Bathroom is progressing. Tile guy is working away today without a plan. No one told him about the waterfall feature or anything, and the niche is the wrong size for it. I knew the niche was too wide, they framed it in wider because it could be shimmed narrower if needed. If it was too narrow, you can't just move the joists out after the fact.

I forgot to take a day 1 photo of the vanilla extract project, but just imagine a clear jar of vodka with some vanilla pods in it. They're not really 'beans' they're fruit. I watched a whole 20 minute youtube video on it.

Recharging all of the little lights I have stashed around the house. Found one more after this picture was taken, but you get the idea. There is always a light handy when you need one this way.

We're putting an ammo order in to test out some new Turkish steel case 9mm, and taking advantage of the order size to get free shipping I wanted to grab some 22 as well. They have the 36gr Armscor plated stuff, so less fouling, but I wanted to make sure it runs in the AR conversion and the G44 before committing to a few cases. Ran 100 rounds through the conversion with no FTF or FTE, but did have 2 legitimately bad rounds. Each one I tried three times and it got three solid whacks. No priming compound I guess. 50 through the G44 with no failures of any kind. That's good enough for cheap bulk 22.

My first lesson with Sydney was Monday and it was pretty good. She's friendly enough, and answered all my questions and gave me some things to work on. She said the summary video would be available the day after, and I just assumed that means the zoom recording but it wasn't. She made a 7 minute summary video re-answering my questions with demos, went over the homework and played a demo of what it should sound like and the correct fingering. That's pretty cool.

The woman took her mom to a drive through light display and I was along for the ride (mostly against my will). Lots of lights. Wee.

One of the MOS plate screws sheared off on the G34. It was just pure luck I found the screw head laying on the ground at the range.

Match results from the weekend. I did pretty good, 8th overall if you toss the PCC guy. Dangerously close to Mr. Purple Ass who won't tap me to start for the qualifier.

Outdoor Limited had some cheap-ish steel case stuff from Turkey. We ordered and split a half case to see if it was any good, put it through the paces vs. Wolf, Tula and some others. Turns out... it's not all that bad. It's about 100fps slower than Wolf/Tula so it's not good 'military' ammo if you want lots of energy but it's perfect for practice and maybe matches since it's softer than the Winchester White Box we used as the brass comparison load (and what I shot at the match).

The woman's chicken source had some leftover birds so the woman scooped them up. The all-black one is very goth, and gray bird lays super dark green / olive colored eggs.

Sees candy from one of the woman's clients, and she gave me the hairy ones. Yum.

Started having fires at night with the woman's mom in town visiting. Previously I've just used the hatchet to chop off some chunks of fire starter log to cheat on the starting (not supposed to burn a whole log in the insert but a little starter can't hurt... can it?). Got motivated and took a log and sliced it into pucks with the chop saw. A little messy but now I have nice even sized starting pucks and don't have to chase fragments of log around the garage when they fly off during chopping.

I've been playing some new DLC for Crown of the Magister and really having fun with it. So much so that I was actually going to complete the final quest! BUT, then I got stuck by a bug. In one of the possible final battle scenarios, and the one I'm in based on the choices made during the game, one of the bad guys gets stuck behind a closed door. They can't get out, you can't get to them so you're stuck in the final battle forever. Without finishing that battle and getting the exit key, you can't do anything. Sigh. It's a known bug, but no fix is out yet.

That's a random screenshot from the DLC page, not from my actual game play.

Getting very close to having a bathroom again.

Extract is getting darker now on day 11 vs. day 2.

The woman wants me to make a pound cake for Stacey's birthday, and make it 'custom'. So... the icing is easy to change around, you can use a lot of different liquids so as she's a fan of Fireball (the adult beverage, not the 3rd level wizard spell) I used that in the icing. To make the cake itself more festive, I used that damn bunt cake pan. Both turned out OK, the cake baked faster due to more surface area exposed to the pan but it wasn't overly dry. The icing I used too much water in addition to the fireball so it was a little thin but the flavor was OK.

Tomorrow I'll bake the real cake. This one was sampled by us, Jason, Sean and Will and everyone thought it was edible, if not downright good. Will is a super fan, keeps raving but he's not getting any more since it's gone.

I actually made lunch the other day, not just chicken fingers with bottled sauce but chicken fingers with bottled sauce ON RICE. Oh.... The rice maker makes things so easy. The green onions were leftover from ramen the other night, don't think I would cut those up on my own just for my lunch.

Made a simplified naan recipe, turned out pretty good. Adjusting the pan temp and the dough thickness I got everything between too thin and burnt to too thick and chewy. Fortunately the middle piece was just right so that's what I gave the woman while I ate the mistakes. Nothing was inedible, so a solid first attempt.

Toilet lids don't bounce when you drop them and are $26 from Home Depot with free shipping. You know, should you need to know that.

I made the production fireball cake today, with 2 layers of icing with more fireball and no water and no vanilla (in the icing, the cake is vanilla). We shall see.

Van oil changed at 131k. Pretty sure it's due, I thought "I don't need to write it down, I'll remember". Yea, no. This time I'm putting it on a piece of tape in the window.

The new fight club room at the meat head gym is complete, or complete enough to use. Dunno about those white mats. I mean, they look clean but they're going to pick up color from the pads hitting them, will show dirt/blood/whatever really easy and I suspect they'll get dingy fast. We shall see, but for the moment enjoy the starkness.

