Last night was one of the coolest things I've done in a long while.  I went all by myself to Park West and partook in Geek Communion.  w00stock came to town, and I couldn't pass it up, even if it meant leaving Evie and Tim behind for a night.  I got married and took on a fulltime job while I was still in college, and Evie's almost 3, so it's been a long time since I felt like a kid.  I'm only 28 and I shouldn't feel so old all the time.  But alas, that's my plight.  What a delight it was to put that aside for an evening and just be me.  All by myself.  Not a mommy.  Not a coworker.  Just plain ole me.  Frankly, I think I forget who that is sometimes.  5 hours of therapy was well worth the trip.

I feel like an outsider all the time.  I'm too geeky for work.  Even thought I'm an application developer, I work for a bank.  Most of the people I work with are not interested in technology; it's their job.  I'm also nearly half the age of many of my teammates.  Plus, I'm a girl on an all male team.  At home, even though Tim shares many of my geeky pursuits, I'm too much of a fangirl for him.  I love my blogs, movies, and tv shows passionately, and he's more of a casual enjoyer.  Among my friends from college, I was the first to get married by far, and that separated me out immediately.  My sister can share my love of Star Wars and Buffy, but she's 3 hours away!

w00stock was a once in a lifetime chance to go and be part of something.  To feel like a cool kid.  To look around and realize I was one of the most attractive people in the room for once.    To feel like an insider.  I spoke the language.  I knew all the in-jokes.  I could sing along with the songs and shout out the RHPS references.  I got to participate in uproarious laughter spawned by a for loop!  (Spawned by a For Loop is my Paul & Storm Tribute Band).

Thank you, w00tstock, for letting me be a person again, for a little while.

Here are some of my videos I took with my Mother's Day present flip video camera.

Evening ladies and gents!

For those of you keeping track, you know I was anxiously awaiting my M4-style magazine today to finish off my paintball marker.  Today, UPS delivered in force.  Behold, my Tippman A5 all grown up:

               

As promised, here are some of the other items that were not included in the previous post:

• M4 Magazine:
  
• Sight Rail:
  
• Weaver Mount and Reflex Site:
  
  
  
• Vertical Grip:
  

This coming weekend there will be much pain caused by these upgrades.  I just hope the pain is caused to others and not to me.  More on that to come!

Paintball season is almost upon us and I've got a bunch of new gear to try out this year.  Will it give me the edge over the 16yr olds on the field?  We'll have to see...  Just to catch everybody up, Erin got me a Tippmann A-5 (http://www.tippmann.com/usa/product_guide/markerDetails.aspx?productId=13) last year for Father's Day.  The marker is a great system and I highly recommend it.  I've had no serious problems with the system itself; only unfortunate incident being a damaged nipple valve on one of my CO2 tanks — not the gun's fault, but certainly changed how I played for those couple of rounds.

For my 28th birthday in October my family banded together and purchased my first set of significant upgrades including:

• A Flatline Barrel with barrel rails:
  
• Collapsible CAR-style butt stock:
  
• Low-profile hopper:
  
• High-pressure air tank with remote line:
  
• Ammo pod and tank kidney pack:
  

While the A-5 is nothing to sneeze at, these upgrades not only improved the way the marker performs, it made it really mean looking — going from this:

              

to this:

               

In January, I also ordered and installed:

• Maddog Designz bolt springs — nothing exciting enough to post a picture of, but they do increase the velocity of the paintball which is very nice
• Sight Rail:
  
• Reflex Sight:
  

Yesterday, I received a new box full of goodies:

• Weaver Mount for my top Sight Rail.  This puts my reflex site up about 1.5-2" higher so I can get to it with my goggles on.
  
• Sling mount for the front of my marker.  This mounts to the rail system that's on the barrel itself and gives me a connection point for the sling I use.
  
• Vertical foregrip.  With the amount of weight that I've added up front the default vertical grip that shipped with the marker wasn't in the right place to balance things properly.  This new grip mounts directly to the bottom rails of the barrel and shifts the weight perfectly.  There's an added side bonus of having a taller monopod to rest the marker on when the situation comes up.
  

