More Guns
Auto Ordnance has long been a favorite 1911 manufacturer of mine, though I missed the boat on buying one of their pistols when they still cost $350. Quality has not increased but as they made a name for themselves, their prices went up accordingly. Still affordable, but not quite the same amazing deal.

I was wandering around the net last night for production 1911s that fit my requirements without making me screw around with them too much. By lucky happenstance I ran across a new (to me) Auto Ordnance pistol:



I like it. I've pretty much given up on finding an acceptable production pistol under $2000 without the front slide serrations (I could customize my own Springfield Mil-spec but that's a pain in the ass when I have little free time), so the only real gripe I have the Custom there is the grip safety: I prefer a high grip style, not the 'speedbump' style. However, it's a minor consideration for all the rest of the features you get for a mere $650 including shipping and transfer. Probably cheaper from other sites, also; I found it on Impact Guns.

So. Before I had the Kimber Tactical II picked out for my next 1911 to buy (12-16 months in the future...) but this Auto Ordnance ousted it. It's at least $150 cheaper and the included front strap serrations would bring the real savings up to at least $225. While the Kimber might be minutely more precise, my skill is hardly at the point where I'll be able to take advantage of it.

A major problem with 1911s these days is the sighting systems they all use. The Hienie or Novak low profile, ramped style sights might look slick, but the day you need to rack the slide with only one hand, you'll die before you get it to work. There are two good methods or one-hand racking that I know of: hooking the front edge of the rear sight on either your belt or shoe. Those are the only ways I've ever had work out with a 1911, and with a ramped rear sight it's damn near impossible. King-Tappan style sights are the sights I want the most, but once you cut the dovetail for a given sight at the rear of the slide, there ain't no going back without major gunsmithing skill.

Okay, yeah you can use the front sight in a pinch, but it's tough to do correctly in a peaceful setting, much less with someone else trying to kill you. Try doing it with your off hand!
- posted by Dave @ Tuesday, June 07, 2005

 
Random
Well, the Yankees lost after coming back from 0-3 to tie it; a solo homer in the, oh, 6th or 7th by a Brewer took care of that. Man, they haven't been playing well. Oh well, they DID just come off a really good streak.

I was out driving just now, and there was this dead skunk completely flattened on the side of the road. I passed it twice because it was on one of my turn-around roads, and the first time I saw the glint of an eye right near this skunk. Turns out, as I found on the way back (it ran away when I flashed my highs on it the first time, but stuck around the second time), a fox was eating it, or at least checking it out. I'm betting on the eating, since it ran and returned when I was past. I didn't know foxes were carrion eaters... I figured it was just a skunk hovering around its dead mate. Do skunks do that? No clue, really; I know they're related to ferrets and are mustelids, but beyond that my experiences and knowledge are limited to the nasty fucking stench. Since the Lacey skunk episode, though, it doesn't bother me nearly so much, so I guess I came out ahead.

In case you're curious and don't know, a group of foxes is a skulk. I didn't know that, but it's a lot cooler than a gaggle (geese)... I wonder how people came up with these names, anyway. Well, I suppose they're descriptive, for the most part, of behavior or personification. A murder of crows, for example, or a wake of buzzards. I like the bullfinch collective, a 'bellowing' of bullfinches. Heh, a group of geese on water is a plump. A convocation of eagles? Very appropriate. Yep, I love the wiki.

I was thinking about how people used to tell me to try to learn one new thing every day. One? What the deuce kind of slacking is that? Assuming it is a realistic goal for most people, which I can't really believe, it would mean I'm very far removed from normal. And that, at least, is accurate. Sometimes I wonder what kind of psychoses I harbor, when you compare my mind to the 'normal' mind.

By the way, the collective for hedgehogs according to the wiki is a prickle.

Where are our Renaissance Men, our Polymaths? Where are the Leonardo da Vincis of our time? Are we placing more importance on excellence in specialty and ignoring those who are talented in many fields but not quite enough to stand out in such specialized fields, or do they frankly not exist? If the latter is true, why is that? Education system, lower expectations, culture, demography? I don't know, but my aspiration is to look back in forty years and see the life of a Renaissance Man. I look at our leaders in both the private and public sectors and see nobody who impresses me nearly as much as a da Vinci, Jefferson, or Aurelius.

