Rainy Day Guns and Leather

Had fun shooting the pics last week and thought I would shoot a few more.  The 'models' in the photos are a S&W 635 625 Mountain Gun in 45 LC, a Savage 32 ACP (not as nice as Tam's but for a little over $100, I couldn't pass it up, maybe I will get it bead blasted or cerakoted.....), Colt 1908, Springfield MilSpec and a Colt Combat Elite.

All of the gun leather is from Dad. He had great taste in guns and accoutrements.  Hope you like the pics.  I tried using more natural light this time, less flash as John recommended.

Just realized that all the wood grips are Ahrends - I guess I like his stuff!  Smooth where it needs to be smooth and grippy where it needs to be grippy.

Three Babies, Three Weeks

For the third time in as many weeks, a parent being careless about how they secure their firearm has led to the wounding or death of a child.

It started with a horrible accident at a school in Bremerton: a 3^rd grader brings a gun to school because he is afraid of bullies, drops his backpack on the classroom table and seriously wounds a classmate.  She is still in the hospital and has gone through 5 surgeries so far to repair the wound from the .45 caliber pistol.  The 3^rd grader found the gun unsecured at his parents’ house.  The “parents” ( and I use that word hesitantly) are now being charged with 3^rd degree assault and face up to 5 years in prison.   The “parents” are also being charged with unlawful possession of a firearm because they are felons – banned from owning firearms.

The second horrible accident happened north of Seattle in Stanwood.  A 7 year old was shot and killed by her sibling.  The child got the gun out of the glove box of the minivan they were in while their parents – a Marysville police office and his wife – were outside the car.

The third one just happened Wednesday night.  Parents stopped at the filling station to get gas and the father leaves his pistol in the car while he fills the tank.  The father has a concealed weapons permit but apparently the gun is uncomfortable to wear, or it pinches his waist or who f’ing knows.  He stashes it under the seat of the car.  His 3 year old, one of two kids in the car, gets out of his car seat, pulls the gun out from under the seat and shoots himself in the head.  I know that there is more to this story but no one is talking about it yet.  Leaving a loaded, unsecured gun in a car is a crime here in Washington State. 

Parents  – SECURE YOUR F’ING GUNS.  If you don’t like the f’ing holster you are wearing, get one that is f’ing comfortable or don’t f’ing carry it.  If you need to leave your pistol in the car, pony up 20 or 30 bucks to get a secure locking box to put the f’ing pistol in.  Is your 3 year old worth $30?  Is having your child traumatized for the rest of their lives because they blew their sister’s f’ing head off worth $30? 

Don’t leave your f’ing guns laying around the house where your kids or their friends can get to them.  If you need to have guns in a couple rooms of your house – SECURE THE F’ING things so your kids don’t f’ing kill themselves or their friends.  Talk to your f’ing kids about guns and talk to them often about what to do if they see a gun at school, in the park, in a car, in a schoolmate’s backpack, at the mall or in the fast food bathroom.  As soon as you are able, drill, drill, drill the Daisy 10 Commandments of Firearm Safety into their heads, start them in the backyard with a BB gun and then once they are mature enough, get them out to the range to shoot pistols and rifles and out to the trap field to shoot some clay targets.

 

Teach them, show them how to be safe with guns and how to have fun with guns.  Teach by example.  Don’t be a jackass.

I cannot even begin to imagine what the parents of these children are going through.  It was and is avoidable.  Don’t be a f’ing jackass – secure your firearm when you are not in direct control of it. 

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Ear Worm

Whatever you do, do not click on this link to Tam’s site – I have had the Monkee’s in my head all morning…

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New Camera

Picked up a new little camera that will step in to the action when the camera phone just doesn't cut it.  Took a few fun pics of some of the collection today to see how the macro and super macro lens worked out.

Dad's Combat Commander with quite a bit of custom mods and the Combat Elite I gave him ~10 years ago - both of Dad's Colts have the grip safeties pinned.  It is just the way he liked them.  I bought the Elite for $369 used - it was part of a lot of ex-Seattle SWAT guns that Kesselrings had.   Should have bought them all.  Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special is mine.  I traded for it a couple of years ago - one of those situations where you see it in the used case and you try to act all cool and nonchalant and not let the dealer know that you have set your mind to walking out of the store with it.  More accurate than I will ever be, capable of 5 shot clover leafs at 15 yards.