There's only a couple more items I want to order before my first weekend out at the field:

• M4-style Magazine.  This is completely for looks and nothing else.
  
• In-Flight Refilling hose for my High-pressure air tank.  Another "boring" piece of equipment that makes life easier as I won't have to remove my tank from my kidney pack to refill it with air.

Once I get the magazine on the marker I'll take new pictures and post them for all to see.  Until then, stay safe out there!

Hello to all of our dozens of followers!  I assure you we're still here and we'll start posting updates soon.  For now, enjoy the new photo albums that have been uploaded:


Evie's First Sledding Trip


Evie's Valentine's Day Party


Perry Family's Trip to Medieval Times for Valentine's Day

We trudged through the snow on a gorgeous December night to the Town Center to attend the Hometown Tree Lighting this year, our first ever.  We waited in the snow while the a capella carolers sang.  Santa finally arrived to cheers!  Evie and Erin danced up a storm in the snow and sang along to every song.  Evie conversed with Santa like he was her best friend, and introduced Daddy and Mommy to him.  "This is my Mommy, and my Daddy is back here.  Do you like my gloves?  They have stripes!"  It turns out Santa DID like her gloves.  After Santa lit the tree, we all gathered in the postal center for hot cocoa and donuts with Santa.  Merry Christmas indeed!

We got family portraits made today.  You can see all the poses by clicking on the image below:

This jam session went on for a full 10 minutes. Here's the tail end of it.


And in the height of her jazzy goodness.

OK, let's start with how I don't want to turn 28.  We're talking upper 20's now... 30-2 is another grim way to think about it.  But it seems my family still knows how to bring out the inner kid in me.  For Father's Day this year Erin got me a Tippmann A-5 basic.  As you can see, it's a pretty cool piece of kit:



For my birthday, they all combined powers and got me a really cool set of upgrades:

• High Pressure Air Tank with Remote Line Kit
• New ACU print hopper pack with air canister pouch
• Flatline Barrel with Battle Shroud
• RAP 4 collapsible CAR stock

I also recently changed my hopper from the one you see above to that found on the Tippmann X7; it presents a much lower profile for better stealth.

Honestly, the gun has a whole new look and feel to it.  I can't wait to go out to the field and try it out.  It should be a blast!

This morning we had mini cinnamon roll for breakfast.  Delicious!  Then, I was able to open presents with my family down in North Carolina via Skype.  Although Evie start out shy, she quickly warmed up and was showing off all of her toddler skills (dancing, throwing balls, playing with noisy toys, and even pulled her slide out of the office to play with that, too).  After an hour of video talks with Mom, Dad, and Luke we went to the paintball store where I picked out my hopper pack and my new stock.  Then, we went to Sonic for lunch.  Delicious again!

Evie's taking a nap currently, so I think it might be time to play some Xbox before getting ready to go to church.  Then tomorrow... Paintball!  I'll be sure to post pre and post pictures along with an update on how well things worked.

OK, I'm going to warn you; it's late, and I'm tired.  I've spell checked, but haven't proof read.  Be nice

Lucas was here last weekend (7 AUG 09 - 11 AUG 09) and it was GREAT.  We spent the majority of our time on the paintball field I'm a member of,  Fox Paintball. 

Saturday we played 4 or 5 games that were 2 rounds a piece for a total of about 5 hours of play.  The first field we played on was one I'd never seen before; it was sparse woods and a creek that ran through it.  Lucas did great on both rounds on that field, he only got out the first of the 2 rounds.  The first round I got tagged by somebody I thought was a ref (he was wearing a bright red shirt).  The second round I was a bit more adventurous — I tried to flank a player that 3 or 4 of my team (Lucas, included) had pinned down.  As I was sneaking down the creek, I was using thick brush as my only cover.  Somehow, the guy I was flanking managed to get his shot perfectly threaded through the brush for a perfect center-goggle shot.  Had it not been so impressively lucky a shot, I probably would have been a bit upset.

