Estobug was feeling a little different the other day.
He didn't quite know HOW he felt, it was just different. It seemed that he felt like doing something different...something...adventurous. But he didn't quite know what.
He was watching a little TV that evening when a commercial for boot-cut denim jeans seemed to draw his interest. Not the jeans, especially, but the fine- looking men and women wearing them and the outdoorsy look they had. Right then and there, he decided.
"I'm going to a dude ranch. That's what I want to do!", he exclaimed to no one in particular, since he was alone at the time.
The next day, Estobug looked up dude ranches on the internet, found one that was not too far away, and called them on the phone. It turns out that they had an opening the very next week because a banker fellow had just cancelled. So, Estobug, seeing that as divine intervention, signed up immediately.
They told him to be at the ranch at 6:00 AM on Monday. He thought that was a little early in the day, but figured that was when they were gathering for a big, hearty breakfast before heading out to herd some cows, or whatever it was they did on a dude ranch.
The more he thought about it, the more excited he got. I was so excited that he went right out and bought himself a hat, a western looking plaid shirt, another belt with a big buckle on it, and, yes, a pair of boot-cut denim jeans along with an expensive pair of genuine crocodile-skin cowboy boots. At home, he looked at himself in the full-length mirror in the bathroom and thought, "All Riiiight! I'm lookin' gooood.".
At 4:00 AM on Monday, his alarm clock went off, just as he had set it to do. He jumped out of bed, put on all of his nice new clothes, checked himself in the mirror again, closed and locked the front door as he left the house, and got into his car. He travelled the hour or so that it took to reach the ranch which he found without any trouble because the driving directions he printed from MapQuest took him right to the front door. Not only that, he arrived right at 5:55 AM, just as he had planned.
Everyone he met commented on how nice he looked in his new western gear. They especially liked his boots. That made Estobug feel really good inside and he complimented them right back on items of apparel that he could see were new.
As for breakfast, he had been right. There was a lavish assortment of breakfast foods arrayed on the huge wooden table in the ranch house. Everyone was seated and introductions were made all around. The conversations around the table were interesting and informative.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.
Estobug's alarm clock was incessantly trying to pry him out of the nice little dream he had been having. At 6:45 AM, he realized just how much of a dreamworld he had been in when he finally got to the ranch. He had had to jump-start his car and later he had to backtrack twice through the driving directions he had printed because they apparently failed to take highway construction into account.
As he got out of the car, a burly looking man in dusty clothes yelled at him from across the yard, "You Escobug?"
"Yes, I am.", he replied.
"That horse right over there is yours. Get on it! We're late!"
Without going into any more detail, suffice it to say that all his assumptions about a day at a dude ranch were found to be sorely misguided and the next time he felt a little "different", he took some aspirin and slept it off.