Memorial Bracelet

Update to this entry;
It arrived today.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the current state of affairs with a very nice lady who has a decent grasp on the economy and the inner-workings of our government.
We talked quite a bit about the increases of utilities in our area and the Health Care mess.
We talked about the prices of everything going up and up and the quality going down.
She told me the last dress she purchased was $150 dollars and even though she bought it because it was machine washable, the first trip through a gentle cycle made all the seams rip right out. The tag said it was from India.
Her last car couldn't stay out of the repair shop...she was frustrated that she didn't buy American. At the time, American made vehicles were more expensive and she couldn't budget for one. So she bought a foreign car and ended up paying the difference every couple of months in repair costs.
While we chit chatted for a bit about the way things are in comparison to the way things used to be, she picked up a newspaper and read one of the article headlines...shook her head and dropped the paper back on the table.
She told me of all she's seen and done, she's never witnessed such a failed government in all her years...
She's 99.
They don't make 'em like they used to.

Whaddup, World??

Just a weird observation that I wish I could ask about...
Sadly, I'll never know;

This morning, within six minutes of each other, all these people in all these places hit my blog from an image search. (Click the pic for a bigger view)

The image was the blue sky with puffy white clouds from this post.
It's just odd. Stuff like this intrigues me.

The way our government trains people

If the vid on this page doesn't load for you, basically it's a woman with 15 kids (12 still in her charge).
Her "fiance" (the father of 10 of them) is in jail on coke charges. She blames social services for her problems because "the system failed to take care of her" (even though her rent and utilities were being paid by other organizations and food/clothes were donated from all around her community)...
and at the 2:18 time stamp she says - "Somebody needs to pay...for ALL MY CHILDREN. For my, and their, all our suffering and all our pain. Somebody needs to be held accountable...and they need to PAY."

Someone asked me if I got all the stuff from the gun show that I was looking for.
I said, "everything except a primer catcher and a Lyman Reloading Handbook". I'm still borrowing Jay's book.
A couple days later, a private message showed up on a gun board I frequent and the author told me he had several copies of different editions of the Lyman books. He asked which one I'd like.
I told him that I'd been using the #48 edition and that if he had that one, I'd be glad to pay for it and for the cost of shipping, too.

He wasn't having any of that...and was offended that I offered to pay.
A short while after that exchange, this showed up in a package at my front door:


That's a Lyman #48 Edition, a Lyman #47 Edition, an NRA handloading book, Hallocks .45 Ammo Handbook, John Shaw & Michael Bane's "You Can't Miss" (with an introduction by Massad Ayoob), and FOUR original (new) never-been-loaded genuine U.S. Military Contract magazines made in the U.S.of A...and they fit my Kimber.
It's an understatement to say I was overwhelmed, surprised, and extremely grateful.
Nice guy, that one. Very.

The Shoot

Had a great meet-up/range time with some old friends and made some new.
Shot a couple things that I hadn't before, including an AK47. Nice.
Afterward, a few of us had a quick bite at a diner near the interstate ramp and I zipped home in time for kick-off.
I wish the Colts had won, but it was still a good game. I held out hope til the end, but the Saints just had more heart for it. So congrats, Who Dats, on your big Super Bowl win.
Mardi Gras this year will be the show of all shows.

Quote of the day

"Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledge-hammer!"
~Major I.L. Holdridge, USMC

My ShooterChick Friend

Please take a moment and welcome my ShooterChick Friend to the blogosphere.
She's new to blogging, but she has great stuff to say. She's a good photographer and loves shooting guns as well as cameras. THAT'S a great combo, huh?!
Please click over to A Little Piece of Paradise and leave a comment to say hi and make her feel at home. Your reward will be very cool gun pics and very cool writings from a very cool chick.
You can find her again by looking over on the left under Blogs of Note.
Tell her Annie sent you! :)

I'm gonna need you to step over here...

