

Monday Again Already?

Mondays

Gettin' The Job Done

Delivery For Mr. Kenneth Lane

Horse Drawn Vehicles and Animals

A Recoil Absorbing Butt Plate?

Bookish

Everything's Fine Now. We're All Safe

Caturday

Expensive Jugs

But I do believe that Yetis are worth every penny

Had No Idea

The County Named a Park After My Sister

All those years of Servicing  Serving the Community finally paid off!

100+ Year Old Selfie

Been reading about the daughters of Tsar Nicholas II lately and been a little surprised at how perfectly normal and down to earth they seem to have been.    Still, I thought it was funny when I ran across a selfie taken by Anastasia.   She had to use a mirror.  No selfie sticks back then but a selfie is a selfie.

I guess there really is nothing new under the sun.

Found it on Pinterest.

Still the 4th

Happy 4th

Mondays

Just Six More Numbers

I imagine the shotgun would be pretty expensive too.

Tiger Tuesday?

Ran into a ton of Tiger Tank pictures on Pinterest.

I believe this is the Jaged Tiger that is at the Museum at Aberdeen Proving Grounds.

Same damage to the mantlet and the gun is shoved back a few feet from where it should be.

I crawled all over that thing back in 1974.  My dad was teaching a class at APG.  He took us along and dumped us at the museum every day for 2 weeks.  

No Hot Dogs Today

My Dad's favorite cousin.  Dad was an only child and Earl was like the big brother he never had.   Taught Dad how to shoot and to hunt.  Dad said he could stand on the front porch and pick individual pecans out of the tree in the front yard with his .22.

For years, all we knew was that he was killed crossing some river.

Thanks to the internet, it wasn't hard to find out where his unit was in March 1945.

Remagen.

Before that, they had a small part in the Battle of the Bulge and before that they were in the  Hurtgen Forest.

Never asked for a safe space.   Actually fought real Fascists.


His mother opted to have the remains repatriated after the war.  She asked the Army if she could open the casket;  said she needed to know it was really him.   They told her she wouldn't recognize him.  She said that somehow she would but they prevailed.

After my brother's death, she told my mother that it will never go away but it will get better.

"It."   Grief.

Dad never celebrated on Memorial Day.    Neither do I.

Just Six More Numbers

 Well golly.   It looks like there might be a Ford I'd be willing to buy after all.

Found on somebody's Pinterest page.

I'm All for Equality

I'm so damned old my second and third thoughts were that it should say women and it should have a question mark at the end.   I will keep my first thought to myself.

Two By Moonlight

Events of the night of June 7 / 8, 1944

Story of Canadian fliers in World War II flying B-24’s and patrolling the waters around England, and later France.

One particular B-24 sank 2 German submarines in a span of 20 minutes during one of its night time patrols.

Those patrols lasted in the range of 10 to 15 hours, as the B-24’s had a very long range.

This story may also be found at:

 Two By Moonlight

The Internet

Just Six More Numbers

Mondays

Caturday

Just Six More Numbers

Forever

Just Six More Numbers

Dreamboat Annie

 The Elfen Niece needed to beef up her resume' so it would be more competitive when she applies to Vet School and that required volunteer experience at a Vet Office, Animal Shelter or Farm.   Shortly after we learned that, I happened to have cause to drive within sight of the County Pound so I stopped in to pick up an application.  While I was there, I asked to see the inventory.  

Many dozens of dogs were barking, snarling, jumping up on their cage doors and doing all the things dogs do in jail but there was one that was different.

She looked like a beagle that had been stretched in every direction.   Long body,  legs for days (four of them) and big ol' elephant ears.  I'm no expert on actual Hounds but she was definitely a Hound of some sort.   The thing that made her stand out from the mongrel horde wasn't so much her appearance as it was her attitude of complete indifference to me.    It reminded me of the way TEN cold-shouldered the Johnny Bravo salesdude in Gooseburg a few months back.  She looked at me, turned around and walked out into her little fenced dog run without making a sound.

 Archibald Rutledge said of the Hound:

"He invariably seems to me to belong to an older and a wiser generation, which regards the behavior of all other living things as an exceedingly juvenile performance.   A hound is the only dog that can make me self-conscious of my own ridiculousness.   Fixed by his appraising eye, I shrink into my true stature."

And so it was with me.

I went on about my business but the dog kept haunting me.   It finally dawned on me that we hadn't heard anything back about TEN's application so it seemed reasonable to go check on it the next time I was out that way.   The office is only twenty minutes from the pound so one could argue that being at the office was, constructively, out that way.  I had the argument with myself so it was easy to win and I went back a week after first being snubbed by the beast.

The second look was much the same as the first.  Amidst the cacaphony of yips, yaps, barks and snarls, the big galoot just stood there silently as I looked her over.

Her chart said she was a Treeing Walker Coon Hound.  Fifty percent off adoptions that weekend too.   Oh My.  

Call me Uncle Versey.  I ain't hunted coons in years.   