So, a bit of an impulse purchase after an impulse sale. I wanted to get rid of something I wasn't using and get something I would (or get nothing and just have less but that didn't work out this time). The Keltec RDB hunter was on the chopping block. It's cool, but it's inaccurate so it's not fun off the bench, it's heavy so you really wouldn't want to hunt with it (and 556), parts availability could be dicey in the future and it's worth some money as a resale. That and the fact that I wouldn't use it in a class with it's strange manual of arms (would be wasting limited training time getting good with a bullpup I would never use 'for real') was another point against it. So all that, I sold it to FG&G and picked up something I'll use every day. A hellcat pro... with the factory optic.

I've not told anyone about it, I want to experiment with the optic on my own without a bunch of useless commentary so having a gun no one knows I have with an optic they don't know I have makes 'sense'. I was a little bummed it only came with 2 mags, but found some at FG&G for $25 each. One was a 15 round generic 'hellcat' one but the sales guy pointed out that the spacer comes off and it becomes a 15 round hellcat pro mag. No way! Does that mean that the 15 rounders I have for the regular hellcat come apart the same way and I can use them in this?? The answer is yes! So now instead of a bunch of dumb 15 round mags I don't like in the hellcat (but came with the package) are now all 15 round mags for the pro. Win. I now have 8 mags for the pro, almost enough. I'll keep my eye out for more $25 deals each time I go to FG&G. The OEM sealed packs are $40, but the new in a generic bag ones are $25. They also had some 11 round hellcat mags for $20 but they didn't include the flush base plate and I don't like the ones with the extension The +0 extension is dumb, it makes the mag the same size as the 13 round but without the extra capacity. Why is that a thing? I can see for some ban state where you don't have a choice but then you wouldn't get an 11 round mag anyway to extend.

I got the pro yesterday and did some dryfire with the dot and could tell it was way off. I kinda eyeballed it closer to the irons figuring they were on (turns out the irons were on, unlike on the little hellcats) and today got to the range alone to test. First two groups are here. First was high/right, quarter turn left and quarter turn down and it was right on the money. I fired a few more groups and it was good (but didn't take a picture of the target) and fired one last group at the end of the day to see if it drifted. It didn't.

The dot is just OK, I mean there is nothing wrong with the actual dot but the optic is just sorta 'meh'. It has no on/off, it just dials itself up/down based on ambient light. It does the right thing there, it's dim in the basement when it's dark and then brightens instantly when I go into a lit room or outside. There is just no way to make it stop other than cover it. In the store, 4 out of 5 of the samples had dead batteries, presumably because they're on really bight all the time and with all the people moving around the 'shake awake' thing comes away often. If it even has that. We'll see how long this battery lasts with just casual use... or I guess it's daily dryfire. So more than casual use but no carry time.

I suspect I wouldn't get more of these, would rather get the solar holosuns but time will tell how the battery holds.

While leaving the club today this delivery truck was blocking the entry. The club president was supposed to be there to meet the truck, but he wasn't and he hadn't been answering his phone for the few hours they (dispatch and the driver) had been trying to get a hold of him. I wasn't willing to take responsibility for the order, and just asked the dude what he would do if he couldn't get in, or if the gate was open but there was no one to sign. If he couldn't get in he would have to back out, which seems crazy and would take forever so I couldn't get out. If the gate was open but no one was there... dispatch told him to deliver so that's what he did.

It was 3 pallets of clay pigeons and thousands and thousands of shotgun primers. I had him put them under the only cover next to the clubhouse so at least it won't get wet if no one does anything with it before the rains on Friday. Someone is going to have to hand unload those pallets as there is no way to roll anything over the gravel there so... yea... not my problem. I made sure the stuff was safe, it's someone else job to get it into the locked clubhouse that none of us mere members have access to.

Ellen (who I've not heard from in 9+ months) sent this randomly the other day. She said my doppelganger was sitting in a cafe in SF and it was disturbing her. It does kinda look like me.

A picture from the temporary camera I setup to keep an eye on the fireplace when we're downstairs of us taking a selfie for her to post on facebook. This is a meta christmas photo.

I got the headlight polish kit from dad yesterday at dinner but he said the polish itself had dried out and wasn't usable. The internet says toothpaste works (it's just stuff with grit in it after all) so I got a little tube of expired toothpaste from the place we toss the little ones from the dentist and gave it a try. It worked, but the polish ball was dried out and coming apart, tons of red foam dust everywhere. Eventually the dried stuff was gone and the still usable parts remained but it did make a mess.

Before and after isn't all that dramatic on the pictures but it looks noticeably better in person. Good enough for $0.

The woman did end up getting me something, even though I got her nothing as usual. I mentioned looking to see if Coober Pedy's golf course sold merchandise thinking it would be a funny place to have a golf towel from on my bad. They don't have anything, so I just moved on. She went and stole a logo from their web site (actually from the letterhead that their member's meeting council minutes posting which probably wasn't supposed to be on the web site?) and had Stacey use her t-shirt press to put the logo on a generic white golf towel. They weren't totally happy with the results, but I think it's cool and it's the only Coober Pedy golf towel in existence.

The G34 is back from Glock, and they did go ahead and service it in addition to fixing the broken screw. Basically new parts except for the slide, frame and barrel.

Why these losers can't just shoot a BUG gun in a BUG match is beyond me. Yes, you have to reload, losers.