40/40

I had a great personal victory today. One of the Army things I've never been good at -- for a variety of reasons -- is marksmanship. And of course, being in logistics, the only time we ever go to firing ranges is for our annual qualifications.

Practicing once a year is hardly the way to improve. You can imagine how well someone would do on their physical fitness test if they only practiced that day; now imagine how they'd do if they were never in shape to begin with.

But I did pretty well today -- I shot a perfect score at the range. That one shot in the upper right looks suspiciously like a miss... ... but on further inspection, you can see it does graze the target by a hair. By Army standards, that counts.

Granted, it was a paper target, not pop-up targets, so that made it easier. And because of the range restrictions here, we did not do a kneeling position -- we stayed in the prone-supported the whole time. In retrospect, a bunch of other things could have contributed, too -- good sandbags, decent weather, generous timeframe, a good weapon -- who knows? But I'll take it.

So it's not the stuff of glory, but by logistics standards, it works. And for me, personally, it's nice to know I can do the things soldiers do without any special help from a number 2 pencil.