Effective immediately:

ALL  CLASSES, CCW and shooting, will require a non-refundable $25 booking charge. This has to unfortunately be implemented due to a large spate of VERY last minute cancellations.

While this is normally considered rude, it is even more so, when one has to take their limited productive time, time spent setting up and prepping the class and then … nothing. More time breaking down the set up and cancelling range time, which also costs us $$. Time and money that could have been used for other of the million things home owners need to do, that they don’t have enough hours in the day to deal with. 

I have never had to do this before, as the shooting community is, for the most part a very honorable community. I truly enjoy teaching new shooters and helping them on their path. Unfortunately, some are not so honorable.  

At the beginning of the year, January 8^th, I had to have a small umbilical hernia fixed. No I didn’t lift a too heavy weight…it was actually a stupid movement and being hard headed.

Early November 2020, I was reinforcing my ammo shelves with ¾ inch plywood. This required taking all the ammo off the shelves, removing the shitty particleboard shelves and installing the new ones heavier duty shelves. No problem.

However on reaching the very bottom shelf, closest to the floor, I found something had rolled all the way to the wall. Instead of doing the intelligent thing and getting a broom or stick to move the thing towards me, I bent over and reached for it. It was…just…out…of reach…but I can get it…PAIN! Hard twisting PAIN!!

I tried to straighten up…but damage done. I could feel something was wrong. Once the pain slackened off, I continued (with the broom! Too little too late!) to replace the shelf and stock it with ammo cans.

I tried to work out the next day, but it wasn’t happening. The pain persisted and got worse. I couldn’t straighten up. Doctor sends me for an ultra sound. Yep Umbilical hernia. Off to see surgeon because there is no other way to fix a hernia.

Due to insurance issues, I had wait till January to have the actual surgery. It was a miserable 2 months. I couldn’t work out and had to restrict my moment drastically.

I have to say the surgery itself wasn’t too bad.

The recovery, unfortunately, was bad. In fact, it sucked.

Those first 4 days afterward…damn…the pain was constant and hard. Nothing took it away. Not ibuprofen, not Tylenol. I refused to take the heavy duty prescription pain killer because this particular one always gave me re4ally BAD dreams…and I didn’t need that after just losing my Mom and the shitty year I’d had.

Another month and I was cleared to workout. Damn, had I fallen! I had tried to limit my eating, while recovering, but being sedentary at this age has its issues.

It was hard getting back into the flow of working out. I basically had to start at the beginning again. Sadly most of the gains I had achieved were gone.

Yes, I’m now a certified personal trainer and sports nutritionist and I had to treat myself as a client. Once again due to my age, that metabolism has slowed down and the gains were slow. As always, slower than you want!

Had some complications, pain persisted. Repeated visits to the doctor showed no issues at all, except the keloid scar on the inside of my bellybutton was hard and painful. So some cream to soften it up helped to a point.

Oh well, just have to deal with it. Another pain to add to my list of daily pains.

Life goes on.

A lady I follow on Instagram, Carrie Campbell, was aiming to become a WBFF Pro (she made it too!) in the 40+ division. She posted something her husband’s trainer (husband is a power lifter, they are BOTH motivational speakers too) had said to her:

 10/10/80

10% of workouts will be AWESOME!

10% of workouts will SUCK!

80% of workouts are just putting in the time!

Or to paraphrase NIKE

“Just do it!”

I had given myself 6 months to get back to where I was.

It took longer. Just 2 months short of a year to be exact.

I also tweaked my workout itself, since I now have the added knowledge of becoming  a personal trainer.

I’m happy to report, I am now back to and surpassing the level I was at previously!

All it takes is will power and sticking to it.

This is actually the strongest I’ve ever been in my life and I am now 60!

BTW, I had the 10/10/80 mad into a poster for my home gym!

As I enter my 6th decade of life, I reflect on it…not really any different from every other birthday where I, and probably most of us, tend to do so.

