…and I’m getting into the spirit.
Again this year, Daddy didn’t drink all the Xmas money, or have to spend it on car repairs. Daddy got his car inspected (they didn’t even want to replace the windshield washers) and has renewed his registration online.
I don’t want it to sound like everything is coming up Millhouse. A close family member has been in the hospital since before Thanksgiving. I’m hoping that, if the doctors can get them up and walking, we might be able to get them out on bond the later part of this week. Which will be welcomed by me. And their little dog, which we will call “Toto” to protect the innocent.
(On the slightly positive side, this gives me a chance to make onion dip. Or hot buttered rum. Or real eggnog.)
And work is still giving me tsuris. The good news is, after December 17th, I will be officially out of the office and on leave until January 10th. I probably will check my emails from time to time, mostly for the “fiddling while Rome burns” feeling of it all.
But I got to go to a Christmas party/appreciation dinner last week. And today I got to meet up with the members of what Lawrence likes to call my “shadowy criminal conspiracy” for the first time in a while. I missed the last meeting because of Tulsa, then we took two weeks off for Thanksgiving…
…and then after I finished running errands, I went by Sportsman’s Finest. They’ve decided to open on Sundays for the month of December. Which makes sense, right?
Guess who came in to receive his Concealed Handgun Permit today? 🎅
Did you know the El Paso County Sheriff's Office has issued 49,750 Concealed Handgun Permits with another 2,560 awaiting to be issued?
For more info please visit our website: https://t.co/AbGrPigOUZ pic.twitter.com/ELmffXcfjA
— EPCSheriff (@EPCSheriff) December 3, 2021
Turns out, the gun I had bought in Tulsa and had to have shipped to a transfer dealer had come in. (There were some issues that delayed the process. Nothing criminal or anything, just a shipping foulup and a couple of other little things.)
I don’t know if my readers who are not People Of the Gun understand this, but: when you get a gun transferred to a dealer for you to pick up, the dealer has to open the package and log the gun onto their own record books. So they know what you’re getting when it arrives. Which is significant in this case because…
…the owners of Sportsman’s Finest happened to have a bunch of stuff lying around the shop for this particular gun, and gave me over $100 worth of stuff to go along with it. Free. Gratis. No charge. Seriously. (I’m being kind of coy about the gun here because I’ve actually been working on a post about this specific gun: I just had to wait until it arrived so I could take photos. If I’m lucky and the weevils don’t get into the eggnog, I might be able to post that this week. I will say, it is a really old gun that isn’t made any longer, but is still held in high regard.)
(Not a Garand, Borepatch. Sorry. But you got me thinking about that as a possible next purchase. I believe I meet all of the CMP qualifications, and they aren’t getting any cheaper.)
And they also didn’t charge me for the transfer.
None of this was stuff that I was expecting. I was fully prepared to pay the transfer fee, and thought about arm wresting one of the owners over it. But I decided to do something else instead. The spare parts were just an unexpected, surprising, and honestly quite moving bonus. I wouldn’t expect them to do this for just any random murder hobo. I guess it just happens that I’m one of the murder hobos that they like for some reason.
Made my heart grow five sizes, it did. Not three, because fark the Grinch, stealing the roast beast like that and tormenting that poor dog, but five sizes.
(Mike the Musicologist: “You should see a doctor about that.”)
Anyway, if you need guns or ammo or fishing gear or other outdoorsy type stuff during the holiday season, please consider shopping at:
Sportman’s Finest
12434 Bee Cave Road
Austin, TX 78738
(512) 263-1888
9:00 AM – 7:00 PN Monday-Friday
9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Saturday
11:00 AM – 5:00 PM Sunday during December
Don’t expect free stuff until you get to know them, but they’re really nice people, even if you’ve never been in before.