Today we left Steve and Denise’s for the trip back to Vermont. We jokingly called their house ‘little house on the prarie.. though they have neighbors on both sides, the next houses after that are about a half mile away.. All around them are green rolling hlls.. and I do mean.. that’s all that’s around them…

 

 

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And lots of these (not our relatives though)

 

 

 

 

 

    One thing I haven’t mentioned about Denise is that In keeping with the ‘Little Home’ theme, she’s a fabulous quilter. Before we left this morning we got a tout of just the stuff that was on the top of her and her mother Alice’s quilting pile. Evidently there was much more that we didn’t get to see. These pictures don’t do these things justice.. they are absolutely works of art.

 

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   We left Leavenworth about noon for the 45 minute drive to the airport. . Before we did, we planted a SamStone near the base of a newly planted tree…

 

 We got to the Kansas City Airport in plenty of time.. unfortunately our incoming plane had been delayed in Denver.. so we were going to miss our connection in Chicago.  Judging by the lines that sprung up, everyone else was going to miss their connection as well.   After three frustrating calls to the United phone service center  we inbally got our new flights squared way.. but not before we were sent over to another terminal to get on a Delta flight they had supposedly rebooked us on.. but eveidently failed to do so..

 

We sprinted back to our original terminal and made the later Chicago connection with only seconds to spare.. or so we thought. We ended up spending another 45 minutes waiting on the runway due to anticipated landing delays in Chicago.. Sheeeesh…   It’s never easy

   We’re now safely in the air again and headed to Burlignton. In the end we should get there only 3 hours late (I hope) .. .   Here I am on the plane frantically trying to catch up for all the IBM work I refused to do while I was traveling with my family (good for me.. I think/hope). I have a big meeting on Tuesday I’m just not prepared for.. but I really, really, really had a good vacation with my family..

 

 

 We’re eager to get home and see Scott, Mary and Chai.. and.. to be around Sam’s stuff. This trip has taken us to all four time zones in the continental US.. The four of us have really enjoyed being together and relaxing .. Of course we miss Sam like crazy . We’ve found ways of working him into our trip every day.. it’s a strange new life for us..

    Tomorrow marks the sixth month anniversary of Sam’s death.. It’s so hard to believe that it’s been a half a year already.. It literally seems like last week to me.. the memories are that sharp., If you’re reading this.. please mark the day by thinking of Sam.. thinking of us.. and really sending some love to your family and good friends. We’ll be doing the same..   

     On a related note…

 

Sam’s 15^th birthday would have been a week from tomorrow.. May 28^th.. that’s memorial Day. We’re going to mark his birthday with an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament in Volunteers Green in Richmond starting at Noon (5/28) .. followed by Ice cream, cake and of course, music. Please spread the word around ! Let us know if you’re available to play music !  

We love you all.. and we really love you Sam…

-me

ps. Gabe lost a tooth on the plane !

 

 We had a very peaceful day.  We woke late at Diane’s brother Steve and his wife Denise’s house. .Our nephew Michael had showed up sometime in the night.. so it was food catching up with him.  After a breakfast of cold pizza, Steve and I went out for a 5 mile run on the back country roads  Whoever told me that Kansas was flat was lying.. It was great talking with Steve. it helped slow him down so I could keep up and it was fun getting his views on stuff. Steve retired from the army after 28 years. It was fun doing the compare and contrast between our employers.   On our run  we had the ‘kids today’ talk… and the ‘George Bush’  and ‘Iraq‘ talks..  Our views are surprisingly similar given how different our backgrounds are..

    Steve is also an avid history buff.. World History, US History .. and even his family history. He showed us the most amazing family history he’s been working on. . He’s done a tremendous amount of research on old ship’s manifests, pension records and travel documents to trace both of his and Diane’s parents lines back in time.

Here are Diane’s granparents passports from Italy. Her grandfather had already been living in the US when his first wife died. He went back to italy to pick up Diane’s grandmother Piearina

 

Here they are as they boarded the boat to America

Here’s Constantine as an older man

Diane’s Grandmother , Pierina is in the center of this picture.. I’ always thought she looks very much like Diane ..

 

These family histories are even more important to me since Sam’s passing. Itss”s so important for us to capture these memories. My dad has also put together a family history . It’s a great read.  I think I’ll try to link all of these documents from Sam’s website.

