Great Northern Winter

That's what we've been having, a great winter. It seems as if it's snowed almost everyday. We have at least 6-8" of base, but the sun has been out daily, too. I've been skiing a lot. Last week I left after school a couple times to lay down some runs on the "mountain", then Fridays are ski club days and Sarah and I skied together yesterday. We got a couple inches of fresh powder during the day on Friday which made for great conditions after school. There was even enough powder for me to try some stunts in the terrain park. I caught like three feet of air off some sweet jumps! Although strapping lumber to my feet and rocketing down an icy mountain makes sense, the addition of rails to that activity continues to elude me.

We had a little scare with the horse earlier this week as he wasn't eating and, consequently, pooping much. For Rambo, that's a big deal. Like all of our animals, it seems he has an overdeveloped food gland in his brain, so if he's not eating, it's a problem. I've come to believe that horses are very closely related to lizards, that is, they are perfectly healthy or they are dying. Just my experience. So we worked our way through Monday thanks to some good friends at Cornell and out in Lodi and Sarah and I went out to check on him after work. It was a confusing and stressful day with lots of cooks in the kitchen predicting everything from nothing being wrong to possibly colic. The idea was floated that I could go out there by myself and do some diagnostic work and call back into the office, but after a quick google of "take horse temperature" and a couple of startlingly informative youtube videos, I decided that it might be a good idea to have someone along in case things went south. Horses it seems are rarely trained to hold a thermometer under their tongues, and one piece of oft quoted advice is, "tie a string to the end of the thermometer". Anyway, he had good digestion noises going on so we walked him around a bit, and started feeding him a serving of beet pulp a day to help his digestion and get him hydrated. He seems to be back to normal now and eating everything in sight. Him and Murphy look majestic in their wooded winter paddock and I've been back out to walk him around and practice some training exercises that I've been reading about. I enjoy scouting the property from the saddle looking for turkey tracks, too. Makes me feel like I'm on the trail of a cattle thief that I will catch up with one day. And when I do... BANG!, and straight into the marinade.

Well, that's about the news for now. Yesterday was ski day, so that makes today pick up the crap around the house day... and believe me, there's plenty of it, too. Seems like somebody comes in and makes a mess while I'm away at work during the week with the sole intention of ruining my weekend.

99.9 degrees by the way. That was the reading from the thermometer. Another check mark on my bucket list.