I suppose I’m due for my monthly update…
I’m sorry I’m not writing regularly any more, I seem to have lost my muse but I just can’t give up the site and the friends I have here. I’ll just work on updating when I can, and try to not let too much fall through the cracks.
This has been an unusually cold and miserable winter for us here in the Midlands of South Carolina. We’ve had two separate snowfalls of notable amounts, we got 3-4 inches on the day after Christmas and then we got 7-8 inches on January 10. The January snowfall was followed by sleet and freezing rain around 11am, the company I work for closed on that Monday but then required us to come to work on the Tuesday. I drove in on Monday and found the going not that bad, I thought Tuesday was even more treacherous due to the ice. The ice also caused it to linger on the ground much longer, I finally had to shovel the driveway on Thursday after slipping and falling hard Wednesday at lunch. That marked the first time in my life I had shoveled snow! We had a warm weekend the next weekend but today is cold, grey, and miserable. It started raining yesterday around 3pm and it only stopped around the middle of the morning today. I’m ready for Spring already but we haven’t even gotten to the worst of our winter yet.
I attended a model car show and swap meet this past weekend. The club that puts it on has some very talented modelers, I’m always especially impressed with the Southern California style Low-Riders that one member builds. His paint is incredible!







I suppose I should update my health. The doctor changed my medication and the current one seems to be keeping my blood pressure regulated well. I also took a lung function test in the doctor’s office during the first week of January. That was rather interesting, they had a machine roughly the size of a portable printer that they hooked to a disposable plastic tube. My instructions were to take a really deep breath and blow into the tube “Like you’re trying to blow out candles”. The nurse asked if I’d ever had a test like that before, I wanted to be a smart ass and tell her, “Yeah, but the officer usually shines a bright light in my eyes before telling me to blow into the tube!” Apparently there was a misunderstanding, she never told me to blow as hard as I could and I interpreted “blowing out candles” to mean that I was to blow steadily for as long as I could. When they read the results they sent me to a pulmonary specialist for a full battery of tests, those tests were performed this past Monday and I received a clean bill of health. No serious lung problems and only a mild case of high blood pressure.
I purchased a new firearm just before Christmas. I had written in my last entry that I had won a new pistol as a door prize at my office Christmas party, I already had a similar firearm so I put the new pistol and a rifle I also owned on gunbroker.com to sell. I took the proceeds and purchased a Taurus PT-709 Slim, holster, and laser sight to be used for concealed carry duty. It arrived the Friday before Christmas and I took it to the range on Christmas Eve. The laser sight wasn’t installed for that range trip so I spent some time getting the adjustable sights dialed in then put a total of approximately 120 rounds through it. No failures, and it wasn’t uncomfortable to shoot. I think it’s a keeper, I hope to get to the range this weekend to fire it again. Here is a stock photo of the pistol, I don’t have a photo of my actual firearm available:

I also drove around the neighborhood to photograph Christmas lights on Christmas Eve. I used a monopod to try and make the camera more stable but it still didn’t work very well. I need to think of something better for next time. Christmas and New Year’s was pretty low-key for me this year. I worked every day except the 23rd, 24th, and 31st so I didn’t go anywhere or even have enough time off to really do anything special. |