I need to set up a light box and do these a little better. I do like the macro shots though.

Got Ammo?

Do you have enough ammunition to last you the rest of your life?  Do you have enough reloading components on hand to feel comfortable heading to the trap fields and shoot 4 or maybe even 8 rounds of trap and have it not feel like someone punched you in the gut and stole your wallet?  I am getting to the point where it pains me to shoot anything other than .22’s but being comfortable doing that takes having enough Federal Bulk on hand to crack the concrete slab in the corner of the garage!

Saw over at SHTFplan.com that there is pending legislation in Illinois to add a 2% tax on to ammunition purchases to “go toward a ‘high-crime trauma center grant fund’…”

It is a slippery slope friends, and like Mac says:

Like cigarettes and booze, ammunition, it will be argued, is a danger to public health and the general welfare, and as such, will require high taxation to cover the adverse social impact it causes. It’s only a 2% tax today, but once the idea takes hold without protest, it will without a doubt lead to massive price increases, leaving many without the ability to exercise a right that is a pillar of the US Constitution.

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Campaign

I am at the point that when I see an Obama re-election advertisement on a website that I have to look really close to make sure that it is real and not some type of joke or satire site.  Seriously. 

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Cool (hot) Gadget

Check this out – the BioLite Camp Stove, that when lit, using small sticks and twigs, creates thermoelectricity which powers a fan which stokes the fire creating more thermoelectricity which makes the fan to go faster which in turn generates excess electricity to charge cell phones, lights, etc. via USB.  Whew!!

Larger version is called the HomeStove which works on the same concepts as the Rocket Stove but with the power generator/USB doo-hicky attached.  Great idea.  I will be getting one or two of the smaller versions to add to my kit.

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Gotta get some canning tools!

Great post over at SurvivalBlog on canning all kinds of stuff.  I have been talking and thinking about canning for a long damn time and I just need to make the investment in the tools and get hopping!  The article covers canning meat, meatballs, meatloaf, soups, gravy  and even mentions bacon.  My mouth is watering!

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The End is Near

Shopping at Wally World last night and saw a couple of interesting things. First was this:

TONS of Auguson Farms products and all at really damn good prices.

Second thing I saw that made me do a double-take was the new Sig Sauer AR-15 in the Sporting Goods section….

They also had a good clearance deal on 28 gauge shotshellls.  I have quite a bit of ammo for guns that I don’t own yet J but I was able to resist picking those shells up!  It was hard though!!

If you aren’t stocking up, you just aren’t paying attention.

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A Deal a Day

A new site (to me) that I have been checking on daily is called American Gunfighters.  They list one deal every day, kind of like Woot.com and other sites.  Seems that the deals are fairly decent and you really need to be on the ball to get the good stuff.  Deal today (1/11/2012) is a Pelican Model 1700 long case for $170 bucks or so which is about the going rate on Amazon.  I haven’t bought anything from them yet and am not receiving any compensation for mentioning them, I just think it is a neat idea, appreciate the concept and want to spread the word. 

Update: well I didn't know this but apparently their schtick is to offer just one deal at a time, not one a day.  Pelican deal is over and the current deal is for CAA AR mags.

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Holidays

Christmas and the New Year were both very good to our family.  Got to spend time decompressing, taking care of some chores around the house – didn’t get it all done, but some of it! – spent some quality time with the girls and made some new friends.

Hard part about all of it was having Christmas without Dad.  He always loved it so much and would go all out.  As kids and as teenagers, my brother and I were treated pretty damn well by Santa Claus and Santa Claus liked to give firearms!  Those are some of my most cherished possessions and every one of them has great memories and meaning to me.

As an adult, I was able to give ‘Santa’ and 'Mrs. Claus' a couple of gifts myself and that was such a pleasure – after all the years of receiving, it was nice to be in a position of being able to give.  Now that Dad is gone, I have one or two of those firearms in my possession and my brother has one of them too.  Hopefully someday I can pass them on to someone else.

Another thing about Dad at Christmas is that he always loved reading  “The Night Before Christmas” to us.  There are lots of pictures of us on his lap, or flanking him on the couch.  Even as adults, we would all crowd on the couch to listen to Dad read that story.  This year, I got to read the story to B’s 8 year old and yeah, it was hard.  It brought back lots of great memories and I had to take a few pauses to compose myself but I was able to soldier on through!