 Steve managed to  pull a Mark Twain and convinced Gabe to cut the back 40 with his tractor… Gabe loved it.  

While he played farmer, Elizabeth took Diane and me on an explore of nearby Leavenworth knasas. Leavenworth is best known as the site of a large federal and military penitentiary…   In the mid 1800’s it was an important way point on the way west. Lewis and Clark came through here on their trip through.  We walked down to the River Shore of the Kansas river where large riverboats used to land… There was serious flooding here a few weeks back and the site has been pretty messed up. Here’s a swimming pier that was ripped up

And here I am ankle deep in the residual mud

 

Around 3:30 we all piled into cars and drove to a nice Italian restaurant to celebrate Elizabeth‘s graduation. Very nice…

 
Once we got home, our niece Stephainie showed up with her Italian greyhound   Zoey.. that made 6 dogs– 3 Italian greyhounds (Ziggy , Calvin and Hobbes,) and two German shorthairs : (Bones  and Zena )

 Four goats: (Pippy, Julie. Angel, and Sarah),

A chinchilla (Stitch),

two turtles: (Turtleman and Gamera)

Six hens (White, Black, Brown.. etc)  and one rooster: (Beak)

Approx 750,000 bees (mary1, mary2, mary3……maryN),

It was a bit like a zoo !

We spent the end of the day sitting outside watching the sun set, the moon appear and listening to the frogs come out..

  A perfect day in Middle America.  We felt you here Sam.

-jc

Before I start, I have a confession to make.. I’ve had too much mead to write coherently.. .. I know the expression ‘too much mead’ hasn’t been uttered much in the last millennium , but I’m at my brother in law Steve’s in Leavenworth, Kansas.. Steve is, among many other things, a very accomplished  mead brewer. He raises honey..

and basically useses a fair portion of it to make the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage.. yum. After two bottles of this it’s likely to add a little grog to the blog ..

    We’re here  in Kansas to celebrate the graduation of our niece Elizabeth from nursing school. Elizabeth graduated with honors for her nursing program in Topeka and will soon start working in Framingham Mass.. only a few miles from where my folks live.

      After a last late night walk around San Diego Bay we wet to bed early last night.

We had to leave very early this morning. We had to get up at 4:00 AM ..(ugh) to make our flight

The plane to Denver was full, I had a middle seat.. and was sitting next to a baby…

even so, I was on the plane for about 5 minutes before I fell asleep. It was an uneventful flight..  When we were pulling our stuff together to get off the plane, I looked around for Sam.. It’s always like that..

    We had a three hour layover in Denver then got to Kansas about 3:00 PM. Then drove about an hour to Steve and Denise’s . It’s great being here.. The last time we were here was about 9 years ago.  We had about an hour’s drive to get to Elizabeth‘s graduation ceremony. Before we left, we had a quick dinner of pizza with  Steve’s home grown hot peppers..   Just after I ate I walked around the house looking at all of the pictures they had of Diane, Max, Sam, Gabe and I.. some of the pictures were new to me., and they hit me hard.

As I reached o rub the tears out of my eyes I realized too late that my hands  were all covered with hot peppers.. Yow !. My eyes were on fire.. but it turned my tears into laughter.. Sam never lets us take ourselves too seriously… 

   We got in the car and drove about an hour more to get to Topeka to see Elizabeth‘s ceremony which was in an Episcopal Church associate with  the  hospital in which she trained.  We’re so proud of her..  I have so much respect for folks like nurses and doctors who devote their lives to helping other people. Could I do that ?

   We watched  the graduation ceremony. Then drove back to Leavenworth and started to hit the mead…

   Its now almost midnight and I need to sleep.. more tomorrow..(he says afte fallign alseep typing for 30 mintues) waitng for picture sot upload over mey clelphone)  Looks like I don’t have the bandwith i need to upload all my pictures.. I may need to do that tomorow.. G’nite Sam..

-jc

   

I have to admit that there are some nights when I’m tempted to go to bed before blogging.   I’m struggling to stay awake. Diane and I just came back from the big celebration dinner at the CTRE conference. We had  a good .low key day. We woke up early and got out for a run by 6AM. I dropped Diane by a fitness/yoga place for an early morning yoga class while I ran back for my 7AM breakfast meeting.

