Did you know RSVP’s are out of style?

It’s true.

My baby shower was a few weeks ago and I invited perhaps 20 people. With about a week and a half to go I had gotten “yes” RSVP’s from … Five people.

Two of whom were my mother and my mother-in-law.

I’m not going to lie – I was freaking out a little. I had visions of the six of us sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee and just having a brunch group instead of a shower. And, yes, this event was haunting my thoughts.

I eventually asked my mother-in-law to track down responses the weekend before and we ended up with thirteen people, which was wonderful – enough people to make it a party, but not so many that we couldn’t all fit in the living room.

This came to mind again yesterday when friends of ours cancelled a dinner invitation. Now, they do have a reasonable excuse: this was their first weekend in town (I.e. we were bringing them dinner for when the movers left). We had texted with them around eleven am or noon and asked what kind of pizza we should bring (the answer was “pepperoni”). And then, around 3:15, Mike got the cancellation call.

Now, again, they have a very valid excuse – the movers ran late, the baby was cranky, etc. But more notice would have been nice.

And I got to wondering whether this is a generational thing.

You see, the prep that I had already made for our dinner visit – I baked pumpkin bread so they’d have breakfast foods, I baked vanilla cupcakes with key lime buttercream frosting for dessert, and I bought fruit salad to serve with the pizza – is perhaps a little more than people my age usually do for a dinner visit. I think it was the standard for dinner visits thirty years ago, but no longer. Maybe that’s one reason cancellations and lack of RSVP’s are more common.

What do you think?

P.S. Hey you kids, get off my lawn!!

For Alan

It’s official — the iPhone is the preferred tool for gunbloggers:

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JAY G: “You better hope I don’t tell about your reading selection in the bathroom!  Bodice-ripper, Lissa? Really?”

LISSA: “You’re kidding!  You’re making fun of me for THAT? I was sure you were gonna make fun of me for having the Little House books in there!”

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BETH (rolling eyes): “There’s a Simpsons quote for EVERYTHING when those two get together.”

SCI-FI (indignantly): “That wasn’t Simpsons! That was Ren and Stimpy!!”

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LISSA:  “So, guys, we call our current apartment the Kitty Den.  What should we call our new Florida house?  Castle Sunshine, maybe?  Kitty Den South?”

BOREPATCH: “Nope.  Gotta be the Raj Mahal.”

LISSA:  ” . . . . . OMG. Yeah.  Done and done.”

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Thanks so much, y’all — I had a wonderful time!  I’m gonna miss you guys so much!!!!

lovelissa

Thoughts, prayers and good wishes, please!

Please take a moment out of your day and pray (or meditate, or send karmic marshmallows, or whatever) for Mrs. Weer’d, who goes under the knife today.  (Weer’d asks that you leave any comments here, so that the other post can be reserved for his updates.)

While we’re sending good vibes, could you also please spare a few for Julie’s husband? He can walk a little now, which is great! More, better, faster healing please!!

While we’re thinking happy fuzzies, maybe you could beam a few to Bob S? He hasn’t mentioned it in a while (unless I missed it, which is always possible) but his wife could use ’em. (Also Bob is near and dear to my heart right now because he 1) got a SIG and 2) is considering naming it. SQUEE!)

Many thanks!!

No atheists in foxholes, right?

So we’re driving back from a lovely visit to Shoothouse Barbie’s Cape retreat . . .  quiet drive, not much traffic, smooth sailing really . . . and suddenly the headlights and the dashboard lights start flickering.  Not going completely dark, mind you.  Just dimming and flickering, like a flashlight with a dying battery.

It’s a little scary, but I did have this happen once before.  I take a deep breath and switch on the brights. The dashboard lights flicker flicker flicker and then go completely dark before blasting back on at full power.  I’ve lost my radio station presets but everything is now glowing steadily; I turn off my brights and unclench my shoulders.

Flicker flicker flicker. “Oh sh*t.”

I do the brights trick again.

And again.

And then once more.

Only this time, instead of resetting the car’s electrical system it just turns everything off.  My headlights die — with me traveling at 60 mph, mind you — the car goes into neutral, and every interior light goes dark.