This year we also did something that I haven’t done in a long time or maybe not even at all – Mom will have to chime in and remind me if my memory is faulty – but we loaded up and went to Christmas Mass Service at a local church on Christmas Eve.  It was awfully nice and will become a yearly tradition for us.  I am not much of churchgoer -  I believe in God and Jesus but prefer to pray, contemplate and seek guidance at my own rhythm.

Well, I hope all is well with you and yours out there and that you all have a wonderful year in spite of how things are looking!  Changes are coming, one way or the other and I hope you are taking steps to take care of yourself and the ones you love.  I think I would rather be prepared waaaaay early as opposed to being one minute too late!

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4 More Years

4 years ago today, I had surgery to remove my cancerous right kidney. 

Too much chewing tobacco or mishandling old school electrostatic plotter ink or too much or not enough of something caused a tumor about the size of a golf ball to grow on the upper lobe of my kidney.  Discovered I had it after going to the doctor because if some serious issues I was having with sweating of all things.  At night I would wake up drenched from head to foot – felt and looked like someone had taken a 5 gallon bucket of water and dumped it on me.  During the day, especially after lunch or dinner, it looked like I had just run 5 miles in the heat and humidity of a Missouri summer.  My shirt would soak through and the area around my belt, all around my waist, would act as a gasket to catch the sweat literally streaming off my upper body.  You could say that my body was telling me that something was wrong.

I made an appointment with my doctor because I am also a diabetic and the gushers of sweat pouring out of my body were rather concerning to say the least.  She had a battery of blood tests run and I was informed that it looked like, maybe, kinda sorta that I had a form of lymphoma.  Great, just fricking great.  She wasn’t sure and they needed to run some more tests on the blood samples.  Another 10 days passed before I got another call from the doc, letting me know that it in fact wasn’t lymphoma but something was going on with my kidneys or my liver.

Too this day, it is hard to communicate how incredibly good that news felt.  I hadn’t told anyone about the possibility that I had lymphoma – didn’t see a need to get my friends and family worried or to get myself worked up over something that they weren’t sure about, so the “not lymphoma” news felt like a last second pardon by the governor as they strapped me in to the electric chair.  Everything else in life that others see as BIG DEALS don’t bother me anymore after having to deal with the emotions and fear and what-if’s I had to deal with during those 10 days between the “may be lymphoma” to the “not lymphoma” diagnosis.  I thought I was going to have to start divvying up my stuff and writing a will and figure out who was going to take care of my dog!  It’s only Kidney cancer!  Hah!  Bust out the champagne and cigars!!

I was sent out to a radiologist for a sonogram. A cute little gal performed the procedure and I could tell when her eyebrows knitted together that she had found something and when she said she would be right back and had to go talk to someone I knew that there was definitely something going on.  A radiologist came in and looked at the image and told me that yes, there was a growth on my right kidney and they needed to schedule me for a CAT scan or MRI – can’t remember which.  It involved an IV of radioactive material that allowed them to see if there was blood coursing through the growth.  We did the scan the same day and yes, there was a tumor and it needed to come out.

The oddest thing about the whole deal is that my project manager at the time at work had just returned from some serious peel-you-open-like-a-unraveled-baseball surgery to deal with his second cancerous kidney tumor.  No, we didn’t work in a hazardous area, we just sat on out butts doing PM work on a contract management system. 

I was referred to a urologist who them thankfully referred me to a surgeon who specializes in kidney transplants which was great.  My urologist is this big guy who would look at home on a tractor or loading hay on a farm truck and he has these gigantic hands – fingers the size of Costco hotdogs - shaking his hand was like trying to shake a hand with a baseball mitt on it.  I imagined that they would have to cut me open from stem to stern for the urologist to get his giganto-mitts in me to remove the kidney.  The kidney transplant doc had little tiny hands like an 8 year old girl – that made me feel a lot better. Plus, the doc had done over 750 kidney transplants and I figured that if he had done that successfully 750 times – taking one out and putting it back in, he could easily handle just taking one out.