Earlier tonight I went to the grocery store and the spousal unit decided to come along. While we were there, it started pouring down rain and was still raining when we were finished and ready to leave. We exited the store and were in a little foyer area that's the entrance/exit between two sets of double automatic doors. The mister said since it was raining, he'd go run out and get the van and bring it up to the door. Nice.
So while I'm waiting, a kindly older lady with a pink umbrella struck up a conversation with me and told me she was waiting for the rain to lighten up so she could "make a break for it" (which might have been worth sticking around to see...)
Anyhow...
I'm standing their making small talk with her and as always, I'm sort of conscious that my gun is on my hip and just give a tug on my cover shirt discreetly to make sure no fabric is hung up on the grip making me print.
She starts telling me that it always seems to rain on fair weekend (and today was the last day of our fair)...she stopped mid-sentence and got really wide eyed looking just past my shoulder.
That's when I heard: "I'm gonna need you to step over here..."
I froze for a second and fifty things went through my head in every direction.
Then I heard "Right now. Step over here, please" and a tap on my shoulder.
Holy Crap.
After reading conversations about people being put on the ground by cops until they're satisfied they've sorted out whatever problem they think they're encountering...I was worried!
I turned my head to see...and a rent-a-cop (who just bumped my shoulder) said "Sorry, Ma'am." and turned back to a group of 20-something-year-olds and said, "Gentlemen, right now, over there. Move."
That's when the hubster pulled up to the door and I couldn't stick around to find out what all the hub-bub was about...and kinda didn't really want to!
So anyhow...that was my mild coronary of the year.
Next coronary: MiniMe drives. :p

I wish my phone had missiles.

The other night (or rather the other EARLY morning) just before 3:30AM, our phone rang.
You know that ring...the one that makes you jump out of a dead sleep with your adrenaline pumping wondering who died.
We're in the habit of letting the machine pick up for at least the first few words (we don't have caller I.D. on the land line).
It was some girl who sounded half baked and had one of those Valley Girl type accents. She said "like" a lot and pronounced "know" as "new", etc.
Our machine doesn't cut off after a given time, so I ended up getting up to pick up the phone to tell her she had the wrong number, or else she might still be rambling.

Here's the call as transcribed from my machine that caught it all:

Her: Ummm. Hello. This is for my "Dave's Friend" and my name is Tanya. I don't know you from like Adam, but I've heard your name while I was at Dave's house and like...I know you a little bit. I met you a few times and I need to get a hold of Dave...and I was like wondering if you could like help me...but I see you're not home right now, but like...

This is where I picked up the phone and said, "We ARE home right now because it's three thirty in the morning and we're sleeping and we don't know any "Dave". You've got the wrong number.

As if it would change whether or not I knew "Dave", whether or not it was "three thirty A.M.", or whether or not the phone ringing in the dead of the night gave me a coronary, she actually said, "Oh. Well...I really need to get a hold of Dave if you can like help me..."

I said, "Listen. You have. The wrong. Number."
She says "Oh, I'm sorry...I just need to get a message to him, that's all."
I said, "We don't know ANY "Dave". It's 3:30. You have the wrong number. Don't hit "redial". Bye." And I hung up.

Now you might think this was just a random wrong number, but unfortunately "Tanya" has our number written down somewhere and over the last few years she dials it when she gets half baked. Sometimes she calls and leaves messages about being bored. Sometimes she offers to share pot and hang out. Sometimes she leaves naughty messages for Jason. I wonder if Jason knows she's looking for Dave at three thirty in the morning...

Shifty Powers

I posted here about Band of Brothers, the awesome true account of WWII.
I found out this morning that one of the men that the story unfolded around has passed away. Here's a write up from his town's local paper:

Veteran a part of 'Band of Brothers'
Darrell "Shifty" Powers, who died at age 86, was a hero on the battlefield and to his family.
By Neil Harvey
981-3349

In a 2001 interview with The Roanoke Times, Darrell "Shifty" Powers talked about some of his experiences during World War II.

Powers, a United States Army paratrooper and sharpshooter, belonged to Easy Company, part of the legendary 101st Airborne Division. He recalled a bitterly cold day in the Ardennes when he was able to draw down on a German sniper, sighting his target by the misty cloud of the man's breath. He killed him with one shot.

"Right there," he said, touching his forehead. "Between the eyes."

But Powers, of Dickenson County, who died Wednesday of natural causes at age 86, was also reflective about such matters.

In the second-to-last episode of "Band of Brothers," an HBO miniseries that documented Easy Company's wartime exploits, Powers spoke on camera about the soldiers he fought and also hinted at the intrinsic tragedy of combat.

"We might have had a lot in common. He might've liked to fish, you know, he might've liked to hunt," Powers said. "Of course, they were doing what they were supposed to do, and I was doing what I was supposed to do.

"But under different circumstances, we might have been good friends."

Powers, who got the nickname "Shifty" playing basketball as a youngster, served three years in the Army during World War II and later worked as a machinist for Clinchfield Coal Corp. He found renewed notoriety when his military experiences were depicted on film and in the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name.

