Bang Bang!!

Most of you know that I enjoy target shooting. I grew up in a family that enjoyed taking a few cereal boxes and pop cans up into the mountains to poke some holes into them. Like most kids, I learned to shoot with a .22 rifle.

I started on a Winchester Model 60 (pic below) which is a single-shot bolt action rifle. What that means is that it only holds a single bullet at a time. You have to open the bolt to insert the round. Then, close the bolt and pull the hammer back to cock it. Pull the trigger, Bang! 

Winchester Model 60

Not sure what a .22 round is? Allow me to explain! You've probably heard of a few different bullet sizes before (9mm, and .22 being the two most common). The number refers to the diameter of the bullet. Some pistol rounds are referred to in millimeters (9mm or 10mm), while others are referred to in inches (.17HMR, .22lr, .380, .40, and .45ACP). Assuming a bigger diameter means more power, now we know which rounds are the more powerful ones, right? Not hardly. Here's a picture of a .22lr round next to a .223 round. Same diameter bullet. 

Hmm. So there that is. LOTS of powder in the .223 round on the right! My point is, it's all about the powder. More powder equals a bigger boom. How much force you feel after pulling the trigger depends on how much powder is burned and how much mass is in the gun you're shooting. A heavier gun will soak up more of the recoil and will make things easier on you. Lighter guns leave more of it up to you to absorb with your arms, shoulders, and back. 

So that's enough bullet education for now.As my sister Nicole used to say, back to me! I have a .22 rifle of my own (Marlin Model 60) that I like to shoot, in part, because it is very economical. Bullets are about $.03 a piece. Bullets for my .40 caliber pistol are about $.32 a piece. Here's a picture of a .22 round next to a .40 caliber round. Quite a difference!

 Ever since I bought the pistol, I've been trying to get Heather into shooting. She also grew up in a family that respected firearms but enjoyed recreational shooting from time to time. The trouble is, that .40 caliber round is really powerful, and subsequently delivers a lot of recoil to your body. It's kind of scary for a new shooter! She has done well shooting my .22 rifle in the past, but had only fired a .22 pistol once and it was a very big and heavy revolver. So, a few weeks ago I saw a Groupon for two .22 pistol rentals with targets included at a local gun range. I thought, this is it! What a great opportunity to take Heather to the range to shoot the relatively small .22 round in a pistol that fits her small lady-like hands! So on Saturday, we went to Guns n Leather in Hendersonville, TN. She shot a Ruger SR22 and I shot a Ruger Mark II 22/45.

Surprise Surprise! The Ruger SR22 fit her hands very nicely! She felt comfortable with the controls and shot pretty well! Lookin' good babe with those pink ear muffs!! The gun I shot jammed a lot while chambering the first round of a magazine. Once I got past that, it shot very nicely and had a really smooth trigger.

 I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't hear it with my own ears. As we were walking back to the car, Heather said to me, "Well, I think I want a gun!" BOO YAH!!!! You got it babe. Well, not quite yet. There are 4 or 5 .22 pistols that I want to consider. Unfortunately Guns n Leather only had the 1 model available to shoot that day. I'll be keeping my eyes open for some of the others. Sometime soon, Heather will have her own pistol! It's a win-win for us. It'll mean we can go to the range more often, and start to enjoy another hobby together. 

So that's what we were up to this last weekend! Many of you know that Heather and I are flying to Bellingham on Wednesday to spend a few days with family and friends in a town that is very special to us. I'm sure we'll create a bunch of blog-worthy material, so stay tuned in the next week or two!! Until then, I hope you all are enjoying a nice transition to Fall! 

Funnies!

Hope you've been having a good week so far, and tomorrow is FINALLY Friday! Yahoo!! Need a good laugh? These videos always get us laughing! We thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite videos with y'all. There are so many great ones to choose from, but here are a few of our current favorites. Enjoy!  

Funny? No. Great song? Oh yeaaaah

Hehehe

This last video is rated NP. Not for Parents. :)

Wonderful Weekend

The story I posted earlier today was pretty long, so I think this post will be somewhat brief. Not because we don't have ideas, but because I'm tired of typing. Look for another double post this week of fall-inspired things and a top-10 list of our favorite Youtube videos that will be sure to make you smile!

For many of us, Friday afternoon signals a time for celebration. It's a time to let your guard down, get together with some friends, and enjoy some great food and drink. For the last 3 years, we've been getting together with our class and some from other Au.D. classes for happy hour at a few different watering holes around campus. This week, plans didn't materialize so we decided to go off and have dinner at our favorite restaurant close to home called The Wild Hare. Heather got her favorite dish (BLT with salmon) which includes Benton's bacon (the absolute smokiest bacon you've ever had!) with thick-cut tomato, avocado, and sun-dried tomato mayo.  Yumm!!