So, the surgery was scheduled for the morning of the 14^th.  They had told me that no, they would not have to cut me open front to back, that they could use a laparoscopic method that involved a few holes and a relatively small 4 inch incision.  After exercising my Google-fu, I found some great videos online that showed the procedure, start to finish and it didn’t look that bad at all.  A hole for an air tube and a couple of holes for their little Swiss Army-knife-on-a-stick gadgets that had a clipper, stapler, cauterizer and who knows what else.  One of the holes was used for the camera and the longer incision was to allow them to pull the kidney out with this gadget that when inserted, looked like an ink pen but when some button or lever was thrown, opened up into a little winged basket/spoon thing to scoop up, enclose and remove the kidney.  It was all pretty slick.

I am having a hard time remembering the night before the surgery.  I am sure I was nervous and anxious  and I do remember having a hard time falling asleep.  My bro picked me up in the morning for the trip to the hospital in Tacoma and my boss, who I mentioned earlier had just gone through the extreme version of all this met us at the hospital.  After getting checked in and into the gown, the process began.  I remember being rolled in to the surgery room and the whole place being filled with women, 4 or 5 of them.  I asked them to please be gentle when they did the catheter and that got a couple of chuckles out of them.  Next thing I know, they have the mask over my face, I am counting backwards, the process is over and I am in the recovery room!

Everything had gone well, no issues and they said that I would probably be able to go home in couple of days.  I got lucky and got my own room with a TV, bathroom, the whole 9 yards.  After getting settled in, my bro and boss stopped in to see me and to make sure I was doing ok.  I had a couple of books, a laptop and I was all set.  The food in the hospital wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and I had a great set of nurses checking in on me quite often.  I still had the catheter because they needed to check the urine for blood and I had all kinds of wires and IV’s and other things plugged in to me.  As the day wore on, they removed various attachments which was a good thing.

I had lots of friends stop by to see me and bring me various little gifts, all of which I still have.  One of the best was a “Big Racks” calendar from one of the local hunting stores.  Healthy, buxom ladies wearing about 3 square inches of clothing holding Boone and Crockett-worthy racks of elk, whitetail deer etc.  My buddy had the gals at the store sign all the photos as if they were the gals in the picture – “Hey big boy, get better soon so we can go hunting – from Crystal”.

Recovery at the hospital was fairly fast.  The catheter came out late the next day and I got to finally get up and shuffle around and use the restroom for real.  During one of my shuffles around the hall, I ran in to another guy out shuffling around in his gown and socks, pulling an IV rack along with him.  I asked him what he was in for and he said that he had Crohn’s Disease and just had the majority of his intestines removed.  That kind of put things in perspective for me and I wasn’t feeling as sorry for myself anymore.

I had gone in for surgery on a Friday and they let me head home on Sunday.  Pretty damn amazing when you think about it.  My bro picked me up and got me home in one piece and damn, it was good to be home.  Due to the scheduling of the surgery, I had done most of my Christmas shopping and had decorated the house with some lights and all that, plus the house was clean!  I knew that folks would be dropping by and my friends at work had put together a food delivery schedule so the place had to be presentable. The pain meds were wonderful but I did not want to be on them very long so I started weaning myself off the serious stuff right away. Getting in to and out of the chair was the most painful thing with the stitches and all that, but after a while I figured out a way to do it less painfully.

I am still amazed at how lucky I am – I have wonderful friends and family, a wonderful woman who loves me and I can’t imagine life without them.  I sometimes feel like I am just stumbling through life and that I am one of the luckiest men you will ever meet.  I reckon that I have been living my life right and that I must be doing something to be living this blessed life.  I do, however, feel that I am not making the most out of my second chance and that I need to buckle down and try to make a bigger impact, or difference.  I have let life’s winds buffet me in one direction or the other for quite some time, getting by on luck and the kindness of others!  There has been quite a bit of hard work and perseverance tossed in there and I get that from Mom and Dad – I just feel that I need to do more and I will continue to strive towards that goal.  When is enough enough?  I don’t know and I hope that I never know.  A challenging life is good – it builds character!

Ok – that is enough reminiscing and self reflection for now!  Thank you once again, for your friendship and thanks for stopping by and reading my stuff.  I don’t post as often as I have in the past but that is only because life is keeping me busy.  I have lots of things to post about over the Christmas break so please check back in and I promise there will be some gun pics that you don’t want to miss.

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Welcome to the Future

Via Instapundit – here comes the future – picosecond exposure cameras….

