Corner of Bourbon & Division

There will be backdated posts for Saturday and Sunday. For now, there will be summing up.

Weekend was great, but exhausting. I passed my PAL with decent grades (98% for the written, and 96% for the practical because I was REALLY stupid and let my ring finger brush the trigger guard when I was PROVEing a bolt-action rifle: let this be a lesson to everyone else).

The RPAL I passed with flying colours. 100% on both the written and the practical tests. See? I can be taught. I am royally peeved with myself for that massive fail wrt safety procedures. I'm kind of glad that it wasn't ground for automatic failure.

As Alastor Moody would put it: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Nonetheless, I passed, and all is well with the world. Now I just have to wait for the Canadian government to rubber stamp my tests and send them back to me. This will take a minimum of 30 business days. Then I put the rubber-stamped form along with my application form, and send it right back to them, which takes another minimum 30 days to process, and from most reports it will take closer to three to five months. *sigh* Good thing I'm not in a hurry. Oh, and my RPAL costs $20 more than a PAL. fearsclave calls it a "tax on evil." I think he may not be far wrong. ;)


Today was very busy. Breakfast with fearsclave and Carolyn, then a quick jaunt out to the Coalition Stronghold to deliver maple syrup to ai731 and t! who was working from home. I gave Carter a good number of pats before leaving, as well.

I stopped at Canadian Tire in Alexandria, where they knew what I was talking about when I asked after the indoor greenhouse/staging area that fearsclave has. Sadly, it appears that the thing has been discontinued. So I am SOL for that. I will have to find something similar elsewhere.

Then I drove back into town, stopped at IKEA for shelves, got some stuff from the dry cleaners, did the rounds of various places to get copies of receipts for my taxes (one more paper to track down and then I'm golden), and came home.

Unloaded the car (gym bag with clothes, five tomato seedlings that fearsclave generously gave to me, two bottles of booze from the LCBO, my shelves and other assorted bits from the weekend), fed the cats, patted the cats, called my mother, checked email, caught up on LJ, and am going to go to the Parental Units' place for dinner in about an hour or so.

The cats are Very Unhappy that I was gone so long, but appear to be getting over their snit. There will be more pats soon, and maybe then they will forgive me.

I have done more driving in this one weekend than in the past year combined, I think. I haven't calculated the distances yet, but I definitely cleared 500km. Bleah.

This is a backdated post.


Arrived yesterday at the Fearsranch, and spent an agreeable evening eating pizza, drinking beer, and slaying zombies. Much fun. fearsclave gave me a quick primer (pre-beer) on how to load and unload firearms, and how to manipulate them safely. We went over ACTS & PROVE, and it left me a lot more optimistic about not making an idiot of myself during the class.

Spent the night dreaming about hunting zombies (beer + L4D right before bed = zombie dreams) and actually awoke about minutes before the alarm went off. Got ready, and then spent a frustrating half hour trying to find my way to Hwy 417. Stopped at Tim Horton's, and then stopped for gas, but was thwarted by the gas pump a few times (hence the frustration). It was smooth sailing from there on in, and I arrived half an hour early from my class.

There were four women there in total (out of 20 students), and two of them gravitated toward me and sat at my table (the class was being held in the RCMP mess). I think we were all relieved that we weren't alone. The class was good, although the first half was very dry technical and theoretical stuff, and since I was already tired and hadn't slept well, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open and my concentration was shot to hell.

The practical stuff mostly went well. The non-restricted weapons were kind of unwieldy and most of them had served in so many classes that they had developed flaws and quirks which made them difficult to handle, but overall I learned a lot and was pretty comfortable with them by the end.

I took a wrong turn coming back (missed an exit) which added about twenty minutes to my return drive. This made me an unhappy camper, but it wasn't too terrible. I returned to a house devoid of humans but filled with three very happy and waggy dogs: Jack, Balou, and diggerlicious, who were all thrilled to receive pats and attention. fearsclave, and diggerlicious and Balou's two humans returned from their jaunt about five minutes later, and we all went out to dinner, where I tried valiantly not to pass out because I was so tired.

We went home again, had some scotch, demonstrated L4D for a bit, and then I staggered to bed for a very short night's sleep.

There will be another backdated post for Sunday following this. Stay tuned.