11/11/13

Holy crap!  I used to be dumb, but now I think I might officially be stupid.  No, there’s no doubt about it, I'm stupid… stupid with no self-control whatsoever.  First off I need to say that Larry was off all last week.  I don’t ride around in the afternoon with his replacement.  Oh sure, Frank is a nice enough guy, but I'm not ready to try and foster another friendship… sort of thing.  Anyhoo, since I didn’t have Larry with whom I could off-goof on Friday, I decided I was done for the week and left at 1600 h.  I then decided I'd swing by Bloodbath & Beyond to look at stuff.  That was my undoing.  I walked straight up to the Tavor and asked to see it.  When handed to me, I grokked it pretty well.  I like it… a lot.  When I asked how many magazines it came with, the sales dude said he’d get one in a box and we could find out.  He brought out a box, cut the tape, and opened it up.  There it was, wrapped in plastic, looking all gorgeous… a brand spanking new flat-top Tavor.  He said, “I’m not even going to open this bag so you will be the first one to handle your new gun.”  I said I really shouldn’t buy one so he put the hard sell/peer pressure into effect.  “Think what the other kids in the neighborhood will say!” he said.  “But I've already got a 7.62x39 Kushnapup,” I said.  “But this is a Tavor.” He said.  Since I couldn’t argue with logic like that, I eventually gave in and bought it.  I also picked up three boxes of ammo and four magazines for it, as they were on sale and I've seen magazines become a much sought-after commodity in the past.  I don’t want to say how much the total was.  It was a lot.  Well, all said, it was less than the Tavor with factory optics at the gun show.  The gun itself was $75.00 more than the flat-top I was thinking about at the show… ok, ok!  I'll tell y'all.  All in, the gun, ammo, and magazines were $2,400.00 or so.  See, that is why I contend that I may now, officially, be stupid.  I left the store at 1630 h or so and still felt it was a tad too early to go home so I texted Larry to see if he was home.  I wanted to show off, of course.  I began driving his direction fingering I would call when I got near.  This I did.  He didn’t answer but called me back just as I was at the point of bailing and going home.  I went to his place and showed off the new toy.  He seemed impressed.  I called mom to ‘splain why I was going to be late in case she had dinner plans.  I told her that Larry needed me to swing by his house and that I'd be coming home via Boyd… because I didn’t want to a) backtrack and/or 2) fight the traffic of going the other way.  I was also going to say, if she caught me walking in with the gun and asked any questions, that Larry needed to sell this little .22 rifle because… oh, I don’t know.  I would have come up with some shit.  Anyhoo, at the house I unpacked the gun and played with it until mom said she was going down to fix dinner.  I reluctantly set it aside and went down to eat.  We had crab legs.  They were quite the tasty.  After dinner, I mounted the Meprolight optic which used to be for the Saiga 12 on the gun and grokked it some more.  I field stripped it a few times and fingered out how everything works.  I loaded and then unloaded two of the magazines with ammo but didn’t get them near the gun… I promise!  I'm cavalier about guns, probably too cavalier at times, but I'm not going to put a hot magazine in… or even very near, a gun in the house.  Ok, so the 9mm S&W stays loaded… as does the Judge and Coach Gun… but not guns I'm grokking!  That is the point I'm trying to make.   Anyhoo, I packed the gun, three boxes of ammo, and two magazines in the gun case to take with me Saturday morning to the shop.  I wanted to show off to John and possibly go shoot it at Winchester afterwards.  Saturday morning I headed to the shop a little later than intended and rolled in at 0815 h or so.  John was already there… doing something.  We got down to business and removed the fluorescent fixtures in the main bay, fingered out what bolts we needed to mount John's A-series to an engine stand, and unpacked and set up the Hello Kitty fridge.  It was now time to head to the hardware store for light fixtures, bolts, and tool trollies.  We went to the Home Depot on I-35 and Sycamore School Road.  We rounded up the bolts and then went looking for lights.  We found some we liked and picked up four, thinking we’d put two over each work bay.  When we found the ten-pack of bulbs, I went back for another fixture so we’d have one above the welding table.  We looked for the tool trollies but couldn’t find them.  They apparently don’t carry them.  Eventually we headed back to the shop and installed the lights.  I was a bit disappointed in them when they didn’t fire up all that well.  They did eventually warm up and put out pretty good light.  The place is getting more and more useable.  After the lights were up and working, we hung his engine on the stand and called it a successful shop day.  We went to lunch at the Mexican Inn on Henderson figuring I'd be going to Winchester right afterwards.  Well, it didn’t work out that way.  John wanted to finally get out from under the Crapple yoke and ditch the belly-button i-Phone.  We went to an AT&T store.  They didn’t have the phone he wanted so we went to another store.  This one did have it but, as usual, it took hours to do the transaction.  When we were finally done, I went to Winchester to find that both rifle lanes were in use and it would be an hour at least.  I bailed and went home.  The rest of Saturday was spent in front of the TV.  I'll tell y'all about Sunday tomorrow.