Busy. Busy day…   Diane was up at 5:30 working on her gardens.. (she’s got them all almost in).   She was out cleanign up after yesterday’s hailstorm. Look what it did to our rhuebarb !

I was a lug and stayed in bed until 7.  There were at least 6 kids sleeping over after an impromptu party after the Voices project fundraiser last night. I like it when we have guests in the morning.

    I puttered around for a while trying to get some of the new shopbot milling  machine software working . My goal is to get the Sam picture on the T-shirts blasted into a piece of  wood. Homer has the machine working beautifully.. the challenge is still the software. I thought I had it all worked out.. I’m able to take the picture into the software, vectorize it and create the commands to send it to the tool… It seems to work very well in the tool simulator…..

 

I was so excited I jumped in the car and drove  the 25 miles to Homer’s to try out the data… I noticed that someone had taped a picture of Sam on the steering wheel of the van.. Nice

Homer and I  decided to start small by just trying to get the ‘peace out’ text on the back of the shirt to work. Unfortunately.. we still have several kinks in the software.. the best we could do was a very nice looking ‘p’ and a weird box…

It’s always fun to watch the mistakes (‘How fascinating.. as Ben Zander would say).. but the mistakes can be pretty interesting/dangerous when you have a 10,000 RPM router bit moving back and forth at high speeds.   I’m going to see if I can get it all strengthened out this week

    I stayed at Homer’s a little too long then had to rush back to Jonesville to intercept Jeff D. and his friends.. They had a science class assignment to do an episode of Mythbusters.

The Myth they chose was to test the possibility of lighting something on fire using a flaming arrow. They got an old archery set from Marshal P and a hay bail to use as a target and set to work.

I recall that the traditional material for flaming arrows was pine pitch.. Lacking that, our first try was an oil soaked rag….  We  quickly found that the oily fire would go out when they fired the arrow.. so.. no luck.

We then started trying other volatile liquids to see if we had better luck. We tried denatured alcohol (stayed burning.. but not hot enough)… and Acetone.. Burned hot.. but went out in flight. Gabe suggested WD40 which worked best of all.. but didn’t stay lit when it hit the hay. I’ve got a healthy fear of gasoline.. so we didn’t try that.. Like all good mythbusters, we decided to up the ante a little when things didn’t work.. We decided to make some ‘rock candy’ incendiaries (don’t try this at home !)  .. Rock candy is made by carefully melting 2 parts by weight sugar with three parts by weight KNO₃ . This has to be done outdoors, over low heat with constant stirring and with proper protective gear. The web tells many stories of this stuff going off in someone’s kitchen.. bad idea.. Anyway.. the resulting moldable carmel-y goo is a great smoke bomb and even greater fire starter. 

We did a few test burns then molded some of it around the tip of one of the arrow. The experiment didn’t work as planned.. The candy burned too well.. .the arrow missed the hay bail and quickly burned in half…

  Our only option was to kick it up one more notch.. We  ended up wrapping magnesium ribbon around an arrow  and lit it with a blow torch. Magnesium burns with an intense bright white light which is very hard to extinguish.

It burned fine.. we just had trouble keeping it on the arrow long enough..    Finally we added a little acetone and rock candy to the hay bale, lit the magnesium and let the arrow fly.. instant inferno.. and wouldn’t you know it.. my camera battery died right before that shot.. You’ll have to take my word that it was beautiful.. so that myth was only pseudo busted.. ut we had a great time trying !

   By that time it was almost 5.. I found this guy slithering into our foundation

Then Gabe, Scott and I went off to do some climbing and play some Frisbee.
I got this picture of Gabe and Scott jumping off a cliff.. They are booth nuts…

   We got back to the house just before six to meet our guest.. Sharon, the ‘dog whisperer’ Believe it or not, Sharon has found that she can channel for animals . Our friends Bill and Gina had her come over and ‘talk’ to their cats.. so we decided to give it a go with Chai… I must admit that  I was very skeptical going into this.. but it was really an incredible experience. Chai came in and lay down peacefully between us for the hour or so we all talked to her..

We learned that Chai loves us all very much.. She does not like us to pick her up or use her for a pillow.. but that she loves  taking walks, runs, getting scratched and loves cheese.   She said that sometimes the activity level in the house is too much for here and she just needs her own space. She told us that she eats rocks because the weight feels good to her.. and makes her feel like she were going to have puppies.. (that made me sad.. she’s neutered)  She  said that taking care of us since Sam died has been exhausting work for her.. and that she longs for things to be the way they were (don’t we all !) She got very excited about the prospect of going back to the Crate Escape to play with the other dogs.. She said that she loves walking with Diane in the woods and sometimes ‘sees’ Sam while she walks with Diane.. That led to a really cool conversation about Sam .. and how he still hovers near us. It felt like Chai continues to have a special relationship with Sam. Then she said that she found the activity in our family to sometimes be exhausting. She said that each of us was zooming around maybe even avoiding the need to talk/think about Sam. .. She wished that the four of us and her would come together more often just to ‘be’ with Sam.   This got the four of us really talking… which was wonderful. It’s true that we only manage to get together by ourselves only a few times a week.. and even then only briefly. Whether it was  really Chai’s thinking.. or just our own thoughts that Sharon was giving voice to… it was a wonderful experience. ( I have to admit.. I think it really was Chai !) . we all felt   really good and relaxed after the session.. Sharon said Chai did too. .. The funny thing is, as soon as Sharon left.. Chai disappeared and did not come back for 30 minutes.. we could not find her anywhere inside or out and she did not come when we called.. which has never happened. We finally found here underneath the pool deck just hanging out. … she just needed a break.

What a cool thing.. if anyone wants Sharon to try talking to their animals.. let us know and we’ll put you in touch…

    Well.. it’s late again… and this has been an incredibly full day.  I need to get some sleep.. goodnight Chai.. Goodnight Sam!

-jc