A Different Kind Of Class

Do you ever get that deer in the headlights feeling? I did. Two weekends ago I showed Herman the starter rifle I had for his son, little Herman (who I will refer to as H3). Herman was excited, and so was Jen. They both want H3, and eventually all their kids, to know about guns, how to shoot them, and how to handle them safely. I'm all for that! The deer in the headlights feeling came when Herman called me up and said, "Hey! When are we going shooting this weekend?"

To be sure, I don't remember telling him that I would go shooting with him the next weekend when I showed him that rifle. I had intended to find a time when he had the kids so that we could have a leisurely day of shooting. As it was I had church commitments, the jewelry party, meeting with Lynn, the photography class, and my first serious cooking attempt all planned out. But I like to shoot, so I worked it in.

Right after the photography class I grabbed all my stuff and hightailed it for Roanoke. On the way he called and started vacillating on shooting. He wasn't sure it was worth the time or the shortness of the day due to our planned cooking (I said I'd do my cooking up there for them). We went back and forth on it for awhile, but eventually decided to proceed with the shoot as planned. When I got to their house, I offloaded all the groceries and cookware, picked up Herman and H3, and zoomed up to the range.

Herman and Jen are lucky! They've got a nice range not more than ten minutes from their house. It is called Quail Creek Shooting Range. It's a nice outdoor facility that is run by, as far as I've seen so far, nice and competent guys. We checked in and paid, and we took two rifles out to the benches and set up H3 to shoot his first real gun!

When we got out to the benches, I let Herman do all the teaching. H3 is Herman's son, and Herman is ex-Marine, so I deemed it fitting that father teach son, not father's friend. It's tradition, and what am I going to teach an ex-Marine rifleman's son about shooting? Herman knew what to teach and how to teach it. I just pulled out my lever action .22 and plinked away.

The gun I brought for H3 is a little single-shot, bolt action .22, a Crickett rifle. They are small and made for kids. It was just the right size for H3. I fired it once to show Herman and H3 how it worked (and to make sure it worked). After that it was all Herman's show. He walked his son through the basics: never point a gun at anyone, always keep the gun pointed at a safe place, down range at the range, don't play with loaded guns, make sure to follow the range officer's instructions, never shoot unless he, Herman, Jen, or myself are around. After the basic safety, Herman showed him how to hold the gun, how to load it, aim, cock it, and put the bullet on the target. It was art in motion watching father and son having their first shoot.

It's something I kinda wish my dad had done for me. My dad had, at one time, known about shooting and did some recreational shooting. But in 1965 my dad was went to Vietnam to be a forward air observer. After four months in country, in a no-kidding real-shooting war, his days of firearms were over. I can't say as I blame him for not wanting to relive that, but I also feel like I missed out on something we could have shared. More's the pity.

Herman and H3 won't have that regret, and that warms my heart! H3 took to that little rifle like it was his best friend. Before we were done, he was asking Herman, "Daddy, can I have my own gun?" The answer to that will be, "Later son, when you're a little older." H3 is only seven years old right now, but I think he will be perfectly fine with guns. I didn't see him do anything wrong or unsafe. He is a well-behaved and well-disciplined youngster who looks out for himself and his siblings. If he continues in that behavior I would have no problem getting him his own gun.

I was a little afraid I might not get that rifle back! H3 became quite adept at using it. After Herman loaded and cocked it the first time, H3 would grasp it, pull it into his shoulder, squint down the barrel, and squeeze that trigger. His first shot, naturally, was nowhere on the paper. That's ok! It will come with time. It didn't take long before H3 was pulling that bolt open, putting the next round in, and closing that bolt all by himself, and quite well, too. The only thing he had trouble with was cocking the rifle. The Crickett is manually cocked by pulling back on the cocking piece, and it takes some effort to do it. H3 was able to do it about half the time. The other half Herman would pull it back for him. Eventually he was able to put together a respectable group at seven yards (hey! we started out slow!).

