denverpilot
Tied Down
Well, we might as well start a thread about what y'all got or did or whatever for Christmas fun.
Mom's side of my family did an interesting thing this year... Everyone brought assorted gift cards of a limited denomination and wrapped them, tossed them in a bowl, and drew numbers to see who picked first. Then after everyone picked cards, one could "trade" with anyone else.
That was kinda fun. I ended up making "bad trades" to nieces and nephews on purpose so their little brains would light up at getting a "big" gift card vs a smaller one. We also brought a couple extra cards and tossed 'em in with the others.
I ended up with $15 to Starbucks. Haha. Fun way to play Santa.
Mom bought me some truly awful corduroy pants. Shhhh. They're never going to get worn. The shirts were ok, but not appropriate for work wear, so they're mostly going to take up closet space. Haha.
As far as here at the home front, Karen is on the never ending wait list for a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, and we bought memberships to the nice new range near the house. (Her husband also calls the local shops on delivery nights for her to see if any got shipments of the Shield... Isn't he nice? Still, it'll probably be April before we actually find one locally. It's the Cabbage Patch doll of handguns right now.)
I haven't decided yet on any significant new shooting toys, but knowing that Karen didn't grow up shooting -- and missed out on the fun of plinking with a .22 that every warm-blooded person in my family got, out wandering around with grandpas of both sides -- I picked up a Marlin Model 60. She'll get to plink at the range with it first and then we'll find some nice empty BLM land somewhere this summer for outdoor fun.
(Could have hunted around for a used one, but at $149 on sale... it was literally a "who cares?" purchase. I joked with her that we could have found her a Red Ryder BB gun and immediately went into the Christmas Story, "You'll put an eye out!" schtick. Also joked with her that you can buy the leg lamp now online so I could have a "major prize" for Christmas. Haha.)
The entertaining part was with all of the recent hysteria surrounding firearms purchases, waiting 3 days for my background check to clear. CBI was backlogged 4500 applications on Tuesday and over 8900 on Friday according to the local shop guy. Picked a bad time to buy a .22 I guess. Ha.
Also got to shoot a borrowed Taurus compact in 45 ACP this week at the range. I think the range safety officer summed it up nicely...
"What are you shooting?"
"It's a borrowed Taurus, the owner wanted me to shoot it and see if I agree that the trigger sucks. It does."
"That thing is loud. It's louder than many of the rifles."
"Yeah, and I can't hit anything with it either. It'd take a lot of practice to get over this ridiculously long trigger pull. Takes forever and with the short barrel it's all over the place."
"When that thing was born, it said, 'Im going to be a loud piece of ****."
As I laughed, "It succeeded!"
I also shot a regular Smith & Wesson M&P full size (not pictured, since it was a rental) in 45 ACP. Wasn't impressed. Could get good with it, but I'm way more accurate, even cold, with Glocks.
Karen shot the full size M&P in 9mm and same thing. She hasn't shot enough to know why. In my case, the regular M&P trigger while crisp enough, felt to me like it wasn't consistently firing at the same stroke in the pull. Now I know that's not true, so there must be some weirdness to the plastic or the hinge/articulated safety in that trigger, or something that makes it feel that way. Squishy. Never thought I'd be a Glock fanboy after shooting nice 1911's as a youngster.
So tonight we plink with the .22 rifle and start figuring out which ammo it likes. It'd be great if it feeds the cheap bulk crap well, since every .22 semi-auto seems to have a "favorite" ammo. Got 500 rounds of assorted stuff to try, and it won't be a real test until the little thing has fired a couple hundred rounds anyway to get the springs broken in.
Flying weather looks cold but fine for tomorrow. Need to get up in the 182.
So... that's Christmas at the DenverPilot hacienda. Dad's coming over and we're making tacos on the big day.
How 'bout y'all? I see from Facebook that Troy got puppies. You're killing me Troy. Work has to settle down for both of us a whole lot before we will have time for a pup. And Karen won't be finished with her WOCN school until around March.
