Buzzkill

So it was Saturday night and the Analog Wife is 300 miles away and I’m amazed how little time it took me to revert back to semi-bachelor style.

Earlier that night, I had the gun safe opened up to get ready for the rangeday tomorrow. I put the new B-Square extended scope base on the 10-22 and wiped out Barak’s barrel. After I closed the safe I cracked open the case of Henry’s Special Dark Lager and set about trying to trim the entire Rush musical library down to 900MB so that I can put it on a thumbdrive (more about why I’m doing that in the next post below).

The home stereo is cranked and it’s 2330, the library has been pared down to 1.1GB and I’ve got a nice little buzz going when Russell starts going apeshit. I look out the kitchen window from RNS Blogstation Seattle and I see headlights pointing at an angle into my driveway, the car is sitting half in my driveway and half in the street.

Grab the 1911, conveniently sitting in front of me on the blogstation top (as usual), and make my way to the side door. As I pass the kitchen window I see at least one, maybe two, people heading to the front door and change direction. The kitchen is dark so I know they didn’t see me.

I get to the living room and Ellie has taken up her favorite tactical position on the side of the chair in the living room, where she gets into a crouch and readies a jump (I swear that you cannot see her there until you’re right on top of her and then it is too late for you).

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t live in a shifty neighborhood at all. In nearly three years I haven’t had to so much as make a noise complaint call, but shit happens and you have to be ready for anything.

I hear voices and so does Russell, making his apeshittiness go up to 11. Then comes the knock on the locked screen door. If Russell could have just exploded right then and there, he would probably do so.

Heavy sigh, safety goes off on the 1911 and it moves to the ready.

F****CK!

Little old asian lady and what looks to be her granddaughter wanting directions to I-5. 1911 moves to behind the thigh and I give the directions out.

Russell does not sense my relief and will not stop barking until I grab his collar and pull him back.

Needless to say that, after the excitement, the little bit of adrenaline has killed my buzz.

Oh, and as an addendum, just so that I get all the dogs in the story, Jake (the blind and deaf 16 year old Dachshund who also has ‘weight issues’ due to his pretty much dead Thyroid) got woken up by Russell and decided his best maneuver to help me out would be to take a big shit in the living room right after I shut the door (You see, Jake and I don’t get along well, mostly because he is a Vichy French Dachshund I like to call ‘Lightning’ because he is so slow. And with the wife gone, we generally stay at opposite ends of the house because, unlike the wife, I refuse to rub his belly. Last time I did so, he’d bite me whenever I tried to stop and even though half of his teeth have been pulled, he still knows how to use the ones he has left.)