A Brief Return to Civilization

Tomorrow I hop on a plane to Connecticut (via Idaho, Utah, and Minnesota) to reunite with Meg in time for Match Day. On Thursday at noon, we'll find out where we're gonna live and work for the next 3 years. We plan to spend the next week celebrating with our family and friends up and down the East Coast, enjoying life as much as we can possibly can before Meg starts her 80-hour workweeks in June.

Ranch life is treating me real well, though I gotta say, having responsibilities is tiring. Today we found a two-day-old male calf that had been left or lost by its mother and was shivering at sunrise, unable to stand, body temperature 10 degrees below where it should have been. We got it into a shed, built a fire for it, nursed it from a bottle, and massaged it till we got its temperature back to normal. Tomorrow he'll be joined with a mom whose stillborn calf we had to pull out of her womb with chains and a hand-winch. If we're lucky, she'll take on her foster kid and make him her own. And, just maybe, by the time I get back to the ranch, they'll be following each other around the pasture, chewing on alfalfa and mooing when one of them strays a bit too far away. God I love this job.

--rahul