Friday afternoon I got the call announcing that my special order finally arrived. My new pistol shipped from the factory. Serial number in the low 5000s. I wanted lower, but… As hard as it is to find the Heckler VP9s, I should have been happy to get my paws on any one I could. I was. I’ve never paid that much for a gun (and it really wasn’t expensive, as pistols go).

We name cars and guns. Whips and weapons. The Heckler is a kraut gat, so her name is Gretchen. Welcome to the family, Gretchen. Stay by my side and don’t get your ass stolen like your wayward Argentinian half-sister, Eva, did.  (Eva, if you are out there reading this on a smart phone in a pawn shop display case somewhere, call me. I’ll come get you.)

My basement is stuck in time, half renovated. I got to the point where I absolutely have to cut up the concrete floor and run new plumbing for a bathroom… Or just accept that I won’t have a downstairs bathroom and finish off the walls as they are. The prospect of cutting up/digging up the subfloor is absolutely terrifying. I’ve seen enough YouTubes to know it’s not rocket science. But… Drilling that first hole around the main stack with an impact drill…  Sphincter clench city, man.  Bok bok bok.  There is a phase of the basement that is supposed to get a drop ceiling, and lighting fixtures are supposed to sit in said drop ceiling. I bought the light fixtures that go in the drop ceiling three years ago. Saturday, something inside me snapped after three years of using a shop light in that dark corner of the basement, plugging and unplugging it like a switch. Enough!

I hung the light fixtures with framing wire and powered them up through a switch box I haven’t looked at in four years. The electrical run has been in place. It was a matter of saying to myself, “Now how do I do this again? Which black wire goes where?”

It’s amazing how long we’ll put up with an annoyance such as that; a dark corner of the basement in my workshop, of all places! Equally amazing how much better life is after you buckle down and solve the problem. Let there be light. And there was. And it was goooooood.

Two test flips of the hot switch to check my work, and then off to the range to see if my Gretchen was as deadly accurate as the version of the Heckler I rented before buying. OMFG. Day and night. I’m not badmouthing my Bersa UC9, but the longer barrel of the full size HK, plus a striker-fire trigger as crisp as a Pringle… OMFG. I’ve never shot that well. Never. Never had groups that small. I can’t remember the last time I punched a dead-on center bullseye in a target, and I had three in one day. Sometimes it’s not entirely the shooter and not entirely the gun, but there comes a Zen synergy when a shooter finds his or her perfect pistol. I’m in love. Suh-woon.

Driving home from the range, My Beautiful Wife hastily arranged a “drink over” with her old high school friend. I think I dated this girl for about a week, following my breakup with the 15 year old version of my wife.

I went back down in my newly-illuminated work area, cleaning a small arsenal of guns. The ladies sat on the back patio, tipped a few, and reminisced about how various boys on the high school swim team filled their Speedos. (Fitting payback for the infinite number of Scotch-fueled reminiscences between Julian VonJames and myself of the older girls that mesmerized us in high school.) Gander sauce, my friends, and it was apparently tasty.

After my chores were done, I joined them for a few moments. Jeez-o-Pete. It’s no fun being the only sober person at a party, is it? The college kids across the joined back yards were having a party and they were singing Classic Rock from the top of their lungs. MBW and her friend were singing back at them; Inebriated coyotes howling Freddie Mercury lyrics back and forth at each other across the fence. I’m so introverted, the whole spectacle made my skin crawl. Drunk or not, the stick is just too far up my ass. I’m just too clinically shy for that shit. I went back downstairs and left the Ketel One Karaoke Contest to run its course. Small miracle that cops were not dispatched.

Sunday, the hoarse and bleary-eyed ladies woke to MBW’s work mobile phone chiming. Her boss (THE boss) had tickets to some screening of an unknown movie, as well as the responsibility to represent their hospital at a reception before the event. He scraped off his responsibility on MBW, so abruptly we shifted into clean-up mode and I strapped on a tie to attend a mystery movie.

(This – by the way – is not an unusual occurrence. In the past, I’ve had fewer than 24 hours of notice that I needed to rent a tux and accompany the missus to a gala. No joke, once we ended up sitting next to a bona fide Doublemint Twin.  Or at least an older version of Doublemint Twink who married a prominent doctor from our little berg.)

There are trophy wives, and then there are DOUBLEMINT TWIN TROPHY WIVES, I suppose. I’ll just stick with my beautiful redhaired trophy wife, thankyouverymuch.

The movie was Islamic propaganda, but it wasn’t problematic propaganda. Privately funded by Islamic folks bent on combating negative Islamic stereotypes, Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story depicted the heroic journey of a young Sufi woman who became a British spy/radio operator in Nazi-occupied France. The documentary kept stressing that the average operations time before capture of a clandestine radio operator by the Germans was six weeks. Noor lasted three months. This, apparently is heroic. She didn’t give up any of her spy network to the Nazi interrogators. This actually is pretty frickin’ heroic, considering. The SS “disappeared” Noor and eventually transferred her to solitary (?) at Dachau until they executed her.

So, there you go. Coming to a PBS station near you in September, if you are interested. As entertaining as a tragic story can be entertaining, and certainly an informative addition to the lexicon of WWII documentaries.

Sunday night we slumped into the couch and finally watched the Phil Spector movie on HBO. I had absolutely zero interest in the project until I scrolled by the encapsulation screen on the Roku menu and noticed David Mamet’s name. I had no idea Mamet wrote and directed the Phil Spector movie. I’m a Mamet scholar. As such, I was required to watch a biopic about a guy I didn’t give two shits about.

Holy crap! That is a well-written movie. I can’t believe Phil is truly as sharp-witted as Mamet wrote him, but that’s not the point. The point is that Mamet found a way to build tension in a story where everybody already knew the ending. That’s why he’s Million-Dollar Mamet, I guess. Want Mamet to write your screenplay? That’ll be a million dollars, please. Want Mamet to re-write your screenplay? That’ll be a million dollars, please. Want Mamet to punch up your screenplay, adding only one joke that makes it to the final cut? That’ll be a million dollars, please.

And worth every damned Duetsche mark.