I’m sitting in the Café at Omega at around 6PM. While Diane takes a second yoga class for the day. We did one together this morning at 7 which was really nice

 

There’s a long line in front of me waiting to get Deepak Chopra’s signature on the armful of books this guy writes.   The book store here is absolutely packed with books he’s written.. more than 30 if my count is right..

nd even so.. the two I wanted.. The Return  of Merlin .. and  The Way of the  Wizard   are no longer in print.. I have no idea what they are about.. but I’m drawn to their titles as I search for my own internal wizard. I ordered them online.. but  Dr. Chopra signed a piece of paper for me to stick in them when they arrived.. that will do. I also gave him a SamStone. He’s a very, very cool guy. I’m certain he’ll do soemthing good with it.

 

At this point I’ve been listening to him for about 10 hours and I really have come to respect him.. I never knew what to make of him.. … I’ve always thought of him as a pop icon of sorts..  . I never realized how learned, articulate and funny he is. He’s obviously read widely and deeply from all the major religions.. Listening to him is such a pleasure.. he has such a diverse background in science, and religion.  His message is a synthesis of all three. He was raised a Hindu, went to Catholic schools, wrote a book on the Jewish Kabala, just  published a Book on the Buddha and is writing one now on the teachings of Jesus.   One thing I took from his talk today is that all the worlds religions are speaking to the same truths.. Yet.. I got the feeling that he also  thought that organized religions put unnecessary limits and bounds on personal choices about spirituality. He talked  about the wisdom of insecurity  and the need to embrace uncertainty.  ,, a lesson that has been driven home to us deeply by Sam’s passing.   

 

Note that Chopra is considerably smaller than Diane’s head !

Diane’s very pretty back.. I spent several hours contemplating it today.

The Man has the secrets of the universe on his Lap Top

The building we’re in today

The day passed very peacefully.. it was beautiful weather and we managed to get a nice 4 mile run in during lunch. I really love being here with Diane. It’s like going away to summer camp for us. We’ve been on such a journey in these past 9 months.. Our love for each other has made it possible for me to survive.   We are truly soul mates in every sense of the word.  

 

The food has been amazing on this trip.. quite a bit better than the last time we were here.. and it’s all vegetarian..   We took some great walks around the campus today. My favorite spot was the meditation center.. We put a SamStone in the wall there…  and wrote his name in gravel

 

The meditation sanctuary

The face rings a bell

Speaking of SamStones, we noticed that the one we put in the Japanese garden was no longer there…  which actually makes me happy. Our intent is for people to pick them up and spread them around. We put another one there on the Buddha for the next finder.

 

We even found a wise looking Zen Woodchuck

It’s now about 100 PM.. we had a great dinner then went in to watch a movie that Chopra made of  his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success..    While I really liked the book, I did not care very much for the movie.. which seemed to me to concentrate on the success part of the title. It was a bunch of vignettes describing how various business people had found success and meaning . I recall the book doing a better job of describing the main ideas of finding the possibility posed by every situation.. good or bad. .. the need to give of yourself freely.. the need to be able to receive graciously, the  need to pay your karmic depts.  and the need to find your true purpose or dharma  .. Finding and aligning with your Dharma  he said,  allows you to accomplish almost anything with little effort.     I know that ease that comes from doing what you love and what you think is right.

 

Before the movie,the  guy from the audience entertained us again with an impromptu concert on a Peruvian clay flute  and a didgeridoo. It  was really amazing.

The Oaca ?

 

The Diggery-dude

Ok.. that’s all for tonight..   We’re going to go out and look for meteors from the Persied shower.. It’s supposed to peak tonight and tomorrow .. it’s a bit overcast.. but with luck we’ll see some.. and think of Sam..  More tomorrow

 -me

 ps.. I want to apologize if any of the bumper sticker photos I posted yesterday offended anyone.. the sticker do not (all) represent the views of the managment :-). On second reading.. some of them might have appeared hurtful. That was never my intent.  .. I was just including them to let folks get a feel for the local politics.

