Day 332

Today kind of sucked.  It started out OK, we woke up with the alarm, but stayed in bed for about an hour surfing and playing games.  Then it was get up, do the pet stuff, and have breakfast.  After that I surfed and played a little Minions until about 10:30 or 11.

Then the shit started.  Lucy wouldn't sit on the couch, or in her bed.  We looked and found out that the cats had pissed all over both of them.  The futon is ruined.  The dog bed was washable.  I'm going to have a great time cutting up that cat piss soaked futon to put it in the garbage can.

Then I went out to the garage to do some reloading.  I knew it was going to be hot, but I figured I'd only be out there for a limited time and I'd have the fan.  Hah.

I moved the reloader to the kitchen table.  I decided to check the powder drop.  The battery was dead - so a trip to the house.  The scale wouldn't zero.  I tried all sorts of things and finally gave up.  It's history.  Fortunately I had a backup.  The drop was OK.  I loaded about 10 rounds.  I was having real trouble seating the bullets, so I was concentrating on that.  Then I noticed that the powder drop wasn't working anymore.  As I operated it to see what was wrong, a part fell off.  Then it was 10 or 15 minutes on the floor until I found it.  I ended up tightening two screws that had worked themselves loose even though they both had lock washers.

I fought with seating the bullets for awhile and finally broke down and adjusted the powder drop die to bell the case more.  Of course I had to fight the wrench to turn the die.  After that the primer feed got worse and worse.  I was double clutching the press to feed a primer.  I did 34 rounds before I noticed that the double clutch could occasionally cause a double powder charge.  So I had to weigh all of them looking for any double charges.  Because the different headstamp brass had different weights I had to match them with known good ones.  I ended up identifying three that I threw away.

All the time it was getting hotter and hotter.  About 2 (three hours in) I left to have lunch.  I'd only done 100 rounds, so after lunch I went back.  By then it was at least 90 in the apartment.  The primer feed was still giving me a pain in the ass.  I did finally figure out a workaround that was better than single feeding the ones it didn't feed.  I made a little better time, except for the primers I spilled on the floor.

I finally finished another 125 rounds.  At that point I ran out of bullets.  I had wasted 25 out of the 250 due to the various problems.  It was 5.  I'd spent 6 hours loading 225 rounds.  I did the math on what the primers, bullets, and powder cost me, and I'm not sure I saved that much money. 

Things got worse when I went back to the house.  After I took a shower Ellen gave me a big hug and said "Happy anniversary".  I'd spent our 40th anniversary in the garage. Crap.

The rest of the evening was surfing and watching the TV gun shows.