Miasmatic Review

The rest of the weekend.

After the fiasco that was Thanksgiving, we had to go have family pictures taken on Black Friday. My parents wanted a whole family portrait with them, my sister and my family. I agreed to this a couple of months ago. Then my mother hits me a couple of weeks back that we are scheduled to do it on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. There are two things in this world that makes me painfully uncomfortable; the mall during Christmas season is one of them. But I said I would do it, so I’m not backing out now.

We get to the mall about 9:00 AM; I drop the family off at the door and spend the next 20 minutes searching for a parking space. I got lucky and found someone who was leaving, so I parking lot sharked them. The photos were relatively painless. We did two outfits, the boys in blue and the girls in pink (My wife’s and sister’s idea*GAG*.) The other was everyone wearing Green Bay Packer gear with various props. My dad originally wanted this years ago, before Clone was born. Now that we have Clone I decided we needed to do an updated version with him in it. That’s right people, cheese wedges and all!

The pictures would be ready in an hour, so instead of leaving we decided to hang out in the mall. OH YAY! JOY O’ JOYS! What are we going to do for an hour? Me, “Since we are here, we can take Clone to see Santa and get the damn thing over with.” My mother, “Don’t be that way about Santa!” Contagion the Scrooge, “Why? Clone didn’t hear me, he’s riding up and down the escalator with grandpa, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been on Santa’s Naughty list since a certain incident in ‘88, if not there was that one in ‘97 that pretty much sealed it.”

We get Clones picture with Santa. For some reason he just will not smile with Santa. But at least this year he wasn’t screaming. While waiting in line Boopie comes up to me, “Dad, I found the perfect Christmas gift for mom!” My wife, his mother, is standing right next to me. After the photo, I go look at what he found. I will give the boy credit; it is a gift from the heart. He did his beast to get something he knew his mother likes. Since he was dead set on getting this, I bought and we took it to get wrapped. What made me most proud was when the lady rang it up and told us the price; he looked at me and said, “Dad, I forgot my money at home. I’ll pay you back.” The little goofball was going to buy his mother’s Christmas gift with his saved up money. Nah, not that day, I paid for it and told him he didn’t have to pay me back. My boy is growing up.

After we picked up the photos we went out to lunch with my parents and sister and then went and did some Christmas shopping at a local Irish store we hit every year on Black Friday. It’s our tradition. What was funny is that Phyllis, the owner, said as soon as we walked in, “It’s now officially Christmas, (Contagion) and (Ktreva) are here.” We picked up an item for those hard to buy relatives and headed home.

Saturday Ktreva started putting up the inside Christmas decorations. I’m waiting to do the outside until we get a tree. That way I only have to go through the lights once. It keeps me from going mad. (Post for tomorrow) Around 4:30 I decide to call my good buddy Graumagus whom seems to have forgotten to check his e-mail in the last week. He’ll tell you he’s busy working 9-10 hours a day, dealing with the kids, rubbing skin off the top of his feet. The Frizzen Spouse ™ answers the phone and tells me he’s working. For some reason I got it in my head it was a holiday weekend and except restaurants and retail, businesses shut down. BAH! Foiled again. I was trying to see if Grau was going to accompany me to Anger Management class and if he needed more anti-depressants (Blatantly and boldly stolen from Graumagus.) AKA going to the shooting range and does he need ammo.

Well I figured maybe he’d check his email when he got home for work, so I shot him off a third e-mail this week about going shooting. By 11:00AM Sunday and no response I figured he was NOT going to respond anytime in the near future. Then I thought to myself, do I dare call and possibly wake him up? I mean he is sleep deprived and all, and maybe he was actually sleeping. Then I remembered he’d kick me in the dick if I went shooting and didn’t at least ask him. So I called… woke his ass up, and after what sounded like some mumbled mushh about driving an Allen wrench through someone’s head, he advised me he couldn’t go. And since no one else had answered my e-mails about going, I decided to head off on my own with my new gun.

It took me an hour and a half to get to the range. Where I spend the next 40 (including a 10 minute shooting break) minutes burning through 200 rounds of ammo. That’s right. 200 rounds in 40 minutes, any one that says you can’t hand speed load a revolver is lying to you. In my shooting I discovered a couple of things about my new handgun. A) The sites are off, it’s shooting low. 2) The grip on it rocks D) I am much more accurate with the .357 round then the .38 special load. 4) I bought the right hand gun. I loved shooting it. It fit my hand perfectly, I loved the feel of it, and I had a good clustering, about 2 inches below the bull’s-eye at 25 yards.

I did scare the piss out of some kids at the range with it however. They where there shooting .22’s, air rifles, and .40 semi-auto. Even the .40 was relatively quite compared to when I was pushing .357s through my pistol. I was also showering the stations around me with powder as the revolver kicked out sparks along the cylinder. The kids ( I say kids, but I swear they were all 18 to 25 years of age) where awestruck by my revolver. During the shooting break one of them was asking me questions about it and I was answering him. Then he made the comment, “I just don’t like revolver’s because you only get six shots.” I point to the cylinder on mine (It was resting on the table in the “Secured” zone during a cease-fire. You can’t touch a firearm during that time.) and tell him, “Mines a seven shot.” He looks at it and counts all seven chambers, then tells his friends, “This dude has a 7 shot .357 revolver.” I felt like a weapons stud… but I know I’m not… but it still felt good.

After shooting I head back home, and decide to get a sixer and stop in and see ol’ Grau since I was in his neck of the woods, which is back water northern Illinois. We talk about shooting and I show him my pistol. He hadn’t had a chance to see it since I picked it up. He also asked me if it was normal for a callous to scratch his foot, I thought he just meant like to use it to scratch an itch. Nope, he showed me the top of his foot where it looked like someone use a wood rasp on it. It was much nastier up close then what he has shown in the picture. Then we watched the Packer’s lose to the Eagles. He also asked me if it was normal for a callous to scratch his foot, I thought he just meant like to use it to scratch an itch. Nope, he showed me the top of his foot where it looked like someone use a wood rasp on it. It was much nastier up close then what he has shown in the picture. It’s such a glorious year for my team.

That is how my weekend went.