The target I was shooting at had nice, ragged holes at the center of my targets, plus one hole dead center for my last round. (I was shooting kneeling with the rifle on the bench). Not quite a hard feet to accomplish, but I had lots of fun. We took the targets down. H3's will get framed at some point. When we got back to the house we, of course, showed Jen my target with the nice, tight groups, and told her it was H3's. Then we showed her H3's and told her it was mine. She didn't buy it--she always knows when Herman and I are full of it. Not that it matters anyway. She was just as happy as we were.

All in all it was mission accomplished on several fronts. We had fun. We taught another kid how to shoot. And we strengthened a bond between father and son. Pretty good for an afternoon's work!

Busy Sunday

Last Sunday was one of my busier ones. I had plans to help teach a photography class, take a kid shooting and cook dinner for some friends, and at the same time make it to church. The day started out inauspiciously. I woke up later than I would have liked, so I was late getting away from the house. I went to three stores looking for cheese cloth. The local Walmart Market didn't have any, and the local Tom Thumb was out. Kroger had some, and I literally parked crossways, ran in, bought it and ran out so that I could make it to church.

I was a half hour late to church. My thinking was that I would miss the singing and all the preliminaries and make it in time for the sermon. It almost worked. The sermon was already underway when I took my seat, but I hadn't missed much. It was an excellent Sermon. More on that in a later post. After the service I offloaded about fifty pounds of leftover Christmas Oreo-wannabe cookies, then I waited.

That's all I could do. Apparently Yizong switched around some of his scheduling, and instead of being at TCC this Sunday as I had thought, he was at RCC. As such there wasn't much for me to do for three quarters of an hour. Two of the youth group hung around and started pizzas for the photography class, then started decorating one of the rooms for a Monday night do. Yizong got to TCC a little before 1 in the afternoon.

We took the pizzas and some other food into one of the classrooms and set up for the photography class. Only three people showed up. Two of the three really didn't care if they were there or not, and the third didn't say much of anything. I want to talk more about that class later, but for now I'll move on.

I went up to Roanoke with everything to make boeuf bourguignon plus a little single shot bolt action rifle for a kid. While I was driving up, Herman called and asked if we should go to the range or skip it and proceed directly to cooking. We went back and forth for a little while and ultimately decided to go to the range. When I got to Herman and Jen's I offloaded all the groceries, picked up Herman and Herman and headed to the range. Little Herman learned how to shoot his first rifle. Again, more on this in a later post. We stayed later than we should have and got back to start cooking at 4:30 in the afternoon.

That turned out to be a mistake. Julia wasn't kidding when she said it took two and a half hours to cook boeuf bourguignon. That's just how long it took to simmer the beef. All told we spent nearly four hours cooking. Misty, Jen's friend, showed up for dinner, but we were so late that she had to leave. We were so late that we had to invent something else for the kids to eat before their mom came to pick them up. Finally, at nearly 9 at night, we had dinner. It was worth every minute we waited! Julia definitely knew what she was doing when she wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I want to go into detail on the dish, but again, I'll save that for later.

I got home at about midnight, thoroughly exhausted, but thoroughly satisfied. I had had a lot of fun, and I hope to do it all again!

How Did My Weekend Really Go?

Ok, I admit it. I was feeling pretty down about things right before the weekend. I didn't have any plans or anything to do, and definitely nobody to do it with. Then there was Singles Awareness Day around the corner, and that just put a magnifying glass and spotlight on my singularity. But to be sure my weekend didn't turn out at all bad.

Friday did kinda suck. Instead of staying home and doing something useful (well, useless really), I worked extra hours at the office. Didn't make much progress though.

Saturday wasn't at all bad. I slept in late. Not ultra late, but breakfast was lunch. I bummed around the house until the Pampered Chef party. It turns out I had nothing to worry about considering H and J. They've both been going through their own trials and tribulations, and they have been quite properly become hermits for a little while. The PC show was excellent. There were a lot of gadgets. Some were more useful than others, and, of course, they were all expensive. I'll buy a few of the more exotic things.