 

Sometimes our lives seem almost magical. . There is so much happening in our lives right now.. yet somehow it all seems pretty calm and still.   Calm and still is a funny way to describe 60 people showing up at your house at 7:30 to begin shooting a movie.. but that’s what happened this morning.     By 9 AM, the house was full of cast and crew hauling lights, hooking up generators, drinking coffee, putting on  makeup, rehearsing, setting up props, etc.. Our house is going to be the setting for scenes in the bedrooms of the characters Vita (Annaleise) , Sara(Sophia)  and Daria (Ruby) . Over the past 3 days Debra and crew have transformed three rooms in our house  into the quintessence of teenage girl chic. It’s amazing the attention to detail they have in setting the mood for these three different characters.

 

I did my best to stay out of the way as they set up and began shooting.  I Had decided to take a half work day because Diane and I are headed back to Omega to do another seminar ( Deepak Chopra  ) this weekend.. I had a morning full of conference calls… which I was on.. but kept having to go outside to talk.. it seemed every time I had something to say it was ‘QUIET ON THE SET !’ (they really say that !) .   Here are some pictures from the morning shoot..

 

Merideth getting coiffed

Max post coiffing.. looks pretty cool this way

Vita’s room

Ready for the shoot

Willow and Ruby

Controling the light in the room

Andrew getting dolled up…

The result

Abotu to shoot

Look at all the gear !

 

 

It would have been fun to  stay and see the rest of the day’s shooting .. but Diane and I had to scoot in order to make the 7:30 beginning  of the seminar here in Reinbeck.  As we were running out, Raye’s mom Mary , uncle Bill and her garndmother showed up. I think Bill and I have a certain similar look.. what do you all think ?

Seperated at birth ?

We made it just in time to see the beginning of the seminar. There were tons of people checking in at the same time as we did.. so we barely made dinner before it closed.. The food was absolutely wonderful and all vegetarian.. they have one of the finest hot sauce collections I’ve every seen.. We wolfed down a big plate of homemade Indian food and went to the opening talk. I can already tell that I’m going to enjoy it. Chopra is a very interesting man.. well read, very thoughtful, and very funny.   I’ll  pass on any nuggets I find really good.

 

 I apologize in advance for the shorts posts I may make for these next 2 days.. bandwidth is hard to come by here.. and I want to spend the time listening rather than typing.. I’ll do my best.   More tomorrow.. G’nite all.. Namaste  Sam !

 

-jc

 

ps.  Here are some of the bumperstickers I saw in the parkign lot of Omega.. Not many Republicans here  I’m afraid 🙂

 

 

Woke this morning in Armonk did a quick run through the cafeteria and auditorium to see some friends who had just arrived for a training meeting   I was pleased and surprised  to see so many friends all in one place.. In just five minutes I ran into Tony, Ed, Dennis, Mike, Brad, Noah from the Us, Karl Heinz, Gottfried and Gunter from Germany and Robert from the UK.. IBM is a small planet !

 I left for Burlington about 8AM and drove home in record time (with a short stop for an oil change in Brattleboro) I spent nearly the entire 5 hours on the phone for work calls. I talked to friends overseas who were also driving somewhere.. something about two people in driving cars talking to each other on different continents seems pretty magical and weird.

 I got home around 4.. took a few more calls then headed up to the Jericho Center Store (formerly Desso’s) where the Voices crew was filming a scene. The scene inside the store was crazy hectic.. lots of people and equipment crowded into the stores many nooks and crannys.. Outside the store. The cast and extras sat their patiently.. for hours ! I could never hang out so dociley as they do. Gabe and Trevor had been waitig for 3 hours on the outside chance they needed extras.. they never got called Whatever big name actors get paid to sit around and wait.. it’s not enough !  What was most surprising is that the store was open all through out the shoot.People would come in and buy stuff between takes . pretty crazy.     The store owners desreve a big thanks for letting the filming happen here.. please reward them with your business ! Here are some snaps I took on the scene.

Josh chow’s down

Max exits fram left

Doug, My friend from work drops buy for his mail.

Filming Kario as a sales cleark

Kario and Dana

Merideth .. I know her from work

Ty and Hannah

Goofy looks !

Cora looking shocked

Vvvvvade

Bess directs

One funny story from this store.. in 1981 I stuck a card on the wall saying “. Responsible young professional seeking house to rent and/or roommates”    10 years later in 1991 I walked into the sore and found the card in the exact same place…   Now that’s stability.

