Which Is Largely Hit And Miss.

Last night was the first time I picked up a bow in about two months. Turns out it was actually the last open shoot night of the year at the community center, too, so I'm glad I braved the cold. It was good to catch up with my friend the archery gnome, whom I can't resist referring to here as Fletcher (not his real name, but his real occupation). It was good to use those muscles and those parts of my brain that I've been neglecting. It was good to look the target in the eye and say: Oh son. You're goin' down.

Actually, the target got the last laugh; I am totally out of shape. I tried to just focus on form without worrying too much about where the arrows ended up. So if you were an unfortunate beetle wandering around the target, you would have been quite safe on that center X.

Also, I was glad that the other people were shooting compound bows. A recurve archer like myself will typically fire off 3 arrows within a minute or less. But it's a lot easier to hold a compound bow at full draw, so compound archers take their time aiming. Lots and lots of time. I normally get impatient waiting for them to just fire the darn thing already so I can go pull my arrows, but this time I was grateful for the interval to stretch and breathe.

So that brings me up to 7 out of 10 fun things on my post-November rewards list. Still to come are 7) the broadband internet connection (for reasons already described), 8) the visit to the comic book store (because I just haven't got around to it yet), and 10) the blogging. Which I suspect will pick up after #7 straightens itself out.

Oh, hey, you know what? I'm not going to that Andrew Bird/Nickel Creek show after all. It's all Karen's fault. She gave me a 30% off GAP coupon that was good through last weekend. So I took a shopping buddy to the GAP outlet, and we both left with armloads of incredible deals! Whee! But, um, we sort of spent a lot of money in the process. So when I was buying my ticket for the show, and I realized there were going to be more (dis)service charges than I anticipated, and I thought about all the Christmas shopping I have yet to do, my enthusiasm faded before I could enter my credit card number.

I would normally consider excellent music to be more essential than new clothes. But every time I put on my new coat and go out in that biting wind, I think I have chosen wisely.