I had the Moroccan Pizza which has a butter and honey brushed crust with a mild Moroccan spice blend called ras el hanout. Delicious!

Pictures are enlarged to show tastiness...

The thing that Heather and I have been wanting to do for such a long time is... go to a high school football game! After all, since we dated in high school, we have some great memories of hanging out in stands together on Friday night. Private schools are a big deal around here, so we checked out a few of their website and found a couple schools were scheduled to play each other in nearby Franklin. We dropped off our leftovers at home and went to the game! Boy, it's definitely different going to a high school game as an adult. I can personally say that I am grateful to have the student section on one end, and the adult section every where else.

If you're curious, Ensworth defeated Battle Ground Academy 35-7.

On Saturday night we went to a 90's themed party at Kelsey's house! Heather wore overalls with a shirt off one shoulder and her hair in a side pony. I wore blue shorts with a brown silk shirt, bright yellow tie, and a beige blazer.

As per usual, a good time was had by all!

Sunday brought great laziness and relaxation. The weather has been absolutely spectacular in Nashville for the past few weeks and we couldn't be more excited to welcome the Fall season. With that, I hope you all have had great weekends and we'll be back later this week with a few more blog posts! Also, I'm toying with the idea of vlogging (video blog). We'll see!

I'm going to leave you with a few pictures of dogs that I find particularly amazing! :)

4th Year Funnies

It's been a few weeks since we last posted here. So to make up for lost time, here's the first installment of a healthy double post!

First, I want to tell a story of a Veteran I've seen a couple times now. Not the funniest story ever, but definitely a memorable one. I first saw this guy about 2 months ago. He lives in a nursing home and came to us on a stretcher (traveled in an ambulance) with two EMS guys. Having someone come to you on a stretcher obviously presents some difficulties when you consider we are trying to test somebody in a relatively small sound booth. Of course this guy is strapped to the stretcher and there was a 0% chance that he would be able to sit in a chair. So I put him in the biggest booth we have, which gave me about 12 inches to walk around him. He was coherent enough to answer most of my questions, but clearly this was somebody who needed an expedited hearing evaluation. Our ultimate goal was go get him set up for some new hearing aids.

Long story short, he was a pretty tough one to test. He needed to take 3 bathroom breaks in 45 minutes, kept yelling "help" for no reason, and eventually got tired of testing and said he wanted to leave. We hurried and made ear mold impressions and told him we would get his hearing aids ordered. We didn't end up getting a full hearing test on him that day so we figured when he came back in a couple months to get the hearing aids we would do a quick recheck of his hearing to make sure what we originally got was accurate. Then we would do the hearing aid fitting.

Not so fast! He came back a couple weeks ago as an inpatient in the hospital! Yeah, we're not talking about coming in on one of those skinny stretchers that go in the back of an ambulance. He showed up in a full-size hospital bed! Yeah, the kind with the big railings on the side. That thing barely fits through our extra-wide door to get into the clinic. There was no way that bed was going to fit in one of the sound booths. So this appointment quickly turned into an exercise in "do the best you can with what you have". We just rolled his bed up to the door of a sound booth and tested his hearing in the hall! Clearly not the best testing environment, but it's all we could do! To say this Veteran was impatient with me would be a huge understatement. About 1/4 of the way through the hearing test, he barked at me that he wanted to leave.

"Tiiiiiim, what's all this racket I'm hearing?"

"Those are the soft beeping sounds I need you to be listening for. Remember, when you hear them, I need you to let me know."

"Well turn that stuff off! I'm ready to go."

His physician told me earlier that day that all the Veteran had been talking about upstairs was how much he wanted to get new hearing aids. So I reminded the Veteran that we were working on getting his hearing aids for him.

"Oh, ok", he said. That bought me a little bit more time! I got 500-4000Hz in the left ear and switched to the right ear. I got 500-1000Hz before he spoke up again, this time much more angrily...

"Tiiiiiiim, I want you to stop those sounds! I've had it with these tests and I don't want to do this any more! Get me out of here!"

"Ok Mr. ______ . We're all done with the hearing test. Let me get you unhooked and we'll get your hearing aids set up for you."

"Well, you'd better not make me do any of that stuff any more. I'm never listening to those dumb beeps again. Got it?"

I should be clear. His tone wasn't overtly angry, but more grumpy than anything.

"You bet Mr. ______. I have your hearing aids right here. It will just take me a few minutes to get them ready for you."

