Your Dose of Kitteh
Back Home on the Range
It is no secret that having kids changes your hobbies. An autistic kid changes them a bit more. Living in a state where a lot of people are paranoid about punching holes in paper is still more… confining.
For the first time in years I got out to shoot. It was also my first time on a real range, which seems to be an oddity for a country boy from Oregon. Why, when you can go up on the hill behind the house?
Bit of time getting my feel back and firing a caliber I have never fired before, I don’t feel ashamed.
3″ circle at 100 yards after dialing in the parallax, which wasn’t as indicated on the scope, I took 15 shots and started getting kind of repeatable. It would do for varminting.
I. Had. Fun. Clean range, not crowded, super nice folks everywhere you looked.
Cosmos Laundromat
Stick out the first minute or so. Frank the sheep has amazing things in store for him. Done in Blender 3D. Free and amazing software.
Evil Dad
I lobbied for and finally got a Circle by Disney.
And it allows us to set hard and fast time limits on computer time – time per day total, time per application, where the kids go. It can happen here at home or remotely.
Now, for hours at a time I have my family back instead of a single guy living in a house of people.
WW2 and WW3 happened. Billions died. The the land was burned and they boiled the sea.
And we don’t have to battle for it. The expectations are there, they can be added to or taken away, and people are present.
Star Mangled Anthem
You tried your best? Truly?
Have you considered gainful employment in the fast food industry?
Oh Really?
If teachers really had this kind of clout do you think salaries would be so low?
I am going to bet on the NRA.
Just sayin’.
Mercy
Had a lady tell me that she didn’t think anyone should own assault weapons and that much more restricted gun laws should be in place.
She meant it. She truly and passionately meant it and thought only of the perceived “good” outcomes.
I chose at that moment to clamp down on every single instinctive response, ranging from 2A/tyranny, fallacy of disarming, assault weapons aren’t legal and ANY semi-auto is deadly in the hands of a competent gunman.
Instead, I chose to be kind and point out that the people that shoot innocents are by definition mentally ill and that more than a few were already on the radar.
If she understood how many legal gun owners there are that would never even think of such heinous acts…
Sigh. Worlds apart in worldviews, but my usual vehemence won’t bridge that ignorance gap.
Defeated before I even started.
GuestPost here….so y’all blame Lemur for allowing me to pound away at the keyboard.
As some of you may know from Book of Faces, I’ve picked up woodworking as my mid-life crisis hobby (only slightly less expensive than a motorcycle). Which has given me plenty of opportunities to do research and read articles and watch videos on various techniques and branches of the art. The first thing I ever made was a liquor storage rack, by cutting the end off a pallet, staining the heck out of it, and hanging it on the wall. Yes…its supposed to look rustic, but there’s really NO disguising it for anything but what it is….a first project. Technically speaking, the gun rack was my first project, but we won’t speak of that.
What I found most interesting, though, was my mindframe while browsing photos of fretwork (all of the intricate cutouts using a scroll saw) and 3-D layering or creating a life-like image by using several different types/colors of wood. I noticed, when scrolling past a photo of a man who used a scroll saw and many different layers of wood to build the Milan cathedral, that my reaction started with “Oh Holy Crap that’s awesome!” and immediately moved to “keep scrolling, I’ll never be that good.”
Then I had to stop. “Why not?” I asked myself. Yes….it took him time. Yes….he’s probably got a pile of cast-off mis-cuts larger than my house. Yes, he’s probably gone through more Advil (whiskey?) than the Bayer factories can kick out in a month. But so what? Why can’t I do that? What’s to stop me from building something like this? And the answer is simple: Abso-friggin-lutely nothing.
Nothing except fear. What’s there to fear, though? That I’ll make a mistake? So what? Mistakes can be corrected or re-done.
Nothing except doubts. Why doubt? What did this sawdust artist have that I didn’t? Time? I have time. This isn’t a project that would be done in a weekend. Special classes? Nothing beats getting out in the shop and making perfectly good lumber into sawdust. Loads of assistants who can do some of the cutting/sanding/staining for him and keep the Mountain Dew flowing? Possibly. No idea. That’s beside the point.
So by assuming that I can’t do something like that, I’m basically ensuring that no, I never *will* be able to do something like that. I’m setting myself up with the mindset of “I’ll never be at that point” because I’m not at that point right now, and that mindset falls VERY easily into the “I’m not there, so why bother trying?” I’m pretty sure, if you were able to go through time and retrieve every wood-craft project this artist ever made, there’s a lopsided Popsicle-stick pencil holder colored with Mr Sketch markers that was oooh’d and aaaah’d over and then quietly stuffed in the back of a cabinet somewhere. The difference between myself and this artist is all of the countless other projects dared between that pencil holder and the Milan cathedral.
So no, I’m not up for a project of this magnitude this weekend. But I *am* up for the next step along the road leading to this project. Bring on the sawdust!
“The Master has failed more times than the Beginner has even tried.”
Shatner.
Pushing the envelope of good taste, but I laughed and laughed.
