About A Stepdad

Now for the big boys.  MP-5.   The weapon of choice for many gamers and special ops (like SWATie guys).  It’s heavier than it looks and there was a lot more safety explanation.  I listened, I learned and then I took the gun

I braced my feet far apart, left hand on the front bit (hey, I know it probably has a name but I don’t know what it is), left elbow on the shelf for support, stock braced against my shoulder, my trigger finger off the trigger.  I thumbed the safety off.  Closed my left eye.  Put my finger on the trigger.  Held my breath.  Listened to my heart beat in my chest, thumpidy-thumpidy-thump.  Breathed out.  Squeezed the trigger.

Boom!  Jolt.  Flash.  All at once.  (with ear protectors, it sounds like a big boom, not a crack.)

Bullseye.

“Good shot!” says the attendant.

Fucking right it was.  Big ass iron sights.  Easy to line up.  Made a huge difference that I could brace myself, left elbow on the shelf.   Bang.  Boom.  Bang-bang-bang.  Shells shot over my head.  Pinged off my chest.  Landed at my feet.  I flew through the magazine like I was being attacked by a horde of zombies.  Semi-auto.

Then, I was shown how to reload, I put the new magazine in, braced myself and went full auto.

There is no other way to describe it than holy fucking shit.  I mean, wow.  WOW!!!   It was simply awesome!

I had a hard time keeping the shots on target, though.  First few, sure, but as it kicked and kicked, my aim went farther and farther off.   Easy to hit the target when I was shooting one shot or shorts bursts.  Damn hard to hit the bullseye when it’s bucking in your hand.

Still, what a rush! (That goofy picture of me just doesn’t quite do the whole experience justice.)

Then I moved on to the M-4.  Seemed lighter than the MP-5 but I’m not sure that’s true.  It may be a balance thing.  But hey, this one had a red-dot sight.   Put the little red dot on the target and whammo, you hit the target.  No balancing out front and rear sights.  Point and shoot.  Just the way I like it.

Now this was my gun.  I dunno why but it was.  I shot the hell out of the target and even got so cocky as to have it moved farther and farther back.   Plus, I was now getting use to this whole gun thing.  The smell of gunpowder, the noise (oh man, the NOISE), the jolt of the gun as it’s being fired, the shells rattling all around me, the flash… everything.

But when I went full auto on this one, I had even more trouble keeping it on target.  I did 2, 2 second bursts, which doesn’t sound like much but that gun can spit out bullets about 12-15 per second and I’m not entirely sure I didn’t shoot the ceiling at some point.

Still, when I was done, I was so amped up, you wouldn’t believe it.   A part of that was at least having some success with the bigger guns.  But a part of that was the pure, brutal fun of shooting a gun.  I admit it.  I’ll say it.  FUN!!!!

Best experience in Vegas so far.  I MUST get my license when I get home.

The van to take me to Discount Guns and Ammo arrived a bit late.   Not that it really mattered: I didn’t really mind waiting.  I had a coffee, I was excited and, to be honest a little nervous.  But this would be something new to do, something outside of my comfort zone so I thought I simple HAD to do it.

The driver turned out to be a gregarious Hawaiian.   Huge guy.  Easy to talk to.  Fun.  Laid back attitude.  He got me to the range quickly and we talked about how much Vegas had changed since he’d made his way out here (he left because the cost of living was (is?) nuts in Hawaii.)

When I went inside, they were incredibly nice.   They didn’t seem to mind all the stupid questions I asked and I settled on the SWAT package.  Beretta 92sm 50 rounds.  MP-5, 50 rounds.  M-4, 50 rounds.  Way I figured it, I could shoot pistols in Canada if I got my license but automatic rifles (or carbines), America was the place to go.

But what impressed me a lot was how safety conscious they were.  No cowboys here.  At least with noobies.  Now, I know the RCMP A-C-T-S thingee but knowing and doing are totally different things.  You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to wave the gun around with your finger on the trigger and a live round in the chamber.  However, these guys were super safety conscious and stayed with me the entire time.

So, first up.  The Beretta.  I learned 3 things…

1)Hey.  50 rounds is a lot to shoot for a noobie.  My hand was shaking by the time I’d used up my alloted ammo.