The second game was on their mini urban field and was a game of center flag (objective is to get to a flag that is in the middle of the field and push it to the other team's base).  It's about a 1/2 mile hike through the woods to this field, but very worth it.  Luke and I started out in the back field and tried to work our way up the right side of the field.  We got bogged down quickly into a static line fire fight with the other team.  Luke and I had some 2 on 1 cross fires and got 3 or 4 people out when they popped up at the wrong moment, but still weren't able to move up the field.  When the ref called the the 1 minute I decided to go for it.  I moved left to a new bunker.  Then I moved along the bunker until I could see the flag (which was out in the open in the middle of the field; no cover anywhere near by).  I called for suppressing fire and a wall of paint from my team was put into the air.  I, ran for the flag, jumping over the firing line one of my teammates had, grabbed the flag, and ran in the opposite direction to a bunker.  I took 3 breaths, realized I had hadn't taken any return fire, and moved toward the enemy base.  We won the game with mere seconds to spare.

We also played on a junk yard field, their mini urban, as well as a normal woods field that day.  The normal woods field I suffered a weapon malfunction thanks to an issue with the needle valve on my CO2 tank and wasn't able to fire a single shot during either round.  For the first game, I actually stayed back out of ranged and directed a squad-sized group of players (about 4 or 5) on the left flank of the field.  We quickly overwhelmed the left flank and picked off any single player that tried to run from cover to cover.  I never had to take my eyes off the moment on the field and was able to quickly call out runners for our team to take out.  As we advanced up the field, Luke saw an opportunity to flank and eliminate a player — he called for covering fire while he ran to a better position and just lit into the poor guy.  Surprised the other player didn't call himself out, Luke put a second volley into him for good measure.

The second round on this field was a bit less exiting for Luke; I sent him running for an extreme forward bunker as soon as the starting buzzer sounded.  I'd played this side of the field previously and dominated the field from this position.  Unfortunately, I forgot to tell Luke the bunker was painfully exposed on the left flank and to focus fire in that direction.  He was quickly eliminated.  I spent the rest of that game moving up and down the full line of the team helping people get into better positions as I was still suffering from a malfunctioning pin value.  Again, the game came down to the final minute and I ran for the flag.  Unfortunately, while I was moving to a better cover bunker I was eliminated from about 3 different directions.

In between games I was able to fixed my paint marker and get things back in order for the final game we played on.  Unfortunately, I don't recall much about that one.  We left after those two rounds, came home, showered and went to church.

On Sunday, the field was having a 3-hour Family Guy mini scenario.  The underlying story was a battle between Chris Griffin and the old pedophile, Herbert.  I'm not sure if it was planned or not, but all of the groups that had people 20 yrs old or more seemed to be on Herbert's team, while all the younger kids and teens were on Chris' team.  Seems convenient in retrospect.

The first game was really odd.  Chris had to ride his bike from house to house (marked flag stations on the field) in order from 1 - 9 (at least, I think it was 9) to deliver news papers.  It is the first I have ever seen a bike on a woodsball field.  I don't expect i will ever seen such a thing again.  At the sound of the buzzer Luke and I ran out of the base in an effort to get to station 3 in the far left corner of the field to set up a parameter with about 10 other members of the team while close to 50 other members were spreading out into a defensive line.  As we made our way over, we pushed too far forward and got engaged near the first "house" where Chris was closely approaching.  Luke and took charge of two sides of a firing line and kept Chris and his light guard pinned down until Herbert could give Chris a roll of quarters (you can't make this stuff up, folks).  As I was moving to a better position, I was, yet again, shot squarely in the goggles buy a random shot.  I walked back to the restart point while Luke kept firing on the enemy line like a mad man. 

After the 10 minute wait to get "reinserted" there was about 12 people that were also eliminated from our side.  As the reinsertion buzzer sounded we ran back into play.  I looked toward where Luke had been only to find an empty bunker.  I opted to join the rest of the reinserting players that formed a new squad and pushed up hard on the right side into a trench line.  We repelled 3 counter attacks as the youngins tried to dislodge us from the trenches.