Sunday I stayed away from home most of the day. I went to church. It was mediocre. Although, I must say, it amuses me to sing "Edelweiss" at the end of each service. Apparently thirty-ish years ago someone got the bright idea to change the lyrics to a church benediction song. I guess that's ok, but as everyone else is singing the Benediction, I'm belting out an "Edelweiss" that would be the envy of Captain von Trapp.

After the service I caught lunch with Yizong and did some shopping. I wanted some intel on TCC, and Yizong provided what I needed. We are both exploring this new church, and we share some of the same observations. We both agree that my meeting with Lynn will be interesting. After lunch I did some looking for books. I added to my batterie de cuisine. I found a nice sauce pan at Ross that I couldn't live without. At Half Price Books I found another Julia Child cookbook I couldn't live without: Julia Child & Company. I went to the Texas Thrift Store to see if they had any usable cookware. Nada. I bought a book for 40 cents and paid with a debit card (I don't carry cash). Big Lots had nothing I wanted or needed. I went back up to Target. They had a 6 quart french oven I looked at. I've been on the fence about those for some time. I ended up at Walmart also looking for french ovens, and after today, I know which one I'm buying.

I finally ended up back at TCC for their pre-VD dinner. Yizong has been talking up my guns with the youth. Somehow I just went up several notches in their estimation. The food was decent, and the conversation bearable. I ejected before the concert part of the evening to do some laundry.

I didn't feel as alone as I could have. Friday I did. Saturday I didn't so much, except to say that Monica did come up in conversation. Today I didn't have time to feel lonely because I was busy. I don't know. How did my weekend turn out?

One Day Without Anything To Do...

Wow! This has been the first weekend since August where I really haven't had anything to do, and it wiped me out! I've had no plans, no commitments, nothing to really come up, no emergencies, really not anything at all. This morning my phone rang at 9am. Herman called me and brought me up to date on his family situation. He mentioned that they were pretty booked for the weekend, and I said no problem. We agreed that if they became unbooked he'd call me and see if I was likewise free. After that phone call I went back to bed.

I didn't wake up until 2:30 in the afternoon! I must have been really tired. I made it to my sofa and started to do a little categorizing on this blog. At about 3pm Screamer (aka Zach), the kid of one of my across the street neighbors, rang my doorbell. I've been threatening (or promising depending on point of view) to take him to the range and let him shoot. Today he decided to take me up on the offer. I had him clear the outing with his mom. She was ok, so off we went to the range.

On the way I stopped at one of my favorite places, Military Gun Supply. Screamer hadn't been to a gun store, and I needed to get a rifle out of layaway. He looked around, and so did I. I was interested to see if MGS had any Saigas in 12 gauge. They didn't. I ended up with my CETME, and we were off to the range.

We took three guns to the range: a Walther P22, a .357 revolver, and a Walther P1. I started Screamer off with the P22. We talked about range safety--muzzle downrange, how to aim, how to hold the pistol, etc. We ended up shooting about a hundred rounds of .22 and fifty of .38 special. I shot all but one of the .38s. Screamer wanted to stick to the .22.

One thing I noticed at the range was the distinct lack of brass barrels. When I asked the range guys there, they told me they were asking people to simply sweep their brass forward into the range. Uh oh! That will not help my brass-scrounging reloading activities. I'll have to figure out how to get around that one. (What the range is doing is trying to discourage people from picking up brass--the most expensive part of reloading.)

That's about all I did for the day. No grocery shopping, just a little bumming around Wally World. I may rant about Walmart later, but not tonight. Tonight I'm too tired. Even though I slept ultra late and didn't do anything at all, I'm fairly wiped out!

Friday Night and Nothing To Do

So why am I at home on Friday night instead of going out and being social? Good question.