I have about two seconds worth of panic.  Thank god it’s a moonlit night. And just as I’m hitting the brakes to coast to the side of the road and call AAA — all the lights come back on.

Flicker flicker flicker.

“Well, the hell with that.”  I can live with flickering.  There’s enough light to see by, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to do the fun oh-my-god-my-car-just-died trick while driving full speed.  Uh-uh.

I drive the next hour and a half with slightly shaking hands and the occasional prayer.  A little help here, God.  Please? Just please have the car keep going for another hour.  Please and thank you.

The mile markers have never ticked by so slowly.

Please, God.  Just another forty-five.  Okay?  Please and thank you.

I stay behind other cars when I can so that my flickering headlights aren’t solely responsible for lighting up the road.  I’d follow a car all the way home if it would just go less than ten miles over the speed limit, but no one’s quite that obliging.

Please, God.  Just keep it going another half hour, okay?  Please, and thank you.

By the time we make it home the power locks are ignoring me along with the interior lights.  I don’t care.  My hands are trembling and I’m not one tiny bit sleepy despite the late hour.

Thank you.  Miserere nobis and all that.  Thanks, God, for getting us home safely.

And now I’m running off to the car dealership.

Hope you all had a lovely week!  Happy Friday!!

P.S. I’ve been blog-neglecting and now I’m comment-starved.  Tell you what – if I get more than five comments on this post I’ll post some pics from my very first oyster shot 🙂

Range report: Bushmaster edition

Good morning all!  *slurp* C’mon coffee, do your miracle work and let me stop yawning already . . .

We had a lovely afternoon with Jay G yesterday.  Duh.  Prepare ye for the picture dump!

Jay G starts off our day with the .22 bolt-action; Mike spots for him using the VEPR scope

Mine is upper left, Mike's is upper right, Jay G's is center -- check out those fab-o holes through the red!

Bushmasterrrrrrr! Beware the flying brass!*

For the resulting Bushmaster’d target, I’d like to provide the close up, Mr. DeMille:

That’s my AR-15 grouping.  Pretty sweet, huh?! . . . except . . .

Mike's is top, mine is center, Jay G's is bottom

Riiiiiiight.  My wonderful tight grouping is quite obviously off target.  Boo!  (In my defense, the scope was off; we were having to compensate by using one of the top hatchmarks instead of the crosshairs.  Still, though.)

Jay cut quite a figure playing with Kahr-oline:

And I shot holy hell out of my target with Jay’s Gold Cup .45 and our M&P .45:

(We didn’t let our .45 see Jay’s Gold Cup.  The poor thing would’ve gotten a complex, and she’s a perfectly serviceable well-behaving gun.  No point in waving a beauty queen’s pinup in the wife’s face, y’know?)

A lovely time was had by all  🙂  Thanks so much for hosting us, Jay!

And Happy Monday, all!

*Well, it was either flying brass or this moronic groundhog that showed up a few times.  Darwin was WRONG, dude.  Any wildlife stupid enough to hang out at a gun range should’ve gone extinct several years ago.

Range Report: SB’s guns, continued!

[My computer refused to connect to the Internet yesterday, leaving me with a half-finished post and no way of saving it.  It’s behaving better today, so I’ll finish it up!]

Good morning all!  On a side note, I’m exhausted; I helped a friend by editing a paper, and as a result I was stricken with college nightmares.  You know — dreams of papers overdue, of roommate and dorm issues, of irate chemistry professors, stuff like that.  I feel unrested and stressed despite the fact that I’m not in college anymore!!!

Anyway, let’s revel in the fact that I’m an adult and look at more guns!

While playing with the AR-15 and .22, some nice guys the next berm over offered to let us shoot their .22.  It was a Savage Mark 2 BTBS with a lovely lovely stock:

To be honest, I don’t know whether I hit the target with the Savage; their paper was pretty well perforated and the scope wasn’t THAT good.  But Mike seemed to like it!