For those of you not familiar with hearing aids, there is quite a process involved in fitting hearing aids. It involves putting a microphone in the patient's ear, playing speech sounds at fixed levels, and recording the amplified levels in their ear canals. This allows us to set the hearing aid volume to a level to match a prescription based to their hearing loss. Of course, this process involves having the patient sit in a chair in front of the speaker that plays the speech sounds. Since this patient was in a full-sized hospital bed that wouldn't even make it into our fitting room, we had to improvise! Again, there we were doing the best we could with what we had. We were fitting Starkey Wi i110 Series ITE aids which we know from experience have a first-fit that is very very similar to NAL-NL1. There is typically very little adjustment to be made. So we were pretty comfortable putting these on his ears and just making sure they weren't too loud. Oh, but hearing aids are typically physically connected to the computer during the fitting process so we can make adjustments to their settings. Mr. _______ had to stay in the hallway during this step since his bed doesn't fit in the room! Fortunately, we were set up to do wireless fittings. Granted, this process usually happens, again, right in front of the speakers that play the speech sounds we record. The patient is always in the same room as me. Not this time! We made this one a long-distance fitting. :)

As I'm getting the hearing aids connected to the computer and getting some settings adjusted...

"Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim!!!!!"

I stopped what I was doing and went over to his bed.

"Yes Mr. ______. What is it?"

"I want you to get ME OUT OF HERE!!!"

"We're working on that. I just need a couple minutes to get your hearing aids ready for you. I'll bring them out to you in just a minute".

"If you don't get me out of here right now, I'm going to sue you for libel!"

Hmm, I think to myself. Does this make any sense at all? Nope! Guess I'll get back to the hearing aids.

After just a minute or two, we got the hearing aids on him. Oh, I forgot to mention that he was admitted to the hospital for low oxygen in his blood, so he came to us that day with an oxygen tank on his bed and he was wearing a mask the whole time. Naturally, when we turned the hearing aids on, he heard the oxygen pump which was sitting next to him.

"WHAT'S ALL THAT RACKET????"

"That's your oxygen pump Mr. ______". It's there to help you breathe.

"Well, turn that damn thing off!"

"I'm sorry, we can't do that. You need that to breathe. Once you get back upstairs, they'll hook you up to oxygen from the central system that doesn't make any noise."

"Well, if you don't get me out of here soon, I'm going to sue you for damage".

"Ok, sir. We'll get you out of here as soon as we can. We just need to make sure these hearing aids are set up appropriately for you".

After a couple more minutes, we got everything set up the best we could. I called the medical transport guys to come get Mr. ______ to take him back upstairs.

" TIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!"

"Yes Mr. ______?"

"I don't want to be in here anymore! Take me back upstairs! If you don't get me out of here now, I'm going to sue you for every penny you're worth".

"I've already called the transport guys and they're on their way. We'll get you out of here in just a minute or two".

"What's the hurry?"

:)

Hungry? We were!

Confession time: I've been known to spend a minute or two every so often browsing the Pinterest homepage. And before you judge me, let me tell you that the food ideas on there are absolutely genius! So if you've never been, go there! Speaking of food, Heather and I thought we would bring you a mostly food-related blog this week.

On Saturday we went to Hendersonville to a gun range to do some target shooting. Not surprisingly, the place was totally packed including a waiting list for the range. So we just looked around and moved on. After a little craft shopping, we went to see the Bourne Legacy. Our rating? We gave it a solid B+. I'd give the first three movies between A- and solid A(+)s. Do they even give A+s in school anymore? This fourth one was a big foggy in plot and character development. At the end of the movie, I still didn't feel totally motivated to root for the lead character. There were a few fundamental elements in the plot that were not clearly explained, and a couple action sequences were drawn out far too long. That said, the essential components of an action movie were definitely in place and it was entertaining! Certainly well worth the $5.50 matinee price per ticket we paid! After the movie, we grabbed dinner at Olive Garden. With a $25 gift card, we spent $11 on dinner. If you don't have a calculator handy, that's $22 for dinner and a movie out on the town! You're a cheap date honey. WHAT'S THAT??? I thought she was hard of hearing so I was like, "YOU'RE A CHEAP DATE HONEY!!"  Haha, Love that Sonic commercial! :)  Yesterday and today were spent mostly at home, and mostly baking and/or watching episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Parks & Recreation. Solid lazy weekend!

Yesterday we made an apple pie with our first attempt at caramel sauce, and today I made a small batch of beef jerky. These things, along with a viewing of Julie and Julia at home yesterday, have put me squarely in a foodcentric state of mind for this blog post. So without further ado, here are some pics of a few of our latest kitchen creations! As always, you can see each picture in higher resolution by clicking on them. Enjoy!


