4th of July Festivities

My buddy contacted me last week about coming over for the 4th, to do some shooting, eat some food and blow some stuff up.

We arrived about 11am and started hauling everything from the truck down to his range. He had a 10x20 tent set up over his shooting bench at 50 yards and I set up my tent at 12 yards for us to shoot pistols from.

This arrangement works very good, we just leave the tent at 12 yards in place and shoot through it when we are shooting rifles.

Around 2pm we fired up his charcoal Webber and threw on some teriyaki chicken, garlic chicken and steaks. His neighbors had brought some deserts and the lady clear down the street that was just bored brought by some good salad and spent the entire day there just chatting.

Normally when he contacts me about shooting, its the day of, in this case he contacted me days before so I had some time to plan. I decided my contribution would be 30 1/4lb jars of Tannerite, after all its the 4th!

 These sounded like cannons going off, I think we ended up shooting about 10 of them total, letting everyone there take turns shooting them. They would definitely make you jump at 50 yards.

As the afternoon progressed some more people showed up and at dusk we fired up the grille again and finished off the meat we had not cooked earlier. My buddy had bought a bunch of mortars and we finished off the night with a fireworks display next to his range.

It was one of the best fourth of Julys I have had in years, I hope we can repeat it next year I still have about 20 1/4lb targets to shoot.

Concerts

June 2nd I was in my Boss's office, he was at his computer and asked me "Do you like Keith Urban"? I said hes ok, I'm not a big country music fan, he then asked me "Does your wife like Keith Urban"? I responded "I think so" to which his response was a mouse click and "Good were going to his concert Saturday night".

I didn't care much for the opening acts, I had never heard any of the songs before. Keith Urban though put on a good concert, while I'm not necessarily a fan of his its hard to ignore his talent. It was a bit strange though that two weeks before he had backed out of riding around the Indy 500 with Mario Andretti and was replaced by Lady Gaga /boggle. Now here he was jumping and gyrating like he was in perfect health.

The Klipsch music center is a great venue, other than the drinking rules. You are allowed to bring in one bottled water with a sealed cap. If you buy one inside its $5.00 and you cant keep the cap, they don't want people throwing sealed bottles of water. I bought a can of beer to drink, it was $15.00. I did have an enjoyable evening though and on the drive home Tania and I discussed how long it had been since we had gone to a concert. Before this the last time we went was in 2010, it was a Trans Siberian Orchestra concert in Phoenix that was pretty awesome.

By the time I got home I made up my mind that I didn't want to go another five years with the last concert I went to being a Keith Urban concert. I got online and bought four tickets to Def Leppard with REO Speedwagon and Tesla opening.

Last night we went with Matty and his girlfriend and other than some annoyingly drunk people in front of us had a great time. We arrived a little later than I wanted too and the line to get in was horrible so we completely missed Tesla. About 10 minutes after getting to our seats REO came on. I like REO's hit songs but they really don't do much for me beyond that, they are garage / bar band that are good for background noise. It was more entertaining to watch the drunk people in the VIP box directly in front of us try and sing along to songs they obviously didn't know the words to.

My like for REO must have been shared because once they finished it seemed like the crowd doubled in size just before Def Leppard came on stage, at that point you could really start to smell the weed too.

Def Leppard was very enjoyable, they sounded great and had an impressive stage/light show. The technology today allows for such impressive displays on stage.

We ended up staying right to the last song, and were able to get out quickly while the crowd was calling them back for an encore.

Overall it was a great evening, although not something I would regularly do at $500.00 for tickets. I made up for it though by avoiding the $15.00 beers!

Lump in the lawn

Over the last few weeks the lawn on the west side of the house has been very damp, even soggy. I turned down the timer on that circuit but it didn't help any. Two days ago I noticed a large lump in the lawn and realized I had a leak in the sprinkler system.

I went in the garage and manually turned on that circuit, which made the sod in that area rise up about six inches but the sprinkler never popped up. I dug it out and it had come disconnected from the riser pipe. I reconnected it but it still didn't work, it was physically stuck in its housing. After messing around with it for 10 minutes I was able to break it loose and cycle it in a bucket of water. It was full of dirt and sand that had caused it to stick. I reconnected it again and it started working but the lawn still bulged up around it.

I dug down and found the saddle clamp had twisted on the pipe because the riser pipe between the saddle clamp and the sprinkler head was way too short. This made the sprinkler head sit too high and when the mower ran over it or someone stepped on it, it would twist the saddle clamp on the main line elongating the hole.

I got rid of the saddle clamp and spliced in a t-fitting with a longer riser pipe. Half a day wasted because the guy that put the system in cut the riser line six inches too short.