"He actually hadn't talked about it, his war years, until the book came out," said his daughter-in-law, Sandy Powers. "He gets fan mail from all over the world, and calls."

"For me and my kids, it's just amazing that our regular, sweet uncle was such a hero," said his niece, Cheryl Gilliland of Roanoke. "It sure changed his life in later years. He went places and met people he never would have otherwise."

Darrell Powers met a German soldier in 2005 who had fought against him at the notoriously brutal siege of Bastogne during the winter of 1944.

According to his son, Wayne, he had in September been scheduled to travel to Iraq to meet with U.S. soldiers, but health problems prevented it.

"He was so disappointed. He wanted to meet with the soldiers so badly," Sandy Powers said.

One of his closest friends, Earl McClung, of Colorado, in 2001 called Darrell Powers "a heck of a good soldier and a heck of a good shot."

"And he was there every time I looked up," he added.

"Our family had four boys and one girl, and I'm the only one left," said Powers' sister, Gaynell Sykes of Roanoke, on Wednesday. "He was a great brother. I know he was great at a lot of other things, too -- great father, great son, great husband."

Darrell "Shifty" Powers - March 13, 1923–June 17, 2009

Boxes

There are certainly a lot of people in my area (Midwest) who have hit hard times in the current economy. Jobs are scaled back or disappear altogether. This week makes one year since I’ve lost my own job. I’ve put out scores of resumes and gone on interviews and used temp services and head hunters. In fact, I’m going to a different temp service today to do the whole “spend hours filling out paperwork” bit.

I have to say that no matter what, I still feel lucky and blessed because I have my family and my home with all the contents of it. Some people aren’t so lucky.
Maybe they lived above their means, or maybe they never saved for that “rainy day”, but some people have downsized their homes to the point of having to put their belongings in storage units because their things won’t fit in their new living spaces.

Every time I drive by the rental units, they always seem to be busier than ever, but now I think there’s a reason why that I never considered.

Apparently, the storage unit owners auction off whatever is inside the locker area when the renter misses a payment. It’s part of the rules, and I get that. Ownership is ownership, but reading about the stuff that is left behind when people can’t pay the rental fee anymore is pretty sad. Sometimes a whole life of memories is in a few boxes that someone else thinks is worth ten bucks…and they’ll probably throw out most of it anyway.
Documents, post cards, love letters, wedding albums, baby photos, even urns containing ashes… the things that we can reduce to a box and say "this is my life’s history." And then have nowhere safe to keep it except for a rental storage unit that ultimately can’t be paid for.

I started reading a Yahoo News story about someone paying $400 bucks for the contents of a unit and finding a $10,000 Harley inside and my initial thought was something completely different than what I ended up thinking.
I have mixed emotions about it. I understand contracts are contracts and property rights apply…and all that. I guess if I had my way, I’d buy someone’s life full of memories and do whatever I could to track that person down and give it back to them. It makes me think about how I’d feel if my possessions were reduced to a few boxes and I had to choose what was important enough to save in a locked rental unit.
MiniMe’s baby book with her first haircut lock of hair and first lost baby tooth.
My grandmother’s engagement ring and a photo of her as a child with my great grandpa.
A little rocking chair that was for my 1st birthday.
The only oil painting I ever did.
An antique angel figurine with my birthstone in it, given to me by my aunt.
Shells that JL picked up on the island we accidentally spent the day on.
A little wooden chest that has our dog’s favorite toy, collar, and ashes inside.
A special coin that I carry every day.
A plastic doll that was my mothers, given to her by her dad when she was 6…just before he died.
The empty shell from the first clay I ever hit.
And if I had them, my dad’s dog tags…but I don’t want to have them because that means he’s gone.

Wonder what some unsuspecting person who paid ten bucks would think? "Junk"? Probably.
What would go in your box?

