Guns and Gummies

Last friday was a super fun day.
After class, Jared, Scott, Kenton, and Jen took 8 of us girls to the shooting range south of town. Despite the fact that I vaguely remember shooting a bb-gun about 10 years ago, Scott gave all of us a quick class on how to stand while shooting, how to hold the gun, how to aim, and most importantly, how to handle one safely.

Once we got the basics down, we went over to the pistol range. There we shot 3 .22 pistols (one semi automatic and two revolvers), a 9 mm, a .357 revolver, and a .45 glock. Here are some pictures:



Kenton giving some final advice about this gun.





I did pretty good for my first time ever shooting.



After the pistol range, we headed over to the riffle range where we learned how to shoot 2 .22 riffles (one was a pump-action the other had a clip) and an AR 15. The AR 15 was easily the coolest gun I've ever seen. We were able to shoot targets 200, 300, and 400 yards away. I think it's capable of going farther, but our skill was limited, being mostly beginners. Although, I was able to hit the 400 mark the first time I aimed at it and 3 times in a row. Oh yes, be impressed. (actually, I'm pretty sure that's not all that impressive; but i don't know guns.)

Later that night my friend Lish and I attempted to make gummy bears. We had looked up a recipe online and bought a cheap mold and ingredients. So we got all set up in the tiny commons kitchen with our supplies and a boombox and were dancing along while we were stirrin' and basically just having a grand old time. We followed all of the directions exactly (an impressive feat while dancing) and poured the mixture into our adorable little zoo animal mold and put it in the freezer to harden.

After the appropriate amount of time had passed, we took them out and they were still not very firm, so we put them back. When we finally got tired of waiting, we took them out again and they had definitely not hardened one bit. So we attempt to take them out of the mold anyways. Fail. Not only were we unable to get them out in one piece (or at all without the aid of a fork handle), but they were also incredibly sour and were the consistency of sand that had been turned into glue.

Nevertheless, we decided to make some adjustments and try again. So I see a sugar container on the counter next to the salt and pepper shakers and add a very generous helping of it to the gummy bear mixture along with several cups of water.

While it was heating up, our teacher for this week, Barb Leslie, walked in and told us a fun story about how she's a horrible cook. Apparently, she tried to make mashed potatos for her husband right after they had gotten married. Unfortunately, she didn't realize that if you try to use new potatos, it turns into a glue/cement. So she's adding tons of milk and mashing away with her little potato masher and eventually it gets to the point where she's lifting the entire pot whenever she tries to lift her masher. At this point, she's so frustrated that she takes the whole pot, masher, and potato cement mixture into her hands, walks out the door, and launches it into the yard.

After hearing her inspiring story and spending much more time on our gummies than we had anticipated, we decided that it'd be more fun to join in a game than to continue with our failed experiment. So, with mostly exaggerated dissappointment, I took a wooden spoon and scraped the gummyfail into the garbage while Lish and I were going on and on about how "disappointing" and "horrible" the whole thing was. While in this state of dramatic sarcasm, I completely threw the pan, mixture and wooden spoon into the garbage in a manner worthy of Mrs. Leslie's story. After a good laugh, we took the pot and spoon out of the garbage and washed it out in the sink.

But, having never tasted this second mixture, I still had a faint hope that maybe this time it would've turned out better. So I took a tiny bit of un-garbage-tainted mixture and tasted it.

Words cannot express how horrible it was. I felt like I was swimming in the ocean with my mouth open.

So I turn to Lish with the look of total disgust still on my face and say, "ugh! I don't understand why it's so salty! How does that much sugar turn something sour into something that salty?!"

Only then did we realize that the "sugar" container was filled with salt. Only at JHBC.

But even though our gummies were a total disaster food-wise, it was an irreplacable experience friendship-wise. Who would've thought that a whole lot of salt would bring us a whole lot of laughter and give us a story that niether of us are likely to soon forget.