Nothing like a full tummy to help your shooting! Sunday was once again range day at our household.

We’re not a religious family, but we do enjoy a good Sunday breakfast. A few years back, when we lived in Davis, California, my wife and I developed the habit of going to a cute little diner called Cindy’s every Sunday morning. When we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, we abandoned the practice, mostly for reasons of time.

However, this weekend my wife had her final class for her doctorate. Hooray! (She’s been taking classes every other Friday night and all day Saturday for the past few years, which really put a crimp in our schedules and home life. Writing her doctoral thesis will actually be a piece of cake in that her time will now once again be her own.)

We decided to celebrate by finding a new Cindy’s. (We’d tried the local Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, which makes a decent three-egger breakfast, but it was a very poor substitute.)

So off we went to the Riata, a cowboy bar & restaurant in the newly renovated downtown Livermore. Breakfast was awesome. Eggs were light, fluffy and voluminous; my wife’s linguica was excellent; service was fast and attentive. There’s a pretty long list of entrees to try out over the next several Sundays.

So that was one tradition reinstated. The second was heading off to the range to reacquaint ourselves with my wife’s two Beretta 92s: the “house gun,” Beauty,

and my wife’s as-yet-unnamed Beretta 92 Type M (a 92 Compact with a slimmer grip ’cause it’s an 8-shot single-stack).

My wife needed a little coaching to get back in the groove, but by the end of the session she was on target and nailin’ ‘em to point of aim. I didn’t shoot as much as she did, but shot enough to reassure myself, despite last weekend’s debacle, that I can still shoot well when I relax and put my mind to it.

Confidence restored! Next up: confirming my loads for Boomershoot!