Quick updates.

Sunday morning, Dad and I had coffee before breakfast. I was slightly sore from moving a friend before working the night before. We went to a fairly new little coffee shop down the road, and enjoyed our over-priced coffee and pastries on the porch, basking in the lovely October morning. Some of the most cherished moments in my life have involved swilling coffee outside in the cool early day of a tenth month. Lots of those have been with Dad, and this time was no different. He handed me yet another birthday gift, which this time was a Bianchi Speed Strip with 6 rounds of Remington 158 g SWC +P in it.

"You might try this. They work pretty well," he said.

He was speaking of the Speed Strip. As I stated in comments, I've been meaning to try them out, and now I am doing so. When I ran some errands about town yesterday, I carried a M36 on my belt and just tossed the Speed Strip into my off-side pocket. It carried well, with less clinking than I'd expected. I need to get to the range and practice fast loading with it, 2 by 2 by 1.

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The house is very nearly ready for move-in.

I've got a truck rented for this weekend, and days off to move. We've built my wife's studio (something I've been promising her in earnest for a decade) in the garage. The bamboo looks stunning against the slate. The carpet is a low shag, and it makes my wife happy, so it makes me happy. I've called to have the 30 yard dumpster removed, as it is packed and brim-full of cast-off material from the house. I wish it had more room; I'd keep it for cast-off from the move.

I need to find that pesky gas leak from the stove, though. Until I do, the gas cock at the wall underneath is turned off.

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I've a test tomorrow night in Statistics that I'm really not quite ready to take. Interestingly, while my professor (an kindly old man of about 80 who tends to ramble afield a bit with his anecdotes) was giving us a review in class last week, a group of women sitting in back were chatting. Not in whispers, but in normal talking voices. I put up with this as best I could. I sit in front when the topic is boring (and rest assured, Statistics is a boring class.), so I could generally hear him despite my tinnitus. But when another student from across the room asked a question about the test, and neither I nor the professor could hear it over the din of conversation, I turned around and spoke loudly to them:

"Ladies: 'Disruption Of Classes' is a Class C Misdemeanor, and your continued talking qualifies as an offense. I have paid $1016 to take this class, and I will not put up with your interruptions. If you wish to speak further, take it out to the hallway, and I will bear you no ill will. I speak to You, You, You, and You, miss. Yes, I mean you. Do you understand me?"

They nodded. It turned back around and tried to concentrate on my review. I wasn't just irritated that they were interfering with my class, but that their actions were what I considered insulting to this gentlemanly elder instructor. Worse-- but for myself and one other, I knew that everyone else in the class was working on post-graduate degrees of one kind or another in Education. I should have thought that they would show more professional courtesy. But alas, most of them were young (early 20s) women, and probably have not yet entered their career field. (I had never seen such activity in any of my Criminal Justice classes, I can assure you.)

One of the talkers--a very fit, attractive girl-- had tried at some lenghts to wheedle some extra points out of the professor after we got our grades on our first test. I had been proud of my professor for mildly refusing her repeated urgent whining request.
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Yesterday afternoon while checking my mail, I heard gunshots. I looked to my neighbor, who was checking his own mail. We both felt the wind, a nice mild southerly breeze. We live just four blocks from the south edge of our little town. "Sounds like the dove are still flying," he laughed.

I grinned and took the mail in to thow away.

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Note: mothers-in-law who were born during the Depression (a real depression, not this BS little recession thingy that people are getting their panties in a wad over) are constitutionally incapable of draining the grease off of the cheap hamburger that they fried up for hash. Not one drop. While the hash was tasty, I could have plunged a wick into a bowl of it and lit it to make a passable lamp which would burn for days.