Friday, November 20, 2015

Sorry!!!

"Don't take advice from man who threw his shoe at a crow…"
— "Penny"
Big Bang Theory

Between rehab, SG/TBD/new projects and pushing to finish Bill Wilson's book, I'm GROUND INTO THE GROUND.

Next week is Thanksgiving, and I'm going to take some time to, like, sleep. I'm watching a movie on J.M.W. Turner, one of my favorite painters. Probably a mistake. I have a spectacular print from the British Museum of "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up 1838" in my office. The original of course hangs in the National Gallery in London; I have been privileged to sit in front of it and ponder, insomuch as I can ponder.


Last time we were in London we went down to the Royal Museums Greenwich for a wonderful Turner  exhibition.

I would love to spend Christmas in London, but it's not in the cards this year. Warsaw would be cool, too…sigh.

The mule deer rut has pretty much run it's course. Yesterday we were driving into Ft. Collins for some errands, and the saddest, most dejected little mulie buck I've ever seen wandered across the road. He had 4 little point, his tail was down and still, his head down and it took him about 10 minutes to cross the road. "That is," my Sweetie said, "the most depressed deer I've ever seen."

So, little guy, tough break on spreading the old DNA…I was much the same way myself in college. I saw the local herd buck today, even stopped to take a picture, but he was still to spooky. As I passed him, I looked back downhill and saw a mack daddy mule deer laid up in the brush. The local stud has 5 points on each side, but the big guy in the bushes was huge, big wide rack. About 200 yards from my office window. Cool.

I schedule my knee replacement surgery for the week after SHOT, which is ASAP since my rehab is going so well. My goal is get through that rehab before SG and GUN STORIES ramp up full bore, then me and my brother Rick…well, cousin, but he has always been a brother to me…my old and dear friend Tim Wegner, SG producer John Carter, Marshal Halloway and hopefully all our mutual friend Kyle Lamb will go up in the Smoky Mountains to hunt Russian boar and feral hogs. Chef Tim will be doing the cooking, hopefully the rest of us can keep him in pork. I'll be using the .458 SOCOM I built up last year…I'd hope to take in into the field before now, but that just didn't work out. Lotsa .458 ammo and components around now, so that' an omen...

6 comments:

Overload in Colorado said...

Random question: the ACOG is 25+ years old. There has to have been progress since then. What's replaced it as a short/ medium range optic, and what advantages does it have over the ACOG? I see some of the new 1-6x ~$2000 scopes. Could it be that class?

Michael Bane said...

Overload;

My thinking is along the lines that illuminated "true 1x" to whatever power scope may well be the replacement for the venerable ACOG, but it still has a way to go on that kind of buletproof reliability that the ACOG has (caveat…I have close ties to Trijicon, Aimpoint and Leupold…I wish I had closer ties to Nightforce and Schmidt and Bender!!! LOL!). Look at Leupold on the on-going evolution of their combat optics. If you look at the now outdated Mark 4 CQT 1-3X, it is an amazing optic. I've had one for years, and there is no single optic that I have abused more. I have beat it crap out of it. I have left batteries in it until I had to clean out the corrosion out of the battery box with steel wool on a q-tip. It has been soaked, dropped, battered around in a loose case…it doesn't matter. I've used it in 3-Gun, and yes, the guys with NASCAR shirts laughed at me. But out to 300-400 yards, the 3X will deliver if you do your part.

Still, a variable isn't as crazy rugged as a fixed power (and there's aways parallax out past 100, but that's another issue); I think the military would like a couple of more bells and whistles…

mb

pigpen51 said...

Great painting. I am just a cfw. Common foundry worker. But the older I get, the more I seem to GET artists and their work. I can sit and look at what they do and understand what they are trying to express in their paintings. Where they are looking and what they are seeing.
I don't know, maybe art is not a young man's passion. Perhaps one needs to be drug through a few knot holes before one can truly appreciate the value of baring ones soul to the universe through paint.
Or maybe I am just a goofball. Probably the latter. Either way, thank you for sharing this wonderful image. Truly inspiring.

Michael Bane said...

Pigpen, I think you're right. As a young man, I never particularly paid that much attention to art. As I've aged, I think I do indeed "get it." The first time I saw the "Temeraire," it brought me to tears. I consider one of the high points in my life is seeing the art of the Vatican. Maybe it takes some "seasoning" to grasp, however slightly, the eyes of genius…

mb

bgary said...

"Bill Wilson's book"?

Where can I find?

CharlieFoxtrot said...

So how was the movie? Its on my Netflix list. Worth watching?