I felt really out of it today.. out of… what ? Spirit maybe.. energy… ?  Will ? .. I don’t know but I had a very hard time getting myself to move through the day.. Outside it was snowy and beautiful.. inside I was pretty low and muted.. Maybe too much sleep ?
    I had a busy day up through about 3.. back to back phone calls..each one reminding me how much end of year stuff I hadn’t quite gotten around to finishing.   I was hoping not to be working this week.. but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work.  Around 3  I took off for an hour and a half to go to my friend Chris’s and work on the glass SamStones I’m trying to make. Chris’s wife kim had cut out some sandblasting stencils for me in the same font as the standard SamStones.   I am putting them on glass nuggets I found .. The idea is to sandblast Sam’s name into the glass. with any luck I’ll be able to get them etched tomorrow.  Placing the stencils and peeling off the letters is slow tedious work.. but it felt good to be handling all that Sam stuff.

Around 4:30 I had to head back into Burlington for a meeting with the team at Champlain.. I learned just as I was getting into town that most of the students would be unavailable due to changes in their finals schedule cased by the snow storm.. I took advantage of that to have a meeting just with Ray and Ann.. the advisers to the project..  I’m really enjoying working with the folks at Champlain…

Just as I was abut to leave, I got a call from Max… the Subaru had sputtered and stopped somewhere in Williston. Off I went on a rescue mission. Both Max’s and Jessie’s cell batteries were nearly dead. I got three calls from Max of the form.. “The car died.. we’re in Williston… just past the …… ” … “Dad… we’re just past the first turn beyond the…..”   I ended up driving up and down route 2 until I spotted them on a side street.

They were cold and tired.. so they got into my car to stay warm and wait for the tow truck

We waited and waited.. after about 45 minutes we gave up and went to Mexicali.  to wait for the tow truck to call. . Diane and Gabe met us there for a late dinner.

My friend Aaron was the hostess on duty tonight.. she was one of my jolts and volts science show helpers back when she was about 11   (12 years ago) … Her mom runs Bead Crazy,. her dad collects firetrucks.. and she can make things catch on fire with her mind.. A pretty cool family in my book

We finally got home after 9.. recycling had to go out, wood had to come in, the fire built up.. I went through the motions, exhausted.. I couldn’t wait to fall into bed.. I still had this cloud over me.. I decided to go spend a few minutes in Sam’s room playing guitar.. that’s what I needed… about 10 minutes of just being in there.. and getting back in touch with my feelings is what I really needed for this day.. and it took me all day to figure that out…

I’ll try to remember that earlier next time.. All for now.. G’nite all.. G’nite Sam
-me

I slept for nearly 9 hours last night.. The longest I think I’ve slept in over a year. We woke up to beautiful snow.. It was a perfect day to hang out inside. Our main goal for the day was to decorate the xmas tree.  Gabe had a really cool idea.. he wanted to make the tree into a robot !.. Well.. what’s not to like in that idea.. we got right to it.. the first challenge was the arms. I got some light gauge steel rod … measured out Gabe’s arms.. and started bending.

We got a rudimentary frame put together.. then took a break. I took Gabe to the Round Church to work on a snowboard jump.. the roads were pretty messed up.

I took a quick stop at the bakery, but  it was closed because of the storm. I did get a good look at the anti-TV sculpture that Ben-the-baker’s brother Chelsea had made..   I like the message.

From there I headed over to my friend Chris’s house.Chris is an amazing stone carver, engraver and etcher.  He’s helping me with a Christmas plan  have.

Chris does a bunch of work with words and rocks.. a great combination.

He has a Sam Stone in his workshop !

We hung out for a few hours working on the project and talking to his very cool family. We even made a home made light bulb with his son Finn.. (My friend Uwe also has a kid named Finn.. I’d never heard that name before)  Finn had a battery kit… it had an interesting phone number… the National Battery Ingestion Hotline.. A great number to know.. Do people really eat batteries ?

I got home around 4  and got back to work on the tree. Diane did an artful aluminum foil job on the arms

I added the LED strip lights I bought in Shanghai.

Max added a head

I had to make some trips to the attic to get lights and other tree stuff. Going up there is still so hard ..

In the end.. the four of us came together and made Jonesville’s first Robo-tree..

In fact.. Diane had just said.. “we probably have the only robotic tree in the world’ 2 seconds later Max opened the Sunday paper and saw this:

Another weird coincidence..   Anyway.. the results are pretty … uhhhh.. untraditional… You know, it’s probably easier that way.

We celebrated our successful creation with some chocolate fondue … The end of a very good day.