2) I learned that I need better glasses.  The ones I wore didn’t allow me to focus on the close up stuff.  Stuff like the freaking seeing the front and rear sights clearly enough to align.

3) If you want someone shot in the head at 30 feet, don’t come to me.  However, if you want someone shot in the hip, I am so your man.

I had a tough time with the Beretta.  Aiming was really an issue for me.  I hit the bullseye, what, twice and the outter circle a few more times but lower… lower I kicked the hell out of.  Only problem, I wasn’t aiming lower.

The gun attendant said I was suffering from 2 issues.  First, I was anticipating the recoil and reacting to it by lowering the weapon.  Second, I was Canadian and not used to shooting.  I laughed.

Then I moved onto the cool weapons.

What to do, what to do?   I didn’t have writing to do.  Blog was up-to-date.

Only one thing I really, really wanted to do.

Shoot me some gunz!

So I checked on-line who would be the best for me (a noobie) and what guns they had (I wanted more than just handguns.)   Turns out, big surprise, there are a LOT of choices, all seemingly comfortable with Canadians who know as much about guns as Americans know about, well, Canada.

I ended up picking a place that picked me up.  I like being picked up.  I wish more people would pick me up.

The van arrived.  Off I went

530 pages.  99, 328 words.

4:46pm

Done.

Ok, so Walgreens.  Hard to hide a store that big, right.

Wrong.  Took my a good hour to find.  Sure it wasn’t on the map but it’t not like it’s hidden treasure.   Eventually I found it while crossing a bridge to the side of the road I was pretty sure it wasn’t on.  It was below me.

I bought a flashdrive, a bottle of water, a BIG bottle of wine.  Then I went back upstairs to load the information onto the drive.  It took another hour for the restore to work only to have the restore say it couldn’t complete the restore.

Great.  Just great.  I logged on and transfered my file to the flashdrive and then, just for giggles, loaded up Word.  Who knows, maybe it would work now.

Not quite.   But it didn’t lock up for 10 min.   So I rebooted and tried again.

It worked for 10 min, and 10 min more and 10 min more and I wrote and saved and wrote and saved and kept praying it wouldn’t lock up again.  Got 3 hours worth of writing done before it crapped out.

Ok.  That’s ok.

I got a lot done.  But here’s the thing.  A good thing.  As painful as the day was, as frustrating and annoying, I really, really wanted to write.  The harder the fates made it, the more I wanted to write.  In a sense that was the whole purpose of coming out here.  To want to write again.

So, crappy computer, job well done.  Well done indeed.

All other things aside, all I needed was a laptop to write on.

And yes, at 10:11, that died.

Well, the laptop didn’t die but Word did.  For days, the laptop has been a bit slow, especially when I was using the internet.  Ok, I thought, that’s a wireless problem.  But, it turns out, I was wrong.  It was the computer telling me it was about to crap out.

I had sat down to start my writing and no sooner had I logged into Word, than it locked up.  Crap.  Things like that happen every so often.  So I rebooted.  Word locked up again.  Reboot.  Email locked up.  Reboot.  No access to the internet.

CRAP!!!!

I tried all sorts of semi-clever things but not really knowing much about how a computer works (I mean, hey, it worked yesterday, why not today?), I feared that I would be like a blind bull trying to stomp on a little fly in a china shop.

Everything I tried, failed.

ACK!!!!!   I was so close to finishing.  I had, what 250 pages left?  2 days work.  And now I couldn’t do a thing!!!

Finally, at about 1, I gave up trying to fix the damn thing.  I decided my best bet was to restore the computer so I began that.  But here’s the thing.  I didn’t give up.  If anything, I was more determined now to get some writing done.

I went downstairs and asked the concierge.   Was there a laptop rental place?  Was their a repair company?  They said they had a business section with computers that I could use.  “For Word?”  “Yes.”

Cool.  So I went back upstairs and took out the flashcard (where I had backed up all my files) and went in search of the business center.

