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Joy

Valentines

I read Azra's sad Valentine's Day post and thought of the members of her family and these simply seemed to fit the reality that we sometimes find in life - that don't fit the ideal, but still speak to the human condition.

Here are the Valentine's Day cards that you won't find at the Hallmark card store...

Nat Geo

Munching an Apple

Grandson Cannon (2) likes apples.

Waking up on Wednesday

Is the week half over or is there half of a week left? By Wednesday at noon, most of us have reached a tipping point. Wednesday noon hours are among my favorite because I've spend half of the week waiting for them. As that noon hour passes, and I realize that there is still half of a week ahead, I always feel shade of emptiness, and there is the draining influence of that passing moment. 

Living life always has struggles attached to it. Waking up on Wednesday always brings with it a sense of joy. It's nothing like waking up on Monday (portrayed right).

Maybe I like Wednesday because of the Norse implication. It's Woden's (Oden's) Day. Odin is the one-eye'd king of the Norse Gods who rules over the corpse hall where valiant warriors go when they die. There is that possible subliminal thing going on where I feel invincible on Wednesday?

Wednesday

Breaking Clays

I got out of skeet shooting (mumbles) years ago simply because there was nobody to go with who enjoyed the sport. But last week I got back in the game and broke the first four clays in a row just because...then I went to pot. 

To me, the one type of (legal) firearm that you can spend more money on than any other is a competition shotgun and ever the perfectionist, who would want to shoot skeet/trap if you couldn't break every single clay pigeon? 

In the old days when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I used a Krupp 16 ga. shotgun (side-by-side) for all bird hunting. Mine was built circa 1930, before WW2 in Germany. Some people think that modern shotguns are better, but shotguns haven't changed much in their essence in a very long time. Still, there are devices that make you a bit more accurate in this modern era. (in much the same way that a Kimber .45 Gold Cup is an improvement on the venerable Colt 1911 A1)

Today I use my father's old Browning Lightning Broadway (photo above). The Lightning is a very quick, easy to point, shotgun. However, a fully customized shotgun would be even better with a release trigger rather than a pull trigger, etc. There is almost no end to customizing to make every shot slightly more accurate. But how much is too much? Particularly when your shooting partner is upgrading their gun?

The Browning Citori XT Trap Gold shotgun (w/adjustable comb) can be had for a mere $5,000.00 (plus tax)