Shoothouse Barbie was thrilled to break in her birthday-Garand:

(I’ve had a date with a Garand — remember? — and so declined to make this one’s acquaintance.)

After much hopping up and down and pleading by Lissa, we brought out the shotties!  This shiny gun is a Winchester Model 1300 —

— and here Vanna Dr. Boyfriend shows off the Remington 870:

Is this a good excuse to post the shottie video again?  Oh, surely it’s a good enough excuse:

(And of course I wanted the shiny gun for the video! I did shoot both though.)

As you can tell by watching me fly backwards, buckshot is a WHOLE DIFFERENT GAME than birdshot!!  I was hunkered low for stability and bracing my feet and still got slammed about.

Memento of two shotguns' delicate caresses

The last thing we shot was an FAL .308 (which I believe is specifically verboten by our good friend Martha Coakley):

It took me a little wiggling to get the magazine in — it loads weird, and I’m always afraid to break other peoples’ stuff — but it was a hoot to light off.  It had a real smooth trigger pull; the recoil was not insubstantial but it was fairly quick and easy to get the red dot sight back on target.

I don’t have any pictures, but we used the fading light to scoot over to the pistol range and play with Glocks and Steyrs and Sigs (they have a Siguette!) and removed the center of many targets.  A good time was had by all!

Shoothouse Barbie and Dr. Boyfriend, thanks so much for taking us shooting!  We had a fabulous time!

And as a bonus, I finally, FINALLY learned how to make a moist pork loin!  Apparently the secret is to sear all four sides in a cast-iron skillet before popping it into the oven with a meat thermometer.  Hooray!

I used Rendezvous dry rub all over the outside and served it with pan-roasted brussel sprouts. Nom nom nom!

Range Report – Shoothouse Barbie Edition!

I finally got around to writing this up which I’ve been meaning to do for days Shoothouse Barbie asked me to, so *long sigh* I suppose I will!

Needless to say, we had a lovely time at Shoothouse Barbie‘s range!  It was huge — way bigger than I’m used to — and with more than enough room to set up a shotgun target on the close berm and rifle targets on the far berm.

First up for Lissa: a .22 Vostack (sp?) CM 2 with a superscope!

Dr. Boyfriend carefully instructed us on shooting from a prone position with a bipod and a sock full of rice.  It was really hard for me to keep my eyesight from blurring and my shoulder felt seriously unnatural, but supposedly finding my “natural point of aim” and controlling my breathing would make the teeny-tiny bullet travel 75 yards and go exactly where I wanted it. I think this is where folks find “the zen of the rifle” but for me it was more difficult than relaxing.  I imagine that with more practice it gets easier.

Oh, and the term “hair trigger”?  We haz it!  I took a deep breath, let it out, took a deep breath, then gently placed my finger on the trigger so I could pull it halfway through the next breath — PLINK!

“Holy ****, did that just go off?”  I frickin’ TOUCHED the thing and the shot fired.  Dr. Boyfriend had told me the trigger was ridiculously super-light, but this was like nothing I’d experienced before.  Oy!

The .22 was interesting, but I liked the next gun a lot better:

That is, as many of you know, an AR-15 (with a red-dot sight).  Mama liiiiiiiike!  This pretty thing had a loud boom — although it wasn’t nearly as loud when you were the one shooting it.  Isn’t that funny? — with a smooth and easy recoil.  I’m told that since they’re made of plastic and rather modular, you can trick them out any way you want.

Dr. Boyfriend reclines, Mike hunches and Shoothouse Barbie watches over

I have four more guns to review, but my shower is calling me — Happy Friday, all!

Brisket = Food of the gods!

Good morning all!  Did you know that brisket is super-powered?  No seriously!  You take a slab of meat roughly the size of your torso and, by a mysterious process of alchemy, transform it into meat gold.

Dr. Boyfriend diligently carved and trimmed and seasoned the beef on Friday night and tenderly laid it in the smoker.  By making the painful (but admirable!) choice of choosing food over sleep, he was able to tend it periodically through the night before popping it into the oven to finish at 200 degrees.  When it was finally ready to eat, I took a bite and my eyes rolled back in my head.  Flavorful, tender, savory, juicy meat-gold, y’all. I think I went into a food stupor and was unable to talk until I’d had two helpings.

