There are few worse ways to start the day than to spend a few hours in a hospital waiting room with your ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A man in Chicago found a good form of street justice when his security camera recorded a neighbor stealing his snow shovel after almost two feet of snow fell.

Back in the Old West, stealing a man’s horse got you about 6 feet of rope for a 10 foot fall.  Having lived in an environment where shoveling snow is a daily, and sometimes hourly, chore, stealing a snow shovel is just as bad.

The gentleman from Mordor decided to go easy on the nice lady who stole his shovel, and just buried her car in snow.  Personally, she got off light.

Looks like I picked the wrong time to lose my taste for chocolate.

Hershey’s, purveyors of such lovely edibles as the eponymous Hershey Bar and Hershey Kisses, has released a study which shows that chocolate powder and dark chocolate have more anti-oxidants than some of the “super fruits” such as acai or cranberry.

The total flavanol content of dark chocolate was significantly greater than cocoa beverage on a per-serving basis and both dark chocolate and cocoa beverage had significantly greater total flavanol content than hot cocoa mix, acai, blueberry, cranberry and pomegranate juice, the study says.

Over the last year or so, I’ve lost my sweet tooth.  I can probably count on two hands the number of pieces of chocolate that I’ve eaten since last fall.  For a lifetime chocoholic, especially for dark chocolate, this is a catastrophe.  I still love the way chocolate smells, so there’s still hope.  Maybe if I convince myself that a piece of  dark chocolate before bedtime is good for me, I’ll get back into it.

OK, last football post for  a few months.

Today being a rather nasty day weather wise, my shooting group decided to forego the outdoor range and have an hour or so at the nice, heated indoor range.  Apparently we weren’t the only ones who had this idea, because there was a wait for a lane when we left.

I took along the CZ-82, Taurus Model 85, RIA Government Model 1911, and the new S&W 22A-1.

Thoughts:

• The 22A is a great little pistol.  Mine is the base model, so the sights are pretty basic, but easy to see in good lighting.  I’m going to use it as a pistol trainer for Girlie Bear and Irish Woman, so I won’t be putting an optic on the integral rail.  Only thing I might do is put a dab of orange or white gun paint on the front sight.  I shot Winchester high velocity .22 long through it, and the muzzle flipped less than an inch during rapid fire.  My groups started out at about 10 inches across, but tightened up some as I continued putting rounds downrange.  
• Between me and the rest of my group, we put about 150 rounds down the 22A, and I had three failures.  One was a stovepipe on ejection, the other two were problems with feeding from the magazine.  One of the failures to feed dented the cartridge bad enough I discarded it.
• Disassembly of the 22A was about as easy as I’ve ever seen on a pistol.  Lock the slide back, push in the disassembly button, and lift off the upper part of the gun.  Definitely easier than a 1911 or Mark III.
• The CZ-82 is fast becoming my favorite pistol.  It’s as light as the Model 85, but has enough weight that it doesn’t flip around a lot from recoil.  It shoots very well, has a good trigger, and made a ragged hole in the target at 21 feet.  I was firing Fiocci rounds out of it today.  Next time I go to the outdoor range, I’ll try out the cheap Tulammo steel cased ammunition I bought for it.  
• The 1911 is probably going to come out of rotation as a carry piece.  It just doesn’t want to consistently feed non-FMJ ammunition.  If I can get my hands on some EFMJ ammunition, I’ll try it and re-evaluate carrying the 1911.  It’s a perfectly adequate range gun, and it is extremely enjoyable to shoot.  Some have turned their noses up at the RIA brand, but other than the issues with hollow point ammunition, it’s pretty solid. I’m between 1000 and 2000 rounds into its lifespan, and no components show any signs of problems.  
• The Model 85 is my carry piece, and I need to seriously start doing dry fire on a regular basis.  The DA trigger isn’t too stiff, but I need to strengthen my hands in order to consistently fire it accurately.  At 21 feet, I was still hitting the vitals with every shot, but my groups were between 6 and 8 inches across.  I want to tighten that up so that I can hit a 3 inch group with a cold gun.  Other than that, I really love this little revolver.

