This Is SPARTA!

Yesterday I spent the morning with Dad at the fairgrounds volunteering for a horse show.

Trust me, it sounds soooo much better than it really was.

To be honest, it was kinda like watching paint dry.

As I sat there for three hours opening and closing the exit gate I was able to observe the weird world that is Western Horse Shows. Like for example, do the amount of rhinestones directly affect the rider's chances? None of the men wore tight sparkly shirts, and yet a number of them won. Perhaps it is belt buckle size that truly determines a rider's worth. That and their gigantic hat. Can you not ride a horse western-style without the hat? Does the horse attempt to buck riders without hats?

I mean seriously, some of those women looked like Cher on a horse.

It's also seriously creepy walking in front of a line of nervous horses standing around waiting their turn in the ring. You could feel the nervousness emanating from the riders and horses. Needless to say I kept my hands to myself and gave them a wide berth.

One of the elements of the competition required the riders to lope. Not being familiar with riding in any way I have to say those horses reminded me of Quasimodo limping around the bell tower. Its like they were making fun of retarded children.

And lastly: fake tails. These horses had the most gorgeous tails I've ever seen (no obvious signs of pinworm infections), and turns out the damn things were fake! What's next? Highlights and fake nails?

Nuts.

This morning was my court appearance for the traffic ticket I ranted about here. I came equipped with pictures of the intersection, timing of the light sequence, and my fabulous Lawyer.

After buzzing through the security system and waiting outside for about twenty minutes, all of us 'defendants' were shown into the court room and asked to take a seat and be quiet. Apparently no one bothered to tell the thirty or so police officers in the back few rows the rules because it was basically a giant Cop Party back there. I'm pretty sure they were all trying to pick out their victims and compare who gave the most ridiculous ticket.

After some yahoo went through his cases, we were called up first. Basically this is what happened, all within about a 1 minute period:

Lawyer and I walked up to the stand and Magistrate asked if this was a hearing (which I was like, um yeah?) and Lawyer said something about yes or no (that part was a bit technical for me) and then Magistrate started to dismiss the case when Cop came striding up from the Cop Party in the back of the room and he was all "Are you serious?" and Lawyer was all "Oh, I've chosen my words carefully, Persian. Perhaps you should have done the same!" and Cop was all "This is blasphemy! This is madness!" and Lawyer was all "Madness?.....This is Sparta!" and then he righteously kicked Cop out of the courtroom.

Actually, I sort of blacked out from nervousness when we walked up to the stand so most of that could possibly maybe have been exaggerated a little bit. Or stolen from a movie.

Either way, Victory Is MINE!!