Horses!

Friday I left work a little after lunchtime to go for my make-up horsemanship lesson. One of the guys showed me how groom, saddle, and bridle the horse. I didn't think I would be riding that day, but the next thing I knew, I was up on a horse! The lesson was great - it ended up lasting almost two and a half hours, and I learned how to walk and trot, and got to spend a lot of time on the horse. The instructor suggested that I go ahead and start beginning western riding and skip the horsemanship class, since we'd basically covered it all.

My butt hurt the rest of the day.

Saturday morning we took Bandit sheep herding. When we were leaving, there were about 5 sheep in the field, and Bandit was herding two of them that had split off. I was at the gate getting ready to leave, and I kept calling him, telling him "that'll do," but he wouldn't get off those sheep. It wasn't until he ran around the barn and came back with all 5 sheep that he was satisfied enough to go home.

After that we had lunch, I took a short nap, and then it was off to my beginning western class. The lesson wasn't as nice as my Friday one, because there were a lot more people in this class, but it was still fun. I seemed to have a little harder time this time though, because this other guy was telling me to put my hips one way, have my heels down, and keep my hands forward and up, and after all that, he'd tell me to relax, and I was wondering how the hell I was supposed to relax when my body was in the most uncomfortable position possible. Beyond all that, I had to remember to breathe.

Oh, and saddles weigh a TON.

In the evening we went to this sushi place in Pleasanton, and it was pretty good. The fish was really fresh, and I really enjoyed my Rock 'n Roll. I still couldn't get Marc to try some sushi! Then we watched In Good Company on DVD. Marc thought it was really corny, but I thought it was a decent movie. Nothing stellar, but decent entertainment.

Sunday morning we ran some errands - fish supplies, pet supplies, and a glove for Marc for a company softball game he has. We bought some soft nail caps for the cats - I clip their nails on a regular basis, but they're still sharp enough to snag on furniture, and they totally ruined our last boxspring, so we didn't want them to ruin our new one. We'd never declaw them, and the guy at the store said that these don't bother the cats at all because they can still retract them normally. I put them on both the cats (easy as pie, since they're used to having their nails clipped), and they didn't even seem to notice. Hopefully they can still scratch things normally and not feel much different - just without ruining the furniture.

In the afternoon, Deepali brought over her new dog, Chunky, a maltese. I never knew how tiny they are! Stubby was bigger than him. He was a bit scared in the beginning, but seemed to be pretty relaxed at the end. He was really cute. Stubby seemed to be the most interested, because he kept following poor Chunky around. Our cat seems to be the dog intimidator.

I tried to work on the new site some more in the evening, but managed to only get in about 5 minutes worth of work done, in which time all I did was break something. I'm hoping to have it done by the time I write my 300th blog entry (!), which should be within a week.