Continuing from above, athletics is a good example of specialization. If you're good enough to get noticed on the world scene, as in at the Olympics or similar, you're probably not going to be much good for anything else. Notable exceptions are decathletes, but even then, they're typically not good enough in at least half of their events to have a competitive chance in the specialized competitions. You could say that a major contributor is the sheer quantity of people on the earth; there will always be a bell curve of any given ability, but when the population really gets up there, even the 99.9999th percentile is full of so many people that they're the only ones that have a shot.

The last thing I wish to be is a specialist. Continuing with the athletics example (sigh), I'll never be a great long distance runner. I'll never be a great sprinter. I'll never be able to bench 600 pounds or throw a discus 300 feet. I'll never be able to dunk a basketball or throw a 90 mph fastball, and I'll never swim the English Channel. But I can run farther than most people and still turn on the afterburners when I need to, I can handle more weight in real life applications than most people, and so on. I used to aspire to greatness in running, and I used to dream of playing baseball in college and moving up to the majors, or climbing Everest some day. But somewhere along the way I realized that a 185 pound 5'10" mesomorph with good natural athletic ability is a damn nice thing to be, because while I'll never be great at any sport I can think of, I can be good at all of them. And I'm happy with that--in all aspects of my life.
- posted by Dave @ Tuesday, June 07, 2005

 
Ooooh.
Cold Steel is coming out with a new folder that I really like the looks of:



It's call the Spectre; not much else to say, but it's a beauty. Classy and made with the San Mai III steel they use in all of their high end knives these days. It's also very pricey... too expensive for me, at least right now.


The folder that I really itch to own is the Benchmade Pardue/Osborne Apparition:



Beautiful, enough so that it makes the Spectre look plain. That's the next knife on my list, assuming those damn Anzas ever show up.
- posted by Dave @ Tuesday, June 07, 2005

 
Sigh
So I saw Revenge of the Sith the other day. I finally really dislike Lucas.

See, he wrote the original trilogy, and in the early 90s (I want to say '93) Timothy Zahn wrote--at the behest of Lucasarts, or whoever controls Star Wars--the first expansion novels. His trilogy, the name of which I don't actually recall at the moment, remains one of my favorites in all genres. Since Zahn, dozens of writers, at least a hundred books, and a few dozen games have expanded the SW universe. Those writers and other producers are the people that really made Star Wars what it is today.

Now, every single one of those creators was approached by Lucasarts (or whoever) and asked to do work in the SW universe. They worked hand in hand to make sure the plot and other background junk was acceptable. So, basically anything you see published in the SW universe was approved by some high level Lucasarts dude, if not George Lucas himself. That's how all franchise-type operations work in writing, see, be it D&D, Starcraft, whatever. You can't just set out and write whatever you want for obvious reasons--you know, copyrights. Also, they don't take submissions from fan-fiction type people because if they were to read it, then happen to use a plot device coincidentally some years down the road from a rejected manuscript, the rejectee could sue. They return those with a big ass stamp that says it wasn't read so you don't get any ideas to do that.

So where the fuck does Lucas get off ignoring or flat out contradicting all the work of those other, mostly superior authors? Hmm? My guess is he is a conceited, arrogant fuck that thinks he can just piss off his commitment to those authors to do their work justice, as they did his. I'm not going to list off my complaints just yet because I'd need to watch it a bunch of times on DVD to catch them all, but some day I probably will just to see how much he deviated.

Okay, I'm going to complain a little about the movie as a movie alone. Way too much flash, poor continuity between installments (mostly between the two trilogies), wooden acting... That says it all. I had to stop watching most of the scenes with Anakin and Padme because they were so horrible. Oh! And I have an excellent example of Lucas being a dick: in Timothy Zahn's trilogy, Mara Jade tells Luke that after the Cloud City debacle, the emperor took Darth Vader's biological hand. Hmm, too bad he was already apparently missing both by then, thanks to Lucas's work in the prequel trilogy! Look, guys, it's the little things that really ruin books and movies.
- posted by Dave @ Monday, June 06, 2005

 
P7000 Pistol
Well now, this is an interesting concept. Basically the P7000 is a 1911 style pistol with an open top slide, similar to the Beretta 92 design, chambered in 7x23mm aka 7penna, a proprietary cartridge.

Talk about a solution looking for a problem.

