On a mission...

I'm in the final countdown until I leave now. I have seven days left from today, so the mission from here on out is to cram in as much fun as possible before departure. My last day of work was Friday, so no work will help out.

I actually felt compelled to start a little bit early with my mission to maximize fun. Last Monday I called in sick, and instead took Thor and Winnie to the zoo, and Jake met us there with Erica. Tuesday I took a step back by having to devote my evening to traffic school to clear up a little ticket I received a while back. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, there was some guy in there that was kind of crazy, and while I was forced to question his mental stability, I was also grateful to have his contributions. He made the class time go by much faster than it would have gone otherwise. There was also a lady in the back of the class who appeared to have had way too much plastic surgery done on her face that was actively competing with him for the title of traffic school crazy person. I think in the end the crazy guy won out when he started telling us about how he returned to the site of his ticket to try and find the cop who issued it and confront said police officer about some unspecified lingering question he had about the ticket.

Wednesday however completely made up for traffic school since Cousin Dorian took me out horseback riding. I LOVED it! My only previous experience on a horse was on a half dead looking mare in Hawaii that kept leering back at me in a funny kind of way that made me paranoid that she was going to bite me. I reassured myself that there was no way that they would put a stupid tourist on a horse that bites...not true folks. At the end of the ride the "guide" asked me if I'd been bitten yet because she bites all her riders. I finished the last portion of the ride terrified that any minute she would whirl back and chomp down on my leg. Thankfully my ride with Dorian went much better. I rode a very large horse named Beavis who was a very good natured animal, and relatively obedietn. He did seem to have a certain affinity towards walking really close to a barbed wire fence if I didn't watch him, and would periodically decide on his own that it was time to start heading back to the ranch. On one occasion he did actually get turned all the way around and started heading out in the wrong direction before I figured out how to get him back in compliance with my wishes to proceed to the top of a little mountain. On the way back he kept breaking into an unauthorized trot, and then of course once I wanted him to trot he acted all resistant. Still, on the whole he was very obedient, and I suspect that his brief periods of bad behavior can be attributed to rider error. Either way, I loved it, and I want to go again.

Saturday I went shooting out on the other side of the lake, and was again reminded why I love Utah. I like the desert, and I like to shoot guns in the desert. It was perfect weather for it, and even Utah lake look oddly clean and blue.

So now the question is what I can come up with to do this week that's going to be even more fun than last week. Let me know if you have any ideas, I have only 7 days to enjoy my personal freedoms before I turn them in to the US Army.