In usual goofy fare, it was time to wrap up the last weekend of 2008.
While trying to figure out when to comb Ariel’s hair, I remembered that ICE! over at the Gaylord Texan would be ending soon. I didn’t know whether or not this was the last day (it ends on the first weekend of January, so a few more days left to go for those reading this currently) and figured I’d go. Perhaps Christine would want to go again…we both went about two or three years ago.
This time, instead of my Sony V1 camera, I had my D40. I wanted to see how the pics would turn out. Last time I know I had to be incredibly still and still had to take a few shots to get anything nice.
The D40 was faster, had a larger sensor and I could actually use higher ISOs that I would’ve never done with my Sony. The D40 also isn’t top of the line, but I’m not a pro photographer anyways. I enjoy it, but it won’t be something I do for business purposes.
I hate digressing…can’t you tell?
So off to the Gaylord Texan we went! We took in the atrium briefly, but this was going to be a shorter visit this time. We had a shoot scheduled. My current pistol I bought as a Christmas present to myself last year, so in essence it turned one years old a few days ago.
This time seemed a lot busier than usual. Lots of kids, lots of families…clear shots were not the norm. Because of that, it seemed like we all moved sort of in a line. Last time, we all just wandered aimlessly and checked what we wanted to see.
The exhibits were also different. It seemed a little smaller this time around…but I can’t really tell for sure. Either way, I feel like I took a little fewer pictures, mainly for kind of moving in a group and not really getting a chance to roam around.
The disturbing exhibit award goes to Santa. Santa was looking a little freaky, and he was at one end of the room. The flanking sides of the wall had these elves…but they looked more like Charlie Brown’s head laid on the ground and stepped on until his eyes popped out!
Christine took a picture for a family as they posed in front of Santa. They did the same for us and I had looked through their camera’s viewfinder…the difference in image quality was stark. I don’t remember that much a difference with the Sony…but I think that Sony camera was one of Sony’s greater cameras of the time.
The next big hit was the ice slide. This is where dSLRs definitely ruled. Low light, varying light…lots of motion. I watched family after family, camera after camera. I felt a little sorry for them because they were just the typical point and clicking type photographers. The amount of delay just on the cameras focusing, then add the slow write speed for most cameras. If the person operating the camera didn’t time things right, they usually got no good pictures.
I had similar issues with my Sony, but learned to time for the right moment to fire. Prep and compose, hold then fire.
Getting Christine going down the slide was no problem for me at all, same with her getting a pic of me doing a tactical ice slide!
After that was her famous evil angel exhibit. Flanked this time around with luminescent candles vs the angels of 2 to 3 years ago. After that, it was the manger scene…then the end.
I had my camera and Christine brought along her Flip, another difference from my big camcorder from the last ICE! visit.
I don’t know if they worry of the economy made the exhibit seem smaller, but it was moreso evident with what greeted us after we exited. Last time we got a coupon for a free hot chocolate to warm up after the exhibit. This time, our coupon was for glowing necklaces.
Awesome…despite my fashion insensibilities, I’m proud to know that my wardrobe is now complete to have a glowing necklace as part of my ensemble.
Oh wait…I forgot to redeem that prize on the way out. Great, now I have to BUY one!
Tony was done watching his weird…movies. He had just returned from seeing his parents back home and elected to watch strange videos that only Sean would also appreciate vs doing a tactical team ice slide or whatever!
Time to shoot! Well, we made a short stop and started to hit the Garland outdoor range. But Christine wanted blue whale biscuits from Central Market, so even though it closed sooner Targetmasters was the more logical choice.
Over the course of the year, Christine has fired several hundreds of rounds and I’ve kept a nice close eye on the progress. Around the summer time, she seemed to hit a wall. Her shooting was very good, but she wasn’t really getting more accurate.
I also knew that she was left-eye dominant. This was a challenge posed when line coaching Moni, I think, back on the Cole. I didn’t really have a confident solution back then and it was coming back to haunt me here.
Some thought and some conferring and we decided to let Christine try starting to shoot using her left hand. After making sure she had a halfway decent grip on the gun, we threw a clean target on the range and she fired off a group very similar to shooting right handed. Positive signs for me…we’ll see if she does end up rocking back up again!
Tony did a couple of firing strings…glad to see him up shooting to about usual again, but disheartened that he was pretty much the only one in his unit that was to that capacity.
Me…well, I just simply had to be the most awesome shooter in the range…so I shot and I let that ever growing hole on the target speak for my awesomeness! We even scared away the rest of the shooters from the bay, that’s how awesome I was. Nevermind that the range closes in about half an hour.
Feeling good of our shooting and letting the goofy momentum continue, we had someone enter our bay and continue to show that no matter how bad of a day we have shooting, we can always look at someone nearby and feel much better about ourselves!
Our example here is seeing this guy’s target…maybe three yards away and he is shooting fairly rapidly. His “group” was pushing past a foot wide…basically five or six of the worst groups of Tony, Christine and my shooting combined could fit in this guy’s handiwork.
We went into mockery mode…Tony and Christine began wobbling their guns while shooting at the target. Yet…the shooting was still better. So he was rapid firing somewhat, I decided I’d take him up on that…nothing but a fist sized group.
So, like many others we’ve seen before, what’s a guy to do who can’t hit a target not even 10 feet away from him? Let’s run the target all the way out to 25 yards! We watched a little more until we saw one end of his target fall away as he hit the clip of one of the targets. With about five minutes to go, we quickly just packed up and left him on his own. If he wants to set the whole range on fire, that’s all him! Tony noted him having a USP of some sort…his holes looked like a .40 or .45 to me, nothing Christine herself couldn’t handle.
To Central Market we go! Tony feels hungry at first and then he sees what seems to him to be Neiman Marcus prices. So he eats the price inflation floating in the air and all of a sudden he just wants a bottle of real Coke! I figure a burger with fruit is good and I got a whole pizza where he could at least have a slice if he got hungry again. Christine got a meatloaf sandwich.
Mine was pretty good…I didn’t leave much of anything behind…actually anything! Tony had a slice of paper thick pizza and declared himself full. Christine wanted to like her sandwich…but meatloaf usually has a tomato sauce of some sort, not mayonnaise.
On a side note, Tony and I were looking at the chicken cordon bleu that was up there. We laughed because in the Navy, that was one of the few foods you could ever screw up. It was a good day onboard if you got to the messline and saw you’d have it for lunch or dinner…you were gonna have a good meal!
Then we got some groceries, Christine got blue whale biscuits and we all headed back to Mesquite. Sleepy I was, with work the next day. Christine tenderized her blue whale with her microphone. Tony went back to watching movies that he and Sean watched together in some undiscovered space on the Cole!
What a great finish to the final weekend of 2008! Gonna do similar for the first weekend of 2009! Standby!