Guns, Ice Skates, and Lunches

A day late... better than a year late, right? :)

My Saturday started very early, and ended late, and as a result I completely forgot about making a blog post.  Which is probably for the best, as it would've been sleepy rambles last night.

I was invited to go shooting (as in, with guns) in the desert a couple of hours north of me by a friend of mine, whose husband came up with an automatic game system, of sorts.  I can't say much about it, as it's a currently un-patented, but he has an app that lets the targets move in pre-programmed patterns and then it's simply point and shoot at the one that's currently up.   The group they invited up were all beta-testers, helping him with finding issues with either the software or the mechanical part of it.

They had a bit of a competition set up for who could shoot all the targets in a row the fastest.  I didn't participate in that; it's been about four years since I used a gun and I'm very much out of practice of hitting my target (plus they were pretty small, but I don't really feel like that's an excuse.  I think I could've hit them well enough a few years back).  Despite that, though, it was fun.  I pretty much just used small pistols and a revolver - which was quite fun to use.  I also shot a gun that's similar to what the army uses, which I've never been near before.  Very little kickback, and very light.

Afterwards (for a very different change of pace), I went about half-way home to an ice rink that's open for a ten-hour stretch for public skating on Saturday afternoons.  I've never seen a rink with hours like that.  It was a small place, but very nice.  It's been about a year since I went skating at all, but for all that I haven't forgotten anything.  Like riding a bike :).  It took me a couple of rounds around the rink to get used to it, and then I skated for about two hours.  All the dancing has certainly helped my endurance and leg muscle strength, because I'd be very sore today otherwise.  As it is, I actually slept in a bit this morning.

Also, it being Administrators Week (who decides these things, anyway?), the attorneys took out all the non-attorney staff for lunch.  It was very nice; although I've worked in the admin profession for three and a half years (three different places), this is the first time I've received acknowledgement for it.

...long time no see?

WOW, it's been awhile.  Didn't realize how long it's been.

In my defense, life's been really busy.  I finished the paralegal program, and about six months later (eight months ago) switched jobs.   My last place was a litigation firm, and this one is transactional - real estate.  I'm finding I like the transactional work much better than litigation.  It's a much larger firm, even though it's still in the 'small' category - I've gone from working in an office that had at most four people in it (and, most of the time, just three) to an office with fourteen people, and I'm in a an admin/paralegal team (instead of being, by myself, the administrator, paralegal, receptionist, and just about everything else.  I definitely prefer the team environment.)

The job's downtown, and I ended up moving from Pasadena to Culver City and am now the caretaker of my grandmother's house.  I'm not really a fan of the area - too crowded - but it'll work for now.

In my last blog I mentioned NaNoWriMo, and I've got an exciting update on my writing front - I'm publishing!

It's not the novel I mentioned writing at the time; it's a collection of short and flash fiction.  Eight stories (one being the completed version of the very first story I started thirteen years ago that got me into the idea of writing), 13,000+ words.  I'm going to be self-publishing on Amazon.  I've only got a bit more work to do to finish the formatting, so I'll be posting an update soon (promise!) about the status of that.