The Pursuit of Happiness II...The Smell of Cordite

It occurred to me that I had a very enjoyable day yesterday. It was one of those days that you probably would have if you made it to heaven. Everything was ok. My myriad problems were not dwelled on once. Everything seemed to go my way. Rarely have I felt so content.

What constitutes a great day for me, you might ask? Keep in mind this is all subjective, but here was my little slice of heaven.

For starters, I got a good night’s sleep. Since I’m an insomniac, a good night’s sleep is worth more to me than gold. I still didn’t go to bed before 2:00a.m., but since I didn’t stir until 11:00a.m., I consider that a good night’s sleep. Those of you who don’t have a hard time sleeping cannot understand this. Trust me, this was a good thing for me.

The next thing that happened was a couple of hours spent playing my Xbox. This is pure entertainment for me, escapism at its best. This HALO thing is like mental crack.

This was followed by a great movie which I happened to catch. It was called THE LAST HARD MEN, and featured Charlton Heston and Lee Marvin. I’ve never seen it before, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story followed an old retired sheriff whose daughter was kidnapped by an escaped convict in turn of the century Arizona (20th century, I feel compelled to add). A great movie. Nothing beats a good western, in my opinion. This was a pseudo-western, kind of like THE WILD BUNCH, but better. Finding an old movie that I’ve never seen before is a great feeling. It’s like finding money in your pocket that you didn’t know you had.

The day progressed, and I managed to find my way to the shooting range. There is a lot of happiness that comes from doing manly things like blowing holes in targets. There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that one has a skill with weapons. Why is this important? For several different reasons, that vary from person to person. I can only tell you why I enjoy it. First, I have the satisfaction of knowing I can utilize a weapon in order to protect myself, and those I love. This is important to me.

Second, it’s fun. It’s an exercise in eye-hand coordination, and some people can’t do it very well. It’s like throwing darts, archery, or hitting a great golf shot. It’s just something fun to do, which is challenging. It’s also fun to talk with other shooters about what loads they’re using, what hardware they have, and other fun gun stuff. I had the opportunity to try out a new toy, the Glock 34. This is a long-slide 9mm, designed to be a target model. It’s probably the best-shooting Glock I’ve ever messed with, and I tend to be a big Glock fan. Try one. I digress.

Third, I know that just by shooting a gun; I am making some liberal puke cringe out there. I just like making them as uncomfortable as I can, in a passive-aggressive sort of way. The more I shoot, the more uncomfortable they are. My shooting keeps the range in business, the firearms manufacturer in business, and the ammo manufacturer. As long as they’re out there turning a profit, liberals are wailing and gnashing their teeth. This is a good thing.

Fourth, I like testing my skill with weapons against others at the range. Competition is fun. It makes us better.

By the way, the H&K USP Compact in .45 did quite well at the range. I shot 100 rounds at seven yards. Nothing was outside the 9 ring, and there was a huge hole torn from the x through the 9 ring. It looked like one big bullet hole. I seem to pull to the left a bit (I have to work on that, any clues as to why I’m doing that out there? I shoot from a modified Weaver stance, and I’m right-handed. You IPSC guys ought to be able to diagnose the problem), but otherwise this was about as perfect as I could ask for. Shooters out there are rejoicing about that grouping, the rest of you have no idea what I’m talking about.

There are other reasons why the range is a cool place to be, but I’m sure I have stated enough for the time being. I loved it, I’ll put it to you that way.

The next adventure for the day was to Fry’s Electronics. Electronic goodies as far as the eye could see. Needless to say, a happy hour was spent there.

The final step in the day was a movie, enjoying the company of my significant other, and eating pizza. I then played with the various pets, and got another decent night’s sleep.

The only thing that was lacking was a round of golf, but it was too darn cold to even think about that sort of thing. Heck, no day is perfect, is it?

The bottom line was that this was a very enjoyable day, of a sort that does not come around often enough for me. Life’s problems were put on hold for awhile. No politics to worry about, no job thoughts were weighing me down. I lost myself in things that I like to do.

Everybody needs a few hobbies, if you can call them that. People need something in which they can lose themselves. As Americans, we tend to get caught up in the rat race. We worry about work, we worry about doing a good job, we worry about making ends meet, etc. This is what makes us such a great nation: we actually care about what we do, and we mostly strive to do the best job we can. It’s a good thing, but we need to forget about all of that for two days of the week, if we can. There are reasons for which we work, and one is to support all these fun things that we like to do.

So now we have two ingredients for happiness: a fulfilling job, and pleasant distractions which make us forget life’s problems for a bit.

Next time, I’ll ruminate on the best location for doing all of this stuff. This is a biggie.