Beating Back the Birthday Blues and More Mountain Man-ia

I think that it generally goes without saying that people belong to one of two categories. Those who like their birthdays and those who don't. I fall somewhere in between. I really want to like my birthday - but never really do. The bottom line - I have expectations but fail to communicate them effectively. So this year I decided to take things into my own hands. Aaron's grandma has been wanting to cook a turkey dinner for us. I asked her to do it the evening of my birthday. It was wonderful to be surrounded by family and also to not have to worry about fixing dinner after working all day. The other thing that I did was I bought a ticket to go see the touring Broadway production of CATS. I went with a friend who also bought a ticket. This is something that I wouldn't normally do for myself (but that I would love to do). I am starting a tradition for my birthday that I will do something for myself that I wouldn't normally do. My friend Sam and I went together and had a nice dinner and really enjoyed the show. It was great to have a girls night out and doing something fun that we don't normally get to do! It's not a bad thing to have expectations so long as I'm going to meet them myself and not pin them on anyone else. A funny sidebar to this is that my husband never remembers exactly when my birthday is. I woke up this year and decided that rather than stewing about it all day this year I'd just clue the poor guy in. His response: "I know why I always think that your birthday is on the 22nd - it's because that's Frodo and Bilbo's birthday!" A word to the wise - if your mixing your spouse's birthday up with a fictional character's - keep it to yourself.

Aaron did get me a great present this year, though. Although he doesn't remember the date of my birthday he does know that it's coming and usually gets me a nice gift. This year we've been doing the "Rendezvous" aka Mountain Man stuff and we really enjoyed the black powder rifle shooting. We decided to do the black powder Elk hunt at the end of October. Aaron already had a rifle and wanted to get one for me so I started looking to see what was out there. I decided that I wanted a Lyman Plains rifle - which didn't seem likely because they were anywhere from $500-$600 starting. But Aaron (being the great hunter that he is) was able to pick one up at a pawn shop for a great bargain (Aaron's great at talking people down with price and knows how to get a deal). We've been out to shoot a few times now and I'm getting my barrings with the gun though it's got a few hangups. The first problem is the the part of the gun you put the cap on (the cap holds the primer which when struck by the hammer causes a spark which lights the gun powder in your barrel) which is called the nipple has mushroomed out and is causing the gun to mis-fire 3 out of 4 times I pull the trigger. What this means is that by the time I get the gun to fire, I'm flinching and it's really affecting the accuracy of my shooting. We may also be having some issues with the hammer - it's action seems to be slower than it should be. But we'll take it one problem at a time. We went to the last rendezvous of the year on Saturday. We didn't get any pictures of the rendezvous itself but here are a few of us that we took afterwards. I'll definitely get some more photos posted next year.