Casting About

Growing up in Kennewick WA at the very edge of town was a delight for me as a child/youngster. Our's was one of the first houses out there and despite the modern picture below, in the 80s it was all just fields and orchards and scrub around us. About 2 miles away was this little pond near one of our friend's house.

I can remember really catching a lot of perch, blue gill and sunfish kinds of things in that little pond. Heck sometimes you'd even just snag one when clearing a stuck lure or bait. Fishing from the bank as we did your casting ability was pretty important. You had to get it where the fish was or you'd possibly go home with very little.

To hone this ability I would place a hula hoop in the front yard and various distances and angle from where I stood in the driveway and practice my cast. Trying to get the lure into the hula hoop. The way kids can put a lot of effort into something when they enjoy it I got pretty good at casting a spinning reel.

Fast forward from being 10 years old to today and I haven't caught a fish or done that sort of thing in a loooong time. Well, I now have my fishing stuff out in the garage, bought an Arkansas license and trout tag and about to try my luck at it again. Arkansas state Game and Fish dept has stocked trout in some places near me and I'm gonna give it a shot. So if you see me out in the front yard casting a line, you'll know what in the world I'm doing. (fishing dry fire I guess! hahahaha)

le sigh

I feel very lonely at home right now. Isolated. It's unpleasant.

My body is falling apart. My teeth have shifted post invisalign braces and I can't close my mouth completely, giving me terrible jaw pain. My feet are pronating more and hurt when I run. I have non stop tendonitis in my left elbow. It doesn't seem like my Humira is doing enough. My left eye, the one I had to go to the doctor about is not healing and off and on gives me terrible pain and will water non stop. Making it difficult to see out of at all. Aaaand I feel like I'm getting the flu.

Coming attractions

I have some things I'm looking forward to doing in Feb and March, so here is a list of them just to keep my buzz of anticipation going!

Feb 9-12-visit OJ and family in Utah for a birthday party.

Feb 16-go to Crystal Method concert here in Little Rock.

Feb 18-24-attend Gunsite with super Dave-O for a bolt action rifle class in Arizona.

Mar 3-6- compete in the LA state IDPA championship. hit a USPSA match on the way home. eat cajun food.

Mar 12-15- spend two days in private training with Elias Frangoulis, multi time world champ, here at my home range.

March 31- compete in a level 3, charity, IDPA match in Hot Springs AR

Nope

Sometimes I feel like I'd like to stop eating any meat that came off a four legged animal. Still have fowl, eggs, cheese, fish but not the flesh of cows, pigs, sheep, goat and so on.

Interesting/annoying awareness

I've had to wear prescription glasses for about the past 3 or 4 years. At first a very light correction in one eye only. But my vision got worse and worse each year. Both eyes effected, astigmatism, poor night vision driving, inability to see anything distant, using a magnifying glass to read cooking directions on packages.

You know, sucky. And I'm not a candidate for any corrective surgery.

Like many people who are newish to glasses and engage in a hobby or activity that's very visually intense I sometimes wear my glasses and sometimes not. I'll shoot without them and do good and bad. Then I'll put them on and some of it seems better. Then I'll go a few days without them and shoot better than I was before.

And those experiences are what leads me to my frustration. I definitely do better driving at night with them and seeing things at a distance. But those aren't super critical for action pistol matches. The past two day's I've been shooting in non-corrective lenses, just Ray-Ban sunglasses. And doing great!

Which leads me to the experiment of shooting the next 3 or 4 local matches without my prescription glasses and see what I think and feel about it.

6th, maybe 7th place on the list

This weekend I really felt like moving from San Diego to Little Rock was one of the top ten biggest mistakes of my life. And by mistake I mean something that was my decision, not something that happened to me out of my control.

I've probably made the same number of bad mistakes as anyone but the real biggies have always seemed to effect both myself and others. Let's hope I've corrected some of them and hopefully been forgiven for others.

But yeah, a bit of remorse over the weekend for my choice. I of course can and am living with it, but you know.....

Well that doesn't happen every day....

930pm,tonight. I am in the living room and Super D is in a bedroom at one far end of the house.

While on the couch with no obvious reason as to why, I hear a muffled man's voice at the end of the house near the garage entry to the house/other bedrooms. I wait a heart beat to make sure I heard what I heard. Once verified I run from the couch to the bedroom where Super D is, grab a pistol and flashlight and run to the other end of the house. Gun up and ready. Eyes and ears alert and searching.

I am in the hallway near the garage passage door to the house, lights on. The bedroom right there is dark. I still hear the voice. So I'm silent and just scanning but confused as to what I'm hearing now that I'm close to the source of the male voice. Which still isn't very clear in its source/location.

And then I recognize it but just don' understand what's going on. But I now know all is well. When Super D went to bed she turned on an audio book on her phone. It connected to a bluetooth speaker in her aqua aerobics teaching bag at the other end of the house. The voice I hear of a man in the house, it was an audio book narrator.

No 911 call. No yelling to "get out of my house!" No confrontation or shots fired. Just my quick, silent, assertive reaction to an audible "intruder".

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