Long weekend

I left work on Friday with full intentions of hitting the range while it was sunny, but that never happened. This asshole I've reluctantly known for half my life, who lives in dilapidation on the corner of L-5 and S-1, decided to come and stay with me for the last month or so, against my wishes, and had annoyed me to the point that I instead raced home to hang out with my friend Jack - a true Gentleman. Jack brought me much needed comfort, and I know I'll be hanging out with him for some time until I get this problem with said asshole sorted out.

On top of all that, all of my kids have the latest sickness to be making its rounds in the form of high fevers and super-snot. Things went bad last night when the kids' fevers spiked without warning within an hour's time, and as I was imersing them in semi-lukewarm bathwater to quickly cool them down, I had a sudden nasty allergic reaction to the turkey burgers I ate a half an hour before (I've made them exactly the same since the begining of time). I was alone, so I'm frantically swallowing all the meds in my tactical pillcase while texting my brother to please please please get here quick so that if Ana breaks through my defenses and knocks me out, there will be somebody who can pull the kiddos out of the tub. I'm done with this sickness stuff, and I'm done with the damned allergies. And it's not just that my kids are sickly; everyone I know has been fighting the sickness in their kids since fall, and we all bitch about it. I don't remember being in a constant state of sickness when I was a kid, so this has got to be either a government experiment gone horribly wrong or we are in fact in the end times.

Despite all this, I managed to crank out over a hundred beautiful Gooooooooooold Dots over the course of two days, two rounds at a time. My handloading doctrine has been so fine tuned over the last four years that I can maintain a high degree of consistency and quality control even with the constant interuptions from the kids.

6.6 grains of sweet sweet Vihtaviori goodness per 24 carat gold nickel plated case:



There's no chance of double charging a case, either; in order to have the room to seat the bullet over one charge, I have to lightly tap the case with my finger for a few seconds to get the powder to settle, kinda like a bag of potato chips.



1.129" is close enough. The varience from one bullet to another can be as much as .008", so you have to accept that you won't get that last digit right where you want it. I'll accept .004" inches of variation in total, or .002" in either direction.




Loading cartridges makes a mess on the bench. Being the neat freak that I am, I have to accept that there's going to be stuff laying around everywhere for awhile.




I learned that my oldest son enjoys watching 24 with me while I'm at the press, which is way cool. My boys also like to help pull the press handle down to seat booooolets, which is good to go as well. In time, I hope to teach them the secret art of accurate cartridge making so they can go forth and win shooting matches.

Lastly, my wife and I started watching The Walking Dead on Netflix this weekend, and we're hooked. Ever since 24 ended, there's not been a whole lot to get my attention on TV, but I'll make an exception for this show. Good stuff.