Hopefully spring will hurry up and get here so I can get out to the outdoor range and spend a little more time shooting.  It’s hard to linger over your shots and analyze when you’re paying by the hour.  The indoor range is really nice though, and I definitely enjoy going out there when the weather is bad or I don’t feel like driving the 45 minutes to Knob Creek.

Tam over at View From The Porch has been struggling to clear the demon ice from her sidewalk after the latest version of Snowmageddon hit her lovely home of Rosenholme in the wilds of Indiana.

I was inspired by her tale of woe to pen the following comment, and I’m so proud of it I’m reproducing it here:

OK, stop, she’s choppin’ and chippin’
Tam is out and she’s got a mission
Something falls from the sky there nightly
Rosenholme is covered up in white stuff oh so tightly
Will she ever stop,yo, I don’t know
Stop with the work and the drifts will grow
To the extreme she smacks the walk like a vandal
Cover it with mo-gas and light it like a candle!

Snap, the ice breaks with a boom
Hitting her noggin, raise a knot like a mushroom
Deadly when it smacks upside her melon
Get the walk cleared or be considered a felon
So much ice other Gunnies say Damn!
If ice was a drug, she’d sell it by the gram!

If there’s an ice sheet, yo, she’ll whack it
Sharpen the axe so Roberta can hack it!

Ice Ice Baby!

Head on over and give Tam a little encouragement as she clears her driveway and sidewalk in time for the next round of snow and ice.

An unqualified politically appointed “diplomat” has left our embassy in Luxembourg in a complete shambles.  Apparently U.S. and local employees, some of whom have probably worked there for decades, are described as demoralized and stressed.  Considering how easy-going the State Department types I’ve worked with in the past tend to be, that’s saying a lot.

Apparently, Madam Ambassador Stroum terrorized embassy employees, wasted taxpayer money on searches for personal housing and staff that are commensurate with her station, or at least the station she believes she deserves, and spent thousands of taxpayer dollars in re-stocking the embassy liquor cabinet with booze from Europe when she should have been buying American.

Shocked, yes shocked, I am that a political appointee, who got the job by raising money for President Obama’s 2008 campaign, would abuse her position to make her own life more luxurious while belittling the people who keep the wheels on.  I am also surprised that she did not fly Air Pelosi back and forth to the States, since she seems to be cut from the same cloth as the representative from Northern California. 

Luxembourg, along with the other Low Countries, have been good, loyal friends and allies since the end of the Second World War.  They deserve better than to have a political prima donna sent to be their conduit to the United States government.  But then, the Obama administration doesn’t seem to have a problem pissing in the tea of our oldest and closest European ally, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

President Obama needs to remind all of his minions that they are employed to serve our nation, not to be serviced.  And Mrs. Stroum should repay the taxpayers for every penny we paid for her European junket.

My attempt to pick the games this year pretty much fell apart due to a lot of factors, but I will pick the Superbowl.

I’m really torn about this one.  I cheered for the Steelers back in the ’70’s, but Green Bay is one of my teams.  I’m going to pick the Packers to win, but I hope it’ll be close.  But if the Steelers win the Super Bowl in the first year that Jerry Jones’ penis extension of a stadium is open, I’ll be OK with that too.

anticsrocks over at Flopping Aces has put together a pretty comprehensive liberal to English dictionary.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

“Fully fund” = Blank check
“Working Americans” = Only lower and middle class Americans
“Tax the rich” = Increase taxes on anyone making $250,000 a year or higher, $200,000 or, er, I mean $150,000 a year – *sigh* this number keeps getting lower

Go and have a read.  They’re quite entertaining and ring true with me.  If you’ve got any suggestions for additions, leave them in comments either here or there.