Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Government Shutdown or Not

I am betting shutdown but only because preparations are already being made for one to some degree. My guess is that should the federal government shutdown all nonessential services, almost no one will really miss them - except those who are furloughed. One hopes it does not come to a shutdown but the truth be told it is about time that the Federal Government starts to become fiscally responsible - in my personal opinion.

I doubt I will be told to stay home but if it comes to that I am ready. I took a loan out of my thrift savings at work to hold us over if worst comes to worst. I had to pay a fee to take it out, have to pay my own account interest and am losing interest I would have otherwise received on it - but to know I have it available if needed is well worth it. When the government gets back in gear and has a budget, I will redeposit it to my thrift savings plan. Hopefully they will agree on a budget soon. Not having one, now more than 6 months after the fiscal year began, is a disgrace.

All the best,
GB

NYS Arms Collectors Assn. Spring Gun Show - Road Trip

Brendan and I will be heading up to Syracuse, NY on the 15th of this month so we can attend the NYS Arms Collectors Association's Spring Gun Show. It is a 1,000 table show and can tell you, that is a rare bird in these parts. Rare or not, it sounds like a great time to me. My friends Charlie K & Rob were supposed to come along but cancelled. I am not cancelling if I can help it; I already have made a hotel reservation. Thanks to Hilton Honors points, from my work trips to Arizona over the last 2 years, our stay will be a freebie. I was sort of hoping to stay for 2 nights but Brendan has to work on Sunday and we have to be back by then.

We are planning on leaving on Friday. The drive is about 5 - 6 hours or so, not bad with 2 drivers on board. It should breeze right by. I figure that we will get a good night's sleep at the Hampton Inn & Suites. Not a 5 star hotel but not too shabby when it is for free, heck not even too shabby when you pay for it. I was thinking about the Embassy Suites but figured why use double the points by going just a bit more upscale for only a single night. Our hotel will be only about 7 miles from the show site and literally only three turns made on the road to get from one to the other.

When we go to the show on Saturday, we should be refreshed and ready to check out all 1,000 tables and all the guns available. I am planning on getting a rifle, one of the ones I keep saying I want badly - either an AK-47, a Remington 700 VTR in .308, or a Remington Model 8 in .35 Remington. As Brendan told me in an email reply to my sending him a copy of our reservation:
"If we are going up there and its going to take 6 hours one of us better buy something worth a few hundred bucks haha." I agree whole heartedly and really hope I run across one of those rifles at a good price. Even if we don't see one of them, I am going to guess that we will see something worth buying with that many tables. The shows we are used to down closer to us usually have about 325 to 350 tables. So it will be just about 3x as many and thus I am hopeful that will translate to 3x as many guns on sale and some good competition among dealers. It will be a big disappointment if beef jerky, military memorabilia, book and knife sellers out number gun & ammo sellers. Still though it will be a good trip because we are making it together.

Regardless of what we do at the gun show, I hope I remember to bring along a couple of spinning rods/reels, a minnow bucket, minnow trap and whatever else we can use to have some fun at some of the local water holes up that way. Why just spend all our time at a gun show when good fishing is close at hand as well! There sure are a lot of possibilities for fishing up that way and I plan not to miss at least few of them.

All the best,
Glenn B