Woke up this afternoon on the floor of my closet. No, I hadn’t been drinking. I spent the whole night there because my big, hulking 110-pound Doberman/German Shepherd has developed such an intense fear of thunder that he immediately hides in a dark corner of the house and compulsively licks his feet when he hears the first rumble. And we had thunderstorms. All night long.

If I’d simply left him alone he would have licked himself raw and bloody, and even a Beggin’ Strip failed to lure him out of his hiding place. I finally just lay down next to him and dozed off, waking up every 10 or 15 minutes to tell him to stop licking. Parenthood’s a tough gig, I tell ya.

In Other News, I went to school today and straightened out most of my enrollment issues. Gotta go back tomorrow to actually register for classes. My original goal was to do everything in two semesters, which unfortunately won’t work due to the way the courses are offered. You need to take class A before class B and class B before class C, and you need class C to graduate. So I’m looking at three semesters instead of two, which is slightly disappointing but not a major disaster.

That’s it for now. Squeaky tagged me with this TANSTAAFL meme the other day, and I’m working on it. Stay tuned.

Wow, that was fast. Last Friday afternoon I called up Craig Chadwick of Lightning Arms Sports to order a pair of Craig Spegel grips for my Hi-Power. They were in my mailbox today at noon. Outstanding, fast and friendly customer service from Lightning Arms. Thanks, Craig!

And the grips look even better in person than they did in the photos Craig emailed to me. Here’s his picture:

Same grips, now in my hot little hands and photographed under different lighting conditions:

These grips are made from Cocobolo and were graded “S++” on Mr. Spegel’s quality scale, which goes: Standard (S, S+, S++), Better-than-Standard (BTS, BTS+, BTS++), Presentation, Exhibition. If these are only “standard” quality, I can’t imagine what a set of Exhibition grips looks like. They have a beautiful reddish color that reminds me of Pre-’64 Winchester stocks. The checkering is crisp, flawless and uniform over the entire surface.

Left grip panel is stamped with Craig Spegel’s initials, right one is signed in gold ink:

I haven’t actually fitted the grips to my Hi-Power yet because the gun’s going to be refinished shortly. I don’t want to get them fitted now and then discover that they don’t fit properly after the refinishing work is done. The actual fitting involved is very minor and is necessary not because of any imprecision on Mr. Spegel’s part but due to the slight dimensional variations in Hi-Power frames over the last 72 years.

I’m a very happy guy right now.

Finally, a country song I can appreciate: Rodney Carrington’s “Show Them to Me” (NSFW)

Be Angry at the Sun

Robinson Jeffers

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

——

First published in 1941. Eerie, innit?

Since my muse STILL can’t be found, and since the gun stuff I’ve been working on isn’t quite ready to see the light of day yet, I’ve been reading other blogs much more than I’ve been tending my own. All that reading reminded me that in addition to slacking on my writing, I’ve also totally neglected my blogroll. Yeah, I have a little procrastination problem. I’m working on it.

So tonight I added five of my regular reads: Ambulance Driver, Carteach0, Countertop Chronicles, The Smallest Minority, and Snowflakes in Hell. If you read my humble little blog you’re probably already familiar with most of those guys, but I highly urge you to check out Carteach0’s blog. He’s only been blogging for a month and he already has a LOT of fantastic shooting and reloading material posted.

As for my own site, I have a half-dozen lengthy drafts stalled in various stages of completion. I’ll make a push to finish them before I start school in two weeks. Mostly gun stuff, one or two computer-related items, and an odd little reminiscence that keeps nagging at me. Gotta borrow some prolificacy from my buddy Squeaky…

Teri Polo from Meet the Parents

This afternoon I dug up my annual crop of the only vegetable worthy of my time: garlic. And yes, I know there’s a couple really scrawny bulbs in there. See, the problem is that I’m so busy thinking profound thoughts all day long that I never remember to water the plants. Great genius is as much a curse as a blessing.

I do feel a sense of pride, though, that in four short months I was able to grow enough garlic to last me until next Tuesday.

My FN Hi-Power came from the factory wearing these:

This is a rare case of my shitty photography making something look BETTER than it does in real life. In an appalling display of penny-pinching, FN chose to install the cheapest, trashiest, least comfortable, most ill-fitting, and outright ugliest grips they could find. It’s embarrassing, really.

I finally got fed up with them tonight and decided to order these:

Craig Spegel’s beautiful Cocobolo grips, which you’ll see on just about every custom Hi-Power on the planet. Now I just need to send mine off for a bit of ’smithing…