Tossed and turned all night alternating between half dreams of getting the dog and bleak reality of The Lovely Bride having a cow.  I devised a sinister plan:   I would ask her permission.   I've never used such an underhanded tactic before.  I'd have the  element of surprise.

That Saturday Morning, I asked TLB if we could have a rational discussion about an important subject.   She allowed that we could and told her that I found a dog that I liked, the dog was heartworm-negative, snipped and chipped and the pound was having a sale.   She said she wasn't against it and that was close enough for me.  I Christened her Ann, after Bugle Ann, a dog in an old book and movie and brought her home. 

The poor thing was gaunt and famished.  After we bathed her, she ate three bowls of food.  Then she took over the dog bed and promptly had a seizure.    I was thinking that maybe I should change her name to Hillary but the seizure ended before I got through listing all the reasons why I could never do that to anyone, much less a dog.  She recovered quickly and has not had another.

Ann turned out to be an inadequate name.  Her personality called for at least two syllables so she quickly became Annie.   Just as quickly, she won our hearts.  She simply doesn't get tired of being playful and affectionate.  

Annie has broken all the rules and never gets in trouble.  The small side of our sectional couch is no longer mine.  She just took it for granted that the couch is hers and somehow it is.  She sleeps in The Elfin Niece's bed when TEN is not around.  She gets away with begging.  You name it.  She is the pretty girl that gets away with everything because of her charm.

So now we have Bullet, the business-like GSP; Abbey the mixed mutt that we inherited when the Father in Law went into the ALF and Annie, the Dog Pound Coon Hound.  Its a bit more of a pack than is optimal but the dogs are adjusting and its nice to have someone around that's always happy to see me when I get home. 

Had No Idea My Sister Got A Contractor's License

Just Six More Numbers

An Infidel and an Odyssey Part 9

A couple of Saturdays ago, the Elfen Niece and I attended a cookout down on the river at a place owned by Buckshot's youngest son.  The son, a couple of grandsons and one of their friends were there for a day of grilling, relaxing and a little shooting.

I brought along a few guns for the younger crowd to try out.  They quickly learned that you do not make a habit of shooting your steel pistol target with a 25-06.  The Accubomb penetrated the steel spinner, the jacket fused to the inside of the hole and the core landed in the next County.   It probably actually did since the place is on the County Line.

I brought along a 12 ga Parker VHE and some Vintager shells so the youngsters could shoot a 12 ga without getting beat up.  They each got to shoot a 101 year old GEW 98 too.  

The friend brought along some kind of big plastic 9mm that he just bought cheap and proceeded to shoot about a five foot group.  I don't think he ever even hit the paper.   I don't think the problem was the gun.  It could have been a smooth bore and shot a better group at seven yards.

I wanted to show off TEN's Remington R51 so she shot next.  She hit two bullseyes and  the rest were in the black too.  We refrained from commenting on the previous shooter's suckage and let the others try a few shots with the Remington.  Everybody liked it for all the right reasons:   ease of racking the slide, ease of loading and less felt recoil that most 9mms of similar size.  All expressed appreciation for the grip safety too. 

Less than a week later,  I was talking to a couple who are just getting into shooting and have a Ruger LCR.   The lady is partially disabled and has limited manual dexterity.  As with Aunt Clickity, she found that she could operate the LCR while she could not operate any of the automatics she had tried.  Instead of listening to expert advice and getting something just dripping with Tacti-coolness that she couldn't shoot, she got something she can shoot.   She voted for Trump too.

I saw her target.  She had 15 out of 15 rounds in the black and it was the first time she had fired the LCR and only the second time she had been shooting.   The LCR is a good fit for her but the husband asked what I thought of Hi Point and what I'd recommend instead of his Hi Point since it hasn't worked since he fired the first round. 

We talked about different handguns.   He wanted something less expensive than the LCR and automatics were definitely options for him.   We talked about the Kimber BelAir and several others.   Naturally, with the R51 fresh in my mind, I got around to talking about it.

The trouble is the R51 was at home in TEN's room  so I didn't have it with me to show them how well it does what it does.   The obvious solution was to buck up and get myself my own R51.  Seriously.  Are we still living in America or aren't we? Gears started turning and eventually churned out a plausible justification for it: "if I sell these two I will make $300 more than I will spend on the R51..."   I began to look around.

Gooseburg couldn't get anybody to even look at them until I bought one back before Thanksgiving (seriously, the sales guy said he'd never had one out of the display case) but now they were sold out.   Its never easy to get waited on there and I tried twice just so I could ask if they'd be getting anymore in but had to give up for lack of time.  

On a whim, I decided to check one of the older, local sporting goods stores.  They are known for their high prices but I figured it couldn't hurt to look.  Danged if they didn't have one for twenty bucks less than Gooseburg's last known price and danged if I don't have it now.

So now I will be selling a couple of guns and  participating in the Wussification of America by carrying a gun in a caliber that doesn't start with Four.  I'm still trying to figure out whether this was caused by advancing age or the block of Tofu I found in the pantry last weekend.  Whatever the cause, I don't know when I've liked a carry gun this much.