You see, 7mm is an awfully small bullet to fire out of a handgun. Currently the ammunition is offered in two flavors, 77gr LRN or a 46gr... brass bullet. WTF? Okay, this is a real dumb ammunition design, because with small light bullets you are relying on expansion and frangmentation to damage your target. Brass won't expand or deform much, if at all, and my problem with the lead is below.

They claim the 46gr bullet can hit 1740 FPS, which means the 77gr LRN would be a lot quicker than you want to be firing lead bullets. IIRC, it's best to jacket bullets that you plan on sending down the barrel much over 1300 FPS because the lead will foul the barrel horribly and yield poor accuracy. Harder alloys can hit higher velocities without that problem, but they also don't deform much at all.

A suggested use for this pistol is self defense. Other than pocket pistols and the FN FiveseveN, this is about the last handgun I would choose for self defense. I'd take a full size 9mm over it any day, and you know how I feel about the 9x19mm cartridge in handguns. The only real use I can see here is competition and varminting.

Okay, next gripe. It's a single stack, from what I can tell. Why not stagger stack or even double stack it with such small bullets? The 1911 grip has room for very close to double stack, at the least. 13 rounds of 7penna doesn't trump 9 rounds of 45 ACP, that's for damn sure. Maybe if it held 20 rounds I'd like it more.

It sure is pretty, though a straight mainspring housing would look a lot better, and it could use a high grip safety. It's also very expensive. Suggested retail is, I think, 1560 Euro; that's about... 1900 US dollars? Something like that? It would be more but the Euro dropped 6-7 cents against the dollar after Italy made its Lira comment. Ha.

Whoa, shit, I was wrong. Its suggested retail is 1800 Euro, which is over $2200 at current exhange rates. Jesus. If you're interested in learning more (and seeing the pretty picture), read here. And Defense Review has a piece on it, which has a slightly different point of view from mine on the handgun.

Bottom line is I could buy a pair of 1911s semi-customized to my hands (and by my hands...) and a dozen mags for less than $2200 that would be more effective for self defense every day of the week and twice on sunday. This looks like a toy for people who are uninformed on the facts of self defense cartridges or don't mind buying a fairly useless pistol to add to the collection. I might consider it if I had the money, because as much as I talked shit about it, if someone handed me one I sure wouldn't turn it down.

Like the FN FiveseveN, the most alluring aspect of the pistol is that it is unique. It offers little else.
- posted by Dave @ Monday, June 06, 2005

 
How Close?
How close do we have to get to any given loathsome extreme before people will wake up and realize we're on the path, only a few steps away? How long are the perceptive folks going to be called Chicken Littles, alarmists, and radicals?

I think it's foolish to throw out references to Nazi Germany, for example, under a misinterpretation of Godwin's law. There's one hell of a difference between screaming Bush=Hitler! and comparing the relationship of gun control to the Holocaust and other social disasters (read genocides and oppression).

I may make references to fascism, socialism, police states, and so on, but I'm not claiming we're there. Yet. I'm saying that certain steps are proven in history to lead to such undesirable situations and the people had better wake the hell up before they look out the window some day and see the Gestapo coming up the front walk.

Now, I'm not claiming to be a great social prophet here. I'm a rank amateur compared to a great many bloggers, and my knowledge of all aspects of the cultural morph we're undergoing (for example) is inferior to just about all of theirs. I ask this question not for myself, but for my betters who are decried, ignored, or nonexistant in the minds of 95% of the population.
- posted by Dave @ Sunday, June 05, 2005

 
Whew
It's sure hot here. It's pushing 90 in the shade with an easy 85% humidity, so we're talking serious crush your ass in 5 minutes heat. (I realize that isn't too horrible for much of the country, but to a lifelong Yankee that's been relatively inactive in heat for a while, it's fucking awful. And I'd like to see you Southerners take subzero winter days.)

Yet I went running. Dumb? Well, it depends on your point of view. I wanted to see what it was like to run in this type of weather again, something I haven't done in three years at least, and it's insanely rough. I ran a half mile, almost collapsed while stretching, ran a quarter mile, almost collapsed again, kind of staggered a dozen meters and trotted another quarter mile, and that time I started getting tunnel vision and horrible cramps in my diaphragm. Walked fifty meters, jogged a couple hundred, walked a couple hundred, then ran the final 300 or so. Collapsed in the garage on the dog table sucking wind like a god damn Hoover, then after a few minutes I could walk again and I made it up here, stripped, and started drinking water in a cross breeze from my window fans. I'm still overheated, but I feel alright as long as I don't move too much. Did I mention I was wearing a tight black cotton/poly shirt? Yeah, dumb. I was trying to simulate GA conditions but I ended up almost killing myself.

