In which Martini Enfield is in a disagreeable mood for a variety of reasons...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

… None of which are really “ranty” enough to go in Ye Pitte, so I’m posting them here instead.

The first one is work related. I got transferred to a new store about a year ago and I really don’t get on all that well with any of the people I work with. Never have. They don’t like me because they’ve all been working together for years and suddenly I’m The Outsider coming in and telling them what to do (because they’re all stuck in their ways and it’s affecting their sales figures etc). I don’t like them very much for the same reasons, but I maintain a professional attitude and do my job as best I can. I’ve put out feelers regarding a transfer, but there’s no vacancies anywhere and I’m basically being told to just deal with it, which really isn’t helpful at the moment.

Secondly, the friends that my wife and I had been trying to help with their marriage difficulties (See this thread here) are now being somewhat odd towards us- for example, their daughter had her 2nd birthday the other week and they were most insistent we attend- and when we did (rearranging our work schedules in the process) they hardly talked to us. It was almost as if they’d just taken it for granted that we’d be there and were therefore less noteworthy than their other guests, and it’s left both my wife and I feeling more than a little hurt about the whole thing. Even their parents were basically saying “WTF???” about it.

My wife’s work has been full of dramas as well- they’ve had a popular manager quit over an operational issue and a number of staff have resigned since they don’t want to work under another manager, which suddenly means they don’t have anything like enough staff to run the place and it’s making the staff who haven’t left seriously contemplate leaving as well.

My Mum seems to labour under the delusion that I’m the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company and have wads of cash cluttering up our house- she’s off to Bali for a shopping trip next month and wants me to come along as well. I’ve explained to her time and time again that I don’t want to go to Bali, and that I don’t have any leave left this year (I used it all when I got married and went on honeymoon), and- most importantly- I don’t have any money to pay for a trip to Bali because- wait for it- I’m still paying off the honeymoon trip! “Oh, I’m sure you could just get a few extra days off” she says, completely missing points 1 and 3 of Why Martini Enfield Doesn’t Want To Go To Bali, and being totally wrong on point 2 while she’s at it. :smack:

If that wasn’t enough, my Dad’s arthritis is getting worse and he’s gradually turning into a Cranky, Irritable Old Man. He’s always been a great Dad to my brother and I, and it really makes me very sad to see him changing from someone who was always full of good humour and happiness to someone who is irritable and in pain a lot of the time, partly because he refuses to use a wheelchair as he’ll be a cripple then, according to him. :frowning:

Finally, I went to compete in a Metallic Silhouette handgun competition this weekend, and took my .455 Webley to shoot with (As my .38 isn’t suitable for Metallic Silhouette). I did really, embarrassingly badly.
I managed to hit 4 targets out of 40, which is probably my Worst. Score. Ever in any competition shoot I’ve undertaken here in Australia. What’s worse, is that .455 Webley ammunition is ridiculously expensive and hard to get here- it costs roughly $2 a cartridge on the rare occasions the gunshop has any in stock, and with a 40 round course of fire it basically cost me $80 to knock over 4 targets (being 1 at 25 yards, 2 at 50 yards, and a fluke at 75 yards- I missed all 10 targets at the 100 yard mark). Just to make it even more irritating, I’ve used the Webley in Metallic Silhouette competitions before and posted respectable scores, so I can only attribute my spectacularly low score to having an “Off Day”- one which cost me over $100 in ammunition and petrol. I can take consolation from the fact that it’s still a lot of fun to shoot Metallic Silhouette, but the next time I take a century old service revolver and $80 worth of exotic handgun ammunition to a competition shoot, I’d like to have more to show for it than a score of 4/40.

In short, it’s all making me feel somewhat irritable and disagreeable, and generally adding just a bit more stress to things when what I really want is a nice cup of hot chocolate and a decent book. (Did I mention that we appear to have just ran out of hot chocolate and the supermarket is closed?) Anyway, on that note, I’m going to see if there’s any Milo in the cupboard, in case it escaped my view the first time I looked…

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Have you considered recreational shooting? :smiley:

Just winding you up, mate. You’re a Kiwi, so it is my duty…

3

hugs Martini. I’ve been pretty disagreeable myself lately. It sucks.

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Sucky thing for men is you can’t blame anything on hormones. It’s an easy excuse.

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I’m also a shooter, but I don’t compete. I often have friends over to shoot, though.

We mainly shoot rifles. The target we use is something called the Classification Army Qualification Test (AQT). It requires 8 shots - 2 offhand, 2 sitting, and 4 in prone. A score is assigned.

I usually do pretty well. But there have been times I’ve done badly. I mean really badly. Once I didn’t hit paper in prone. My rifle was O.K. - it was me. I just couldn’t focus. My friends were looking at me funny. They were giving me looks like, “What’s wrong? You usually do well.”

So I know what it’s like. :frowning:

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{{{Martini}}}

Is man-hugging kosher in Aussie-land? In any case, hope things take a turn for the better!