TSA Thugs

Hands of Blue Installment Two:


I took my mom to the airport this morning and since we had to get her checked in two hours early, it left us quite a bit of time to sit in the cafe next to the metal detector pass through and say our goodbyes.
We watched several dozen people go through the whole "jacket, shoes, belt into the tub" deal and saw a few people patted down and wanded.
Then something happened that made me incredibly mad.
On the other side of the glass retaining wall where all the TSA magic happens, there was an elderly woman in a wheelchair being pushed past the metal detector. Two TSA thugs (one on either side of her) hoisted her out of the chair and one was standing behind the chair. That poor old woman was so frail and hunched over, she was obviously in a bit of pain and had an absolutely mortified look on her face. While the two thugs dangled her, the third awkwardly was shrugging her coat off of her and they all three looked like they were losing their grip enough that she might hit the floor any moment.
Once they got her coat off, they continued to hold her as upright as she could be, but clearly her spine was too hunched and crooked to be anywhere near "upright". TSA thug #3 then proceeded to FRISK her! I don't mean the same type of pat down that other people setting off the walk through detector got...I mean they meant business of the body crevice kind.
Once they sufficiently felt up her hiney, they plopped her into the chair that no one remembered to lock the wheels on... then they struggled to scoot her up in a better position.
For her comfort? No...they had yet to yank her shoes off and frisk her from her thighs down.
Thank God she wasn't the mad bomber that she clearly looked like! After all, she probably even had the nerve to knit an Afghan for some loved one at Christmas!!
Feel safer yet?

Band of Brothers

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Not too long ago, the TV series Band of Brothers was mentioned on a forum I visit. I never gave it much thought, but as time went on there were lots of references made to it that I didn’t get. It seemed like a point was being made that I was out of the loop with, so I looked into watching the series to see what it was all about.
I really liked it. So much so that after every episode, I’d describe what happened to the Mr.
One night when I was watching a little bit of it, he walked through the room and paused for a moment to watch. He ended up staying and decided he’d like to see the entire series, too.
Not long after that, I started watching them over…but with him. He really liked them, too.

For those that don’t know, it’s a TV series based in fact about Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division. It follows the men from basic training in Toccoa, Georgia through Normandy, the Battle of Bastogne, and on through the surrender of Germany and then the surrender of Japan.
Each episode is highlighted at the beginning with clips of interviews conducted with the veterans of Easy.

There are ten parts.
It starts off with “Currahee”. Easy has a captain who is a terrible leader. He’s unjust and has no ability in the field. He punishes the men repeatedly for trumped up infractions before finally getting reassigned away from Easy.

In “Day of Days”, the men make their jump into Normandy in the cover of darkness behind enemy lines. When their commander is killed, the 1st Lieutenant becomes the leader and he forms a strategy to take out some of the big guns that are killing the men landing on the beach.

In “Carentan”, there’s a private who is so afraid, his fear causes him to temporarily go blind. Once his sight is recovered, he is still under siege of his own debilitating fear until his commander forces him to confront it head on when they are under attack.

“Replacements” is the episode when the men who have fallen are replaced by newcomers who find it hard to be accepted. They don’t have the bond that time helped forge between the original Easy members. During a battle when they are forced to fall back, one sergeant is cut off from the company and has to fend for himself hiding and fighting alone until the enemy leaves the next day. I bet it was the longest night of that man’s life.

“Crossroads” finds Easy stumbling into an attack that wasn’t planned. Thinking that they’ve stumbled on to a few snipers, Easy starts to take position to take them out. But when they start firing, dozens upon dozens of Germans come running over the ridge.

“Bastogne” is the Battle of the Bulge and finds Easy with no supplies, little food, scant ammo. A medic tries to help as much as possible, but with no supplies he’s forced to try to scrounge what he can from the aid station. And that’s not much.

During “The Breaking Point” Easy loses probably the most men under the bad command of their new Lieutenant. He’s indecisive, gives bad orders (or no orders) and disappears for hours at a time alone. In the middle of the battle in Foy, Belgium, he gets called out and replaced by a new leader who has the men’s best interests at heart.

“The Last Patrol” centers around a previously wounded member of Easy who rejoins the group…but he’s not readily accepted back in because some of the other members that met the same fate went AWOL from the hospital to rejoin the unit and he didn’t. It makes him more of an outsider like the replacements.

“Why We Fight” was one of the hardest to watch when the men stumble upon a concentration camp. They’re bewildered and horrified, not knowing what exactly it is until one of the men can translate what the prisoners are saying. After they arrange for food, water, and medicine, it’s feared by the general that the camp prisoners will scatter before they are all properly cared for and he orders them all to be locked back up until arrangements are made. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the guy’s shoes who had to look them in the eye and tell them that.

In “Points”, Easy finds out that although the men have been through battle after battle and been wounded over and over, most of them don’t have the required 85 points to go home. The fighting decreases, but with an abundance of weapons, ammo, alcohol, and disgruntled tired men…lives are still lost from infighting and accidents.
Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest is found and captured and the war comes to an official end.
There’s a scene where they’re playing baseball and a narrator tells what’s become of each man and what he’s gone on to do.

