What Manly Things Did You Do Today?

Name it Gorgo3

When I was a kid I'd get my bottom beat if I mistreated an animal. Now days I'm a magnet to animals ..... cats that no one can approach come up to me and start purring. I was in Africa inspecting a local's honeybee hive and they were amazed that bees would congregate on me. They ask if I wanted them off and I responded "That ok bees like me"

I also use to work environmental on a landfill as an inspector and many occasions rescue frogs from bad situations and release them in the wetlands.

 

Elmer season is over. Now it’s Martian season.

This was with iron sights at 5 yards. Not sure why I shoot lower with iron sights than I do with my red dot.

 

Problem is I've heard all their vitals are in their earlobes, which, unfortunately, you can't see.

At least the grouping was good.

 

Nope, that’s just a rumor started by Yosemite Sam.

 

“Say yer prayers ya long eared galoot!”

 

Found a polyphemus moth. Huge. Flew away like a slow bird. Beautiful creature.

 

Hurricane must have stirred up the fauna, first Sphinx moth I've seen here .

 

I like it when I find a good sized Luna Moth.

.

 

I’ve never hung blinds before. We’re replacing our old vinyl blinds with the faux wood slats, and had to custom cut a couple. Watched a couple of YouTube videos, got out an old miter saw and trimmed them, and got them hung. Saved some money doing it myself! Maybe not the most manly thing I’ve ever done, but that was an accomplishment for an old accountant/economist/banker!

 

Pics, or it didn't happen.

 

The patience involved was certainly manly.

 

The two side wimdow openings were a bit smaller than the standard sizes available. We could get custom cutting at the store with a more expensive brand, but decided it was something we could easily do after watching a couple of YouTube videos. I’ve got a miter saw, so I got it out, taped the collapsed blinds tightly together, and lowered the saw blade slowly into the collapsed blinds, shaving off just a bit on each end. After doing it, I’m not sure taping them was necessary, as long as you hold them tightly. The keys are making sure you have the ends squared up, and taking your time. Please pardon the mess on the table!

 

Great job @BamaT !

 

This morning, I went out on my deck & assembled a storage cabinet. This will store bonsai soil & garden supplies. Not overly difficult if you knew when to follow the directions & when to ignore them.

Since some of the pieces slide together & lock into place, I rubbed some beeswax on them to reduce the friction.

 

I work for a non-profit org. that adopts families for Christmas and tries to fill their needs. This year I ask if they needed anything built. I was informed there was a need for a night stand. I told them I may have parts to build one.



It stands exactly 20" tall

Not too bad for scraps.

 

You cats and kittens do some righteous deeds. I must stop in here more often.

 

Translation, please?

 

"Elmer season" refers to my avatar of Bugs Bunny & his nemesis, Elmer Fudd. As to the target, I like shooting the Martian targets because they are whimsical & also brightly-colored & easy to see. I have been shooting target pistols for a year or so and have improved my skills quite a bit.

In case you are not a shooter, I will clarify my comment about the sights. "Iron sights" are the ones built onto a pistol. "Red-dot sights" are electronic sights that can be added on to it.

 

Got it. Makes perfect sense now

Correct, I am not a shooter. However during the summer of ‘71 at camp in upstate NY, I enjoyed shooting a .22 rifle at little paper targets tacked onto a wall at 50 yards. Earned a cloth “Marksman” patch that’s still kicking around somewhere in my basement. My Mom sewed it onto the Levi’s jacket I was wearing at the time and I removed it when the jacket bit the dust. I haven’t touched a firearm since that summer. At this point I’m not likely to try again as I fear the noise would aggravate my raging tinnitus.

Until that summer, Pop was always just my mild-mannered dad who mostly worked 9-5, M-F in a pretty cool job. He was the Chief Supervisor of two-way communications, first for Civil Defense, and later when Civil Defense was merged with local governments, for the City of New York. Fun fact, my dad was concurrently the vice-chair of the east coast Emergency Broadcast System. Remember, “This is a test. For the next sixty seconds, this station will be conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System…?” That was him. Pop was the primary developer and implementer behind EBS. Of course, the Chairman was the one who very graciously agreed to take credit for the whole shebang. But back to camp; what I didn’t know until that summer was that Pop was also a helluva rifleman.

Visiting weekend, my folks arrived. The counselor ratted me out for “reduced showering.” I was pissed. “Jeez, at least talk to me about it first before you bitch to my folks, dude.” I still remember my dad showing me a bar of Ivory soap that still had a highly visible logo after two plus weeks. I told him, “We swim every afternoon before dinner. Clearly, I’ve no need to shower.” Okay, this has nothing to do with my dad’s skill with a rifle. But you got me thinking about that summer, and the soap incident kind of reappeared in the front of my head… so the next day after all the parents were given a guided tour of the grounds, Pop asked me, “Besides playing ball and swimming, what else is fun?” I brought him by the archery range, and then to the rifle range. He watched with interest as I showed him what I’d learned. When I finished my dozen or so rounds, he asked, “Can I try?”

Like I said, this was the summer of 1971. Pop was discharged from the army iirc in late ‘45, early ‘46, and to the best of knowledge (then and now), hadn’t fired a gun since then. In all my time growing up dad rarely talked about his time in the military. All he’d say was that he “was in the Signal Corps in General Patton’s Third Army in Luxembourg” and then would (quite deftly) steer the conversation elsewhere. Over the years I managed to twice press him for more details. When I was 16ish dad shared a rare father-son wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean? Say no more momentary peek inside his middle aged memory banks. Seems if things had gone differently, I’d have been “born in France.” The other little morsel dad offered up was the time “they” told him to climb poles and trees to string cable for a communications network of sorts. He said to me, “I told them, ‘No. Go ahead and court martial me, I don’t want to be shot at.’” And again, somehow the conversation swerved… My dad’s dress uniform hung in a closet in our home until a few years later when my brother and I started wearing the jacket for camping and other teenaged silliness. I don’t remember what became of it.

Yeah yeah, I’m getting there… so there we are at the rifle range in the woods. I went over to the specialist in charge of the range and got another dozen rounds of bullets. Pop laid down on his belly and loaded the first .22. He took aim and slowly squeezed the trigger. Boom! Then in rapid succession, Boom! Boom! Boom! After what seemed a superhuman flurry, we went and got his target from the wall. I still have it somewhere in my basement with my old jacket patch. There was one big hole in the middle of the bullseye! My jaw dropped. I looked at him with what must have been a look of stupid incredulity on my face. He looked back and forth, left and right, looked me in the eye and said, “I was also a marksman.” We walked away in silence, and joined my mom elsewhere on the campgrounds.

Fast forward forty or so years, I was going through mountains of papers and personal effects after Pop passed away. I came across a bunch of family papers I’d never seen before. Included in the lot was a folder of dad’s military service records, papers, etc. It seems my mellow and unassuming father was indeed a marksman with multiple commendations for the role he played in General Patton’s Third Army. It also explains the unanswered question that was gnawing at the back of my head for so many decades. How does a 20 year old PFC have the wherewithal, the cojones, to tell his superiors to “go ahead and court martial me?” Now I understood. He was a military specialist and never ever talked about it. I’m guessing his soft spoken demeanor was a well practiced and necessary way for him to cope with the horrors of life during wartime.

Me? I never served. If I was an old Gillette razor I’d be an E1. Young men born between April 1, 1957 and December 31, 1959 were not required to register for the draft back in the day. This little anomaly in American sociology pleased my mother immensely. My kid brother on the other hand registered but wasn’t drafted. He had other issues, but that’s another saga.