Mom's side of my family did an interesting thing this year... Everyone brought assorted gift cards of a limited denomination and wrapped them, tossed them in a bowl, and drew numbers to see who picked first. Then after everyone picked cards, one could "trade" with anyone else.
That was kinda fun. I ended up making "bad trades" to nieces and nephews on purpose so their little brains would light up at getting a "big" gift card vs a smaller one. We also brought a couple extra cards and tossed 'em in with the others.
I ended up with $15 to Starbucks. Haha. Fun way to play Santa.
Mom bought me some truly awful corduroy pants. Shhhh. They're never going to get worn. The shirts were ok, but not appropriate for work wear, so they're mostly going to take up closet space. Haha.
As far as here at the home front, Karen is on the never ending wait list for a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, and we bought memberships to the nice new range near the house. (Her husband also calls the local shops on delivery nights for her to see if any got shipments of the Shield... Isn't he nice? Still, it'll probably be April before we actually find one locally. It's the Cabbage Patch doll of handguns right now.)
I haven't decided yet on any significant new shooting toys, but knowing that Karen didn't grow up shooting -- and missed out on the fun of plinking with a .22 that every warm-blooded person in my family got, out wandering around with grandpas of both sides -- I picked up a Marlin Model 60. She'll get to plink at the range with it first and then we'll find some nice empty BLM land somewhere this summer for outdoor fun.
(Could have hunted around for a used one, but at $149 on sale... it was literally a "who cares?" purchase. I joked with her that we could have found her a Red Ryder BB gun and immediately went into the Christmas Story, "You'll put an eye out!" schtick. Also joked with her that you can buy the leg lamp now online so I could have a "major prize" for Christmas. Haha.)
The entertaining part was with all of the recent hysteria surrounding firearms purchases, waiting 3 days for my background check to clear. CBI was backlogged 4500 applications on Tuesday and over 8900 on Friday according to the local shop guy. Picked a bad time to buy a .22 I guess. Ha.
Also got to shoot a borrowed Taurus compact in 45 ACP this week at the range. I think the range safety officer summed it up nicely...
"What are you shooting?"
"It's a borrowed Taurus, the owner wanted me to shoot it and see if I agree that the trigger sucks. It does."
"That thing is loud. It's louder than many of the rifles."
"Yeah, and I can't hit anything with it either. It'd take a lot of practice to get over this ridiculously long trigger pull. Takes forever and with the short barrel it's all over the place."
"When that thing was born, it said, 'Im going to be a loud piece of ****."
As I laughed, "It succeeded!"
I also shot a regular Smith & Wesson M&P full size (not pictured, since it was a rental) in 45 ACP. Wasn't impressed. Could get good with it, but I'm way more accurate, even cold, with Glocks.
Karen shot the full size M&P in 9mm and same thing. She hasn't shot enough to know why. In my case, the regular M&P trigger while crisp enough, felt to me like it wasn't consistently firing at the same stroke in the pull. Now I know that's not true, so there must be some weirdness to the plastic or the hinge/articulated safety in that trigger, or something that makes it feel that way. Squishy. Never thought I'd be a Glock fanboy after shooting nice 1911's as a youngster.
So tonight we plink with the .22 rifle and start figuring out which ammo it likes. It'd be great if it feeds the cheap bulk crap well, since every .22 semi-auto seems to have a "favorite" ammo. Got 500 rounds of assorted stuff to try, and it won't be a real test until the little thing has fired a couple hundred rounds anyway to get the springs broken in.
Flying weather looks cold but fine for tomorrow. Need to get up in the 182.
So... that's Christmas at the DenverPilot hacienda. Dad's coming over and we're making tacos on the big day.
How 'bout y'all? I see from Facebook that Troy got puppies. You're killing me Troy. Work has to settle down for both of us a whole lot before we will have time for a pup. And Karen won't be finished with her WOCN school until around March.
