Mike Mike Mike Mike, what time of year is it?

Movie time! And there are ohhh soo many movies I want to see! And in no particular order, here most are most of them:

-The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug
-Anchorman Two
-The Wolf of Wall Street
-Out of the Furnace
-The Dallas Buyers Club
-American Hustle
-Lone Survivor

All in all December should be a pretty good movie month and it looks like I need to see about two movies per week. Wow. Fun!!!

Shooting post scrip....

The match mentioned where I fell down during the course of shooting? I ended up winning my division and placing 4th overall out of 18. And my classifier score is gonna bump me from C to B class in production.

Saturday I shot a match entirely with my left hand only. I was 16th out of 28. So with my 'wrong hand' and it alone, I still beat almost half the people there.

My injured finger still hurts. I am going to have to wait till like December 7th before I really shoot again with my right hand in competition.

I gotta say, I was really surprised to have won my division and been soo high up in the overall at USPSA thursday and then to almost beat half the field saturday in IDPA with literally one hand tied behind my back.

Must............. Check...................Ego..............

I'm not a Genius.

I'm not a genius. Or even a member of Mensa. The official IQ test I took in college had me at 138. And you need it to be 140 or greater to be genius, so just not quite there.

Well this not quite genius has been bore with his blog and had no inspiration to write anything beyond my normal "oh, look at me!", kind of post. And I still haven't came up with anything different than that, so it's what you're going to get today too.

Bored the other night I went to Barnes and Noble to check out books and magazines. I ended up with the usual motorcycle magazines but also a book titled "Combat Shooting" by a well known gun journalist and cop who has had to use his gun multiple times in the line of duty. An expert and well respected for decades in the field of using lethal force.

In his book he talks of the value of competitive shooting to prepare you for using your gun in real life, for self defense. So I thought, I wonder if I've ever competed against this guy and low and behold I have a few times. The most recent being at the IDPA national championships. Like in golf, the lowest score wins. His score was 358, mine was 356.

HA! He gets to write a book and is an expert in the field, and I rank newbie in comparison has beaten him in our sports biggest match. Who cares if I am over 20 years younger than him. What do they say should happen with old age and treachery versus youth and enthusiasm? (that it should win, but it often doesn't)

Not having learned my lesson from showing off a la the one finger pull ups 3 weeks ago, I went to last night's match feeling pretty confident. I had an imposed 4 week ban on shooting with my right hand to let my finger heal properly. Well, it's been 3 weeks and I did beat the guy whose book I just bought, so why not just go for it? Hubris. Again!

Well guess who slipped and fell, running, holding a gun, flat on their face onto concrete last night? Me, Mr Not-Quite-A-Genius.
The gun stayed in my hand. It did not go off. My finger was out of the trigger. The gun was pointed down range the entire time. After a few stunned seconds on the ground, I got up at the RO's prodding and continued to shoot the course.

A little pain to body and pride. Battered but unbowed. We'll see if I've learned my lesson.........

Fun with photos

From a long long time ago, a friend made this for me based off a picture of me while I was in Iraq.

And from today, a different photoshoped version of Rowdy.

I really really need to get to work on my xmas card ideas now......

Feelings

Most of us put up a wall. Some of us tear it down when we are in love. For other reasons some of us block them out, put a lock on them.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings. I've been accused of, and sometimes self identify as an "experiencer". Someone who did or does things, just to see how they feel. Listing them all would be pretty confessional, and not all that good to do in a public space.

But as someone who cries at poetry or the national anthem, who instantly gets ready to fight when they feel like someone is being unfair..... just..... what I'm trying to say is that I "FEEL". I feel.

And as part of that feeling, I don't like weed, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine or whatever to mask, amplify or change my feelings. I want what comes from within me to a a pure fountain, a well spring of authentic "ME".

Many things can elicit a response from me, and if I'm going to revel in it, feel it, show it then I want it to be as true and honest as possible.

To live. To know. To feel.

*To which I say a great deal of personal hell must come from not feeling. Dead inside truly is an apt description as it's the opposite of living one's life. Followed up with the classic, "Don't confuse my kindness with weakness".

You can get me out of my jeans, but..........

But you can't get my genes out of me. Unless I spit in a tube for you. Which I did and paid $99 to do it as well.

