The family has left the building

[feren]

My parents hit the road at around 0815 this morning. On one level I feel relieved to have them out of the house, because things still aren't nearly unpacked and organized enough here to comfortably sustain company. On another level I miss them being here because I only see them twice a year at best, and the house feels a lot more lived-in when there's company. Stupid Catch-22.

To summarize my family's visit: They arrived at 1145 Friday morning and, once I got them situated in the house, they slept until late afternoon -- slim surprise when you take into account that they had left Florida at 1430 Thursday and driven through the night without stopping to sleep. That night our friends Heather and Garry K joined us for dinner at Cheddar's, just as planned. It was a pretty nice evening! There was plenty of good food as well as fun conversation. As an added bonus, we got my mother on the way to being soused by starting her off with Kahlua on the rocks and following it up with a Mudslide. I don't think any of us were prepared for how large that drink turned out to be. Amazingly, she finished the entire thing. Between her and my dad it's slim wonder I'm a lush, eh?

Saturday was relatively low-key and quiet. All of us lounged around the house while my parents continued to recover from their two weeks of work in Florida. Or maybe they were recovering from driving 1,200 miles in just under 22 hours straight. In the afternoon there was talk of them heading for home but we consulted the weather and decided that the snow wasn't worth worrying about. For dinner I treated everyone to bd's Mongolian Barbeque and then hauled them over to the new Bass Pro Shop. We split apart and wandered the store, each of us gravitating to the various areas that interested us -- my dad and I were in the hunting section in no time, mom went to check out the seafood restaurant and lady_curmudgeon was blissed out in the clothing section. While we looked over the selection of firearms Dad pointed out the FNH Five-seveN, which looks like a nice pistol. I may look into getting one at some point in 2008. I'm sure the state will work on making it nearly impossible to purchase the second I start getting serious about it, but that's a different rant.

We retired to the house around 2030 and watched the news to get a better idea of the weather for tomorrow. Naturally the local stations were making the snow out to be some sort of huge scary death-bringing Terror from the Arctic, boosting their early Saturday predictions of 1-2" in my area up to nearly 9" for the 9pm news. What the hell? All I had to do was look outside the house to see that there was barely even a flurry occuring, and when we came in after dinner there wasn't more than a quarter of an inch on the ground. The best part of the evening was probably when the reporter was interviewing people about how they were "coping" with the snow. During the interview the screen was showing side shots of earlier in the day where that same person was armed with a shovel and scraping maybe an eighth of an inch off a sidewalk. They barely even had a shovelful at the end of the walk, but I guess this was done to help convey the "hardship." Seriously, when did the northern Midwest get so terrified of snow? I don't get it.

Today I will relax, work on some house chores and plan an attack on Curmudgeon's malfunctioning computer.

Gosh darn, I said it feels so right

Comments

[asetwoman.livejournal.com]

You're lucky then. We got dumped on pretty good and the snow is knee height here.

[feren.livejournal.com]

Interesting -- they were claiming the big snowfall was supposed to happen South of I-80.

This further reinforces my belief that these meteorologists and their computer models are pretty much without value.

[asetwoman.livejournal.com]

Without value? I wouldn't go THAT far, although this time they seem to have gotten lots wrong.

[feren.livejournal.com]

Your icon (as it relates to the topic of snow) makes me grin. When do they start airing LOST again in January, do you know?

[asetwoman.livejournal.com]

OMGWTFSNOW?

Because of the writer's strike, I'm really not sure how many episodes we'll get, and the date it's supposed to return is unclear as well.

Also, something about your LJ's particular style makes the pull-down menu for icons black text on black, so it's hard to choose one sometimes. I will cop to using that one deliberately this time, however.

[shanedoll.livejournal.com]

For some strange reason... I might have to disagree with you.

Shanedoll hate snow...

[doomsey.livejournal.com]

We got a fair amount of snow in Elmhurst/Lombard/etc too.

4" or so.

Not an OMG EMERGENCY, but at least enough to pull out the snowblower...

[steelhelix.livejournal.com]

The FN Five-seveN is a nice gun, well designed ergonomically and comfortable... the only bad thing I can say about it is it's caliber. It was specifically designed to shoot the 5.7, which was originally intended to be a specially made armor piercing PDW round, and the FN Five-seveN handgun was to be the companion to the PDW. The armor piercing versions of the ammunition are not available to the public, but that's not the bad thing about the round... it's proprietary. Being proprietary, and more importantly, extremely uncommon, it's expensive to purchase. Unless you intend to reload the cartridges, it could be very uncomfortable for your wallet.

And I won't get started about how bad an idea reloading is for any sort of semi-automatic firearm.

[loboguara.livejournal.com]

I already have an "armor piercing" gun for fun...it's a 1946 Soviet Tokarev TT-33. :) It's got a massive flamethrower of a muzzleblast that lights up the entire range and sounds like a magnum revolver, but it's a slender, 1911-size semiauto, nearly flat. Lots of fun. I've got a second as well, a Polish variant, but the range does not allow one to do the John Woo twin guns thing, with good reason. ;D

As to the FiveseveN, are they even legal in IL? I thought one of the legislators there had already called it a "Cop Killer" and was trying to ban it and the ammo for it?

Because, you know, every meth-head will go buy a $900 pistol to knock over the quickie mart for $30...

If I was gonna get that spendy, I'd go for an H&K P7. They're just too cool. Someome just showed one that they'd had done in gold titanium with burl walnut grips. It was appropriate for carrying while playing poker with Mr. Bond, I thought.

[steelhelix.livejournal.com]

Personally, I prefer my Sig GSR... but that's me. I've got a nice little assortment of guns, but I'm getting more and more involved into the politics these days (and not nearly enough range time).

Some states and localities do ban the FN, for no really good reason. The armor piercing version of the ammo is banned on a federal level, so that automatically limits it to normal 5.7 mm rounds... which are basically extremely fast .22 cal rounds. I can't speak to which localities do ban it, that'd require a lot more research into local laws.

I have issues with HK as a company. While they produce a decent but not fantastic product, regardless of their massively over-hyped advertising campaign, their customer service is one of the worst in the gun industry when it comes to dealing with independent civilians. That's what you get when a company primarily sells only to military and law enforcement with less than 10% of their sales being in the civilian market.

I think we've stolen enough of Feren's rant for Gun Politics now... so I'll shut up.

[loboguara.livejournal.com]

This is true, that HK's customer service basically consists of "You suck and we hate you." ;)

And my favorite is still SIG, yes. They're also local to me.

[ya-wot-aver.livejournal.com]

And I won't get started about how bad an idea reloading is for any sort of semi-automatic firearm.

Got me curious, why is it a bad idea?
(I only ask because I reload semi-auto)

[steelhelix.livejournal.com]

I got too long-winded with my reply, so you'll have to go here to read it.

[loboguara.livejournal.com]

Get a SIG P220! Become one of the Brotherhood of SIG! Seriously, I have one, someone else you know has one... You gotta get one, man! :D