Salami, spinach, and other things all wrapped up in pizza dough

General Tso's chicken and cauliflower

Margarita pizza with garden fresh basil

My first attempt at making caramel! What a great process this is! I've always known that caramel is made by simply heating up sugar, but it is a really neat thing to see!

Here's the caramel in an intermediate state. There were still a few chunks in there but of course it all melts down to pure deliciousness. Unfortunately, I think I had my heat too high because the caramel started to smoke a bit too early (when the last chunk had just melted) and it quickly started to darken. What I ended up with was a rich amber colored caramel sauce that had a slight burnt taste to it. But hey, not bad for a first attempt! Next time I'll go with lower heat and I think I'll end up with something really delicious.

Lastly, here are a few shots of the beef jerky! If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to share my recipe and a few tricks I've discovered after making this a few times!

Henry Horton State Park - Take 2

What's better than camping?! Camping without Draco! Last year, Tim and I vowed that our next camping trip would not include Draco.  Draco, you're a great dog but a really terrible camper!  Our friend and Tim's fellow 4th-year intern, Sol was nice enough to take care of him while we spent some time outdoors this weekend. Saturday morning we packed the car, left Draco, and headed south of Nashville to Henry Horton State Park.    

                                         

Last year we discovered this great campground and this year we decided to return and do a little more.  This campground has 75 camp sites, but you don't know it while your there because they are so spread out.  It is very clean, quiet, and has some nice walking trails along the Duck River.  Beautiful!

We spent all day Saturday playing around, enjoying views of the river, and discovering the outdoors. Check it out, did you know that tree bark starts out looking like this?

                                            

Totally forgot our camera on our walk, so we had to borrow this pic from Google images - we're still camping / semi-hiking newbies!  Anyways, we had no idea that bark started out this way on some trees.  I thought the trees I kept seeing had cancer growths on them. But turns out, they're healthy young trees growing bark. Nature is so awesome!  

Let me take that back, nature is awesome until it falls from the sky and hits you in the chest.  Yes,there I was... sitting, reading, minding my our business when this hard-as-a-rock nut falls from the really tall tree above me and hits me in the chest/neck!  Ouch!  Scared me more than anything - definitely got my fill of "nature"!

Tim built an excellent fire with no trouble at all!  I remember the first time we went camping in Bellingham. We had purchased some wood from a neighbor. As it turned out, the wood he sold us had not been sitting for very long.  You couldn't really tell by feeling it, but we knew as soon as we tried to build a fire! The wood not dry inside. In case you're wondering, wood that isn't completely dry hisses, bubbles, and generally doesn't burn. So yeah, that fire was really hard to light and ever since our confidence in fire building has been a little low.  But not this trip! Tim had the fire going in no time!  "Man make fire"!

We roasted hot dogs for dinner over our excellent fire and relaxed as the sun went down. We ended the evening with some s'mores and listened to some tunes on the ipod. 

Sunday morning we packed the site up in a jiffy and headed out.  What did we do for breakfast you ask?! We ate out!  That's right the campground has a restaurant / breakfast buffet!  I know what your going to say, "That's not camping"! Well, that's our kind of camping.  If I'm going to sweat all day in the Tennessee summer heat and sleep on a far-too-rapidly deflating air mattress in a tent, I deserve to have a really yummy breakfast waiting for me!

This weekend was really a great time for us to spend together, relaxing and enjoying each others company.  We do these things so well! And we're getting better at camping each time!  Maybe next time we'll try winter camping!  

Just Funnies!

Hey all!

As many of you saw, I posted earlier this week to mark a very special date. Our 4-year anniversary was this last Wednesday. We didn't do anything too crazy this year, just went out for a nice dinner. We have already made a deal to spend some money on each other next year. For our 5th anniversary, Heather said she will buy me a gun if I buy her another band for her wedding ring. Not a bad deal I think! The rest of our week went by somewhat slowly but sure enough, the weekend showed up just in time. We had a very nice weekend with friends as per usual. We went out for dinner and drinks on Friday after work, ran our errands and went to a Nashville Sounds game on Saturday, and hung around the house on Sunday (and watched the closing ceremonies of course!) Now Heather is asleep and I thought I would just put a little something together to keep the posts coming. Here's my plan. I don't have any other outrageous stories from work right now, so I thought I would just post a few pictures from around the internet that brought a smile to my face for one reason or another. Enjoy!




Snooze...I dare you

Double Rainbow? Yeah, not impressed...

So true

Parents Adapting

And now, Chuck Norris Jokes!

Big Finale!!