This year is completely different tho, what with the Covid/scam going on almost two years now. I’ve lost more friends and family in the last two years than I can ever recall happening before. Oddly enough none to Covid-19.

I do realize this is one of the “hazards” of reaching this age as well: you outlive some your friends. Bob Schafer told me this would happen; he was around 94 at the time. Sadly, all too many of those gone ahead, died way too young. Troy Lane was 52. Manny “Mandingo” Figueroa was 38. Raquel Llera-Stern was 32. My old friend and sparring partner Spencer Dunstan as well. You will be missed, one and all, and I, for one, thank God that you were in my life.

This leads me to say that I am THANKFUL to ALL my friend and family for being in my life. I wouldn’t be who I am today without your love, influence, and friendship. I will even thank my enemies, tho I don’t feel I have any, but others might feel differently, for what they taught me.

One of the things that stands out the most right at this second, is family. Family includes friends and what many people would consider pets.

You cannot choose your blood relatives; you can choose friends. This choice makes them family. Many times, even more so than blood.

Pets come into your life and become family…and yes many times our personalities clash! Just like life, huh? The Catholic Church says “animals” have no soul. I disagree. All MY “pet’s” have a piece of MY soul. I cannot believe God would turn away such love as a pet both gives and receives. In fact, I refuse to believe it. My God would not do such a thing.

So right now, I want to say, BE with those you love. Spend time with them. All too soon your children will be spread out across the face of the planet. You won’t know if or when you will ever see them again.

Yes “technology keeps us in touch”, and I won’t deny it’s a pretty cool and useful thing…BUT…and it’s a big BUT…it can NEVER replace speaking to a loved one face to face, hugging that person, holding their hand…

There will come a time when your child will no longer want to hold your hand, because they are “big kids” or “adults” don’t do that.

My advice to everyone is:

Hold your child’s hand as often as you can…and REMEMBER it!

Tell your wife you love her

Tell your parents you love them

Tell your grandparents you love them

Don’t let too much time pass before you do

Make memories with everyone…

Someday it will be all you have left of them

So, on top of being a Certified Personal Trainer now…I am now a ..

Specialist in Sports Nutrition!

]]> http://www.omegatactical.com/2021/07/963/feed/ 0 http://www.omegatactical.com/2021/07/remembering/ http://www.omegatactical.com/2021/07/remembering/#respond Sat, 24 Jul 2021 19:47:47 +0000 http://www.omegatactical.com/?p=958

Around 1971 may parents and I took a trip to Spain. My Dad had wanted to go for years, as he still had some distant cousins in Barcelona. A Spanish friend/business partner had told us if we passed thru Valencia, to stop and visit with his family. So we planned on it and did just that.

Once there the Old Spanish mans family didn’t treat us like family… Royalty was more like it! Going as far as loaning us one of the families apartments for our stay. To do this, they temporarily evicted a young couple from said apartment!

We were also given guides by the family to show us around town. As it happens there was some festival for some miraculous Saint going on at the time and the town was in full party swing! S it happened, just down the street from our loaned apartment was the main fair

Back then shooting galleries were part of every festival/fair…now I had been given both a BB-gun and a single shot .22LR rifle for my 7^th birthday …and I LOVED to shoot them! This fair was no exception, and not being big on rides even then, that was where I went!

I too had an escort for the fair, a young daughter of one of the family and she asked me if I knew how to shoot. I told her, “A little bit…” and she said, “Here I’ll buy you the first round, do you think you can get me that stuffed animal?” and pointed to big teddy bear type animal. A “round” it turned out an even dozen pellets. No real firearms, air rifles. I told her, sure, l would try.

She goes and buy the round and the attendant shows me how to load the rifle and hands me 12 pellets. The set of targets for the stuffed animal in question was ping pong balls set on little metal stands. I loaded up, lined up the sights and squeezed the trigger…the rifle popped…and the shot went low and left. The girl looks at me and said “You said you could shoot! You missed!” I told her the sights were off, but now that I know where it shoots…she just looked at me like I was a liar.