(We didn’t starve Friday night, mind you; we feasted on pork loin.  And remember, I don’t usually like pork; I have very poor luck having it retain even a drop of moisture.  Apparently the secret is to pan-sear it all over in a cast-iron skillet and then pop the skillet directly into the oven.  I think it might have been finished on the stovetop too?  Supremely moist and tender!)

Elektra Blu was MOST helpful, offering to dispose of any unwanted bits and pieces.  (Well, she also offered to dispose of the whole damn thing, but she had very good food-manners; she begged less than my cat does, and without the little vocalized “Mew!”s.  Which is good, ’cause that would have been weird.)

Shoothouse Barbie was kind enough to let me feed her the first night to cement my identity as a member of the pack.  Sooooo cute — you get the cup of food and walk over to her dish, then instruct her to sit.  The first time she sat for me, she did so with her nose in her bowl; I sternly “Hey!“d her and she sat bolt upright.  Then you pour the food in the dish and she has to wait until you say “Okay!”  Even though she’d barely known me for a couple of hours she obeyed.  Such a good puppy!  Such good doggie manners!  Which is a good thing, because I fear my ideas of pet enrichment may be rubbing off on SB . . .

"Save me, Obe-Dog Kanobe, you're my only hope!"

I fell just a little in love with this puppy.  I mean, she was SUCH a sweetie!  She loves attention and occasionally “pets” you with her paw and gives hugs by snuggling her head between your legs and — well, just LOOK at her!

Shoothouse Barbie and Dr. Boyfriend are fabulous hosts, by the way.  They fed us gourmet food until we lolled around in gluttonous stupor and let me walk the dog and even put a pitcher of water and two clean glasses in our room and were just the most thoughtful and polite folks ever.  And oh, the conversations we had!  Everything from chemistry to engagement rings to puppies and kitties to family to politics to the caliber wars to meth dens to AR-15 triggers to spin classes and gym mixes to the proper composition of a breakfast taco to digital cameras to crock pot recipes to retirement savings to cargo pants to Johnny Depp to dove hunting to lots of other stuff.

So, the friends (furry and otherwise) and food component of this mini-vacation were an A-plus.  Tomorrow — our trip to the range!

Please set my caffeine meter to “Shrieking”

I’m ashamed to admit that I abused Shoothouse Barbie‘s hospitality.  How?  Well, Dr. Boyfriend didn’t notice it, but I stole the sling off one of their rifles.  I’ve just wrapped it around my left bicep and tightened it with my teeth; I’m now ready to take the quickest and most effective method for getting coffee into my bloodstream.

(Of course I didn’t; I don’t steal.  The closest I came to abusing hospitality were fleeting thoughts of dog-napping.)

I am EXHAUSTED, y’all.  We had the unexpected pleasure of dining with old college friend CC last night.  I finally managed to give him Ambulance Driver’s autographed book*, something I’ve been meaning to do for a year.  (He says thanks, AD, he’s really excited to read it and was psyched by the note!)

CC’s years of EMT-ing and medical response leads him to have the — dare I say it? — cynical, off-the-wall, biting-yet-good-humored hysterical stories I’ve found common in the EMT world.  He told us stories about breaking in new physician assistants, and a woman with very unfortunately placed necrotizing fasciitis, and the similarity of drug reps to pole dancers, etc., and we laughed ourselves silly.  A lovely time was had by all!

But it meant we didn’t get home till 10:15 PM.  Another night of short sleep for Lissa and Michael!

So, rather than give short shrift to my trip to Austin, I’m holding most of it until tomorrow.  However, I shall give you a teaser!

*P.S. En Route is now on Kindle!  If you haven’t already bought a copy, do it today!

Off to play with Shoothouse Barbie!

We’re off to Texas to play with Shoothouse Barbie, Dr. Boyfriend and Electra.  And boomsticks!  Lots and lots of boomsticks!  Cheers!