Something happened today that greatly curtails my free time and money for awhile. I had an air conditioning guy come out to look at my heater. It has been acting up for about a week and a half, and I've been slowly and progressively getting colder in my house. Today that a/c conctractor delivered news which I had been dreading and expecting at the same time. My entire air conditioner/heater needs to be replaced. Both indoor and outdoor units. That translates to a minimum of $4,000 at the very least!

God knows that I'm going to have trouble raising that kind of scratch, and of course it won't be $4k. It'll be more because of my house, or the setup, or any one of a hundred reasons to hike the price. I've got a home warranty that will offset the cost a little, but I'll still end up paying the lion's share of the repair. With that in mind, and not having any other outstanding invites or plans for the night, I figured low key and cheap were good words to implement tonight.

Would that it went the way I had anticipated. This afternoon I finally got around to a hobby that had been completely put on hold due to the girlfriend: reloading. I sorted out all my spent brass and started the process of depriming all that brass. By 8pm I had snapped the pins in both my decapping dies, bringing that part of the process to a screeching halt.

I've been putting off doing housework. I loathe house cleaning (one of the things I know I need to do, but only did begrudgingly when Monica and I were still together), so I've put it off. Now that may be the only thing I've got to do that's active. Chances are I'll end up vegging out in front of the TV, rotting my brain with some rerun movie or TV show. Ah, the joys of being single again.

Downshift Saturday

Wow! has it been a busy week! Doing second shift, going to the SWAG get together on Wednesday, and a date last night, and I'm wiped for today.

I had planned on going to a Pampered Chef party at my friend Sarina's house. I had even responded in the affirmative on her Facebook announcement. But I slept in too late, and once I got up, the laxative that my doctor had prescribed took effect. Long story short, I stayed in the bathroom while Pampered Chef took place. Ah well, I'll make the next one.

With my morning now shot, I just vegged around the house. There were no definite plans, just a sense that I have to do something about my lawn. Early in the afternoon Yizong called and asked if I'd go with him to buy yet another range finder camera. I said I would, got dressed, and went up to his apartment.

We left there and went to East Dallas to one of the seediest neighborhoods I've been to in quite some time. Yizong called me for a specific reason--he knows I carry a gun, and this is one of those neighborhoods that makes me glad I have one. Of course the problem is that Yizong never writes down exactly where we're going. (The last time we guessed at where we were supposed to meet the seller and got lucky.) We drove up and down the street a few times, growing more wary as we did so. Finally he called a mission abort, and we decided to go to the gun show for a little while.

This was the first time I went into a gun show and didn't spend more than a hundred dollars. Truth be told, I spent a grand total of five dollars on some beef jerky. Yizong tried to get me to buy a camouflaged tool bag as a purse for Monica, but I didn't really fancy the idea, so he ended up buying it for his wife. I saw a few things that were nice, but nothing I really wanted to buy--especially as I didn't have the money to buy anything much.

After we returned to Arlington I went down to Golfsmith, a big golfing store. I played with a bunch of putters, drove a few balls with a couple of drivers, and drooled over some of the high end equipment. I bought a few golf balls (one of my new weaknesses) and found a deal for a free glove to boot.

Academy Sports was next on my hit list, and I almost wish I hadn't gone. This weekend was tax free weekend, so everywhere was pretty much besieged by people trying to save a few cents (all that you really save on tax free weekend). I looked at their golf stuff, compared prices, and took a spin around the store before I went to Dick's Sporting Goods.

Dick's is a place I don't usually go to for two reasons: their prices are usually a bit higher, and they're in the mall. I avoid malls in general due to the crowds and the teeny bopper scene, but I wanted to see what they had in golf. I found several 5 woods, but they were lady's clubs, so I abandoned that search and went to the Knife Shoppe to have my pocket knife sharpened.

After the mall I took a spin to Target and Walmart to get some groceries and finish my exercising for the day. Groceries and a few goodies in hand, I bailed out and came home tired, but satisfied. Except that I wasn't done.