Well the next 11 shots knocked 11 ping pong balls off. I looked at the attendant and he says, since you missed one you don’t win anything. I said ok, give me 24 more shoots, and I paid for it this time.

The result was 24 more ping pong balls flying around. So I got the little girl her animal and one more.

So I bought more pellets.

In fact I used all the pesetas my Dad had given me to buy pellets.

For the next 3 hours I knocked EVERYTHING down that the gallery had TO knock down. Ping pong balls, bottles, rolling metal animals, didn’t matter. It went down. After the first 30 minutes the attendant said he had to change out my rifle. I knew he was lying, but it was his stand, so I got a new rifle.

This one shot to the right. Once again it took one shot to figure it out and I continued devastating the gallery. The attendant was in tizzy. He never thought this 10 year old kid could shoot like I could. Finally, I told him, “Look, I just want to shoot and I’m having fun, keep your prizes.” He relaxed visibly and said ok.

By the end the day the little girl was bringing people by to see young American kid shoot…and by evening half the town was gathered around the gallery to watch me shoot. And me? I was having a BLAST!

The gallery attendant made out well in the end, because he had people trying to out shoot me. In fact he asked me to stop by the next day and I could shoot for free as long as I didn’t miss more than 5 shots.

I didn’t.

Facebook and Twitter have silenced a SITTING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

If this doesn’t give you cause to be VERY apprehensive you really need to look into what is going on!

Google, Facebook, Twitter and now Apple, have censored not only the American people but the ENTIRE PLANET from hearing Conservative viewpoints!

You should be scared!

When an entity or group of entities has a monopoly on what information can or cannot be heard, this is totalitarianism. Dissenting or controversial information cannot and should not be withheld.

How can you make an informed decision if you do not have all of  the information? This is what they want. Keep you in the dark and only provide THEIR viewpoint.

We need to think for ourselves. In this day and age, with all the sources of information out there we really have no excuse to NOT educate ourselves.

Now due to these entities having a monopoly on WHAT is posted and WHO posts it, even our sources of information are now compromised.

Library circulation is down throughout America and possibly the planet, because people prefer the ease and comfort of just looking it up online. What books are left on particular subjects and being “accessioned” in favor of “more modern viewpoints.

Authors like Rudyard Kipling and even H.P. Lovecraft (who was VERY Liberal and loathed Republicans!) are being branded as “Racist” and “colonialists”. One has to view their writings through the lens of their time period. If this stays on this path we will soon lose Marcus Aurelius, Sartre and a whole host of others who’s very ideas are being censored. I find this disturbing in light of the American Library Association’s vehement policy against censorship!

WAKE UP, my fellow Americans!

Here’s praying that 2021 will be better than 2020.

In reality, it is up to US to do that.

So…

Success requires replacement:

Replace Netflix marathons with SLEEP

Replace fake influencers with INSPIRING CREATORS

Replace toxic friends with MENTORS

Replace complaining with GRATITUDE

Replace blame with RESPONSIBILITY

Replace alcohol with WATER

Replace overthinking with ACTION

It doesn’t seem like much, altho admittedly some of those can be difficult. I do like beer! However I limit myself to two a day on weekends only. I also eat as little bread as possible.

And yeah…when the world is beating you down and the hits just keep coming…be GRATEFUL.

Yeah you read that right. Now read it again. BE GRATEFUL.

Thank God that He is with you to get you through anything!

Be grateful He gave you the strength of mind, will and body to ENDURE it all and more! You have trained yourself to do this.  We have free will, so WILLINGLY choose to do the things YOU need to do to make yourself STRONG!

Mentally

Physically

Emotionally

Get outside of your comfort level because that is where growth occurs!

So let 2021 be the beginning of the best years we are going to have moving forward.

So while this year has been mostly pretty crappy, there have been some very good things that have happened.

This is one of them!

