Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Corned beef is cooking for dinner...CHECK!

Irish Salt Bread purchased............CHECK!

Potatoes being readied.................CHECK!

The potatoes are the important part. Since I'm half Irish, and half Polish, potatoes were akin to religion when I was growing up.

And my sweet little wife knows that, and treats them with the reverence they so deserve.....

Whole-House Filtration and RO System Installation Complete!

These guys were GREAT, once they got here.

The main filters and salt container were installed, plumbed in, leak tested and flushed, and then they did the under-sink unit.

And they plumbed in the ice maker for the fridge, too!

As soon as all the water in the heater is replaced, we should be able to enjoy showers more, and the laundry should come out better, with less soap.

It wasn't a cheap system, and ate up most of our tax "refund", but it's something we'd both wanted for the house for quite a while.

Oh....and I took my share of the "play money" we set aside every year, and ordered my M1 Garand from the CMP.

Yes, I went "traditional", and ordered it in 30-06.

I'm not one for naming my guns, but I think I'll call this one "Duke" when it gets here!

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OOOPS! I Spoke Too Soon....

They arrived about 2 minutes after my previous post.

Equipment is staged, holes have been drilled, connections are being soldered, and other activities are taking place.

And again, they apologized profusely for not being on time.

Seems the "Special Deal" through Home Depot has been selling like hot cakes, and they're up to their eyebrows in work.

And one of the two guys is one that came the other night, they're both very knowledgeable and professional, and this should be an easy installation for them, seeing as they can easily get to all the pipes to plumb the system in to the house.

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Waitng for the Plumber, or Someone Like Him....

ARRRGHHH!

We bought a nice RainSoft whole-house softener and filtration system last week,

It was a "Special Deal" from Home Depot, and included 0% financing as long as we pay it off in 24 months.

WELL....the installation company was supposed to come out Wednesday, between 1500 and 1730 to site the installation of the tanks, estimate the amount of plumbing required, and install the under sink part.

They didn't get here until 1900, and by then it was too late to start anything other than the site survey, and drop off about half of the equipment.

They told us that somebody would be in contact Thursday morning, to show up Thursday afternoon, and install the under sink pre-filter, RO unit, and final filter equipment.

They didn't call or show, so I called the office at 1600.

At 1730 the office manager called, and *promised* me that somebody would be here between 0900 and 1100 to start the installation, and that they would call 30 minutes before arriving.

It's now 1125, and no call, no show.

I'm going to call them back at 1130, and try and find out what's going on.

The guys that came here Wednesday seemed really sharp, and answered all the technical questions I had to my satisfaction, and apologized for not being able to meet the promised schedule due to some unforeseen problems at the installation they had just finished.

They showed me some pictures of the one they had just came from, and I have to admit it was a difficult installation, and they pulled it off beautifully.

The house was on a corner lot, with a very small backyard, and the owner didn't want anything visible from the street.

They dug a pit to mount the equipment in, plumbed it in to the house, backfilled it, and put a fake fiberglass "rock" over the exposed components.

I'm sure it took them a lot longer than anticipated!

Of course, that does *me* no good, as they haven't come back, or called, since the office gal called Thursday evening.

I sure hope the damn equipment works better than their scheduling process in getting a crew out here for the installation!

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Here's One for Old_NFO!

He's probably already seen it, but I thought I'd share it with the rest of you.

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Another 18 Students Graduate from NRA "First Steps" Course

Well...we trained another 18 people today.

Some had shoot before, and were very good.

Some had never shot before, and got better as the class progressed.

And three young ladies had never held a gun before, and admitted to being scared when the class started.

At the end of the day, all 3 young ladies were "9 ring or better" for their 30 allowed shots, and kept saying things like "What's all the fuss about?".

And in our "The Law and Firearms" section at the end of the class, everyone was appalled at the legal wranglings and loss of our rights that's taking place.

And everyone said that they wished they had gotten more involved at an earlier date so they could write to their congresscritters, and state their views on what was going on.

One of the students even said "It's a Bill of RIGHTS, not a bill of WANTS", which I thought was a pretty good way to put it.
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"First They Came For...."

Here's an 'update' to the famous "First They Came..." quotation.

