Typical Saturday at the Bunker

This morning there was a cluster of pathetic-looking mules deers, still fat from the summer, staring through the deer fencing at what's left of the garden after a couple of mild freezes (carrots, eggplants, beans, a few tomatoes). Asta the Manx simply went ballistic. He launched himself at the window, the little stub in the place where a normal cat's tail would be vibrating, hit the window with his claws out and growling. Asta is a mean 12 pounds of cat. Big "mouse;" little mouse; all the same to him. If he weighed 100 pounds, he'd be dangerous.

I have to say, the eggplants and the tomatoes produced spectacularly. The carrots we got in late, and they're just ready to eat. Next year, we'll do better. We learned a lot from this year's expanded garden…Rule 1, get the deer fences in first!

I gotta say I'm a little bit bored with outrage, more bored still since it seems to have invaded the training community. While I was in Scotland, I read the Facebook flame wars on metrics/no metrics, and there seems to be spatter still all over the place. Sigh. Just like there are no magic bullets, there is — at least to me — no magic training. I've learned from a lot of different people, many of whom I didn't, and in some cases still don't, agree with. I always fall back to Bruce Lee: “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own…”

Outrage is kind of a disease, somewhere on the continuum between nausea and diarrhea. It's a bogus emotion; in a world that includes Miley Cyrus, George Bush, Kanye West and Al Gore, true outrage is just plain out of reach. The most I can swing is revulsion, with maybe a touch of nausea.

Look, train how you want to train, with whom you want to train. The important thing is to keep training, keep getting better. I am and have always been a proponent of competition as an element of your training, because while competition may indeed be false stress, it is still stress. Because of y background in stupid shit, I am a strong believer in the concept of "stress inoculation," the old "cowpox protects you from smallpox" routine. Shooting under stress makes you a better shooter in numerous ways. Your gun-handling improves because you do it a lot, in front of strangers and some person with a timer. Your drawstroke improves because it is a fundamental skill in competition, so you have to do it a lot in both dry and live fire. This means that you have an index card for "draw" already in your head when you start working with your concealed carry gun…you don't have to start from zero. Ditto for marksmanship…it's a fundamental skill in all forms of shooting competition…sooner or later you've got to hit something at an uncomfortable distance…it's helpful to know what that distance is for you at this moment.

Anyway…I'm looking forward to tuning myself up after more than a year of rehab. We did a lot of walking in Scotland…not to mention A LOT of steps…castles apparently don't have elevators. All in all, it was great for me. I'm still a bit of a ways from "run and gun," but I feel like I've turned a corner on it. I have a meeting with my orthopedic surgeon end of the month and I'm hoping I get a decent verdict.