The Happy Dance

I'm a laid back kinda guy. Takes quite a bit to ruffle my feathers, good or bad. But right now I feel like doing a Snoopy-style happy dance. Calvin and Hobbes in their pajamas, listening to classical at 700RPM, that sort of thing.

Thursday afternoon I picked up Max Payne 1. Fantastic game. Not as good as Far Cry, but beautifully gritty, with a film noir feel straight out of a Dennis Lehane novel. I'm 2/3 done with it, which is good - it's sucking up all the time I should be spending doing productive stuff, like schoolwork or writing.

Thursday evening sucked. I've felt lower, I know I have. I just can't remember when.

Friday afternoon rocked. I'll share more when I feel it's appropriate, but I still can't help but smile.

Friday evening we had a bonfire. Great fun, throwing old financial documents and ammunition receipts into a huge blaze.

Saturday afternoon, on the way to the range, I picked up another magazine for my battle-rifle and 60 more rounds of ammunition. Ran into 2 ex-soldiers out at the range, got an eye-witness account of what Iraq is like. Kinda busts your world view when the soldiers you believe are the bad guys are just like you.

Anyway, they were great company on the range. I shot my battle-rifle off a rest (I need time to develop my muscles, that's why I'm shooting 50 rounds a week with my brother, in addition to range time with my dad), at 25, 50, and 100 yards. Even with the added pressure of 2 soldiers and my dad hanging over my shoulder I put a 25 yard, 20 round group together that you could cover with a measuring cup. Taking it out to fifty, I fired an around-10-round string, 8 of which grouped together on the paper plate in such a way that you could cover them with a vertical tongue depressor.

I've never used my battle-rifle at 100 yards before. A 16 inch barrel and a target you can't see the bullseye for isn't a good combination. After working my flinch out, I line up the sights and discover that the front post is the same size as the plate. Dang. I managed to make paper by lining up the top of the front sight with the top edge of the plate. Out of about 20, between 5 and 10 made the plate.

Now, that's not good shooting. But given the fact that I fired my battle-rifle for the first time in nearly a year LAST WEEK, that's pretty dang good. I'd rather be shooting my CX4, truth be told, but I'm going to get proficient with this gun. And come November, I'm going to buy 2 more as insurance.

Oh yeah, and Gander Mtn. is working over my malfunctioning BAG Day gun, to get that working again.

I am so pumped right now.