I came down stairs to find Mason’s snowboard in the entrance way. He must have stayed the night. He sometimes does when he has to be up on the mountian ealry in the morning.. I like his Sam sticker.   Turns out the mountain road was closed.. so he didn’t have to go to work.

I headed in to Champlain to deliver the morning bribe of donuts . The students are working so hard to get our project completed.. Right now my main contribution is to keep them well fed.   I’ve spent several days camped out in their parking lot taking work calls in the car and snagging free wireless from one of the dorms. Whenever I get a break in my meetings I run in and shout encouragement , pass around more donuts and run back out..   Here’s the view from my mobile office.

Last weekend I sat on Ray’s desk and it collapsed.. now they have a warning up.. I’m proud to have taught them at least this one lesson.

The day was blustery and raw.. around 10:30 it looked like the sun was abotu to set.. dark clouds, sleet and hail…

Around 1 I dashed back to IBM.. I wanted to see my friend Sharon’s talk.. good thing I made it.. Turns out I was doing her introduction.   We had more than a 100 folks turn out to hear Sharon talk about IBM’s new focus on alternative energy, climate protection and water management. It was really interesting. It was really great having Sharon visit !

Sharon’s travel plans got messed up when her return flight got canceled. Her buddy Gina was able o book her an earlier flight, so I had to speed her to the airport.. we got there in plenty of time, though . After dropping Sharon, I was going to head back to Champlain… but I couldn’t figure out if anyone was there. Instead, I stopped at Talent and borrowed some of the internet and worked there for an hour or so. I had some email stuff to do.. It was fun working there.. they kept feeding me !  i got to see Hannah, Dave, Adah and Senyah…

And even got to meet their frind Matt, who runs an after school program fro the South Burlington schools.

After that I had about another hour and a half of work calls. I took them in the parkign lot of the Japonese resturant.. (again.. free wireless !) ..I had good calls with friends Wolfgang and Ruchir.. always very good to talk to those guys !  Then picked up some take out and headed home. I ran into Bark W, Mallory C and two of Brandon Kilborns’ cosuins. It was good talkign to them. We were all heading up to Jen’s for a psuedo-suprise brithday (real birthday.. only the surprise was ‘psuedo’) . Deb and Hannah had made jena collage of pictures Hannah had taken of Nate and Marie.. they were really god pictures !

We drove up to Jen and Tim’s with Deb and the kids.. We had to sneak past the stair railing that their dog Wilbur had pulled off when he tried to chase a scent while on his leash.. He actually managed to get pretty far with the banister banging behind him until Nate caught up and jumped on him.

Jen was sitting upstairs not expecting us.. which was great… Here’s the table she made…complete with SamStone.

She loved the pictures from the Townsends…

Then out came the feast. it was a standard P.M.S. dinner.. (Pizza, Meatloaf and Sushi)

Here’s Gabe taking his first ever bite of meatloaf.. Amazing that a kid 12 years old has never had meatloaf.. but stranger things have happended. He said ‘it tastes like meat’

After dinner it was time for cake and candles.. Jen did the honors

The icing on the ice cream was an attractive blue

Tim gave Jen a book called ‘Porn for Women’.. don’t worry.. it was pretty tame..

Lots of normal dressed guys saying stuff like:

and …

It got late pretty fast.. so we packed up and headed home. Jen gave us a brand new box of SamStones that she had fired recently.. Good thing.. we were almost out..