66ｰF and partly cloudy this morning, going up to 80ｰ today. The stormy front that rolled through yesterday brought some welcome relief from the heat, even if only for a couple of days.
Did a bunch or running around for errands Saturday morning, and got almost nothing accomplished. Seemed everyone was out of everything I wanted. Stopped at the Kia dealer to pick up an oil filter, only to find that their Parts Dept is no longer open on Saturdays. Convenient for them, I guess. Stopped at the Academy store right behind them to pick up some .38 Special ammo for me and 9mm for The Wife to get in a little range practice, and their shelves in the handgun ammo section were almost completely bare. The only 9mm they had were shotshells. I did find a few boxes of .38 for me. Stopped at Harbor Freight to finally return the recalled jack stands, and swapped them for new ones. A couple other items I wanted were, of course, out of stock. On the way home, wondering where else I might try for some 9mm ammo, I remembered a little gun shop near Carlyle that I've been wanting to check out for awhile. Called them when I got home, and the guy told be he'd just gotten a shipment on Friday, and had about two dozen boxes. He said he normally closes at noon on Saturdays, which was in five minutes. I told him my predicament, and he said he'd stay open until I got there. He did, and I bought six boxes. Great guy, who has probably earned my future business.
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Sunday morning, after the morning chores, we packed up some handguns in range bags went to shoot at a new-to-us range in Pocahontas IL. An old friend had recommended the place to me years ago, but we just never found the time to go check it out. They opened at 10am, so we were there when they unlocked the doors. Nice place. We shot for about 45 minutes, and had the place to ourselves for about the first half hour. She brought her 9mm S&W Shield and .380 Ruger LCP, and I shot three of my .38/.357 revolvers. Enjoyed it, and will probably go back when we want to shoot indoors out of the weather. We went home, and I cleaned the guns while The Wife was taking care of the dogs, then we headed back out to a place in O'Fallon IL for our CCW renewal class. Instructor was fun and efficient, and we were out of there in under two hours and heading to another range in Columbia IL for qualification shooting. This was the same range we qualified at last time, kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and they have peacocks roaming around the grounds. Magnificent birds. And noisy. We got the shooting done, everyone qualified first try, took a group photo (which I haven't seen yet), and were on our way. Full day of shooting stuff, and I didn't hate that at all. Haven't been doing enough of that lately, something I've always enjoyed. Plus, now we have that silliness out of the way for another five years.
My boss called me Friday afternoon and asked if I could take some parts to a customer in north central Illinois Monday morning. When I hesitated, he asked if I had a scheduling conflict. I told him, "No, just the last time I drove up there for another customer back in February, it cost me a car." I agreed to do it, though. When I got there Monday morning to drop off the parts, I was met by their Quality Engineer. Nice guy, but he had a problem he needed resolved. That saw me there all day sorting parts for them. Not something I'd hoped to do, but staying and doing it made for some great customer relations, and they expressed their gratitude several times before I left. The 2-1/2 hour drive home tuned into a little over three hours due to some rather whopper storms passing through the state yesterday afternoon. Just north of Springfield on I-55, I almost pulled over, as even the trucks had slowed to about 20mph. We just couldn't see. Just as I was thinking about pulling off, it suddenly slowed to a drizzle. There were cars all over the place; in the ditches on both sides, up the embankments, and a white Camero with a new guard rail hood ornament. It started getting heavy again just south of Springfield, and again when it let up there were accidents everywhere. The northbound lanes were shut down by an accident, which I passed just in time to see them righting a tractor trailer which had tipped over onto a car ... fortunately only the trunk area was smashed. The rest of the drive home was relatively uneventful, and just in and out of rain. When I got home, the ground there was still dry as a bone.
Wife picked up the new foster dog yesterday. Her name is Nadia, she's a deaf and blind (double merle) Australian Shepherd, about two years old, and she was surrendered by her former owner to a high-kill shelter in the Little Rock AR area. One of the volunteers there got in touch with the Speak St. Louis organization to get them to rescue her before she was put down. The shelter had been keeping her in a cage that they clean with a power washer ... without removing the dogs. So, Speak STL got their volunteers to get her out and ferry her to St. Louis, where she ended up with us, as my Wife is their unofficial official trainer for blind and deaf dogs. Just in the few hours she'd been there before I got home, The Wife had already taught her touch commands for "come", "food", "water", and "outside". She was already house broken, and gives a low bark when she needs to go. She's a very gentle girl, and has no problems with strangers, other dogs, or cats. Here's a pic of her with our three stooges just hanging out in the kitchen last night.
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