Weekend At The Grandparents' Place

This last weekend, my mom went to Chicago to watch the marathon. I elected to stay home, because A) I had a muzzleloading shoot on Sunday and B) I wondered how it would be to stay home while she was on vacation.


This meant I spent the weekend with my grandparents, at their house half a mile down the road from us. I lived with them for 8 years (I was still living there when I started this blog), so it didn't seem like it would be too big of an issue to stay there for one weekend. I discovered that one grows used to their own house pretty quickly.


The plan was this: I'd ride my bike over to their place Saturday morning, work until the store closed (for those not in the know, they own a gun shop where I am employed), and then go into town. On Sunday, my grandpa and I would leave early for the shoot, and get home around 4.


Work went really well, and I made enough money to (hopefully) fund a viewing of Rocky Horror Picture Show Live! with my friends this weekend (trust me, I'll be posting more on that soon). I usually have fun at work, because it's easy, yet slightly challenging. Plus, the whole store atmosphere is very relaxed, and when customers come in it's usually like having a friend or acquaintance drop by for a visit.



After work, we went into town to get dinner and, apparently, go clothes shopping. I was not aware the second item was on the agenda, which was a nice surprise. The only problem was it was another school's Homecoming, so the restaurant we went to was packed with teens. It was a little awkward, especially when I recognized a few people. Still, the food was good! I got a new pair of skinny jeans as well, so you could count that as a victory.



When we left for the shoot on Sunday, I knew it would be cold, so I dressed pretty warm. Unfortunately, it's impossible to wear gloves when you're muzzle-loading, so I ended up not being able to feel my fingers for the rest of the day.


The shoot was a multi-discipline shoot, with four 50-point regular targets, a smoothbore target, a pistol target, and knife and 'hawk throwing. I included all this info because I now have a reader who knows what I'm talking about: the awesome Crush of Society guitarist Bobby! He shoots muzzleloaders as well. Anyway, I did well in all the regular targets. I managed to hit the paper all five times with the smoothbore, but kind of gave up on the pistol when I had only hit it twice out of 6 shots.


When they announced the winners, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I had taken third place in the regular aggregate. I was only four points away from first, and I had been up against a lot of very good shooters. I got a knife as my prize for that, and a mug as a thank-you for being a Junior shooter (I was the only person under 50 there).


All in all, it was an interesting experience. I had fun, but would I pass up going to Chicago again? Probably not.