I'm going back out around 7 PM, I think, or maybe around dusk.

I can not believe I used to run XC in summer heat like this. Dear lord. Run around the lake was a summer event, usually in August... that's a 9 mile or so two person race, you see; a fast person is paired with a slowish person and they run half laps until they meet, turning around and running back, meeting again, etc. The faster person ends up running more of the course, and it's chafe city for the balls.

Lacking a good way to close this... I guess I'm just a hot weather pussy for now. I'm going to go out every day in midafternoon and run at least a mile--but do my real running in the cool parts of the day--and try to build up my heat resistance. I know I can get over it, because while I didn't like running in the heat back in those XC halcyon days, I still pulled off an average of 8-9 mile days at a good clip. Can you believe the athletic director said we couldn't take our shirts off while we were running on the HS grounds my junior year? What the fuck is that? I'd like to see that jackass out there running with us to compare 9+ miles with a damn shirt on to 9+ miles without one. Guess he didn't grasp thermodynamics and heat exchange and shit like that, because it can be an easy 10 degree difference. (Compare the shirt which absorbs IR, reflects heat from the skin instead of letting it escape, and prevents sweat from evaporating... to running with a bare chest. Even the slightest breeze can turn a 95 degree day into a very bearable 80 degree running temperature. Hell, I've been actually cold on runs in the summer without a shirt on!) What a stupid fucker. Is it really that hard to understand why the dry sock and wet sock thermometers will show different readings with wind? Duh, that's the whole fucking point of sweating.
- posted by Dave @ Sunday, June 05, 2005

 
Indifference
Something I run into frequently when debating the merits of various laws is the old 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' line. Or someone will say 'oh, well I don't do that anyway, so I don't care that they restrict it.'

Well, to those folks, I give a hearty FUCK YOU.

How would you women like it if the government decided to strip you of suffrage and all of the men and the women who don't vote said they didn't care because it didn't apply to them?

How would you feel if all the whites and other minorities said they didn't care you were being evicted from the country because it didn't apply to them?

How many of you that say you don't care will come crying to the rest of us, those you've been putting down and oppressing with your very indifference, when the government does something that DOES apply to you?

We have to stay united. I will fight for drug, tobacco, and alcohol freedom--despite the fact that I do no drugs, I do not use tobacco products, and I do not drink--if you'll fight for firearm and knife freedom. It's called a quid pro quo, and if you don't help me when I need help, I may just tell you to piss up a fucking rope when you come crying to me for help. Probably not, because I'm a nice guy... but I might. I get closer to that point every day.
_____

Unity is a total pipe dream, because most Americans don't give a shit about anything beyond their own life and maybe some vague platitudes. I see that to be true, and I'd have to be real dumb to believe the government doesn't see--and utilize--it as well. Need I remind you of the nature of government? It is to acquire, hold, and build power within itself, not serve the subjects. Realize this: the agents of the government are not required to live within most of the laws the rest of us proles are. That alone should tell you a great deal about the JBTs* running this country.


*Jack Booted Thugs: The deragatory yet scarily accurate name for agents of the government, Federal especially, with a specific reference to the ATF (also FBI or DEA depending on the context).
- posted by Dave @ Sunday, June 05, 2005

 
Cash Laws
Man, from a writing standpoint I just love the way the government likes to fuck with us because it gives me an incredible amount of shit to write about.

You should know that it's illegal to leave the country with more than $10,000 in US currency. It's also pretty much a guaranteed confiscation of your cash if you enter the country with a lot of money. Why? Well, the presumption is that you're going to go buy drugs with it. Funny, though...

Read.

I don't want to excerpt it, and I'm not going into their profiling complaint--other than to say that yeah, no shit they're going to stop people who fit the profile of drug runners more, but it's a separate issue. Profiling goes both ways, guys; if the cops see a white guy in a nice car in the ghetto at 3 AM they'll probably assume he's a buyer and stop him. It's not racist, and the inflammatory claim-makers that spew that shit should be shot in the face with a fire hose.