If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion moving through the same fluid, the resulting movie would last three years. My emphasis

Very cool stuff – built to see around corners but lots of potential for this technology – depending on speed of processing and output, could this lead to Predator-like cloaking systems?  Harry Potter’s cape?

  Bad. Ass.

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The Gun Wire

Over at the always entertaining and enjoyable Firearms Blog, I see that there is a new site that I need to add to my everyday reading list (EDL for those that like acronyms) : The Gun Wire

Looks like some good stuff, modeled after the Drudge Report site.

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Kindle Fire

Got my new Kindle Fire a couple of days ago and damn, it is pretty amazing for a $200 device.  When they were first announced, I ordered one for Mom for her birthday this week (Happy Birthday again Mom!) and she ordered one for my birthday last month – worked out pretty good for both of us!

One of the things I have noticed is that it is a little odd to go back to my G2 Android phone after using the Fire – the G2 seemed like a fairly large device but now it feels tiny in my hands!

Lots of reviews out there, Les Jones has a good one here – we have considered getting something like this for the 8 year old but we are going to get her an inexpensive desktop first. 

Couple of little gripes I have about the Fire - I haven’t found an easy way to adjust the volume – it seems like a 4 step process to get to the volume control – wish they would have built something in to it to adjust the volume easily.  I wish I could change the size of the icons on the home screen and on the flipper-like carousel – they are GIGANTIC and I wish they were about half the size. I set up access to my email accounts and for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to delete a bunch of email at the same time – seems like the only way is one at a time, grr.

Big likes - Being able to connect my Fire to my G2 wifi hotspot for 4G access.  Absolutely gorgeous screen – brought up a couple of movies through Netflix on the Fire and they look great.  Nice to have another device in the house with Pandora – need to get some external speakers for use out in the garage on the bench.  I like the bright screen for reading and the ability to change the font and font size while reading.  Digging on the cloud storage thing – I have been using that for some time and the Fire makes access seamless. 

I have just barely started using it and I imagine there are many features and capabilities that I haven’t come across yet but I am very, very happy with it – highly recommended.

I will retire the 3G Kindle but will load it up with a ton of free “how-to” books and pack it away with one the little USB port solar chargers I picked up from Brown Dog Gadgets.

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Davy Crockett v Welfare

Take a few minutes to go read this excerpt from The Life of Davy Crockett over at LewRockwell.com.  I saw the link yesterday on my feed from The View From North Central Idaho and it is a must read.

A very powerful piece, written in 1884. 

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Auguson Farms

FYI:  The local Wally World is carrying a pretty good supply of Auguson Farms products at really good prices.  From what I saw the other day, they are 10 – 20% cheaper than what I have seen online.  Not sure if that is a nationwide thing or just available locally. 

If you aren’t taking things seriously yet, it’s time to get ready.

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Nuts!

Got Peanut Butter?  Prices going up – fast.  The price below works out to about $8.50 per jar – about a buck more than the 2-pack was selling for last week at Costco….

Better stock up on pecans too.

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November Already

Holy mackerel, I have a lot of stuff to post about but no time to do it!  I even had a comment and question from Helene that I need to respond to and I haven’t yet so I am going to do it right now!

I have been reading quite a variety of things lately, lots of Sci-Fi, Survival Fiction and Non-Fiction, a couple of How-to books and I am currently enjoying Monster Hunter Alpha.  Mom set aside a couple of boxes of books too that I brought back home (see below) and still need to go through.

Had a great trip back home to see Mom and Gramps and got to see several of my old high school friends.  Mom and I got a lot of work done out in the garage, cleaning, sorting, tossing and organizing her stuff and Dad’s stuff.  My brother and I brought quite a few things back with us (we drove back) and we are currently sorting through all of that.

We joked that things could be worse – Mom and Dad could have been in to fantasy knives, paintball, velvet Elvis paintings and beanie babies!  As it is, they both have great taste in firearms, books, knives, clothing, footwear, gun leather, etc.  One of these days I will post some gun porn that will just make your mouth water!

I had an invite from Mike over at Crucis’ Court to go sling some lead downrange while I was back, but we didn’t have the time – next time I am back, we will take Mom out and head to the club with Mike and grab some BBQ while we are at it.

Well, I need to get back at it.  Hope all is well with you and yours!

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