Even as I write this post, I still haven't figured out where I'll go to church tomorrow. I thought about going back to ERCC and see if Jessica goes, but if I do that, it will only be to see if I can connect with Jessica, which doesn't seem like a good enough reason. Besides, it's currently a captain-less vessel, and there are a lot of churches to go to. I may pick another one at random and go to it. Hopefully next week I'll have done some homework and find a church that advertises a singles group. But who knows... if things work out with Monica, I may not need a singles group any more. Stay tuned folks!

TCS All Class Reunion - Day 2

What a day!

I didn't sleep well last night. I may have reinjured a hernia, and the pain was keeping me up all night. I finally drifted off to sleep sometime in the morning, and when my alarm went off, I shut it off and went back to sleep. I ultimately got up at about 9am, and went for a walk (like I didn't do yesterday). During my walk, I got a call from one of my teachers. He cancelled out on shooting with us this afternoon. Of the three that I was going to take, only one ended up going.

I got back to the house and packed up all my shooting gear and went up to the school. We went to the range and had a complete blast! There is an outdoor range near Slaton called Rustic Range. It's a really nice facility located off a dirt road in a little canyon. It has a nice shop, some reloading supplies, a lot of lanes and target stands, and, most importantly, you can back your vehicle up to your stand.

That's exactly what we did considering the amount of gear I had in my truck bed. We spent the next three hours going through a ton of old battlefield rifles. After awhile we switched to pistols. Three hours later we were hot, tired, but thorougly satisfied at the amount of paper we had killed.

We retired back to town, and me to the house. I had about an hour and a half to shower, cool off and get ready for tonight. The festivities tonight were semiformal, so I had packed some trousers and a shirt. The real trick was going to be shooting pictures in all that getup. I finally left the house at about six and got to the school to set up for portraits.

The portraits didn't quite go as planned (actually, they didn't go at all), but that's a minor thing. There were more people there tonight than last night, and I saw a bunch of people that I hadn't seen for years. We went through teacher recognitions, future plans for the school, the alumni association, etc. all while having a nice dinner. I got a lot of good pictures, so hopefully that will set up some future business for me.

I'm not doing this post any justice, but it's another case of getting home late. I'll have more thoughts during the week next week.

A (Sort Of) Blind Date

Yesterday afternoon was the day Yizong brought his friend over to my house. I really didn't know what to expect, and I wanted to make a good impression, so I spent Saturday doing something I should have done a long time ago: cleaning house. I got my front rooms and kitchen spic and span, as well as my guest bathroom. I closed the doors to my office and the spare bedroom as well as to my main bedroom. A good cleaning was just what I (and my house) needed, so whether or not Yizong would cancel, I felt good about the job.

Yizong didn't cancel. He, his baby, and his friend, Kathryn, showed at about 3:30 yesterday afternoon. Neither Kathryn nor I knew what to expect, and I think we both felt a little awkward around each other while he wasn't present. He wanted me to show her around, and I started to do so when his phone rang, and he took the call IN MY BEDROOM! This was the bedroom that was entirely unkempt and nasty, even by my standards.

Moreover, all my guns were in there. I have to say, I wasn't really looking forward to trotting out all my old warriors, but he wouldn't have it any other way. Yizong wanted Kathryn to see everything I had, and I dutifully hauled out whatever he asked me to show, feeling like I was hurting my chances more and more with each rifle that appeared.

When we got through doing show and tell with the rifles, he wanted me to demonstrate ammo reloading. I did so, going through the steps of putting together some 9mm, which was what I was loading at the time. After I did that, both he and Kathryn wanted to load their own round. Yikes! I didn't mind, but reloading is something that you have to pay attention to, and I watched them like a hawk to make sure nothing bad happened.

It was all the watching, running, and serving that made this feel weird. It didn't feel date-like at all, but it didn't even feel like I was hosting friends. It felt like I was hosting Yizong, and Kathryn was just an accessory. After the reloading, I tried to balance out my attention to make sure Kathryn and I were talking so that I wasn't performing for Yizong.