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Thanks for the support, guys! I’m sure it will get better- I’ve just been an irritable bastard lately (I nearly gave a puppy The Finger, such was my distemper!)

On the upside, the staff at work have been doing what I tell them for a change, and I did gain a small measure of joy from sitting in the Managerial Swivel Chair, turning to one of the staff whilst doing the Finger Pyramid of Evil Contemplation, and saying “Tell me, did today’s delivery contain Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams Attached To Their Heads?” with a completely straight face. :smiley:

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Hang in there mate! I always thought you were a decent fella and enjoy your posts.

::slaps back - proffers a pint::

($2 / round! wow, at that price, even I would consider reloading. How can you practice?)

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Although I’m sure my better half, Serious Lark, would wholeheartedly agree you’re swell chap, once she got to know you, I must point out that it was me, trupa, that posted the above. Posting from another account is one of the hazards of a multi-doper household, I guess. My apologies.

Cheers mate.

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On Friday in Georgia, usa, the other outpost of Britain’s criminal exportation program, the local bowling alley with beer and three bowling balls which can accomodate my oversized mitts was lax in returning the one usable ball I could locate and sent my second round into a gutterball frenzy and, due to the fact the hot and friendly staff was apparently recently replaced by the frumpy and surly, my mood went straight into the pisser. Your story wins , though, if that provides any solace.

(I also missed a lot with the Daisy single pump BB gun at a party before I fractured a rib tripping over construction debris on the way to a piss, but that was OK)

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At two bucks a round with a 4 in 40 chance of hitting a target, I’d have to seriously consider my budget before I took a shot at a home intruder.

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I won’t try to give you work or mother advice (although I could hit the guilt nerve by saying I wish my mum was still alive to bug me with unreasonable requests, but that would be a cheap shot so I won’t take it.)

As for the shooting – hey, we all have times when our hobbies end up in shambles around us. I remember a custom-designed TV stand that ended up six inches too short and four inches too narrow. Spent over $200 on materials, ended up tossing the damn thing on a bonfire. I feel your pain, truly I do.

But y’know, ME, none of us here on th’ Dope have much use for your Neanderthal friend. I think in that last thread we pretty much came to the conclusion the jerk needs to recognize the advent of the 21st century. Since I doubt he’d even hear you if you bitched at him for the way he treated you and your wife, I honestly think the best thing to do is starting putting some distance between you. Lots of distance. Like Melbourne-to-Darwin distance (God, I love Google Maps!) Seriously, this guy isn’t your friend. He’s an asshole who uses other people. Get shuck of him if at all possible.

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Neither can the OP at $2/round.

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As for your dad’s arthritis, what’s being done to treat it?

I don’t know anything about Australia, but here in the good ol’ US of A, doctors are very hesitant to use strong-enough pain relievers. My MIL is 86YO and has terrible arthritis in her hips. It doesn’t make her cranky, per se, but it does keep her from moving around much, which contributes to her weight problem, which makes the arthritis worse, which. . .well, you get the picture.

The doctors will not give her “good” drugs like Percoset, or maybe Fentanyl patches so she can get comfortable and I don’t understand why! I know these drugs are addictive, and sometimes abused, but hell, she’s 86! So fuckin’ what if she gets hooked? Give her “the good stuff” and take away her driver’s license, and let the poor woman get some freakin’ relief!!

Does it help that I’m angry right along with you? :wink:
If not, I hope posting and venting helps at least a little!

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How can I say no to free beer? :slight_smile:

As for the ammo- that’s why I got the .38 Webley, so I could practice with that and shoot competitions with the Zulu-stopper. :smiley:

Ironically, the .38 S&W ammunition my smaller Webley uses now actually costs almost as much as the .455 ammo for its bigger brother, which means I’m going to have to get a 9mm semi-auto so I can afford to shoot general competitions.

My friend’s wife call me up the other day out of the blue apologising for the lack of talkage at their daughter’s birthday. She wants to have us over for dinner to make up for it, so that’s something.

The gun is accurate to 50 yards- I’ve used it before at the range many times, and I could probably make it effective to 100 yards with practice. As it is, however, it’s illegal to have a gun for home defence in Australia, and I keep it locked in a safe anyway when I’m not using it (as per the law here), so it would be useless against an intruder anyway. Fortunately, it’s not illegal to play cricket here in Australia, and a Gray-Nicholls is going to be just as effective in the confines of the living room as a .455 Webley or a 12ga, should the situation call for it (Which I hope it never does, btw).

At this stage, it’s physiotherapy, glucosamine tablets, and something like Vicodin, which he got when he was last in the US.

I haven’t asked him too much about what he’s taken because A) I don’t know any the arthritis drugs from skittles and B) He has health insurance which means he’s getting something decent, or so I would assume.

Even so, it’s not nice to see him the way he is…

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Sure we can. We just don’t. Because of our hormones.