Vacation, All I ever wanted, Vacation, Had to get away.............

At long last, I am back home and back on my laptop which makes everything go just a little easier. (and much faster)

I had a great time on my "vacation". Williamsburg as normal was a blast, but hot as the hinges of hell. It was said that the temp on Saturday hit 104. Luckily most of the hospital staff was inside the governor's palace, but the women of the hospital were stuck outside. My admiration for the ladies grew in leaps and bounds as the weekend continued. I don't think that I could have put up with the heat under canvas like they did and kept the distaff end of the hospital running as smooth as they did. The whole weekend the ladies supported the hospital with charm, grace and good humor. I can not tell you how proud I was of them. By all reports the Williamsburg staff were delighted with the job we did.

The week before the Williamsburg event I spent a few days with my good friend and mentor, "Uncle" Chuck Walker. We didn't get many things done, but made plans to work on a bunch of other things later on in the year. I love working with Chuck, and I think he likes having me around to bounce ideas off of. Chuck is one of those types of fellows that can make anything out of almost nothing. He is truly a craftsman and artist.

After Williamsburg, I spent the following week with my buddies, the Randalls. Again, a chance for me to decompress and spoil their little girl, Miss Susan. It was a nice relaxing week, I didn't get much accomplished project wise but did get to see something that I have always wanted to see, the NRA museum. Rick Randall, myself and young Bryan Greeley took a drive up to Farfax and wandered about for a few hours. If you have ANY interest in firearms, you need to make a trip to this museum. I know that after this trip, the NRA had to invest a great deal of money in Windex to remove all my nose prints off of the glass cases.

A really cool exhibit that we saw at the museum was called Guns West! a retrospective of the old west. It had original weapons and gear from the period as well as modern weapons used by modern cowboy action shooters in competition. In my mind, the very best stuff was firearms and clothing used in movies. I was raised on John Wayne and cowboy movies and it was very, very cool to be able to see firearms carried by John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck and others in movie that I watched when I was growing up.

I even managed to do a little knot work at a small one day event at Londontown Public House and Garden near Annapolis MD on the following week-end after Williamsburg.

So all in all it was a great two weeks. But now back to the old grind. GRIN