Tommy Get Your Gun

It's not a gun, it's a weapon! 

Call if a gun, and they'd make us drop for twenty. 

Twenty pushups. 

Just got home from work in the ER. Same crazy shit. Kids with fevers, and young guys who wipe out while pursuing sports glory, and break something. I'm sitting in the living room at the computer, writing this in my underwear, while the wife, two kids, and the Basset Hound (who has taken up permanent residence on my Archie Bunker lazy boy TV-watching chair) are all snoring. The zebra finches are eyeing my hairy shoulders nervously from the empty I Can't Believe It's Not Butter plastic cup that is the nest inside their cage. Their "nest" is lined with lint from our drier.





So I ran into E, today, and he invited me to go shooting with him, tomorrow morning.  I said "Fifty-fifty chance I'll show up."

Here's the conundrum: 

(1) The wife wants to go up into the mountains, to play in the snow with the kids.  I don't want her to go because (a) the Jeep has a blown ball bearing in the front right wheel, and the 4-wheel drive won't shift into gear.  In plain English, it's undriveable. (b) After she slides off the 138 or the 2 she won't be able to call for help because she washed her jeans this morning, and didn't bother to remove that nice Motorola flip phone of hers.  Yes, I spent 10 minutes pointing a blow drier at the phone.  It's a gonner.  Dead. Kaput.  Koniec.  Muerte.

(2) E's spot where he fires his M-16 is at low elevation in the very same mountains where the wife wants to go.  I don't want to be a hypocrite--or even worse--a hypocrite who gets caught.

(3) The monthly Bonelli Bird Walk is also tomorrow morning at 08:00 and I would love to go birding with a crowd of birders who I never see.  And I'd like to get my hands on that ^&%#! Bald Eagle who only shows up when I'm not there.  Watch...if I don't go, he'll show up.  Same goes for that rat bastard Black & White Warbler that has eluded me since November.

(4) The last time I fired an M-16 Ronald Reagan was president.  I don't mind waiting a month or two longer, so that when I lay down in the prone firing position, I don't start shivering with the cold. 

(5) Last but deinitely not least:  I have serious concerns about one of us sliding off the road with the snow levels as low as they are, this weekend.  The Caltrans highway conditions report makes it look like we couldn't go even if we wanted to.  Bonelli might just be the safer i.e. smarter choice to make.

Decisions, decisions...