There’s an extra bit with full length interviews that tie today’s men together with yesterday’s memories. All these years later and you can see in the eyes of those men that they see it like it was just yesterday. Their pains and losses are fresh hurts…their joys are newly lived. It’s incredibly touching.
If you haven’t ever seen Band of Brothers, I recommend doing so.

Adoption and pictures.

At one time I had a Kahr PM9.
It was a decent enough little gun, but I didn’t have anything that ammo shared and I was using my Smith & Wesson Airweight as a carry gun. I knew that when I’d eventually switch to carrying a semi-auto, it would be my Kimber 1911 style – hands down.
Although I liked it very much, I really didn’t shoot the Kahr that much and couldn’t justify keeping it when I wanted other things instead.
I listed it at RimfireCentral.com and it was there for a few weeks. My net-friend Sophia spotted it and knew someone who was looking for something similar. She alerted him to my ad and he ended up buying it from me and really enjoying it. Awesome.
Quite some time has passed and during her travels, Sophia crossed paths with the Kahr’s new owner. When she inquired about it, he showed her how near and dear he’s kept it.
It’s a great feeling to know someone loves something you did too, and they’re taking such great care of it!
Here she is in her new home:
This is getting tagged under "Awesomeness"!! Thanks, Sophia!

Who throws a shoe? Honestly!

By now the whole world knows a size 10 was hurled alongside an insult at President Bush.
Everybody's thinking the same thing!!

Amazing Woman

At the age of 92, she passed away leaving $2.8 million to 11 nonprofit groups. Touching the lives of thousands of people, Blanche Vavra never spent a penny on herself for anything but bare necessities. She was a private quiet person who never married and had no children.
I bet in all her plain frugality she was a sparkling person to be around. Here’s a quote from the article about her:
“Vavra loved to get dressed up, remake jewelry and always looked very dashing.
She probably had a cigar box full of jewelry and the whole thing wasn't worth a dollar," Jerry Dobesh said. "But she wore it well.”
Please read about her here.

Black Friday

I don't much care for crowds, but this is sad and ridiculous:

A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York died after he was trampled by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy…

The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee,…

The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.

Source link

And then there's this one:

Two people were gunned down and killed Friday inside a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, Calif., authorities said.

"We have two dead individuals inside the store," Gutierrez said. "The events of why the shots were fired is still ongoing."
The store is on lockdown, and KTTV in Los Angeles is reporting that a 6-year-old girl was one of the victims.

Source Link

I can believe it.
Yesterday, on our way to our family Thanksgiving, we stopped at a WalMart so I could run in and get a card that I'd forgotten to grab a couple days ago...
The employees were moving these big skids of stuff that was all wrapped with black plastic that was due to be the "black Friday" sale stuff for this morning. While they were moving the skids, customers were shoving each other out of the way and ripping the plastic to try to see what was inside. The employees were saying, "please, sir...don't do that!" and "Please, ma'am, that's for tomorrow...you're not supposed to!"
It was like they were sharks in a feeding frenzy.

Refresher Course

Facebook

It’s been around for about four years but I never even gave it a glance. I’ve heard people rave about it, but I pretty much ignored the hype. Every fervent declaration of praise met a deaf ear and as far as I was concerned, people who would get that jacked up over something similar to “myspace” were nutty.
This weekend I ended up looking for a contact that I’ve lost touch with from school and tried to trace them through the internet. I ran in circles for a little bit and Google completely let me down. Through searching for mutual contacts and in areas I remembered, I traced that someone back to…you guessed it… “Face Book”. In order for them to be able to receive a message from me letting them know I was looking for their snail mail addy that was lost along my life travels, I had to register. After hearing MiniMe go on about it I thought, “No big deal”…so I did it. I’m telling you, literally within minutes I was contacted by people that I grew up with and went to school with. There were pictures posted everywhere from more than 20 years ago that I'd never seen…some that I was in! There were current pictures that acted as a sort of “who’s who” in the land of the “turning 40 this year” set.
There were pictures of everyone’s children and it was remarkable to be able to pick a kid out of a group that I’ve never seen and think “THAT is so-and-so’s kid! They look just like their mom or dad did at that age” or something like that. It’s way so much more fun than I thought. If you haven’t checked it out…it might be worth it to take a look!
YMMV.