Now, if Margot had been with me, I would have found that in minutes.  But, being me, I got lost.  Even WITH a map.  Even with signs over head saying what was where.   In my defence, this place is HUGE and sometimes it’s a bit confusing.  Deliberately so.  They make it winding and weird to disorientate the stupid (like me.)

However, I took the opportunity to look around, see a few sights and take a few pictures.

Eventually, I found it but wait, their computers didn’t take my little flashcard.  Dammit.  They said they could take a flashdrive which I could buy at Walgreens.  They gave me directions, which is like handing a rubik’s cube to Freya, and off I went.

The adventure was not over.

So I really didn’t want to pay $8 for water so I came up with a cunning plan.   Buy the water (or drinks) elsewhere and store them in my insuite fridge.  Pretty smart, right?  Pretty clever.

Now that fridge was kinda full so I had to shift things out to store my drinks.  The expensive vodka, out, Dasani, in, the bottle of wine, out, the lemonade in.  I had it made.

However, when I woke up today and did something I don’t normally do.  I read a label.  A label on the little fridge.  That label said something that immediately got my heart beating.  “Refreshments removed will be AUTOMATICALLY CHARGED to your suite immediately after removal”

Fuck me.

If I read this right, all I had to do was remove something, say, like an expensive bottle of vodka, and I would be charged.  It didn’t matter that I didn’t use it, I would be charged.

OMG!   I’d moved all sorts of bottles out and around.   Expensive bottles.

Panic!!!!!!

After I restarted my heart, I decided to see if I was about to be ass-f*&%ed.  I went downstairs and spoke to the desk.  I explained what I’d done and held my breath.

They said it was no problem and they would reverse the charges.

Whew.

But a tough way to start out the day.

150 pages done.

Watched The Raven, as a reward.

So tired, though.

Tomorrow, if I could get on top of it like I did today, it would be a great day.

However, the fates had other ideas.  I’d clearly done something to really piss them off.

Ok, I’m a romantic.  I admit it.  I used to love to do all sorts of goofy romantic things for Margot.  I miss not being able to do that now.

So when I see something neat, something, well, romantic, I tend to take notice.

First, the non-romantic but equally cool thing.   The waitress wanted to know what I was doing.  Dark-haired, dark-eyed, pretty as hell (as is everyone working at the Venetian.)   I told her I was writing.  A book.

Because it wasn’t too busy, we got talking.  Sure, waiter, customer kind of stuff, but I asked her what made a good book for her.  She said the language had to sing.  I liked that.  Not exactly what I’m writing but I get where she’s coming from.  She asked what I thought was a good book.  I said something that transported me from the mundane world to someplace different, someplace exciting, someplace I wanted to be.

It was fun to talk about writing and story-telling with someone else.  I miss that, too.  She was nice to spend a little time with me.

But when she left, I heard the voice of an angel.

I’d sat on the faux canal in the Venetian and every so often a gondolier would gondolier by, singing to the people in his gondola.  I loved hearing the tenor voices.  So lovely.

But the voice I heard was a women’s.  I looked over, and there punting by was a lovely, young woman singing at the top of her lungs.  It was simply beautiful.  Oh sure, she was quite pretty as well, but that voice, oh that voice.

Now I totally get why women go weak at the knees when being sung to.  I get it.  It’s a thing of real beauty.

I stayed long enough to hear her twice.

I could have stayed forever.

But writing awaited.

A writing day, today.   Lots of writing to do.  And I had a plan.  150 pages completed.  1 big ass problem solved.  Only thing… I didn’t exactly know what the problem was.

How is that possible?  Well, I read a few chapters and found them to be unsatisfying.  Boring even.  Yet, I couldnt’ figure out why.  There was conflict.  The characters were acting in-character.  There were good hooks in and out.  There was nothing wrong with the locations.

However, something was missing.

Decided to print out the pages and look at them old-school.  I took them downstairs with me to eat lunch.  I read them all, spread them out on the table, and tried to look at them with fresh eyes.

In the end, it was easy to find.  I’d managed to duplicate information revelations.  Oh, they were different in many, clever-Joe ways, but they really said the same thing.  So.  Cut-cut.  I took them out.

Then, somewhat pleased with myself, I took time to enjoy the view.   And fell in love.