Saturday, April 20, 2019

Indoor Shooting Range in the Hurricane Damaged Cottage and Other Adventures

Our Good Friday was not the way we usually observe.  Our Good Friday was full of more joy and less church service (both in the serving and the liturgy sense of that word) than usual.

We awoke to a gloomy morning, with reports of rain and even more severe storms to come.  My 12 year old nephew had wanted to do some shooting of the airsoft pellet gun, and we thought about going to a range.  But the range we had our eye on was closed for maintenance.

We had saved the huge cardboard boxes that the outdoor lounge chair cushions came in because my spouse had thought that we might do some shooting in the backyard.  But it was raining.

We do have a hurricane damaged cottage, and my spouse and nephew went to work transforming it into an indoor shooting range.  It worked well.  My nephew has remarkable skill/talent at hitting the target.  I do not.  I hit one bulls-eye, but it wasn't the one I was aiming toward.  I'm trying not to see it as a metaphor for my larger life.

We did go to the archery range, but we didn't know we had to bring our own equipment.  We don't have our own equipment.  I'm willing to rent, but I'm not willing to buy.

The rain had cleared, and the sky looked relatively clear.  We looked at the radar and decided we had time to eat at my nephew's favorite place at the beach.  They said, "It's so windy we can't put up the umbrellas, so you'll have to sit in the sun.  Is that O.K.?"

O.K.?  Of course!  I was happy for the breeze and the occasional clouds that scuttled across the sky, as the sun is a bit intense, even for April.

We returned home and decided to enjoy the sun while we had it by lounging by/playing in the pool.  I made better pina coladas at home than we had at lunch--ah, the joys of a fridge with a connected water line that will crush ice for me!  We played a game new to us, Rollers, a kind of dice game, less complicated than Yahtzee but still fun.

Because we had such a big, late lunch, we had snacks and appetizers for dinner:  Chex Mix and cheese and crackers.  We closed the day by watching Trevor Noah stand up comedy on Netflix. 

And those storms that we stayed on the watch for all day?  They rolled through as we went to bed about 9:30.  They weren't as severe as predicted, but I know the rest of the nation has not been so lucky.

We've awakened to a cloudy morning, which the weather folks tell us will clear out soon.  It's much chillier than usual for this time of year--the storms came by way of a cold front.  But I predict we will still enjoy tropical drinks by the pool while my spouse grills.

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