Justin Buist

I my previous post I popped up a baby picture of mine.

Yep, I look goofy. Theresa saw it and said, “Awww. I hope we have babies with that cute nose!” I then told her that ain’t likely to happen. It isn’t genetics that made me look like that. It’s a deformation, probably a side effect of a prescription drug that my mother took for one month of the pregnancy. I forget its name. Thankfully she quit taking it when it didn’t produce any results. God only knows what would have happened to me if she stuck with it.

The portion of my face around the upper nose and eye area didn’t form correctly. There’s no bridge in my nose in that picture. I didn’t get one until I was 10. It was a bit difficult to keep glasses on my face until I finally got that bridge, and I was in glasses at the age of 2.

The reason my eyes are closed: I didn’t have any muscles to open my eye lids. I still don’t. I’m told I didn’t crawl much as a baby because I couldn’t see where I was going. I kept bumping into stuff. The only way for me to see was to tilt my head back and look out a little slit below my eyelids. This is probably why I started walking earlier than most.

When I was four years old I went in for surgery to basically tie them open using ligaments from the leg of some guy that died in a motorcycle accident. After the surgery I could finally see things properly, but I still have a squinty eyed look to me. In college that lead a lot of people to believe that I was stoned out of my gourd at every party I went to. More than once I was asked where to score some good weed because of it and I had to let them down every time.

Another side-effect of this is that when I’m totally relaxed, like when in deep sleep, my eyes open up again. Most folks just relax the muscles that control their eyelids to close them. I have to scrunch up my face. It requires effort. It’s a very slight movement, but I had to learn how to do this after the surgery so I would blink. For, well, I forget how long after the surgery, probably months, my parents would have to occasionally remind me to blink. It was something I never really needed to do before, what with having my eyes pretty much closed all the time.

Then there’s the ears. That one’s genetic.

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Breda Wants Baby Pictures

Alrighty then.

Here’s me at about 3 months:

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In the planning stage of the wedding my good friend that got married a hair over 2 years ago said something along the lines of, “The only thing I regret was not inviting more people.”

We had about 185 people that were attending out of the, I think, 220 or so we invited. Two days later I’m already thinking of people that we should have invited, like the guys that actually set the whole thing up. I worked with them for years, but totally forgot to invite them. Stupid mistake. Spend a lot of time on the invite list. You’ll hardly regret inviting somebody. If they don’t think they should attend they won’t. The only folks that might be offended at an invite is an ex of your spouse.

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Yeah, I’m blogging on my wedding night. Nerd alert. Sorry, just too energized and trying to wind down still, so I figured I’d blog about it. Nothing specific, just an AAR that might help other guys going into a wedding.

First, I was definitely nervous. Not so much about getting married, just having to stand in front of 180ish people. It happens.

Second, I was sweating like a Kennedy in a motorcade. Holy crap! I don’t wear a suit often and wearing a black one in a greenhouse in direct sunlight will make you sweat. Even my best man was sweating, so I don’t feel too bad about it. Heck, we were all sweating up there. At one point Theresa reached up and dabbed a sweat drop off my face. That was sweet.

We both giggled during the ceremony thanks to my 6 year old niece ripping a huge fart in the front row. Not everybody heard it, so they weren’t sure why we were cracking up.

Third, I forgot people’s names. I chalk it up to sensory overload. I was so weird. I’d walk up to a group of people I knew, like friends we hang out with every other week, and totally blank on their names for 3-5 seconds. At the same time I knew the names of family members I hadn’t seen in at least 10 years. Some of the family would actually come up to me and say right off the bat, “You probably don’t eve know who I am” but I did. Weird.

More later, perhaps.

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Kids are coming over, so all guns go under lock and key. It takes me about 15-20 minutes to get everything done and double-check that I didn’t forget anything. This time it took a little longer because I couldn’t find my S&W 1911SC and Saiga 20 gauge. They were hiding.

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Caleb:

I have heard friends and other gun nuts who are not 1911 cultists say things like “the Glock is what John Moses Browning would have designed if he had lived long enough.”

Heh. No.

If John Moses Browning (peace be upon him) had lived long enough we’d have landed on the moon 8 weeks after JFK’s famous speech in some sort of contraption with a big ‘ole Winchester logo on the side.

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TheHighRoad.Org (THR) is the only online gun forum that I regularly visit. I found it very early on in my life as a gun owner and have always found it to be a decent resource. Tonight it was shut down.

The founder, Oleg Volk, has published why that happened. In short, the volunteer that ran the place, and hosted it, Derek Zeanah, got himself control of the domain back in 2006 and nobody noticed. Something has happened recently which made Derek decide he just needed to take his ball, which isn’t actually his, and run away with it. Probably to gather up some ad revenue. Oleg is going to the courts to get back what’s his.

Xavier posts his thoughts on the matter. He was a moderator over at THR until Derek locked everybody out just hours ago.

I don’t figure this will end well.

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Earlier this week I began experiencing pain around the area occupied by my right collar bone. It left me a bit confused for a while. I dislocated my left collar bone, not the right one. WTF would cause this?

Then, yesterday, I step out of the shower and look in the mirror. I’ve got a nice yellow bruise fairly close to my shoulder.

Oh yeah, I forgot, shotguns will do that to me.

In related news, apparently a Saiga 20 recoils a bit harsher than I would have imagined. Didn’t notice it at the time, of course, but it seems to beat me up worse than an 870 Wingmaster in 12 gauge.

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One would think that after a local police department pays out a $10,000 civil right violation settlement related to the open carrying of firearms they’d probably stop hassling people for it.

Or perhaps at the very least they’d stop hassling the guy that was just awarded the settlement.

Or perhaps the officers involved with the original case would immediately back off when they came upon said individual for the very same noncrime.

You’d be wrong.

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In a followup to this post here’s some more testing with my Saiga 20.

Range: 15 yards
Load: Federal #3 Buck, 2 3/4″

I must have just pulled that shot high. It’s possible that point of impact and point of aim are off with this load and this gun, but given that the next two don’t show the same pattern I’m going to assume operator error.

Summary: This still won’t work for me. This is even worse than the test with Remington Express ammo. A good number of pellets are simply missing the patterning sheet. I think I’m going to have to choke this shotgun.

For what it’s worth I also ran some 3″ Federal #3 Buck through it and the results were about the same. I have the targets saved but haven’t taken pictures of them. It’s not really worth it.

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