It’s a slow friday night. Not much happened today. and that’s just fine with me. It’s nice having a day with no special significance.. and nothing planned. Gabe had spent the night up with friends on the mountain.. Max slept in.. I decided to take the time to weld up the frames for the fused glass projects the kids are doing. The glass is for the Friends of Sam Art Auction next Friday at JDK.. (I’ll post details as soon as I have them) . The projects will start with a 10 by 10 inch plate of clear glass. The kids will then create designs using bits of colored glass which we’ll then fuse together using Jen’s kiln. It’s a really beautiful effect. Jen and I designed a really simple holder made out of an ‘H’ made out of 1/2 inch mild steel welded to a section of 2 inch angle iron . It’s amazingly relaxing and healing for me to work with my hands like this. Welding is such a zen sport.. it’s so cool to transform a bunch of chunks of steel into a designs. We started from whatever we could find in steel stock at our local home depot.. which isn’t much
It’s satisfying to mass produce things too .. it must be the same appeal as quilting.. or needlepoint.. or accounting.. or things like that. Here’s the finished product..
By the time I was done I’d welded and ground off severalponds of metal.. the floor was covered with steel dust.. the perfect place to write Sam’s name. I still find a place to write it every day.. (sand, mud, snow, rocks, vegatbales) / 
Around 2, Diane rescued me from the fumes of welding and dragged me outside for a snowshoe. We had to take Trevor up to teh mountain to meet up with Gabe.. so we started from there with Chai takign the lead. There was a ton of new snow. it was beautiful .. We got part way up the mountain and ran into our friends Tom, Silas, Brad, Parker and Jake. Tom took a bad fall the other day and got cut on the ice as we were coming down from the top of the mountain on Tuesday. He says it looks worse than it is.. I hope so 
Here’s silas
Multipierced Brad
Parker.. who is up visiting for the holidays.. It’s really good to see him. Sam was visiting Parker with their frind Eric when he was killed. We feel such a strong connection with both those boys now.. 
… and our buddy Jake. 
We took a nice hour loop n the backwoods trails.. It seemed like midwinter up tehre.. (it was 17 degrees and windy.. so it felt like winter too !)
We came across this guy pointing to a gnarly jump made out of stone way out in the woods..
Here’s a beutiful snow spirit I saw
On our way back we found this bus parked way high on a trail with this crazy jump on top of it.. I can’t imagine how it works.
By the time we got back to the car we were pretty frozen. .. I had major icycle action in my beard. 
Around 5 we headed up to Jen and Tim’s to make soem more SamStones.. there was a big Halo match goign on. Nate tried to give me a lesson in the game.. I’m completely hopless at it. Not good news becasue I’m supposed to be figurign out how to promote video game technology in education.
Tim and Jen have a beuatiful picture of Sam above their computer. 
Around 7:30 Our friends Lee-Ann , Linda and her daughter Andrea showed up from Endicott. Linda is Diane’s best friend from when she was a kid.. and Lee-Ann was her frist baby sitting job !. They’ve all come up for the Sam Concert tomorrow. it’s great seeing them !
See you all tomorrow !
-me