I am proud to say that I am now a Certified Personal Trainer!

I have always been into fitness and now I am going to be doing it on a professional level!

Look out planet!

I spent over a month reading and viewing videos on this platform ONLY.

I guess I shouldn’t be shocked by this, but initially, Yahoo allowed comments on these news articles at the bottom of the page. Then one day, BOOM! No more comments on any of them. Just like that. No warning. No notice.

Ok, cool.

One might ask why they did this?

Could it be that around 95% of these comments were vehemently AGAINST said articles? And BTW these comments went both ways; if an article was Conservative, the vitriol spewing Left was in the majority of those comments. If they were Liberal, Left leaning, comments of the Conservatives were in the majority.

Ok you would say, that’s understandable.

However, Yahoo is a VERY Liberal news outlet, so the majority of news spin leans that way, the proportion of Liberal to Conservative news on Yahoo tends to be about 70/30 in favor of the Liberal news bent. So by that same token the Conservative comments at the end of the articles FAR outweighed the Liberal comments.

This was enlightening.

When Yahoo allowed it. They stopped it cold turkey.

It actually showed that not everyone believes the spin they give the news. Some people still use their intellect.

Oh and since they’ve put a disclaimer up saying the following:

“Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article comments.”

Safe and engaging? It’s a web site. It’s not a playground or a parking lot. You didn’t get into “fight” in the line at the market. It’s not road rage while driving.

Those are actually dangerous.

This is in the limbo of the “interwebs”, where you don’t “See” anyone or risk actually talking to a person, IN person. Or interacting with someone right in front of you. Someone who might actually take exception to what you have to say and HOW you say it.

For a bit they termed the above “A survey” and did indeed, link you to an actual survey as to how often you read the comments and how often you made your own comments. That option, to take the survey, has since disappeared. Now it reverts back to the message posted above.

Can’t have the public refuting, or Heaven forfend, dispute what and how your “news” was written, I guess. I guess even having an opinion is not good. For them.

News should be just that, news. It should have no spin on it unless it’s an editorial. It should be the FACTS, presented without bias or personal, political or religious views. People should do their own research, like they used to BEFORE the internet.

News should just be the facts. Period. You should be an adult and make your OWN decisions and come to your own conclusions.

Yes I did get furloughed from my day job for TWO months. What did I learn

I learned that I really do NOT want to go back to said job. I’ve been there 15 years. It was fun at first, being a part of a large. well known prestigious organization…till you find out that all large organizations, they care very little for the person in the ground. If you voice your opinion on how you’re being treated, they shame you and tell you that you should feel lucky to be employed there at all.

But this is not a bitch session. This is a POSITIVE post, to say I am taking control (however illusory) of my life again.

I also learned that peace of mind and FAMILY are the most important things you can have!

Before I was furloughed and before all this Covid-19 bullshit started, we were planing on taking some time off to visit our daughter in the Pacific Northwest, where she is stationed with the Navy. Well the furlough came along and we thought, “well shit, we won’t be able to go!” Well guess what? We said “Fuk it!” and went anyway! After all I wasn’t goi be using any vacation time, since I was technically unemployed and the wife has a TON of vacay time!

Ended up being very inexpensive with all the miles we had. Great flights, to and fro even!

But the IMPORTANT part was we had FUN! We saw gorgeous views, we hiked Mt. Ranier and Mt Baker as well through Whidbey Island and Anacortes! Ate too much, drank, too much, and had a shit ton of fun!

Worth. Every. Penny.

To share all that with my wife and daughter was priceless.

Now if you’ve read this far, good for you! What I need ask you, my readers (if any! LOL!) what would you like to see from me in future posts?

I’m a shooter and a shooting instructor.

I’m a martial artist and instructor.

I’m also a fairly varied and knowledgeable about quite a number of different topics, as I consider myself an “Old School Man”.

What is that? A man who has a knowledge base that encompasses a variety of skills/talents and general “know-how”.

So, feel free! Ask me a question!