R is for Rifle Shooting

EGG told me a big fat lie. He told me we couldn't go pistol shooting a couple of weeks ago because of Australian gun laws and that is not true. We didn't go pistol shooting because he was too lazy to organise it. (Oh and there was whole Sopranos violence issue I had going on at the time).

But he came good because for this week's Alphabet Weekend he took me Rifle Shooting and it was excellent.

Did you know lots of people go rifle shooting? It was 8:45am on a Sunday morning and the rifle range was packed. It didn't actually start off well for me because everytime someone shot their rifle I jumped. I was twitching around the place and starting to get a big headache and then I remembered the earplugs I'd brought. I put them in--problem solved.

I got me my big gun, my bullets, got some instruction and guess what--I can shoot--straight.

I am so relieved because over the past year of doing these Alphabet Weekends I had come to a horrific conclusion (and you probably have too). I am totally and utterly useless at doing anything physical. I drive slowly, have no balance and absolutely hate anything to do with physical exertion.

I has been with a heavy heart that I have realised that if the world is going to end and it is up to me to save the hero by stopping him from falling off a window saved only by my strong hand grip or that a car chase through the streets of the city will stop the evil poison from falling into the hands of the bad guy set to dominate the world then the world is doomed. Until I took up shooting. I can save the world with my dead straight aim. What a relief. (You can probably tell from the above that I watch far too much TV, but it really had me worried me).

A very nice man showed me how to load and unload my rifle. Did you know that rifle shooters are amongst the nicest people I've encountered while doing Alphabet Weekends? I must say I was surprised. I was expecting a lot of people called Bubba who spoke with slow American accents, wore baseball caps and had facial hair (again that TV thing). But no, they're nothing like this. There was even a lady there wearing pearls who looked more likely to be going to high tea than the rifle range. Just goes to show that you (maybe I) shouldn't judge.

EGG of course got a great big gun and great big bullets. But I was happy with my nice little 22 and shot happily away, hitting my target and generally showing off. EGG reckons I was lucky and that his target was much further away and that I had to stop making fun of him. I might give him a few pointers next time so he doesn't pout so much.

See the picture of my target here and my rifle set up. Very pro. Obviously EGG doesn't want anyone to see his target.

If anyone needs me to save the world you know where to find me.

R is for Rifle Shooting.

Q is for Queensland Roar

EGG and I have been together for a very long time and mostly it has been a happy time, except for one glaring little fault that EGG has (and it drives me mad)--he's a fair weather fan. Now he loves his sport, any sport, but he has been known to jump on the bandwagon of whatever sport we are doing well with.

Now we can mean anything--it can be an Australian team, a Queensland team, a Brisbane team, a worldwide team with a single Australian member (even if they only lived here for two weeks of their entire life)--it doesn't matter, just so long as we are winning. The Olympics sends him into a frenzy--he's an expert on judo, badminton and the high jump--any sport that might win us a medal. What he doesn't know about water polo since the Sydney Olympics? To his credit he sticks with his new team and its sport for a long time, but the thing that sends me crackers is that he never watched, read about, discussed that sport until we started doing well at it.

So it was a no-brainer really when I took him off to Q is for Queensland Roar because we are in the finals. Yes, Queensland with a long and lengthy history of two years in the comp, was in the finals. EGG had been talking about it all week and about how well we we doing.

So off we went with SSS in tow (she like her mother is not adverse to watching good looking boys run around a field for 80 minutes). But alas it almost fell through as a massive thunderstorm struck a half hour before kickoff and it looked like the Alphabet Family was going to be enjoying Q is for Queensland Rail for that is where we spent the first hour of our outing--stranded at Milton train station.

But it cleared and we joined the massive crowd for the kickoff. The atmosphere was tense, the crowd was cheering the home team and booing the opposition--gosh it was exciting, for about five minutes. I'm sorry, I just don't get soccer. I kept asking EGG why no one defended anyone and he tried to explain but then he gave up. The game must have been a bit too much for some of the players because they kept getting injured and then lay down on the ground trying to get the referee to wave around a piece of yellow paper. In fact that piece of yellow paper should have been an Academy Award considering all the acting that was going on. They called it injury, the fans called it milking a penalty, but me, I think they were just tired and needed a rest.

And why does the referee write all the bad things that the players do down in the little notebook he carries. It's 2008, surely they should use a Blackberry, or a PDA or at least a dictophone. Why don't they just look at the video replay?

Don't get me wrong though--I learned a lot. I learned a really cool chant that goes "North, south, east, west--this ref is dumb and deaf." I learned that when the goalkeeper from Queensland has the ball everyone chants gooooalllllkeeeeeper in a deep voice but when the opposition goalkeeper has the ball everyone yells "throw the ball you Sydney wanker". I learned that one from the delightful 9 year old fishwife sitting behind me. She's going to make some man very happy one day.

Anyway Queensland won 2-nil. EGG was beside himself. We'd won.

Q is for Queensland Roar--soccer is so boring.

P is for Psychic

EGG was apologetic when he announced that P was for Psychic. But I wasn't disappointed, no I was very excited given the fact that I really hate surprises and now I was going to know my future and be prepared for anything life was going to throw my way.

EGG's apology however, sprang from the fact that his original P selection was a no-goer. He'd really wanted to take me P for Pistol Shooting. Wow! How good would that have been? But those pesky little things called the Australian gun laws ensured that wasn't going to happen. Normally EGG and I are great supporters of the anti-gun lobby, but of late we are becoming a product of our environment.

It all began on Christmas Day when SSS presented EGG with the first season DVD of The Sopranos. EGG and I had missed the whole Sopranos shebang six years ago because it was on so late, and Channel 9 kept changing the times so we gave it a miss. Well didn't we lose out. So since Boxing Day EGG and I have watched the entire Sopranos series--all 86 episodes.

We watched so much of it that we were referring to the FBI as the bad guys. We watched so much of it that phrases like "stop breaking my balls" and "enough already" started creeping into our everyday speech. We watched so much of it that we were starting to understand why Tony Soprano had so many good looking goomahs (that's a mistress for all you non-fans--see we really have got the lingo). We watched so much of it that we started thinking Carmella had a sense of fashion. We watched so much of it that when we greeted people we went in for the big double kiss-hug combination. We were so addicted that we stopped going out, other than to visit the video store to get our fix. So you can see how pistol shooting was a natural progression. We had been exposed to so much gratuitous violence that a gun in our hand was the next step. Thank you Australian gun laws for saving us from ourselves.

So we tore ourselves away from the DVD player and a-psychic hunting we went. And where is the mecca for psychics in Brisbane? Why South Bank Markets of course. So $90 poorer we found out that EGG and I have the world's most wonderful relationship which means that we'll stay together long enough to at least work our way through the rest of the letters of our Alphabet Weekends. We found out that we're going to travel, have interesting careers and that SSS will be a constant joy to us both. Sound just like a Disney film, doesn't it?

That's all I can remember because even though she was talking about one of my favourite subjects--me--I sort of tuned out and nodded sagely at appropriate times. She did however point out that I was a drama queen. Moi--I was shocked. EGG fell around the place laughing until I told him to "stop breaking my balls". You see how bad the whole Sopranos thing had got.

So EGG and I now have a big Sopranoless void in our predicted happy lives. We're not sure how life will be without Tony, Patsy, Syl, Christopher and the gang. OK, we know they're psychopathic killers and that it's only a TV show but.... Anyway there's another series called Deadwood that might be right up our alley--lots of violence, cursing and killing. SSS suggests we watch Bambi instead.

I'm off to the video shop--well the pyschic said that I would make a journey.

P is for psychic.