Finally having a chance to get out of the trench line, I worked my way back toward the rear and then toward the middle of the field where I saw Luke again.  It was then I realized why I couldn't find Luke as I rejoined the game earlier; our team had pushed up significantly and owned close to 80% of the field.  Luke and I started to move forward and left toward the enemy's main insertion flag.  I was a bit nervous as the enemy team had an impressive high ground advantage over us on that side.  Much to my surprise, just as Luke and I got settled into a couple of cover spots near each other the reinsertion buzzer sounded and close to 30 kids and teens ran at full force down the hill at Luke, and me, and about 10 other of our teammates covering that side.  I still don't understand why, but they all ran past bunkers as they were trying to shoot on the run.  It was a bit hairy, but we managed to eliminate all the charging players without losing a a player.  The game was called shortly after that based on time and score.

The second of the 3 hour-long games is a bit harder to explain.  We had to prevent the other team from finding objects near a tent in the middle of the field.  All I really remember is Luke and got pinned down horribly from 4 or so directions and got eliminated once each.  I'm not sure about Luke, but I went through close to 1,500 rounds of paint that game.  It was pretty crazy with nowhere to move to.  The firing lines were very static; lots of trading suppressing fire and a few chances to take some "sharpshooter" shots to eliminate players.  Luke and I both ran out of paint about 3 minutes before the end of the game.

The last game was really interesting; there were 3 teams: Chris', Herbert's, and a team of Evil Monkeys with pump guns. (You have to pump air into the marker after each shot, making the game significantly harder.  However, these guns are much more quiet and normally very accurate.)  The objective was to shoot and capture the most Evil Monkeys while preventing the other team from doing the same.  Like normal, we all ran that crazy camouflaged people to the center of the field when the starting buzzer rang.  About 10 of us got pinned down in a 3-man bunker and I was very quickly eliminated from a well-aimed shot from my left.  Disappointed with my lack of taking cover (I know better than that!) I walked back to the reinsertion point very grumpy with myself. 

Again, I was separated from Luke during the reinsertion buzzer as he did better at ducking in the opening minutes than I did.  Unable to find him as I got back into the game I went very far left on the field through thick brush.  I got caught up on some underbrush and was eliminated again.  As I reinserted for the second time, I noticed Luke pinned down in a high tower bunker.  I suppressed the enemy squad of about 7 that had him pinned and we fell back.  We again tried moving down the left side of the field with much better success this time.  We caught the monkeys by surprise and managed to shoot a number of them; we just weren't able to ever get close enough to capture them.  Luke claims he got one back to the base while we were separated, but I didn't see it...

Near the end of the game we had an altercation with an Evil Monkey (again... you can't make this stuff up) claiming Luke was cheating.  There were raised voices as I fought the hardwired big brother urge to put my CO2 tank through this guy's head.  All-in-all, a really fun day, though!  I can't wait to get Luke out here to do this again.

Evie and I have been SO BUSY.  Three weekends in a row we've been downstate visiting family for one adventure or another.  We've been doing a lot of camping, which I adore.  Evie has been an absolute treat and done so well.  Her favorite thing is waking up in the morning and sprinting over to Nanna's camper to give her a big hug goodmorning.  She's so used to going down there now, she keeps asking to see Poppy Tim, Mawmaw Quanee, Nonny, Papa John, Kristen, Cameron, and Bobby ALL THE TIME.  Like we can just hop on over there in a minute.  I've been loving all our camping and fun.  We now have our own tent which is adorable and just the right size (6 person).  I have my own fishing pole and tackle box for the first time in my life.  It's like I'm officially an adult now.  Through all the visits, we even found time to finish 3 giant shelf projects with Dad.  It was such a fun time.  I don't get to spend nearly enough time with him, and it was a blast.  This past weekend was Dad's 50th birthday party.  We pooled our resources and got him an AWESOME RC car that goes up to 35mph.  What a blast of a summer it's been, and there's still more fun to come!