Pictures, Part Three

Each year, for the past four or five years, my father and I have met in Las Vegas for a father/son trip where we manage to squeeze in golf, good food, a show, and LOTS of gambling into a few great days. This year, because of internship interviews, dissertation, and a little thing called Baby Will, we had to postpone the trip. Since we only had a couple of days this year, we met in Tunica, Mississippi for two nights last week. It was a great time, we had lots of fun, and much success at the tables as well!

One fun thing we did was to go to Willows Sporting Clays, which offered a range of clay pigeon shooting experiences. Neither my Dad or myself have much gun experience, so it was educational as well as exciting. The experience went like this: A guide drove us around in a golf cart from station to station, and at each station there were three different shots to take. The guide had a handset with three buttons, one for shot A, one for B, and one for C. They each corresponded to a machine somewhere out in front of the shooting area that shot a clay pigeon through the air for us to shoot at. Some were high lobs moving away from us, some towards us, some shot across the ground, and some went VERY quickly from left to right or right to left. The degree of difficulty varied greatly from shot to shot, but we each got 8 shots at each station, no matter what.

Oh, if you're wondering, the answer is yes - we bet against each other. Here are some pictures of the fun!



Golfer meets Hank Hill?



Our guide, at the first station, showing Dad how to load the shotgun and call for his shots.



An action shot right down the barrel.



I just realized that I'm wearing the same shirt as when I shot guns at the Roop farm a couple weeks earlier. If you see me in that shirt, watch out, pardner.



This picture is currently the wallpaper on my laptop.



Smokin'.



Can you see the machine that shoots out the clay pigeons? This was only one of three at this station, but it's representative of how hidden many of them were. You say, "Pull!" and out shoots this flying orange disc. (Hint - it's on the right behind some trees).



The grounds were covered with shells. It was a great day. I won't reveal who won the bets. It was so close that an analysis of variance run in SPSS said that there was, statistically speaking, no significant difference between the means.

And moving on, here are a few of the pictures I had time to take before the chess tournament started. First, the kids played in classrooms set up like this:




The adults played in the library:




And finally, we had a hilarious experience the other night. The dogs were being REALLY snuggly. Penny was laying down and Pollywas resting her head on top of Penny's back. Sometimes they lay together, but this was out of character for them. I tried to sneak a picture, and this is what I got:



But then Whitney saw why they were being so snuggly:



They started walking around and looked really pitiful. They were almost scared by it! They had no idea what was going on. I even took some video of them walking around, and then was about to unhook them when they came apart on their own. Funny stuff.



That's all for now! One more week in Austin. The goodbyes are in full force now and are getting pretty overwhelming. We have some very special friends here and we'll miss them a lot.