So, I’m sitting here in the middle of the afternoon, drinking vodka and raspberry lemonade (because, yes, I am still unemployed), and it occurs to me that I need to update my blog.  Shortly thereafter it occurs to me that I need to catch up on everyone else’s blog. Immediately after that, I realize that I haven’t linked to anyone else’s blog from my new site.

So I fix the site.

And then I start reading some back-blogs, during which I decide to look at some of the other blog links that my friends have. See, I just don’t have the patience to sift through all of the other sites out there to find what’s good and what’s not, so I rely on others to do it for me. But it’s as I’m doing this that I realize, hey, I’m at the very bottom of 2 out of 3 link lists out there.

My selfish bastard side suddenly speaks up: “Dammit, I deserve better than this!”

But since I pride myself on my rationality (though it could be the vodka helping out on this one too), I decide to think about it. In doing so, I come to the conclusion that I really should be last. I only update a fraction of the time that everyone else does, and my style is much more of a rambling, nonsensical sort than anecdotally amusing. No problem. Because the point is: I’m linked from 3 other people’s blogs! People like me. They really like me.

So I just want to give a shout-out to my Seattle home-girls and boys. Keep on writin’ in the free world!

Now that that’s all out of the way, I can get on to the fun stuff.

You may not think it, but drunken croquet could quite possibly be the most fun home-game there is. My friend Ryan’s birthday was this last weekend, so I drove down to spend the night, and engage in some good birthday fun. It was pretty typical – BBQ, lots of people I don’t know but have fun with anyway, and copious amounts of alcohol. Okay, not copious, but there was never any real worry that we’d run dry, and there’s still 1/4 of a refrigerator full of beer (we did manage to polish off the vodka, rum, Crown Royal, and some SoCo).

Somewhere just as we were beginning to hit a good level of buzzedness, the brand new croquet set gets busted out.

And let me tell you: I kick some serious croquet ass.

That’s right. I played 5 games. I won 3. Now, you’re probably thinking that those aren’t exactly ass-kicking odd right there, and without the rest of the story, they’re not. So I’m gonna fill you in.

After completely annihilating the competition the first game, I decided to sit out the second game and just sort of chill, enjoying the atmosphere. I took some pictures, and was having a generally good time, until I realized halfway through the game that I was just sitting on my ass while everyone else was playing. That just wasn’t going to do. So, roughly 10 or 15 rounds into the game, I decide to join, just for the hell of it.

I came so close to winning, that someone had to forego a couple of wickets just to knock me out on principle.

The way I see it, I should have won 4 games. But I didn’t, and I don’t like to shouldacouldawoulda, so I’m happy sticking with my 3 game tally. But just for the record, the one game I did lose, it was by a long shot. I made 2nd, but it was a good 6 shots behind 1st. So kudos to Eric for being “in the zone” on that one.

The rest was really just a blur of too much greasy food – dinner and breakfast – movies, and general laughter and fun having. That makes 2 weekends in a row. Too bad next weekend is going to be spent clearing old, nasty brush away from a fence line. But the upside is that I get to trade all the time I spend doing it in for firearms classes. That just rocks my world, especially since I couldn’t afford them otherwise.

I could certainly stand to blow the hell out of some targets, get screamed at to “RELOAD!RELOAD!RELOAD!”, and learn some good tactics for the day when they come for you.