   The meting was a collection of all the IBM fellows  who were attending the conference.. there were about 50 of the 65 of us there for breakfast. It’s fun to get together like this occasionally to swap stories, exchange views and generally scheme. One thing I learned today is that one of my hero’s Bob D. has been working at IBM for 49 years.. longer than I’ve been alive… and what’s more, he’s still a major, major technical contributor.. Now that’s inspiring. !

   From there I met Diane and we went to the conference’s morning session.  There were three guest lectures at today’s sessions. The first was Jean-Michel Cousteau.. son of Jacques Cousteau, who is also a world famous oceanographer and film maker. He gave a terrifically inspiring talk on the state of the worlds water. He spent most of the time discussing his latest project of exploring the Amazon river and it’s tributaries. He had so much passin for what he did.. and his motives were so pure.. it was a great inspiration. He quoted his dad as having said.. ‘People protect what they love’  ,,, The sole purpose of all the film making they do is get people to fall in love with the worlds oceans and the creatures and plants in them.. I can tell you it worked for me this morning.. the wale movies he shot were amazing.   Cousteau  also said that you must win someone’s heart.. over to an idea then theit  mind will follow. If you try to win their minds first, it will never work..

    After Cousteau, we heard a talk from Prof. George Smoot, the co-winner of the 3006 Nobel Prizze in physics. He gave a fabulous talk on the search for dark matter energy in the universe, it’s distribution in space.. and the importance of these findings on validating the big bang theory and the universes projected future. It was so cool.. What was  also very interesting for me is that  Smoot, an MIT grad is the cousin of Oliver Smoot, the onetime MIT undergraduate who measured the Harvard Mass Ave bridge by lying end to end across the bridge/. To discover that the bridge was 364.4 smoots plus one ear. The funny thing is that Oliver parlayed this stunt into a job with the international Standards Organization SA.. He was actually  the head of ISO  for several years.

   After Smoot we were treated to a concert by ‘The Five Browns’ , 5 20 something Julliard educated siblings who play 5 identical Steinways together.. I cannot describe the richness of the sound.. or the absolute precision they demonstrated. It was great watching them play.. and listening to them talk.. they were really normal kids. They did a memorable cover of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ on five pianos.. how cool is that ?!

   After the Browns the session ended and we met up with the boys.. They’d just woken up … We all got our suits on and drove down to Coronado  beach.. it was an overcast day.. and half way between warm and cold.. Gabe and I messed around on the skim board some more.. I think I actually started to get it !. Gabe is getting quite good. We came up with a cool variation where I pulled Gabe along the beach as fast as I could while running. It was a very cool ride. When we were getting pretty cold, Max, Gabe and I walked out into the pacific and did some wave taunting. When we found the right wave.. the Kahuna… we tossed a SamStone through it.. It felt good. We were freezing at that point so we drove back to the hotel and got in the hot tub.

   At about 6 Diane went down for her Spa treatment.. part of th perks of this meeting.. and I went off to a work meeting.. We met back up around 6:30 to go to the big dinner.

The boys took off in the city to find dinner and fun/mischief.   Later they told us that they went into a restaurant and Max posed as Gabe’s agent/photographer. They tld the folks in that worked in the restaurant that Gabe was a famous skateboarder from the east.. The maitre-de  actually asked for Gabe’s autograph.. pretty funny !

   Our dinner was really nice.. again, I wasn’t feeling as social as I usually am. Rather than trying to ‘work’ the room as I would have done in the past, we basically stood stil land talked ot folks who unwittingly wandered in to our reach . It was very nice. there were nearly 1000 folks at this dinner.. Can you imagine making that work out for the food ? Diane and I were assigned ot host one of the tables. our table was all folks from the hardware division.. so we had some things in common.. We started talking about work.. ok I  started talking about work.. but the spouses directs s away.. we then talked about where we lived, interest.. and , of course, kids.. As always this brings up the question.. ‘how many kids do you have’… As always I answer 3.. then explain about Sam’s passing. It’s always hard to get through the story.. Folks are always receptive and responsive when we do. We gave out quite a few SamStones this evening..

    We finished the evening with a nice long quite talk with my friends Kevin and Betsy.. a good end to a good day. Diane and I went back up stairs to find the kids back home.. We’re having a great time out here. I’m so glad the boys came.. Sam, you’re so here with us too.. Tomorrow’s a complete vacation day.. nothing planned. Should be a treat.. Gnight all.

-jc