 

 

During one of the waiting lulls I walked with Gabe and Trevor over to our  friend Chris’s house/shop to see if he’d had a chance to finish Sam’s stone. You might remember that we’d etched Sam’s Mayan Glyphs into a stone for the back yard,.. but we’d not had time to add his name or his birth or death  date s. Chris had come and picked up the stone and etched in that extra info. We’d asked him to put Sam’s dates on the bottom so it didn’t look so much like a grave stone. He’d done a wonderful job on it.. We all managed to muscle the stone up into the bed of Chris’s truck. 

While we were at Chris’s we got a chance to walk around and see some of his other projects. He’d just finished this piece called “wise’ that he did from memory in 3 hours  with an angle grinder fitted out with a diamond saw. He’s a true artist…

Even Chris’s woodpile is interesting and beutiful !

We all then headed home. I was surprised to find that while I’d been out, Debra and Emily the Voices Prop people had been working on our house. Diane and my bedroom had been transformed into a teenage girl’s room for Ruby’s character Daria..    And the downstairs bedroom had been transformed into another girls room for Annaleise’s  character Vita.. The transformations were quite amazing.. They’ll be shooting here on Friday,.> Diane and I are going to play Audrey’s character Naomi’s parents.. I’m supposed ot be a spaced out ex-hippy dad…   I’ll have to work on that…
Dowstairs .. Vita’s room

Upstairs – Darias room

Cleaning for the shoot turned up all sorts of precious stuff

Chris showed up with the stone shortly after that and we muscled it out of the truck and back in place. It was nice to have it back. I have to confess, seeing the dates on the bottom caused me to choke up hard They look so…. .. I don’t know.. real ?

 Muscling Sam’s stone out of the truck

Chris and his youngest sonn Sawyer

And older son Finn (the secound Finn I’ve met this month !)

Gabe and Trevor take in the sunset

Nick and Liz look well matched

Meanwhile, Diane had worked up a delicious dinner of pesto noodles and roasted eggplant . I think we had 9 again for dinner…   Never short of company these days..

 

Diane and I are sleeping on the floor these next two nights as not to disturb the movie set in our room.   The show must go on, I guess. Anyway…  I’m totally beat now and need to sleep..  Good night everyone, goodnight Sam.

 

-me

I had a nice start to today.. my friend Ruchir invited me down for breakfast…even though he was 1800 miles away in Texas. I left Armonk around 6:40 and drove 20 miles in a deep fog.

 

I showed up at Ruchir and Rashi’s house at about 7:15 because Rashi’s mom had offered to make me fresh pratha’s and pickle for breakfast (my mouth is watering just in thinking about it).. I had the most wonderful visit with Rashi and her parents who are visiting from India. Rashi’s dad is a most interesting guy.. He’s very interested in the healthful properties of certain foods.. He seems to like using me as a test subject for some of his food experiments.. Last time he had me try Noni juice (yuck) and pickled turmeric (yum).. this time he was easy on me.. The most extreme thing I ate was mango pickle with my breakfast. It was so wonderful. The girls were still asleep, though  Isha, the smallest one. Woke just before I left. .. Great way to start the day..

 

I got back to Armonk by 8:45 in time for my first meeting.. My day was an a very exciting  mix of meetings with different types of folks in Armonk. . I had several day job phone meetings mixed in with meeting on technical vitality, division strategy  and education outreach.. I love walking around Armonk and seeing all the shiny smart people.  I also love all of the historical IBM equipment they have on display

 

 I had lunch with my friend Willow and IBM”s ‘corporate comedian’.. yes. It’s true.. IBM has a comedian on the payroll… what a cool job that must be !    Around 4 I wandered back to the learning center for more day job discussions. On the way back, I planted a SamStone on the rock ledge where I once built three snowmen at 3AM on a very cold morning because I couldn’t sleep.

 

Three snowmen…. Three… While I was on a call today.,  I took  an online survey from  a magazine I get (Make) .. One of the questions was  how many kids do you have ?… I still need to answer three… there’s no space under the question to explain

 

This evening I had a nice dinner with new friend Will (sorry.. I didn’t get your picture !)  and old friend  Gunter.

 

 We got together over Japanese food to talk about a possible joint project. It would be fun to work together with them..  I came back to the Learning center and met up with my friends Dennis and Ed

 

All in all.. a good day.. lots to think about on the car ride home tomorrow morning.. See you all at home.. Samdrive with me.

 -mc