Yard Work Day

Well, my parents had (SURPRISE!) my Christmas/Birthday present delivered to the driveway on Thursday: several cubic yards of mulch and #1 Stone. We're digging a 1'x1' ditch around the garage and filling it with the stone to increase drainage, and we're mulching all the flower beds, and around the hedge. I'll try to post a pic when we're done...

I'm currently taking a lunch break while the 'rents went to let their dogs out, and we'll be back at it in a few minutes here!

Oh, and I dug out a decorative bed of lava rock - and it was 10 freakin' inches deep! I filled two garbage cans and some other misc. containers with it all before deciding it will look nice on top of the stone around the garage.

My First Rifle Match

My friend Brian invited me out to West Bend Barton Sportsmen's Club for a military rifle shoot yesterday. I recently join the Saukville Rifle and Pistol Club (more on that in a later post), so I was able to get out on Friday night to try and get my K-31 on paper, as I hadn't yet shot it, and I replaced the rear sight with a MOJO aperature unit.

I got it pretty well sighted in at 50 yards, and I was going to be shooting at 100yds Sunday, so I figured I'd be close enough. Oops. I freaked out a little bit when my first shot wasn't on paper, but I tweaked the sights a little bit and got lucky on my second sighting shot. The shoot consisted of four stages, each of ten rounds, with two sighting shots (they actually do you a favor and drop the lowest two scores):

1) Standing, no sling, slow fire (10 rounds in 8 minutes IIRC)

2) Sitting, w/ sling, rapid fire (B/c I'm shooting a bolt action I got two strings of 5 rounds here, 70 seconds each. Everyone with a semi-auto got 70 seconds for 10 rounds)

3) Prone, w/ sling, rapid fire. (10 rounds in 70 seconds. Again, I was able to do two strings of five each here.)

4) Prone, w/ sling, slow fire. (10 rounds in 8 minutes)

The first two are shot on a standard 100yd NRA high-power rifle target, the third stage was shot on a simulated 300yd target, and the fourth was shot on a 600yd simulated target.

My scores (give me a break, I'm new to this rifle thing):
1) 66
2) 71
3) 45
4) 42

So, a 224 out of a possible 400. Ironically, my best score was rapid fire sitting, where I forgot to use my sling as permitted, and instead just had it taught against the side of the rifle. I'm not so sure I would have done much better otherwise, though. Next month I'll do better, but I'll have to put some rounds downrange in the meantime. I just need to remember to take it slow and easy, and concentrate on getting my sight picture consistent.

Snow Job

Well, Saukville got about 20" of snow yesterday; my brilliant employers decided to have us come in for work, and then an hour before I was done anyways, in the thick of the snowfall, they shut down operations and sent us all home. Yup, "C'mon in, the weather's fine," followed by "OMFG this storm is too much - everyone go drive in it!"

Anyways, another gripe I have is that Ozaukee County is horrible about clearing I-43. It took me an hour an a half to get to my job on Milwaukee's East Side this morning, and as soon as I past the county line, the freeway was perfectly clear. Haruumpphh.

Established Rock Band...

...seeking experienced and highly-motivated bass player in the Milwaukee area. We have about 16 original songs (we play some covers as well), some of which can be heard on our myspace page, and we are also looking at changing our name. We practice 1-2 times per week, playing 3-5 times per month when we're busy.

Our good friend Eric moved out to the D.C. area to pursue a career there, and now we need to find someone before the band loses momentum.

Maybe if I get good at the blogging thing, I'll clean up the myspace page as well - I don't want to volunteer myself for anything though . . .

Welcome

Welcome, all, to my new Blog. I will try to keep things upbeat and interesting here, but bear with these first few posts while I set up some links, play with format, and stabalize my footing.