Lot's of Newbies, so let's start a......
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Lot's of Newbies, so let's start a......
| Thu, 03-03-2005 - 3:58pm |
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I've been really busy. My job required me to move to second shift last December (6 months ahead of what I expected) and I've been working a lot of overtime. In addition, I've been busy with other things. I had a 5 day meeting in Pensacola FLA in mid-February, followed a week or so later by a 3 day meeting in Dallas.
In between, I've been working 10-12 hour days. Pretty much come home and sleep and go back to work. Weekends I sleep and run around with my boys.
Yes, I was working on marriage. I was involved with a woman from Mexico, a university professor. It actually half-way worked out -- she got married, I didn't. Actually, I have no problems with what happened. I wish that it had been me that she married, but neither of us were willing to give up our jobs, so there wasn't much else that could have happened. And we were both intent on getting married, so it didn't suprise (or bother) me that she married so soon after we ended.
I am corresponding with a woman in China right now and hope to meet her this summer. That's a large part of the reason that I'm working all the overtime, is to pay for airline tickets.
In general, I'm about as happy as I can ever remember being. I love my job, the ex has pretty much settled down, although my willingness to sweet talk her and semi-flirt with her has a lot to do with that, I think.
My grand daughters are healthy and happy, my older two kids are busy working at acquiring educations, my younger two guys are busy at being teenagers and discovering the world in a healthy fashion.
I joined the local rifle club here after I found out that they have a fantastic gun range just outside town. If you ever want to have boys be happy to be around you, just find a way to let them blow something up or shoot things with your approval. We aren't interested in hunting right now, but it's great (and cheap) fun to go to the range for several hours of shooting on the weekend. I like being with my boys and I have really missed guns and shooting ever since I left the National Guard.
All in all, I'm happy but have very little time during the week because of my work hours.
Michael
Great update Michael! Are you planning to go to China, or bring her to you here for a visit?
and discovering the world in a healthy fashion.... What a GREAT statement. I pray I can say the same about my son when he gets into his teen years. And the shooting is a great idea. Jas keeps talking about getting Ty something he can handle and taking him out to do the same. I've love to see him do that. To see Ty learn a healthy respect for gun and how to handle them. I know they'd actually both like to get into hunting at some point.
Hi again
Great update! I remember the thing with the woman from Mexico. Glad it hasn't slowed you down any. Still working towards getting what you want.
And though I'm not a big gun person, I would totally love target shooting. I keep thinking I'm going to look into that one of these days. I couldn't hunt but I remember going to the boardwalk at the beach and the shooting gallery they had there when I was a kid. I would sit there and shoot at things for hours. God knows, my son would love it.
I hope you get to go meet this woman from China soon. Good luck!
Tara
My goal is to get to China right around the beginning of summer. I'll have to get a leave of absence from work since I otherwise won't have enough vacation days left to spend any time there. And it's an all or nothing deal. I expect to make the decision when I meet her as to whether or not we will marry. If I make the decision to go ahead, then it will be while I am there for the two-three weeks.
That situation bothers a lot of people, but I trust my judgement. It just means that I have to have all my ducks in a row financially and legally before I leave to visit.
And yes, I'm real happy with my kids. My two younger ones are heavily into "gaming". I like the adult supervision that they have at the store where they do this stuff and see them making good choices. I overheard my 16 yo advising his younger brother to stay away from one of the other guys because he "doesn't have any common sense". Evidently, my boy disapproved of some sort of "prank" the other kid had pulled and felt that he was likely to escalate to more dangerous stuff later.
The same son has also been talking about one of his friends who just got his license AND a car and told me on different occasions that the kid:
- lied to his parents about where he was going to be,
- has 2 speeding tickets in the first 3 months of driving.
I like seeing my boys put their values into action.
For myself, I don't believe in guns for self-defense. But then, with my size, I don't need to. My daughter wants one to keep in her home and I'm willing to get it for her if she goes through training and spends enough time shooting it to get used to it first.
I'm not even really interested in hunting. Maybe wild hogs or turkeys in a year or two, but I'm not interested in deer or other things. I just like going out to the range with my boys and shooting. We have some .22 pistols, which are somewhat expensive, but the ammo is super cheap. We pay to get the copper jacketed bullets so that we don't have to handle the lead, but even with that, it's about $9 for 550 rounds. See how long $9 lasts you at any other sort of entertainment, especially something that boys like and which gets you outside.
Going to the range is a stress reliever in itself. It's several miles outside of town and down a mile or two of dirt roads, past sleepy little rivers and through quiet trees. We see deer, possums, skunks, and all sorts of birds as we go to the site. Then, I also like that my boys are getting used to guns so that they understand them and have a healthy respect for them but not a fear of them.
We also have some rifles and larger caliber handguns. One of my boys is really interested in long range shooting, maybe even competition. The other boy just loves to blow off ammo - and I'm all right with that.
I plan to get into reloading pretty soon because of the cost savings on the ammo other than the .22's.
We save our pop cans now (we don't drink much of it normally) to take out for targets, and we also have a couple of inexpensive steel "spinner" targets, as well as some clay targets. We also have regular paper targets that we use for the rifles and a spotting scope that we use to see what we shot without having to run the 100-300 yards down range.
When we come home we sit and talk while we clean the weapons. It really helps to keep that bond strong between us. I'd love to get my daughter involved in it if we just had someone to watch her baby while we shot. But, in a few years the little one can come with us, also.
My only real fear is getting stopped for something and getting my name and picture plastered all over the papers with headlines reading, "Suspect found with 8 firearms and nearly 3,000 rounds of ammunition". It really sounds bad, but for a weekend of shooting, that's pretty normal. Especially when we have 2 rifles and 2 pistols that shoot .22 ammo.
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