Ugh

I feel like crap.

I haven't been out on St Patrick's Day in several years, because it's long since turned into Amateur Night. It has gone the way of New Year's Eve, where every moron that never drinks decides to go out and make an idiot of themselves. Besides, the free market capitalizes on these rubes. The end result is that the bars are six people deep with morons; the prices are jacked up; the service sucks; and there's a roadblock on every corner. No thanks.

I felt obligated to go out because Mrs Schwartz bought me a kilt for Christmas. It's custom made in Scotland, and the material wasn't in stock, so it just arrived last week.
As we sat around the house on Saturday, we discussed it and decided that we weren't going out.

Buuuut, I had scheduled to take Mrs Schwartz horseback riding on Sunday. Our ride was supposed to be at 3pm. We were on time, but the place was packed since it was about 65 degrees and sunny. We met a woman and her two little girls, I'd guess 8 and 6. It turns out that her husband used to take the girls horseback riding, but he had recently died, so the mom was taking them for the first time.
The youngest girl rode on the same horse as her mother. They had been falling behind us the whole ride. At one point, when they were about 100 yards behind us, their horse starting trotting. The little girl fell off, but was miraculously unhurt. Mrs S turned her horse around and went back to help. Trail horses don't like turning around, but she's a good rider.
We get moving again and some time later, they got into trouble again, and Mrs S again turned her horse around to help. When it happened a third time, Mrs S's horse was pissed off, and in no mood to turn around again. He started bucking wildly. Mrs S bounced off his neck a few times and ended up sitting on his neck. I wish I had a camera. It took her a while to get herself back over the saddle's horn. She had lost her glasses. I wasn't able to turn my horse around, so I had her hold it while I walked back and found them. By the time we got back to the car, my neck was inexplicable stiff and hurting. I had to walk as if I had a stack of books balanced on my head. Mrs S was a mess. The horse had rung her bell pretty hard. Her neck and head were a mess. She couldn't even talk straight.
We made it home and started hitting the gin.
For those of you have read here a while, you might remember the dangers of this from the slipped disk incident.
This morning, I woke up with a sore neck AND a hangover. By the time I had finished my lunch, I was feeling better. My neck is still pretty stiff, but I have a lot of the mobility back. I'm skippiing aikido for a week to heal.