Thoughts on self-defense practice

After looking over some things at the last Carnival, and remembering some others I'd read, had some thoughts to put down.

You're at a restaurant. Sitting at table, having a good dinner, and the "Oh shit!" situation happens. Every tried drawing from an eating position? Try it. Make sure your piece is unloaded, holster it(or pocket or purse it or whatever), and sit down at the table. Make sure you're sitting as you normally would, then pick a spot as armed robber/kidnapper/terrorist/whatever that just came out with a sub-gun or something from under a coat and draw. I mean actuallydraw, like you would for real, fast and trying to get lined up on the bad guy fast. It ain't that easy. If you don't watch it you may bang the barrel on the table as you try to raise it, or bang your elbow on the back of the chair(I did that once in practice and nearly dropped the gun; I doubt I could have shot accurately with a half-numb arm). And depending on angles, you may find yourself having to fire one-handed at an odd direction; you can't always kick the chair back out of the way, or might be in a booth. So try it.

Someone(may have been the Geek) mentioned reading of some ladies taking a chair to the range and setting up to practice as if sitting in a car when a situation you can't drive away from happens. Think about drawing, getting it past/over/under the steering wheel and pointed out the window, then firing. Again, quite possibly one-handed.
UPDATE: this was at Hell in a Handbasket, here at 'Avoid the Bucket', taking notice of this post at The Cathouse.

As various people have pointed out at different times, you need to get out of the habit of standing in a solid position and firing. If a bad guy is shooting/cutting at you, you need to be moving; away to the side, or maybe- in some circumstances- towards him.

Have you ever tried to shoot accurately at a silhouette while actually jumping around? Or running?

If you've got a place where you can safely try it then do. Next time you shoot. In any case, take your unloaded piece and try it on some target at home; it's liable to surprise you. (Note: soft-air guns are great for this. I used to have a 'snarling robber' silhouette on the wall with the sticky target hung COM) If you can't actually run around(please don't scare the range officers and/or other shooters), try just shifting left-right and back, or a step back and forward while shooting.

And, again as has been pointed out by others, start looking for/thinking of cover(remember: concealment hides you from sight; cover actually protects you). Most bad guys can't seem to shoot worth crap, so if you can shoot from behind something that'll actually protect you from any accurate shots, you go home and the bad guy goes to jail or morgue. Which is the proper outcome, after all.

I've come to think that doing almost anything different from standard practice is helpful, if only because it breaks you out of the standard line of thinking about shooting and better prepares you. Remember the 'practice as you plan to fight' idea. Because, as Bill Jordan said, there's no second-place winner in a gunfight.