Late night – short report. I had a really full day with back to back meetings at work that went from 7:30 AM until 5:00, 6:00 if you count the phone calls I returned at the end of the day. OK.. to be fair.. the last meeting of the day wasn’t so tough, it  was a reception for some folks at work who’d recently gotten promoted.. They were actually serving beer and wine in the IBM cafeteria.. We’ve come a long way since T.J. Watson !

After work I met my friend and work colleague Garry for dinner.. we were heading towards Mexecali (my favorite).. but their computer was down so thy had to close. We walked over to  Nicco’s instead and sat outside.  The  food was excellent.. and so was the weather. It was really great talking to Garry. He and I are in the same department.. Until recently, Garry was working here in Vermont, but living near Poughkeepsie NY. Every week he’d commute back and forth.. a few months back he was able shift most of his job back down to NY.. which is much better for his family life.. but leaves me as a department of 1 here in VT .The last couple of times Garry’s been up, I’ve been out of town. … so our meeting was long overdue.  We talked about work, people, life, family, and Sam…   Garry’s a thoughtful and wise person.. it was fun to connect.   Mid way through dinner we heard a loud clatter and saw a kid pushing another kid as fast as he could in a shopping cart.,.. it was Mikey  pushing  and Casey in cart… I told Mikey to keep the receipt .. I wish I’d managed to get a picture of them. About a half our later two women walked up to us.. One of them approached me and asked  me if I was me.. I mean.. she asked if I was john cohn. When I said I was, se said something like ‘this is to show how powerful Sam is’ .She told me that she’d never seen me,, never seen a picture of me.. had not seen my Sam button.. but had figured out that  was Sam’s dad by ‘my energy’ from seeing me across the restaurant. She then introduced herself as  Jeannie L.  a new friend of Diane’s . . Our common thread is a sad one. Jeannie’s 8 year old daughter Ila died 3 years ago. Our friend Mark knows Jeannie through a number of connections. Mark connected her to Diane and they’ve gotten together several times to share stories. We talked about Sam and Ila.. and about other parts of our very changed lives. It is such a strange bond we have with others that have suffered a loss like ours.. but it’s such a strong connection. I could have spoken with her all night.   Garry was kind enough to snap a picture of Jeannie, Me and Jeanie’s friend Sue.. (I just realized I didn’t get a picture of Garry !)

  Several months ago Jeannie gave us a very cool picture she call’s Ila’s Moon. It’s a beautiful picture of the full moon .. which was very special to Ila’s life. On the picture is a poem  that a friend ‘s daughter, Alyssa, had written for her.

 

 
Ila’s Moon by Alyssa T
If you are up at half past nine
When the moon is up in the starlit sky.
You will know why the moon is there
To shine a bright glittery trail.
To a place where happiness is all there is
No wars, no guns, no need to fight.
That’s the place I’ll be tonight.

 We have that picture on our ‘Sam table’ downstairs.

 
After Jeannie and Sue left, Garry and I talked for a good bit more then I ran into BestBuy to do a bit of Max birthday shopping. I was surprised to  find Mikey working there looking very professional ! 

At that point it was about 9:30… I decided to go to the Inn at Essex to  meet up with another old  friend Mike (note this is the third Mike for the night… Open Mike Night !)  who was visiting from Minnesota for the day. I’ve worked with this mike for more than 25 years (!!!).. we go way back and have had many good times together over the years..

He was traveling with our mutual friend  Jeff J. the two of them had stumbled into another colleague of ours, Mitani-san from Tokyo,.. It was like old home week at the Inn at Essex….. It was great catching up with all of them..  It was about 11:30 before I headed home.. Now I’m beat and need to sleep..   What a full day..

   I love people.  I love my family.. I love you Sam.. Gnite

-jc

What if spring never came ? That’s what I found myself asking as I looked at the pieces of the half assembled  trampoline in our side yard.

