I still have an extensive list of chores to attend to, though, and right now I'm procrastinating. What's a man to do? My free time is (hopefully) going to be severely curtailed in a little while; knowing that, I want to enjoy being able to do nothing for as much as possible before my free time turns into paid time.
It's kind of like the last week or two of summer vacation, where you suddenly realize that you didn't get all the nothing done that you wanted to do while school was out.
If you're Haruhi Suzumiya, you make an extensive list of activities for the next two weeks and make your friends wear themselves out doing everything on the list--and then [SPOILER REDACTED] when [SPOILER REDACTED], some fifteen thousand times, until [SPOILER REDACTED] happens.
But if you're someone like me--who unfortunately does not have the power to alter reality to suit himself--generally you look at the dwindling time, sigh, and go back to sleep.
Mostly, what I need to do is go shopping. I'm down to about 1 day's worth of cat food, and a few bottles of Pepsi, and some of the food supplies need replenishing. I also need to hit Kohl's for a couple of dress shirts that have big enough necks that I can button them. (My brother swears by their shirts. I'll try one or two. WTF.)
I'm thinking about wearing a blue shirt with the suit on Wednesday, like I did to Mom's funeral. I really liked how it looked. We'll see what I find at the store, though.
* * *
Even with the insanity of yesterday, I didn't sleep much last night.
It was kind of surprising. I mean, I lay in bed Saturday night and dozed in an out for about five hours, then was up for a while; I hit the hay at 1 with a full tab of Xanax in me and fell asleep reasonably quickly, but when I woke up at 5 (a few minutes before the alarm went off) I was glad I didn't have to drive very far, because I was not exactly sharp.
I rested in the Prius on the way to Indy: I'd close my eyes and relax and try not to think too much--just sit and conserve energy--and that seemed to work fairly well. (Forget sleeping; I can't sleep sitting up.)
We were only at the show for a couple hours; the rest of it was mainly sitting and talking, which doesn't take much. To my surprise, the mead didn't knock me out; but on the way back up north, again I found myself going into powersave. (Og thought I might be asleep, but I spoke up and said I wasn't.)
On the way back from Og's place (where I'd left the Jeep) I--in my somnolent haze--took a wrong turn, and I only found my way home by accident; if one intersection hadn't been "right turn only" I'd probably still be wandering around Indiana. I thought I was driving west and I was driving south.
The intersection where I could only turn right, though, got me headed in the right direction; that road intersected Sheffield, which intersects with Exchange, and that's an intersection I recognized. So in fact I only lost about ten minutes or so while wandering around in a dazed fog.
Moral of the story: when I know I'm going to be out all day and probably coming home really tired and after dark, I'm bringing the GPS with me. Or at least a goddamned compass.
So: I got home, fed the cats, belatedly realized that I was hungry; I made a PBJ and crawled into bed. I ate the sandwich and turned off the light...and slept for all of three hours.
WTF.
But I wasn't up for that long; and after a little while I went to sleep again and slept for a few more hours. I played some WoW and had some grilled cheese sandwiches (and wrote a blog entry) before going back to bed; but I didn't fall asleep, so I got up again and went to McDonald's for a bacon mofo.
...now I want to go to bed again. Well, the stores I need to visit are open until 8 or 9 PM, and I prefer shopping a little later and avoiding the crowds, so maybe I'll just set the alarm and go later.
And maybe I'll put it off until tomorrow. F it. Wednesday is when I'll really have to cudgel myself, because I need to leave the house no later than 7:30 AM in order to make it to the interview before 9 AM--and even earlier would be better. Leaving at 7:30 means being out of bed by 6:30, and I'll have two alarm clocks set for that!
* * *
At the gun show someone was selling Sten Mk III kits for $187. They were wrapped in cellophane smeared (on the inside) with cosmoline and I was hesitant to pick one up to look at it lest the cellophane rupture; I did bend over and give one a hard look, but I couldn't tell anything through the cosmoline. I suppose I should have asked the guy WTF the deal was, there.
I'll tell you: it'd be damn cool to have a Sten. But "kit" can mean anything from "assemble these finished parts to have a fully functioning gun" to "here is a bunch of approximately random metal chunks which you need a machine shop to finish in order to build anything that even resembles a firearm". Given the price, I'm thinking it's probably closer to the latter than the former.
It would, of course, be a semiautomatic firearm. The difference between semi- and full automatic is usually a little bit of machining or a slight difference in parts. (I recall a TV news story which was aghast that there was a gun which could be converted to full-auto simply by machining an ear off the safety selector.)
Most Stens seem to use 9mm ammo, which ain't cheap, though one of the beauties of the gun was that it was designed to be field-converted to use other ammunition. If a bunch of Brits with Stens captured some German ammo, they could change barrels and use the Kraut ammo in their Stens.
Oh well. It's not like I have money falling out of an anatomically unlikely orofice (though I do have the gun fund). Maybe someday I'll get one; and if not, it won't be the end of the world or anything.
* * *
There is a gun shop here in Crete I suppose I should try visiting. I can't even remember the name of the place; I just know where it is: just south of town on Route 1, north of the trailer park but a way south of the Zion Lutheran Church. It's in an old building, one that probably dates to the town's earliest years.
I'm guessing they wouldn't have much I'd be interested in, but I ought to go in there and maybe buy a box of ammo and see if they do firearm transfers, and how much they charge; because if I keep going to gun shows in Indiana, eventually I'm going to see something I want to buy and have money for same--and while long guns aren't a problem, you can't buy a handgun in Indiana and just tote it into Illinois. Five day waiting period, you know; and it has to be shipped to someone with a federal firearms license, who then checks that you're legal to own a handgun and does the paperwork.
...the place I go to shoot the Mossberg and Astra charges $75. That is a bit steep, IMHO, considering all they have to do is receive the weapon and hold it until you pick it up, then verify that you are who you say you are, do some paperwork, and make sure it's been five days since you bought the gun.
Then again, that place is run by an ornery older guy. They don't allow reloads on their range, mostly (I think) because naturally they want to sell ammunition. (Also, of course, some people are idiots. "I can put a lot more powder in here than that! I'll cram it full and that bullet will really fly!" Then the cretin wonders why his guns blow up....)
If the Crete place is cheaper, naturally I'll have them handle firearm transfers. And you never know: they may have exactly the pistol I want sitting in a display case at the price I want to pay. You never know.
* * *
I have to admit, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on my brother-in-law's AR15. There's absolutely no chance of that whatsoever, of course, since my sister is insane and probably wouldn't sell it to me even for twice its market price. (He's also got almost an entire can of easten European surplus ammo. Last time it was there, the box was under a desk....) Oh well.
I have this tendency to keep my mitts off stuff I don't understand, and when I was last out there guns were still in that category, so I didn't really look the thing over; but it looked awful sweet sitting in his gun case, I tell you....
Now, of course, I'd pick it up and clear the action and look it over, you know, before putting it back the way I found it. Once you learn how to handle firearms, and as long as you follow the four basic rules, it's not a problem.
* * *
Well: it's 12:30 and I have no motivation or energy for anything; and since it's those last couple weeks of "summer vacation", guess what I'm going to do?