Peaceful day…  I managed to sleep until 9 which is what I needed after last night’s drive. Max and I got in around 3AM last night… It was a great drive.. both of us managed to stay awake long enough to enjoy hanging out together.. Max played DJ and turned me on to some new music…   He drove the second half while I slept. He saw a huge shooting star while I was asleep…

Today started out cold.. 5 degrees… and never really warmed up much. Gabe went up to Bolton to freeze his tuchus off.. while Diane, Chai and I took a great snowshoe on the side of Robin’s mountain.   By the time we got back both Chai and  my beards were frozen solid..  After a brief warming spell inside, Diane and I went out and took apart the trampoline for the winter.. Note to self.. There are probably some great 30 degree days to do this next year..

I spent an hour or so trying to figure out a good way to to get a years worth of my blog in printable form. It was hard work.. not so much the text processing.. but reading through all of that old stuff. Someday I’ll re-read it end to end.. but now is just too soon.

Around 4 I zoomed up the mountain to pick up Gabe. He still had all of his fingers and toes. .. but he did say one of his friends did get a little frostbitten.

We headed straight from Bolton to the Christmas tree place in Essex.. Max was there waiting for us. The boys immediately spotted a beauty.

After a few minutes of grunting and cursing we had the tree down, bagged and on our car.   This is another ritual that is so changed now.. everything is..

Max is home and we’re together again as a family.. 4 forks…

A really nice dinner…It’s so good to be together…

After dinner.. it was time to put the tree up..

We picked well. The tree is 1cm shorter than the ceiling !

I’ writing from the parking lot at Pratt. I’m sitting in the car while max tried to cram a semesters worth of stuff into a duffel bag. I think I’m helping him the most by staying out of his way. As soon as he’s done we’re going to drive back home. It is great having him back for awhile…
    My trip down today was really nice.. as these drives usually are. I got on the road at about 7:30… rather than 6AM as I had originally intended.. I just couldn’t pry myself out of bed. I finally got up in time to take Gabe to school.. then took off from there. The late start was just as well since the roads were still a mess.. I had to take it really slow until about White River.. Still, the day was beautiful.. and the company was good (I often ‘talk’ to Sam in the car)… I spent most of the drive down in calls of one type or other..  I find these calls in the car to be some of the most productive I have.. There’s nothing else .. keyboards, text messages… etc.. to distract me so I really pay attention to what’s being said. Consequently, the miles just melt by. Before I knew it I was approaching NYC.  My original plan was to try and catch a talk at CUNY main campus on 5th in Manhattan.. The speaker was Prof James Gee, a word recognized expert in the educational use of video game technology.. It would have been great.. but as I neared the city, the traffic started slowing down.. I was goign to be cutting it clos.. and then there would be parking. The final straw is that my friend Nora from the NY Hall of Science who’d told me abotu the talk called to tell me she was goign to blow off goign because she had too much to do. So… I aborted the mission.. But I had a good ‘plan B’ I drove down to the NY Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows.. and had a great meeting with Nora’s boss, Eric.

Eric, Nora and I are all working on this same IBM video game proj. This was the first time I’d had a chance to sit down and really talk to Eric one on one. It was so much fun. We have very similar backgrounds, raised Jewish, device physics background, love of education outreach… and both vegetarians !.. We took advantage of that fact to go have our talk over veggie Chinese food nearby.. It was GREAT !.. Everything there from the ‘pork’ buns to the ‘fish’ were all vegetarian.. It’s a place just made for  veggie Buddhists and Kosher-keeping Talmudists.. So cool. NYC  is just amazingly diverse.. something for everyone if you know where to look!

Now I’m just sitting in the car and working i.. I found some free WiFi.. so I’m pretty comfy !     

A really cool/weird  thing just happened… as I’m sitting here typing !.. I turned on the satellite radio for some blogging tunes and turned to the Indie station I always listen to (XMU).. As I did that I was thinking of the time I turned on the radio last year and this station played ‘Organ Donor’ by DJ Shadow.. just as I asked where Sam was out loud to the cosmos .. Right after that they played a really obscure DJ Shadow cut ‘ Building Steam from a grain of Sand’. That song has some very Sam like lyrics. I blogged about it  on Dec 21st and Dec 22nd last year.. raw times.
   Well.. just as I was thinking back on that weird coincidence.. on comes ‘Building Steam’   I jumped I was so shocked !

OK.. Max just came out.. time to start helping him load the car.. It’ll be a long drive home.. but nice… My family is coming together.. I love you all.. love you Sam

-me