This was Gabe’s big birthday present.. an item on the list since he and Sam were little.. but always rejected… rejected for what reason  ?  safety ? money ? aesthetics ? Anyway the ‘ you only go around once’ message is so deep in us at this point that we ordered the tramp  last week.  Most of it showed up this  morning.. we were so excited.. we knew that Gabe would be psyched.. unfortunately  there were at least two big problems: First.. there were no springs. Evidently the box of springs was misplaced somewhere between here and Gonzales Texas.. They’re looking for the box.. but no sign of it yet. yet. Second.. the thingy’s on the frame don’t quite fit in the dealies on the rest of the frame.. with mismatched dealies and thingy’s there’s no way to assemble the tramp frame. We called the company and they explained that they thought they had had problems with non-spec  thingies . They’re reshipping a box of new thingy’s the estimated arrival time s this Sat.. , . Overall this is not a major setback.. but it was disappointing.. Gabe took it all in stride.. but I  figured that the trampoline would be my blog topic for this evening.. guess I’m out of luck.

    Trampoline problems aside.. it was a pretty quiet day. It started out when we found these aliens sleeping on our lawn in their weird spacecraft. We made peace with them

,.. I quickly got pulled into several early morning phone calls.. then ran off to my  Reiki/Massage session with Marci.. it was great as usual

. I feel this is somehow keeping me more balanced. Don’t ask me how or why it works.. it just does. When I came out of Marci.. I saw Diane’s car parked outside Pat’s yoga studio.. which shares a driveway with Marci’s.. I quickly created a rock and weed valentine for Diane.

. I then walked back to my car to find this stuck under my wiper blade. Great minds think alike. No ?

After Marci I had time for a short lunch stop at the new On the Rise down near the park. I’m so proud of Ben and Rachel for taking this from dream to reality so quickly and completely. The place is absolutely beautiful. It was great seeing Rachel Jane and Judy on my visit.. I really recommend the Tempeh sandwiches with jalapeno sauce.. yum !

   I went from there to a really busy day of phone and face to face meetings. By 6, I was beat.  I got home in time for me to Gabe and drive him up to his end of season Lacrosse party in Jericho..

We got there to find that we’d forgotten the big plate of brownies that Diane had made for us to bring.. good thing.. as there were already 7 plates of uneaten brownies. Gabe begged me to go and buy something else.. . I went and picked up some doughnuts ant the Jericho General store… I’m proud to say that every last one of them was eaten. .. Now .. the Jericho General Store is worth it’s own blog entry  at some  point..  It was a pretty interesting mix between grocery/convenience store and gun store .. only in Vermont.   I did find this poor guy hiding out behind the cold cuts.. Looks like he has a price on his head !

   After the Lacrosse party, Gabe ad I came home. He Max and I decided to try out an idea that Homer had given me today. I’d told homer about how to swing  burning steel wool around your head to make a giant sparkler.. This weekend Homer and friends and improved on that idea by taping a wad of fine steel wool to the bottom of a Frisbee , lighting it and throwing it.. Its very dangerous as it shoots fire everywhere.. but it’s also very. Very cool… remember kids, don’t try this at home without a responsible adults.. (and that generally means Mom !). Here’s a still picture of the path.. and here’s a move.. very cool to see live.

   Hope you saw it sam.. love to all, gnite !

-me

 

 

 

Diane, Chai  and I took a run this morning as we often do…This time I brought my camera to show everyone how beautiful it is with the Phlox in bloom.

 

Here’s where I always write Sam’s name in the ground at the ed of the trail

The veiw of Robbin’s Mutnain from the trail

Chai’s first beach.. she always drinks here..

Downwatd dog on the beach

Wet dog on the beach

Almost home !

My work day was pretty standard.. lots of meetings, lots of emails. Lots of pressure.. nothing too new. I was passably  productive.  I did have to leave around 530 in order to catch Diane’s 6PM yoga. Class was great today.. it was really hot in the barn which made everyone’s muscles that much looser. It was a good workout.

 As I left the barn after yoga I was very surprised to find that Sam’s Mayan Glyph stone  was missing. ! In it’s place was this smaller rock with the word ‘Peace’ etched in it and one of the original SamStones.. I was pretty stunned… where’d it go ? It must weigh 350 pounds… Why was this new rock here ? 

Diane came out and explained that our friend Chris C.  the stone mason that etched the rock,  had picked it up to add Sam’s name in the back. We’d planned to do that around Christmas.. but then things lead to things, the ground froze.. life moved on and we never got around to it. Coincidently I was talking  with Chris’s mom on Saturday and she must have asked Chris to do it. Very nice family..

Just as I was hearing this story, my friend Dave shoed up for our guys night out. Dave and I had been trying to find time to catch up over a beer for some time.. We went to the ‘Hen of the Wood’ in Waterbury.. the place used to be the ‘Mist Grill’.

