Survived Another Holiday

I do not know when holidays changed from things to anticipate eagerly to things that strike dread in my heart. It probably was a few years into CFS that the demands of such days became apparent to me. Yes, I stubbornly believed back then that somehow, someway I would get better.

Then there was Labor Day, a federal holiday I always thought was pointless. I’m not a fan of holidays except to mark important events or to honor military service. It also seemed unnecessary with Thanksgiving not to far away and Christmas a mere month later. To me, it was inconsequential and gave it little thought.

So of course this year I completely forgot it was coming despite many announcements about the ward picnic. Postponed plans to go to the range to make some very badly needed zeroing in for a couple of rifles meant that yesterday morning was a must do. Then at noon the picnic would have to be gotten to. Oh hey, a phone call from a friend getting the online gaming group together for steak later that afternoon made things even more complicated.

I really wondered if I would survive Labor Day.

In the end, things worked out because I had to give up on the picnic. Sighting did not go smoothly at all, making the trip to the range expensive in stamina and money. Forty rounds of .223 is not that cheap even with Brown Bear ammo. But I did find out my scope had drifted eight inches up and nearly four inches to the right at 100 yards from earlier this year. Hey, it is cheap Chinese junk, but it was the only thing I could get for an old Mini-14 back in the day.

Complicating zeroing in further is that my hands shake even more since the bout with Lyme Disease. The best group I shot was just over an inch at 25 yards with three bullets making one large hole. That is not so good. After many 100 yard walks in high humidity, I manage to get the last five round of ammo I could allocate to the effort into the six inch black of the target. It grouped at around four inches with two in the center ring and is the best I can expect at the moment.

It is a far cry from 1.25” and 1.5” groups shot a couple of years ago. Oh well.

Tired and hot, we headed from the range to The Creamery in Rushford for ice cream. Snickers swirled in vanilla with fudge was my choice this time. Darkening skies warned of rain and it was well after noon at this point. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, I abandoned plans to make the picnic. Driving in a bad storm did not appeal to me, so groceries were picked up in a short trip to the store and we headed home.

A few minutes after getting the last sack in, the wind began to swirl leaves and anything else loose in the yard. The drought has caused a lot of top leaves to fall from the trees so it was an interesting sight for this time of year. Fortunately, the hail promised by the Doppler radar never materialized, but we got a hard rain. A well needed one at that.

I shut off the PC and dropped in bed to rest for awhile with very mixed results since I was in pain from the change in weather. Being a human barometer is great for keeping dry, but not so much for resting.

Giving up on that, I ended up getting a call to game online before the get together. We made some good progress, but had to abandon the game at a bad stopping point so I could head out for the real life part of the gathering. Along the way in, I noted again that my Sansa Fuze sounds much better through the FM transmitter I have after changing its operating system to RockBox. If you have an older MP3 player supported, I highly recommend installing this.

The get together was fun and the steak was delicious. I will say the game of Munchkin played was not remotely vicious enough for my tastes. The League of Legends PvP match we played was also fun, if futile. It was the lowest scoring one between two teams I have seen yet, which gives an idea of how tenaciously we fought a defensive battle.

Driving home turned out to be an adventure thanks to very heavy fog which somehow managed to get worse the closer I got to home. Driving on a road under construction at night in the fog was a new experience for me. I do not recommend doing this when very tired.

One penalty of overdoing things is that I can get too tired to sleep. What happens is that my ability to suppress the constant pain I’m in fails and so it was a very rough night. I ended up getting up in the wee hours and playing a videogame to pass the time after doing some reading. To say I was not sharp would be an understatement. Thankfully, in video games you get to resurrect when you die.

Hmm. This was supposed to be a very brief post and I have rambled on at length. Time to get the mail and work on two reviews I hope to have up this week.