The weekend of driving.

So, I've been very busy over the last four (4) days: I got up at three (3) in the morning on Thursday, drove two hours and shot in the M16 EIC match at Camp Perry, on the way home, I stopped at a Toledo area Wal-Mart for an eye exam, and received a set of soft toric contacts to replace the RGP lens that I had broken on Wednesday evening (yes, it is possible to break a lens while opening a beer with a cheese slicer...), I then drove home and fell asleep immediately. On Friday morning, with another short night of sleep, I drove back to Camp Perry with my Dad and shot in the Springfield match. After that, I arrived home about 8:00, took a 45 minute nap, and waited for Metzger and Scott. When they finally arrived at 12:15, we left immediately. I took over driving from Metzger soon after, and drove until 7:00, at which point Metzger took over for the last little bit of easy driving. The next day, I drove another 7+ hours on the way home, including the horrible traffic around Chicago, and a ridiculous amount of backing up narrow driveways in a South Bend subdivision . (Anyone notice that like a good 1950's dad, I do all the damn driving?) Finally, Metzger and Scott dropped me off at about 1:00AM Monday morning, so I did get nearly four (4) hours of sleep last night, before my normal 2 hour morning commute. Finally, I'm typing this at work, hence the legal writing touches like numbers (#'s), and the grammatical errors from many, many short nights. (As a side note, I just declared today “casual monday” since the boss is gone, and I have taken off my jacket and dress shirt to sit around in an undershirt and dress pants while writing a blog entry.)


The National Matches:
I was pretty happy with my performance, given my utter lack of practice this year. I shot my best off-hand score of all time (at least in competition) on Friday, which also had the bonus of beating my Dad's off-hand score by 3 points.

LFTF version 2.0

Perhaps a bit less colorful than the year before, and it sucked to only be there for one night (no drinking in the pool this year:-( ). On the upside, the music was much better, the shirts were very cool, we had better quality beer, etc. Overall, I had at least as good of a time as I had the year before.

Gunar's absence probably decreased the amount of funny stories from this year, but oddly some of his essence seemed to rub off on the rest of us. I have not figured out how to appropriately euphemize everything yet, but suffice it to say that a mildly adult themed incident occurred that, when I found out about it, caused me to laugh hard enough to spray Pepsi on Metzger's steering wheel. I know that's a particularly vague description, but certainly those who were there will understand what I mean, and if I think of a better way to tell it later, I'll edit this.

Amber's knee injury, although it definitely put a damper on many of our plans at the time, has quite a bit of amusement value in retrospect. I've never seen anyone, much less Amber, bitch and whine as much as she did that evening, but it had amusing moments as well. Certainly, it was very amusing to watch her attempt to dance, while intoxicated, without putting any weight on her leg.

Talking to the police when the concert was shutdown for noise violations was fun. Despite the fact that I was sober and polite, I suspect that the Baraboo police hate me. I would imagine that small town police expecting a bunch of scared kids, and possibly a couple of easy MIP arrests really don't expect to deal with calm, rational legal arguments. Oh well, they should forget that by next year.

Lighting the post concert bonfire early. I know, I know, it is another inside joke, but last year I wanted to do that and Metzger talked me out of it. This year, I did it, and got away with it, despite the fact that I did it immediately in front of one of the Concert organizers, who due to some amazing lack of perception immediately complained to me about the fact that someone had started the fire (while I was palming my lighter back into my pocket).
I had a great time talking to Amber's Baraboo friend Jay on Saturday night. After everyone went to bed, he and I drank a vast amount of beer and discussed technical topics for several hours. In retrospect, it sounds like the start of a joke, with an electrician and a lawyer drinking beer on a balcony, but it was lots of fun.

Talking to Metzger's parents and Amber's parents in the same day is very, very scary. Sort of a parallel universe situation: both are fairly functional nuclear families with only one child, both sets are very nice and hospitable...but Amber's mom gave me a bloody mary for breakfast, and metzger's parents offered peach cobbler. In anycase, I was utterly terrified that I would slip up and mention “slash fiction”,

Taping the cheap styrofoam coolers together, in the parking lot of the grocery store, so they would hold enough beer and ice was amusing.

Quotes:
“Last weekend I got to dress Ann Daemon up, and make her do what I wanted” -Metzger

“The apartment smells like men” -Jen (I woke up to this comment, think Lord of the Rings orc-like, and extremely disturbing at the time)

“Good at networking is such a nicer way to put it than slutty”-Me

“You take one, I'll take the other”-alledgely by me, about sleeping arrangements

I'm too tired to keep typing, but someday I may type up the story of metzger and the baseball bat/stake question, and the