oh boy.
at the end of september, kevin and garrick drove the very very long drive to winchester, virginia, where they worked at the NSSA, that is to say, north south skirmish association, their big twice-yearly national shooting competition. the different units take turns working at the events, and each one requires many, many workers, and this year it was the 114th’s turn.
at first they told kevin and garrick that they’d be working security. since kevin was a cop and garrick was in the military police, which made sense. they’d get to sit in the office all day and handle any kinds of issues that came up, which to my understanding would mostly involve guys who got drunk and disorderly, and it seems as though with all those guns around everywhere you wouldn’t want people to get drunk and disorderly.
but then the organization decided it’d be a liability issue if kevin and garrick worked there because they aren’t paid staffers, but instead, volunteer workers.
so instead they worked the visitor booth.
meanwhile, the first day of their trip took a really long time, partly because they had to stop at this place.
Garrick is doing his favorite pose, acting like he’s pushing over, or pushing up the candle. yes, it’s a giant candle, indeed.
so here they were two straight guys on their way to a civil war-era shooting competition, stopping at a candle place.
do you bet they were the only two straight guys in the place without any women with them? it made me laugh. garrick stocked up on enough candles for a year, i believe. kevin didn’t buy any candles at all, but he bought me two nice little plaques, one which says “you are my sunshine,” and the other, “all because two people fell in love.”
so sweet.
and then it was off to the shooting competition!
here is where they spent all their time; they called it the shack, but i said it should be called the love shack, and they could fill it with the sweet-smelling candles plus they could stop at wal-mart and buy all kinds of beads and crap like that.
the did stop at the wal-mart in winchester, and kevin said that the clientele there was even more interesting that your usual wal-mart crowd, but they didn’t buy any beads at all. oh well.
because october was breast cancer awareness month, the official caps for the workers were pink.
garrick, even though he’s the one who wanted to stop and buy many scented candles, didn’t even want his cap when he got home, so he gave it to me. so yay for me, one more running cap.
garrick, hard at work on his first day.
they worked four days, and this is what the parking lot looked like the first day.
so it was a little bit boring.
here’s sunset on the second day, also not so busy. i feel that that one car might be garrick’s, which mean they drove from their camp site on the grounds over to the parking lot, which seems a trifle bit lazy to me, but maybe it’s not their car. or maybe it was five miles to the lot?
here’s garrick and some guy next to our popup camper. it doesn’t look like the most scenic of camping places, does it? more like a mass of cars and trucks and campers in a field.
this is the main place where the 114th ate their meals, i believe. next to it is jim leineke’s cute little van, which will fit at least five scottie dogs in it, which is what it’s usually filled with when he and his wife nan take trips. it’s a little camper van and very, very cute inside and i wish i had some pictures of it.
kevin and garrick in front of some old car – a model T, maybe? after they got their picture taken and kevin sent it to me, i said GARRICK LOOKS LIKE HE’S BEING FORCED TO SMILE WITH A HORRIBLE GRIMACE ON HIS FACE. i asked them to please get somebody to take another one.
and they obliged.
this is the last day of their job; the second two days were much more busy than the first two, and when kevin finally got home he was pretty exhausted.
and so that brings us up to the beginning of october, and i didn’t take many pictures in october anyway so soon i’ll be all caught up.
yesterday i saw my friend linda castor, who said she’d been thinking of me in the past few days, and i asked her why, and she said because of halloween. this struck me as funny, because even though we did have some great big halloween parties, we haven’t had one in two years now, and it seems like forever ago that we did it.
my neighbor bernice called yesterday and said she’d meant to come over on halloween to see all my decorations, and she assumed that we’d had a giant party, but i told her that if she’d stopped by, she’d have just seen my house which is always in need of cleaning, and my lone decoration – a cute lighted snoopy wearing a pumpkin costume. randy gave it to me last year, and when i was digging around in our scary filled to the brim with endless piles of stuff basement, i found the snoopy and decided to get it out.
it sat up here for about three days, but now it’s down in the basement with the many many other halloween decorations which may or may not be used again.
ok on this blustery monday morning.
mrs. november hughes.