I felt like progress was being made in that department until Yizong's one year old decided to start engaging my cat. Dash, my cat, usually doesn't like strange people (although she liked Kathryn), and she's not used to having people chase her around. Yizong and Niuniu (his baby) chased Dash around enough until she got tired, then Niuniu decided to try to touch Dash. Really, according to Yizong, she tried to poke Dash.

Dash doesn't take kindly to being poked by strangers, and she reached out and touched Niuniu to let her know she didn't appreciate the gesture. Niuniu ran back to Yizong, crying like the world was coming to an end. We all checked her, and all Niuniu had was a tiny little scratch on her eyelid courtesy of Dash. At that point the afternoon's activity was pretty much done.

I had hoped that Kathryn didn't feel threatened or weird being around a guy that's a gun collector and a reloader, but she said she thought it was cool. We didn't get to exchange any kind of info or make any other plans due to the hasty departure necessitated by Niuniu's boo boo, so I'm not sure exactly how it all ended. Yizong promised to call me, but I'm afraid he's in the doghouse with Xiaoyan when she finds out about Niuniu and Dash. Let's hope it all works out for both him and me.

Fishing, Shooting, Walking, but No Dating

This is one of those days that seems to typify my singleness. It's the first day of a two-day weekend. I'm worn out from work. I don't want to sit at home and do house work, but I can't work up the emotional stamina to engage with a lot of other people. So what do I do?

I grabbed my fishing rods and put my raft out on Lake Arlington. I spent the entire morning trolling the south west shore, trying to catch something substantial, but getting nothing more than a couple of little white bass. It was gratifying to see that my plans for getting off the shore to do some fishing are working out, but after two hours I was hot and sore, so I put back into the dock, broke everything down and went home.

I puttered around the house long enough to cool down and relax from fishing, then I grabbed my rifles and went to the range. There I shot seven different rifles that I hadn't ever shot before. Each one worked like a champ, and I'm glad I picked the ones I bought--they were all as accurate as they should be, and I nothing blew up. I swept the range clean and picked up some brass for my trouble. That effectively killed the afternoon, so I went home again.

At home I showered and putzed around the house until supper time, when I figured out that I hadn't put in my five miles for the day. Walking five miles is a drag, but it's something I have to do to make sure my weight keeps coming off. I packed up some cassette tapes and went to Academy Sports where I picked up some deeper diving baits for the next time I go fishing as well as my evening protein bar. I stopped by my friend Yizong's apartment to drop off the cassettes so that they can be taken back to their proper place, then I went to Walmart and walked around the remaining steps.

Between the fishing and the shooting, I was pretty sore, so it took me a little while longer to make my rounds, but it gave me some time to think. The foremost thought on my mind was: why wasn't I out trying to dig up a date as opposed to being alone all day long? As I said earlier, I just wasn't ready to go through the mental and emotional judo of trying to make a hookup.

Right Place + Right Time = Good Time!

Tonight was the first of two planned events this weekend--the young adult get together at the Kawamotos' house. It's been a nutso weather week all week, and it rained again this afternoon and evening. I called to see what time the do started, and the word came back 4:30 if you wanted to swim and 5:30 otherwise. I didn't want to swim, but I did want to see who would, so I figured to show up sometime between the two start times.

Well, it rained, so nobody showed up to swim, and I was the first to show up. Guess that's a party foul on me. It turned out to be a good thing, though, because I get to talk to Darren, Al and Kathleen Kawamoto's son. He's a shooter and gun collector in the same vein as me, so we spent the first hour or so talking guns, ammo, and collections. Some others started showing up closer to 5:30, but Darren and I were pretty oblivious to them.

I finally had to break off and start talking with the others. All in all about fourteen people ended up coming. Working from memory, they were: Pat, a 2ndish year college student going to University of California San Diego, Pat's brother Em who is just out of highschool, Lauren who is out of high school and moving to Maine in about three-ish weeks, A. J., a student at Southwestern Theological Seminary, Michael, a high schooler and Lauren's brother (I think), Brian, also just out of high school, Doug and Dedra, a married couple who still go to the singles group, Ashley, who I didn't find out a lot about, and Michael (different from the first), apparently Ashley's boyfriend.

