…and i woke up feeling anxious, about various and sundry things. not the best way to wake up, but it’s better than my mood yesterday, which was downright, well, depressed. yesterday afternoon i decided to avoid life by napping for a half hour. the best part of that was that amy and jim’s dogs noodle and numi joined me in the nap, and they enjoyed it even more than i did. i had to drag numi out of the bed because he wanted to lie there forever, deep under the covers including the very thick down comforter. that dog loves to sleep, and he want to coccoon deep down under the blankets whenever possible.
here is one photo that i meant to post last saturday. it’s the day kevin was finishing the new floor on the screened-in porch. after that he decided he needed to fix his shoe, and here he is cobbling.
next to kevin on the table is a trophy he won fencing. and next to that is a photo of him from his bike trip to ireland.
yes, he makes me feel completely inert.
on sunday i went with him to the cowboy shoot, where the guys dress up like they’re in the old west, at least sort of, and they shoot at targets. i’d been saying i’d go with him for months, so i figured i should finally make the effort, mostly because he wasn’t going as early as he usually did.
we left the house at nine and had to be there no later than 9:30 and we somehow made it. we stopped off at the lowe’s parking lot to pick up my brother david.
here they are, david and kevin getting all ready for the shoot. we didn’t ride horses to the event, which would have been much more authentic than showing up in the minivan.
after all the cowpokes were ready, they gathered around to listen to the cowboy rules.
here’s david, ready and rarin’ to go. his sunglasses don’t look terribly authentic, in my opinion.
kevin was the first cowboy to shoot. for some reason i’d imagined the targets being bigger and more elaborate, with painting on them. but of course the painting would have been shot off. in most of the scenarios they had to use one type of gun to shoot at some targets, and then they’d have to pick up a different gun (or pull it out of their holster) and shoot at other targets. the best one by far was when they had to hit a target that then fell backwards and launched a clay pigeon in the air, and they had to hit that, too. david hit the moving target, which was quite impressive since he’s only been doing this for three months now. kevin hit it, too, but i expect him to do well.
kevin did an excellent job on this shoot.
here’s jerri iams, the only other cowboy i knew there. jerri has been doing the cowboy shooting for a long time and he’s the one who introduced kevin to the sport. is it a sport? i don’t think it is. it’s a hobby? an activity? a chance to dress up and shoot at things. jerri won a prize at our last halloween party, i think. he was dressed in the outfit you see him in here.
i have to start planning the party soon. i have to get the multiple boxes of halloween decorations from the attic in our old house. maybe later today.
and here’s david shooting a rifle. i didn’t get any photos of them using two pistols, one in each hand, to shoot. that was pretty cool.
ok, this guy is known at “turquoise tony.” note the turquoise hatband and gun, plus he has blue casings on his bullets instead of the usual red. he had more turquoise on him i think, but you can’t see any of it here. of course his belt buckle is turquoise. tony was one of the better shooters, and clearly has been doing it a long time. he seems like quite a colorful fellow. i didn’t actually talk to him, but as i stood around during the day i started wondering about these guys’ political leanings. what kind of comments would i have gotten if i’d worn my obama t-shirt?
i guess just because they like to dress up like cowboys and shoot doesn’t mean they’re not obama supporters. because the guys who dress up in the civil war uniforms and shoot civil war-type guns seem to be fairly pro-obama, at least according to what kevin told me. he said that most of the civil war guys’ wives had been at the obama rally when i was there.
but i don’t know about this turquoise guy.
kevin didn’t know i was taking pictures of him from this vantage point…i was fascinated by the amount of stuff he had hanging from his belt. plus, notice the spurs – he jingled merrily when he walked. plus he has that knife, which i’m sure was to make it look authentic; it wasn’t like there was anything around that would need cutting. no fish to gut or anything. no animals skins to…skin.
this is kevin later in the day. the thing started at 10 and didn’t finish till three. quite a long day, in my opinion. there was a lunch break, but even though we were near the head of the line for the food, the guys in front of us snagged all the chocolate chip cookies, leaving us with the inferior oatmeal raisin ones. i noticed that one of the greedy guys had three chocolate chip cookies piled on his plate, and that was in addition to however many he’d already stuffed in his face.
not that i was bitter about the lack of CC cookies or anything.
i think i’d have liked the event better if i’d had a chair to sit on. there were five different target areas, but there were two possees of guys, each with about 20 guys in a group and so mostly kevin wasn’t shooting, he was standing around.
the really bad thing about the day were the no see ‘ums. little tiny bugs that were landing on my and biting me constantly. dressed in a skirt and a sleeveless top, i was getting gnawed on more than the guys who were thoroughly covered up.
i thought the bites were no big deal until i realized on monday that they’d all turned red and bumpy and they itched like crazy. they continued to itch like crazy yesterday, worse even than mosquito bites. on monday there was an article in the paper about these little bugs, and their technical name appears to be pirate bug, which doesn’t sound so technical to me.
kevin said that on sunday he shot the best he’d ever done. he said this was because i was there, and he was trying to do his best for me.
hmmm. is this going to make it more difficult for me to gracefully decline to attend any more cowboy shoots? next month is the last one they do outside; in the winter they shoot inside and i heard a cowboy say that it’s very loud, all the shooting inside, which makes sense.
we’ll see how things are going at the end of the month. it’s a long way off, isn’t it?
ok, now i must accomplish many many things today. here i go.
october grace.