Only 16 more class days left! Ye gods, I'm ready for graduation. Things are still going pretty damn well for me, though. I've scored 100 on the last three weekly tests, and I won the Top Shooter award for this class! We spent about two weeks doing some pretty intensive firearms training, then this past Monday we shot the POST course. (The POST course is 60 rounds fired from a variety of distances and positions, within certain time limits, with a top score of 120.) We had to shoot the POST course four times, and the averaged scores of all four shoots had to be at least 96 to pass. Well, I shot 119, 117, 120, and 120, for an average of 119--which happened to be the best in the class! Ha! Oh, and I've been informed that I'm the first woman to ever win the shooting trophy from this academy. Ha!

We also ran the obstacle course about a week ago. The instructors like to wait until there's been a good solid rain the night before, so that there's plenty of mud. This picture is of my group before we started the course. (I'm the one on the far right.)

And this is me crawling through mud. (Amusing aside: We ran three miles yesterday afternoon during our PT, and somewhere around the 2.5 mile mark one of the instructors who was running with us looked back at the little gaggle I was in as we were panting and gasping, and said with a cheerful grin, "Just think, you're doing all of this for a really low-paying job!" I replied, "Yeah, but you get to drive a really cool car with lights and siren!")

Okay, this is me climbing over the Really Friggin High obstacle. I'm about thirty feet in the air in this picture, and those cross-pieces that we had to climb up were about three feet apart in most places. I took my time on this one, because the thought foremost in my soft little head was, "Wow, a fall now would really mess up my career!"

And this is the after picture. I'm the muddy one right in the middle. It took forever (and three times through the washer) to get my BDUs clean, and I ended up just throwing the shirt away. But, it was actually a lot of fun (though I have little desire to do it again.)

And I think I'm going to suck it up and buy new running shoes. I'm still suffering from shin splints, and I realized yesterday that I've had the shoes I'm using now for over five years, and the padding is pretty well gone in them. Yeah, I know, there's only three weeks left, but I don't intend to stop running after the academy is over.

Finally, I know I owe several people email. Some of you have written terrific, long, encouraging emails, and I've felt bad for not responding, but ... well, I promise I'll get a reply out before the next millenium!