The big things I wanted and I think most people want to know are, what diseases do I have a genetic disposition to? What other health info can be gleaned from current levels of consumer testing and understanding? Where is my ancestry from in the world?

Any other knowledge just seems like a bonus. Well in full rowdystyle blog exposure here are some of my results!

Ancestry. From maternal and paternal line it looks like I am pretty much exclusively Northern European, specifically Scandinavian.
Maternal Line
Paternal Line Through which I am evidently related to Leo Tolstoy.

Here is the real kicker, the health part. There is a reason they make you sign so many wavers and consents, because you might not like what you learn. In my case, looks like Alzheimer's is in my future, sadly.


There are huge ethical issues to knowing and sharing this information, so I hope I don't regret it, but there it is. Time will tell.

I have no weird inherited conditions, thankfully. I am a fast caffeine metaboliser. I have a decreased response to blood thinners like Coumadin. And I have the red head's increased tolerance to pain medication.

Some of the traits the testing shows with what they say is high confidence:


If you have a spare $99 and you are remotely interested in this, I would say go for it! Is it totally exact? No. Will it tell you everything you wanna know? No. But what you do get out of it was worth it for me!

Wolverine!

For a school project we needed to do a self portrait as a superhero, superstar, supervillian that sort of thing. Well how my hair was I thought I could pull off a wolverine pretty well.

Keep in mind these first pictures were shot by myself, in the garage and very quickly done up in photoshop.



Now what I did as a rough draft is OK. I could clean up the selections I did in photoshop and be done. Probably get a B. But who wants just a B? Not me!

So I had a friend take some of me posing as Wolverine earlier this week. I was sooooooooooooooooo self conscious. I almost came home and cried in the shower. It felt that weird, seriously, being something I'm not and having people watch. Way worse than how singing gives me goose bumps all over.

I'm not gonna show you any pictures from that session here, but you will be able to check them out on the photo blog of mine next week. I promise you they are pretty amazing. And you'll be able to see how I incorporated them into my project as well.

I CAN has cheezburger. (aka I got a kitten)

$250 later at Petco, $125 later at the SD County Humane Society and two days worth of my time I came home with a kitten. He is almost 6 months old and his name is "Mr. Oliver Hammond".

Mr Oliver Hammond likes being petted, playing with his feather toys and chewing on fake plants. He probably also likes eggs as he wouldn't leave alone last night as I was eating some. He doesn't like classical music, getting picked up, sleeping in his bed or dogs. His birthday is May 1st.

For a shelter kitty he seems just about right and I'm happy to have him in the home. When he isn't incessantly bugging me to play or pet him. But that's way better than a cat who ignores you. Right?

So many new things!

-I got the results back from my genetic testing. So I have some things to more fully write about the results from my experiment with 23andme.com. I'm almost exclusively Scandinavian in my ancestry. And I'm pretty sure to get Alzheimer's.

-The cat. Yep, came home with a 5 month old kitten today but not the one I expected at all. The one I wanted, and several others like him just didn't win me over in person once I got to spend time with them. But Mr. Oliver Hammond is in confinement in the upstairs bathroom right now to get him acclimated to his literbox, food and scratching post. He is a pretty cute black and white cat you will see lots of pics oh him soon.

-My photoshop project for class that has me re-imagined as Wolverine. I'm surprisingly wolverine-esque.

-Thanksgiving plans. Gonna be going to St George to see family for 3 days and I'm taking guns and motorcycles for family to play with. The neighbors with 6 animals will stop in on Mr Oliver.

-My first accident, a 1-1,000,000 occurrence and it happened to me, with the reloading press!! Just a small explosion.

See, I have quite a bit to write about, and to show pictures of and expound upon. Check back soon!

The LOLs never stop around me.

Here is a kitten I am going to go check out at a shelter today. He is a 4 month old Russian Blue. I hope he acts like he likes me so that there is some sort of bond to really make me wanna adopt him.


And I totally goofed up my match in Arizona this weekend. Being a showoff I was doing pull ups on a roof beam during the morning briefing. Well that somehow lead to me doing one finger pull ups and there was a loud POP noise from the middle finger of my right hand.

Yep, torn pulley injury to the middle finger of my right hand. It was just enough to take me out of my game. And it's gonna take 3 months to heal. Good thing the shooting season is over for a while, but still.... you gotta shake your head at me and what I do sometimes.

All the time.