This place was really good. Excellent food.. great setting.. really good   live music. I highly  recommend it. I had a great time talking to Dave about life, families, Sam, my work, his work, friends and everything else. We had a very helpful conversation about some o fmy ideas for scaling up the education outreach work I’m doing. Dave’ s a very wise  and far thinking guy.. I’m very glad he’s so generous with his time

I got home around 10:30 ad found Max at the computer… I showed him this cool YouTube link that my mother sent me today called ‘Women in Art‘… Watch it and you can get Art History credit.. isn’t this cool?

In  a similar vein.. my own local artisan’s had bene experimenting some more with Mary’s MacBook.. here are their masterpieces.. Enjoy !

Beautiful !Gnite all.. gnite Sam..

-me

Great day-after-birthday day. I rolled out of bed at around 8:30 to find the house still full of kids.. about 8 of Gabe’s friends had spent the night and about 4 of Max’s had too.. though no one really looked like they had slept…

Gabe’s posse had decided to attempt the same river raft expedition that Devon and friends had done yesterday. They put a slightly different twist on it by lashing the canoe and the kayak to the raft to form a catamaran of sorts.. They shlepped the stuff down to the river in pieces than tied the crafts together.. they had 9 kids on board It was pretty funny to see.    They managed to make Richmond in just over 2 hours.. not too bad with the low/slow  water.  Might be because they had a cooler of Red Bull with them ?

    Around midday I caught up with my friend Sandy who was down in Houston for our 30^th High School reunion. She gave me a quick run down of who showed up… hair quantities and color.. and a few stories about folks.. She had been my proxy for the event and handed out some info including this blog and the SamStones website.  I’ve already heard from my friend Mer  which is very cool. Sandy is going to bring me the email list from the event  I’m looking forward to connecting up with a few old friends  I want to tell them about our lives up here.. about Diane, my kids.. about Sam.. . about Vermont.. it’s so very different than where I grew up. 

    After I talked to Sandy I went out to help Diane, Scott , Mary working in  the gardens. We spent several hours mulching which is a job I love.. It gives you an instant sense of accomplishment.

Diane has opted for much for flowers than vegetables this year.. and already the yard  is alive with color. The flowers are so bright and life affirming. I love it.. Here are some of the flowers she already has growing here:

   Late afternoon we all decided to do one more family thing for Gabe’s birthday. We all piled in the car and headed out for a dinner and a movie. First we stopped at Moe’s Burritos to harass our friend and roommate Mary ..  really like Moe’s.. .. everyone there is  programmed to say “Welcome to Moe’s” whenever anyone comes in the shop..  You can mess with them by standing there opeening and closing the door.  Mary looked quite professional rolling those burritos (burriti ?)

After a good dinner we headed next store to Starbucks to see  Elsa.

It’s fun having both of our good friends working so close so that we can torment them both. 

From there we headed  to the Majestic to catch Shrek III. It was really wonderful.. technically it’s amazing to see how far computer graphics has come.. I spent the whole time staring at the texture of things like Shrek’s shirt, trees and clouds just amazed at the compute effort required to do that.. I loved the pot.. but won’t give it away.. One thing I will say is that this movie has a new character , Merlin, voiced by Eric Idle from Monty Python… Merlin is me… even down to the Birkenstocks with socks (though I rarely do that anymore)

   We got back home in time for a little light up Frisbee

then we all headed off to bed.. everyone was exhausted.. I think none of us got more than 5 hours of sleep over the last several nights.. It’s nice to be this tired… It was a great long birthday weekend for Gabe.

Happy birthday my son. gnite all !

 

-js

 

ps.. Phoebe  P. got curious about the recurring theme of the nautical star in Meghan’s guitar, Kyle’s tattoo and her own drawn on Tattoo from Staurday… Sh figures that anything that’s occurring that often has some meaning.. Here’s what she dug up.

 

…  the nautical star tattoo…  would be a symbol of guidance. Now as time has passed the nautical stars represent the direction of one’s life, for those of us who are not sailors but still need guidance.  Some say that if the nautical star is pointed upwards they have a higher outlook on life and so on.  The meaning of the Nautical star is to create your own path, but use the stars as a guide when you are lost or scared.

 

I like that meanng