Al cooked hamburgers and hotdogs. I had my first hamburger in seven months. It didn't disappoint. I sat at a table with Pat, Brian, Lauren, Michael 1, and A. J. I carried the conversation for about half the time. I'm afraid it came off as five interviews. I'd ask questions, get a conversation going, and at some point shift over to another person. Eventually I ran dry of things to talk about, and the interview got shifted to me (after an awkward pause). They were all good conversations all around.

I liked talking with Pat best. She had the most mature conversation of anyone I talked with at the table, and she was in an interesting major. No sparks really flew--it was just a conversation, and it was clear that she had ambitions of staying in California for awhile.

After we all finished eating we ended up playing a game called Pente. I'll skip the rules for brevity's sake and just say that it's a strategy game that gets more complicated as the number of players increase. I was at a table with Bryan, Michael 1, Pat, Ashley, and Lauren. I won one round and made a few points, so I was satisfied I didn't completely bomb out. Ashley is really the outgoing type--always wanting things to move fast and interjecting random but related comments. Hyper isn't quite the right adjective, but maybe one below that. At the end of three games we all had had enough, and the party broke up.

I didn't get to leave right away. Bryan decided he wanted to leave ahead of me, but because my truck was blocking the driveway, he decided to go around. Unfortunately, he pulled into a grassy area that, due to the rains of this week, was as soggy as it could be. His minivan got stuck, and we had to figure out how to get him out. We discussed it and tried a few things, but ultimately we attached a two rope to my truck, and I pulled him out.

This is one of those nights that was just really good all the way around. Everyone was really nice. The conversation and food were both excellent. I met a fellow gun nut, and the Lord put me in the right place to help out a brother. It'll be interesting to see how the second half of this goes tomorrow.

So Where Do You Go To Meet Someone?

There are a lot of questions floating around my mind as part of this project, and one of them is: where do you go to meet someone? It seems like a fairly simple question I suppose, but the answer is a little elusive. My friends all give me the same advice. Joe, they say, you want to meet someone who likes the things you like and does the things you do, so look at your hobbies and interests and go to places that engage those tastes. Well, there's just one little problem there.

My interests seem to lie outside the mainstream "datable" material. I like to go shooting and fishing. I like reading, but not to the exclusion of all else, and definitely not to the point where I analyze something to death. Most of my time revolves around work and home chores, so what little time I do have is usually spent recovering from one or the other. When I do indulge in my hobbies, it's usually a solitary pursuit.

Take yesterday's and today's events. Today I went to a gun show. I like walking around and seeing what there is to see. There is all kinds of history at gun shows, and not necessarily just guns. I saw flags, coins, a few stamps, pictures, old money, books, and, of course, guns. I spent nearly five hours hanging around there and helping my friend Gerry run his table. (Ok, I didn't quite run anything, but I did get to sit behind the table like I was running it.)

Being behind the table and walking around a show, you see a lot of different things and a lot of different people. I saw old guys, families, couples, handicapped types, some women, some children, and even a baby or two. But is this a place where I can meet someone? Maybe, but I wouldn't quite know how to go about doing it, especially because most of the women there in my age/interest range were walking around with their husbands/boyfriends.

Last night was a little different. I went to a concert with friends. It was a concert I wanted to go to--a lot of John Williams' movie music. It was mostly science fiction/fantasy: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Superman, etc. It wasn't a concert they usually go to, but they went with me anyway. I noticed the same thing as at the gun show--a lot of different kinds of people, but really no single women. As we were driving home, we were talking about this project and the blog, and this very question was brought up. Where does a person go to meet people? At this stage of life, it's a little difficult because you don't have school to rely on any more. My main solution has been the church. I don't yet know if it's a good solution. I hope it is, but only time will tell.