Shamelessly borrowed from Ninety Miles from Tyranny.

The "Bill and Hillary" Kitchen Set

From a friend of mine.

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Quiet Week.....

Not much going on. I've been going to bed pretty early this week to try and get plenty of rest while the antibiotics do their magic on my sinus infection.

It's working so far, as I'm able to breathe, and I'm not coughing all night long. The persistent headache I had has gone away, and my low fever (101*) has dropped back to "normal", which for me is about 97.9*.

Morale at work is pretty low, and I've moved all my personal stuff out of my office area on the ship.

Since there's NO CHANCE we'll be going out for at least a year, I figured why keep the stuff on board.

The manager I'm more or less permanently "om loan" to told us this morning at the O-dark-thirty daily meeting that the "voluntary layoff" was directed at a few specific people they're trying to get to leave "quietly". He didn't mention what group they're in, but I have my suspicions about which one it is.

And Saturday is another "NRA First Steps - Pistol" class that I'll be helping my friend with.

ALL of his "First Steps" classes are booked solid through the end of March, and he told me all the April classes are getting filled in, too.

I just hope we can scrounge up enough 22LR to keep the students equipped!

A Big "Uh-OH!" at Work

I stayed home today as I'm still under the weather, and had a doctor's appointment. They've now got me on two antibiotics to try and knock out this sinus infection that's been plaguing me for several weeks now.

And my doctor had some 3D imaging done of my head (yeah, yeah, I already know it's empty) to see if he needs to get an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist involved. Hopefully the course of antibiotics will knock it out, and I'll start feeling better.

On the work-front, I received an email from a fellow employee. Seems there was an all-hands meeting today, and the company is offering "voluntary layoffs", where if you agree, you'll get 4 weeks pay, and a kick for your COBRA medical.

Offer good only until 5pm Wednesday, so hurry now over to the HR Department and sign up!

I haven't decided what to do, as I have a Worker's Compensation claim in-process, and my sweet wife is worried that any final amount will be decided by my future earnings potential, and if I'm not working, I might not get the amount the lawyer says we'll get.

I suppose I should talk to him about it......

NRA "First Steps - Pistol" AAR

Gee....I'm using the term "AAR". Never thought I'd get here......

Got to the range today about 1030, and was greeted by the lead instructor, three other volunteer instructors, and twenty anxious students.

Some of them had fired guns before, some had not, and a few were "scared" of guns, but thought they'd be better off knowing actual facts about them, rather than relying on the the lamestream media is reporting.

The classroom part starts with The Four Rules, and then gets into the basic parts of a gun ("Frame", "Barrel", "Grip", and "Action"), and then discusses ammo.

Then grip and stance are taught, moving on to sight picture, followed by a short break.

After the break, we finish up the classroom training by reviewing what was taught, checking stance and grip for each student, and answering numerous questions.

You can tell these are very interested people by the questions they asked, and by their attitude.

While the lead was finishing up in the classroom, the other instructors and I went out into the range area, set up a table, hung targets, and loaded magazines.

The pistols in use were Ruger Mark-II's, slightly modified with dots of white-out applied to the sights. A couple of years ago when my sweet wife took the course, she complained that she couldn't get a sight picture because she couldn't see the sights!

The lead took my suggestion to use white-out, and nobody has complained since then.

The first segment was 20 rounds onto a piece of paper, just to get the students used to handling the pistols, inserting/extracting magazines, and manipulating the controls on the gun.

After questions were asked and answered, stance and grip checked again, we went to 20 rounds on a standard NRA "Slow Fire" target.

As the students fired at their first target, we watched them for things like jerking the trigger, and as always, stance and grip.

The last segment was 10 rounds at a fresh target, this time "scored".

Three of the students scored 98, so we had a 3 round shoot-off to determine the "Best Shot of the Class", who won a nice baseball cap.

So.....we started with 20 students, and turned them in to 20 graduates, with a certificate, patch, rocker, and wallet card.

The class was 100% safe, none of the guns spontaneously "went off by itself", no blood was spilled, and everybody had a great time.

And the next 5 Saturdays are booked solid, so I imagine I'll be spending a whole lot of time helping my friend teach new shooters the basics.