Also, if you're wandering around town with a lot of cash and are stopped by a cop, prepare to lose it all. It's considered a crime, at least de facto if not de jure, to carry large quantities of cash. If you 'don't have a good reason' in the cops' view, you're screwed. Ok, if I want to carry my god damn life savings in a duffel bag on my back, I don't NEED an excuse. It's called freedom, mother fucker, and the response to a police inquiry should be "What fucking business is it of yours?" The reality is that the police have every motivation to find enough suspicion to confiscate your cash because it goes directly to the system that employs them and I would be surprised not at all to find cops got a cut of whatever they confiscated.

Oh boy, enter the tedious Constitutional pedantry. There's this little snippet of law called the Fourth Amendment, and it reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

To go along with that, we have a piece of the Fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Well now. I'd say that makes the actions of various JBT agencies rather unConstitutional, wouldn't you?
- posted by Dave @ Sunday, June 05, 2005

 
Terrorism
That word is tossed about like a damn hot potato these days, applied to everything from legal militias to granny with a paring knife in her bag from the picnic that she forgot to take out before she hit the airport. But what is terrorism?

ter·ror·ism (tr-rzm)
n.

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Hmmmm. Somehow I don't think granny fits that mold.

The 'War on Terror' has become a vehicle for expanding government powers--ostensibly temporarily, but since the WoT will never be over so long as we dick around with soft tactics in the Middle East, in a few years people will become so accustomed to the new powers of government that even if the WoT is over some day, it won't even occur to them to make Congress repeal them. It's worth mentioning that the 'War on Drugs' did the exact same thing.

You're branded a terrorist for having the capability of perpetrating a terrorist act, not for actually committing one. That's a common government theme and one of my major fucking gripes (to put it mildly) on this blog. Realistically speaking I'm more 'dangerous' with no weapons than the overwhelmingly vast majority of the human population is while armed with a knife, so if granny with a knife is a terrorist, I guess I am too, only there's no way for me to turn off my capability. What about other martial artists? Should we sedate them? How about doctors, sports therapists, and nurses, with their dangerous knowledge of human anatomy? The list goes on. Better ban those aviation engineers because they know far too much about how to cripple and airplane to trust them!

Look. The terrorists that took over all those planes on 9/11 did so because the passengers did not resist (with a notable exception), not because they had terrorist knives, er, box cutters that made them supercriminals. There could be many reasons for them not resisting, such as if the terrorists killed the pilots and there was nobody else to fly the plane if the passengers did regain control, but we will never know. What I do know is that after that snafu, no self respecting airline passenger will just sit back and let a bunch of fruitcakes with utility knives take over their plane. The TSA bullshit--tossing your ass on a blacklist with no redress--is just one more measure of control the government has passed on us without preventing any real crime, and gee fucking whiz does it smack of police state or what? Toe the line or you'll be driving everywhere, buster--and that's just for now. What if they decide folks on the terrorist watch list can't be trusted to drive either? Or have access to their bank accounts?
- posted by Dave @ Sunday, June 05, 2005

 
More on Gun Laws
Disclaimer: I wrote this during commercials while watching Mythbusters and reading about battery technology, so if the logic and structure isn't clear, my bad. I didn't edit it either, and I don't feel like it now.

Gun laws are something you need to keep a sense of reality about. Yeah, I get really pissed when I look at the infinitely unConstitutional measures our various legislatures keep trying to pass, and do manage to pass, but really... getting the guns out of the hands of Americans is an impossible feat for the present.

Look. The RKBA movement is pretty god damn big, full of military personnel and other independent, action oriented men and women that own a lot of guns. Guns aren't just tools to most of them, but a way of life; skill is earned, polished, and honed, all as a matter of pride. We're talking about millions of armed, willing, and ready people here.

People seem to think that as soon as a confiscation/registration law is passed, it's all over. Poof, the guns are gone. Well, that's not how it works. At absolute best the government has, oh, two million or so foot soldiers to try to confiscate the guns from seventy million owners, and if even 10% of those owners resist, the government will be outnumbered rather handily.

Now, I understand that there are a few dozen ways the government could put pressure on gun owners to pretty much ruin their lives until they give up their weapons, but how many people do you suppose will stand for having their lives shut down by control freaks on capitol hill without fighting back? Some certainly would, either by mental weakness or responsibilities to family and such, but it would take only a tiny percentage of pissed off militiamen to force the government to push a police state that would spark a general revolution or recognize the 2nd Amendment affirmed right again.

