Update, with archery
I'm now into both my work and property busy season and am trying to juggle things so I can somehow free up time to read Fool's Assassin in the middle of next week! I know what I'll end up doing is searching for "Fool" and reading those sections first, which is clearly not an ideal plan.
I would be having a rather tedious time, except I accidentally took up a new hobby. Two weekends ago I was driving past the archery park I went to back in 2009 as part of my "new things" project, and decided to drop in and shoot a round to postpone going home to annual reports. I don't know why I let five years go by before going back, since I had fun then and even more fun this time. So much fun in fact that I looked at beginner bows in their store afterwards and decided to buy one, rationalising that holding the bow and pulling the string back would be excellent exercise for my arms and shoulders and would help counteract time at the computer.
Most modern bows aren't made of wood, but I paid a little more to get one with a wooden handle, rationalising again that since it would be living in my house I wanted it to look nice. Which it does, at least to my uneducated eyes. If I ever join a club maybe I'll feel the need to get something more up-to-date!
I initially just bought four arrows, but upgraded to a quiver and more arrows this week. Back quivers apparently aren't the thing any more, but I want to impersonate Legolas and also stretch my right shoulder as much as possible, so that's what I went with. It is seriously fun to reach behind you take out an arrow! I'm sure it has to be more fun than having the arrows hanging at your side.
There are some logistics issues with archery:
1. You need a target that will stop your arrows and is big enough that you can hit it most of the time. For now I'm using hay bales, but apparently wool bales stuffed with tightly-packed plastic are also good.
2. You need room to miss safely. Fortunately I have that, and this new use for my space is making me better disposed to all the work of weed spraying and mowing and whippersnippering at this time of year.
3. You need to find your arrow when you miss, which is more difficult than it sounds. The arrow embeds itself in soft ground leaving only a tiny bit visible. This is becoming less of a problem as I miss the bales entirely less often.
(I took the bulls-eye target off after the first day, since it clearly wasn't going to last very long. Now I just aim at the middle of one of the bottom two bales.)
If any locals are interested in giving it a try, come to the archery park with me! huckle and her family came up last weekend and we did the beginner's course. I tried the intermediate course this week and would happily do it every day if I could. Maybe one day I'll get good enough to hit the zombie.
Also, if you can recommend books with a strong archery element, please let me know. There's Legolas in Lord of the Rings of course, and Alec in the Nightrunner series - which I recently reread and which probably had me subconsciously primed to acquire a bow.
I would be having a rather tedious time, except I accidentally took up a new hobby. Two weekends ago I was driving past the archery park I went to back in 2009 as part of my "new things" project, and decided to drop in and shoot a round to postpone going home to annual reports. I don't know why I let five years go by before going back, since I had fun then and even more fun this time. So much fun in fact that I looked at beginner bows in their store afterwards and decided to buy one, rationalising that holding the bow and pulling the string back would be excellent exercise for my arms and shoulders and would help counteract time at the computer.
Most modern bows aren't made of wood, but I paid a little more to get one with a wooden handle, rationalising again that since it would be living in my house I wanted it to look nice. Which it does, at least to my uneducated eyes. If I ever join a club maybe I'll feel the need to get something more up-to-date!
I initially just bought four arrows, but upgraded to a quiver and more arrows this week. Back quivers apparently aren't the thing any more, but I want to impersonate Legolas and also stretch my right shoulder as much as possible, so that's what I went with. It is seriously fun to reach behind you take out an arrow! I'm sure it has to be more fun than having the arrows hanging at your side.
There are some logistics issues with archery:
1. You need a target that will stop your arrows and is big enough that you can hit it most of the time. For now I'm using hay bales, but apparently wool bales stuffed with tightly-packed plastic are also good.
2. You need room to miss safely. Fortunately I have that, and this new use for my space is making me better disposed to all the work of weed spraying and mowing and whippersnippering at this time of year.
3. You need to find your arrow when you miss, which is more difficult than it sounds. The arrow embeds itself in soft ground leaving only a tiny bit visible. This is becoming less of a problem as I miss the bales entirely less often.
(I took the bulls-eye target off after the first day, since it clearly wasn't going to last very long. Now I just aim at the middle of one of the bottom two bales.)
If any locals are interested in giving it a try, come to the archery park with me! huckle and her family came up last weekend and we did the beginner's course. I tried the intermediate course this week and would happily do it every day if I could. Maybe one day I'll get good enough to hit the zombie.
Also, if you can recommend books with a strong archery element, please let me know. There's Legolas in Lord of the Rings of course, and Alec in the Nightrunner series - which I recently reread and which probably had me subconsciously primed to acquire a bow.