Fatale Abstraction

This weekend was chock-full and friends and shooty goodness. I want to say thanks to everyone who I got to spend time with while they were in town visiting the gun show - it was great to meet people whose blogs I've been reading for so long. I met Speaker Tweaker and his wonderful family, as well as Fat Hairy Bastard and the lovely Denise. Commenter Rabbit showed up with his rapier wit and charming wife. Matt G and marvleous family came, and his girls played in the pool with ST's daughter. Brandon and his daughter came down from Memphis, so they won the gold star for greatest distance traveled. It was great to meet them, too. Holly, JPG and Peter came by as well. Just when I expected everyone to begin stopping by, my phone crapped out utterly. Crud. I bought my Centro just 3 months ago, and here it had some sort of catastrophic failure. Crappity. Somehow, even without a phone, everyone managed to find their way here, and I squeaked by for 3 days with no cell phone. It's funny-- I can't remember the last time I went more than a day without service. Someone may be a teeny bit spoilt, oui?

I finally got some earplugs made for myself at the show. The earplug guy was a great wit and made the process more fun and less tedious. Next time, though, I'm going to have him make a cast of my ears and send off for the glitter foam plugs for me. They'll match my retainers, even if they are ghastly expensive.

I got to try out the new earplugs when I went shooting Sunday with Holly, JPG, Peter and LawDog [I am so not worthy!]. We all shot lots of things, and Peter let us all put some Crimson Trace grips through their paces. Seems they'd make an excellent training tool to work on steadying the hands, actually- the laser looked like I was doing a spirograph thingie- wobbling about in a floral loopy type pattern. The fun new discovery for me was LD's Henry .22 rifle, which he graciously allowed me to keep re-loading and shooting.

Peter and LD(two of the best folks you could ever hope to meet) coached me on my new 20 ga feminine protection, and after I was handling it more comfortably, the shooty goodness commenced. First was the birdshot, and with more and more specific instruction (yes, nose-over-toes went through my head all day Monday), I went on to make a hash of a paper plate with slugs. That was fuuuuuunnnn.

But, I did have to go back for more of that Henry action. The funny thing is what a hoot it is to fire that thing, and particularly after shooting the shotgun, the .22 felt like shooting water at clown heads at a midway shooting gallery. Fun stuff. I want one of those.

Monday I did the round robin of AT&T wireless stores, finally being sent to their equipment repair center. They are going to overnight me a new Centro. Meanwhile, I went to Target Monday evenign and picked up a go-phone for $16.24, slipped my SIM card in and Bob's your uncle: same old phone, only with 14 messages racked up. Yup. Totally spoiled.

Went to Mom and Pop's for dinner Monday night, and Dad was showing me a .22 rifle he's been working on. He asked me if I want to go dove hunting with him this year, and I said "oh yeah, I totally want to shoot the international symbol of peace." Um, I'd better get to work if I'll be able to hit a moving target by September!

Don't you just LOVE a gun show weekend? I'm starting to...