I think the way the government will ultimately disarm our society is cultural indoctrination in schools, growing whole generations of collectivist anti-gunners. They're working on it right now, perhaps not specifically to remove guns from the hands of gun owners, but to establish a socialist culture. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I'll just have to turn around and call you a blind sucker.


Read this for a scary view of the future of guns.

I tried to find the sabotage piece by Connie du Toit on our public schools, but I'm not having any luck. I'm browsing her very worthy archives and essays right now, though, so if I run across it I'll update.
- posted by Dave @ Saturday, June 04, 2005

 
I'm Home
A lot earlier than I thought I would be. Nothing changed mid-trip, I just wasn't aware that we were planning to come home today.

So, a few highlights. I really missed Erin the whole time. That's not a highlight, but it was a repeating theme.

We went to a mother's side of the family get together in Binghamton and I saw a few aunts and cousins I hadn't seen in a while. It poured in the last half of the day and we went on a several mile jaunt around the lake and the dogs were annoying as hell, but we saw an abundance of rare plants - like lady slippers - and it was overall a fun time.

Next major stop: Antietam, Maryland. As in, the battle of Antietam, in the Civil War (War of Northern Aggression, as I'm coming to view it, despite being a Yankee). It was pretty interesting, even though the driving tour was confusing and we got turned around a few times. I lost interest 3/4 through though because it was too long and some of the stops were just rambling on. It's shocking the type of battle (Napoleonic) they fought in the Civil War, the horror of forming in lines and standing firm against the opening volley from your enemy... I can't imagine the courage it would take to stand there in the front lines, rifles leveled twenty yards away are your chest, praying that the first shots missed you and hit your brothers instead--or maybe hoping you'd take the bullet rather than a friend. I'd rather walk into a modern battlefield than face that kind of combat any day of the week.

Okay, many hours later we ended up in Virginia at Stone Manor cabin, a nice little place on the Shenandoah River. It was beautiful and peaceful except for the fucking trucks running up and down the road all damn day; one day when I was sitting on the screened in porch attempting to write, a grading machine came up and down RIGHT in front of our fucking cabin literally 12 times in a row. It was loud enough at 50 yards that I couldn't hear my voice speaking normally, so I hope the bastard running it went deaf.

The nicer bits were the horseshoe pit, fire pit, spa on the porch, the big ass painted turtle that sunned on this rock maybe 70 yards out into the river from our banks... it was pretty cool there. I'm taking several bits of architectural wisdom from the cabin to apply to my own house some day, if my dream of building my own place on my own land with my own hands (as much as possible) is realized. I'd think about going back some day if I could get a guarantee there would be no trucks.

We went to Luray Caverns, the tour of which was rather short on geology and history. It sure was worth seeing though, and I only wish I had a better camera; my digital is fine for up close stuff in good lighting, but I'd need a digital SLR or regular SLR and a bunch of film to really do it justice. It's God damn amazing if you think that all of those formations were the result of dripping water with a few minerals.

What else did we do... I dunno. I'm losing my mind. I broke in a new folding knife, a Benchmade Pardue Ambush, the only folder I own that I can open with one motion of my thumb instead of two. The rolling lock was annoying at first, but it's grown on me. I also managed to cut my middle finger when I mis-caught my Benchmade Monochrome folder; the serrations got me. No big deal, but it's the first cut I've had since Christmas. Otherwise I read a bunch of books, played some Monopoly (sometimes with myself... and I still lost), watched a few movies, just relaxed, and realized HOLY SHIT I'm leaving in two weeks! I almost had a panic attack the first time that hit me when I was trying to go to sleep the first night at the cabin, and I had to read another hour to get my mind off it and not have awful dreams when I did fall asleep.

I think I'm running out of steam. I lost my train of thought a while ago; I see the Yankees lost, and I'm getting all nostalgic and lonely so I might as well sign off. 'Night.


Oh! I forgot. On the way home, we got to sit unmoving in a damn traffic jam for 90 minutes. Sweet, huh? It doesn't trump the five hours in an airplane coach seat on the tarmac we did once, but it was pretty bad all the same. Yeah, the driving part of this whole trip, which totaled about 18-20 hours, was really shitty. Not going to bitch too much, but let's just say I don't really fit in the seat...
- posted by Dave @ Friday, June 03, 2005