The 3 Manly Things I Did on Sunday

After a hearty breakfast (that's not one of the three things), I:

1. Replaced a burned out headlight on my car: This was actually more about perseverance and the ability to deal with skinned knuckles than actual manliness. I've done it a few times before; the battery is directly behind the left headlight, and the windshield washer reservoir is directly behind the right headlight, so there's not a lot of room to work with, especially to fiddle that damn retaining clip. And this from a guy with small hands. (Small hands; big hog, though.)
   
   
2. Shot at stuff with guns: It's been a long time since I've fired a gun, so I went to Blue Ridge Arsenal to get some trigger time in. It's just off the intersection of Route 50 and Route 28 -- they seem to have put up a few new shopping centers in the, oh, 7 years since I was there last .
   
   I set myself up with a polymer-framed Ruger 9mm and ended up shooting about 150 rounds. I managed to keep all of them on the paper, but I was pretty rusty:

   
   From 7 yards. (Ignore the 2 misses up by the head.)

   Looking at my targets, I was mostly shooting a little high and to the left right, which is probably a bit of recoil anticipation and poor trigger manipulation. Add in a little loss of concentration, a need for new glasses, and forgetting where to put my thumbs, and that tells me I probably shouldn't wait 7 more years to shoot again.
   
   After shooting, I got to handle some of the rental long guns, including a WASR-10 (a Romanian AK-47 variant) and the FN PS-90 (the civilian version of the submachine gun commonly seen on Stargate SG-1).
   
   I have no need for any sort of long gun. Doesn't mean I don't still want one, though.
   
   
3. Worked out and got HUGE: Actually, it was a makeup workout to get back on schedule, and I'm doing lighter sets of 20 right now (well, up to 20). But it was still very manly -- and the manliness was only increased by the UFC Unleashed and Man vs. Wild episodes showing on the TVs.
   

After that, I went to Jammin' Java for the Over the Rhine Christmas show, which was not especially manly. It was, however, canceled (due to illness), so it will probably be rescheduled to a later, non-Christmas-y date.

As I was driving back on Route 7, I passed Tower Records and saw their "Going Out of Business" sign. I hadn't known they were still open, so I made a U-turn and did some damage there. But I'll have to talk about that later.

Tags: manliness, replacing headlights, shooting, handguns, ruger, blue ridge arsenal, jammin java, over the rhine, tower records