Happy Mardi Gras everyone.,.Fat Tuesday As they say in New Orleans, laissez les bon temps rouler . (let the good times roll) .. I remember going to New Orleans to ‘do’ Mardi Gras many times as a kid … We’d stay with my grandparents or my uncle and aunt , eat weird food like king cake… the cake with a choke hazard built right in… then go and catch beads and dabloons thrown from floats . I really loved it.. The thing I remember most about Mardi Gras was New Orleans without the sweltering heat.. Those are great memories.. Even post Katrina, New Orleans is my ninth favorite city in the world ( after Burlington, Montpelier, Austin, Shanghai, San Fransisco, NYC, London, and Haifa)
Anyway, Mardi Gras seems pretty far away,…. it’s in the 20’s and drizzly up here… I had an extremely productive morning.. of phone calls.. then a mad dask out to a lunch meeting.. Thankfully, my fairy god wife had put reminders of all the important stuff in my car.
I did do one quick errand to Burton on my way to Champlain this afternoon. As I said in last night’s blog, Gabe is trying to retrofit Sam’s bindings unto an 802 board that he had won in 2006. The trouble was that all of the screws didn’t fit..
I stopped into Bolton and the guys there helped me understand that some of the boards mounting holes were messed up. We developed a plan to work around this. After that, I loved walking around Burton .. they have this great ‘poaching’ campaign in which they are actively encouraging folks to ‘poach’ the four remaining ‘no boarding ‘ ski sites on snowboards. They are even offering sizable rewards for folk who poach; and take movies of the event.
I had never been in the Burton store.. I just loved it.. so many cool things to see:
One of the boss guys, Justin, helped me super glue a SamStone up on the nice flagstone fireplace that Burton had in the lobby. I like that there’s a SamStone in this store.. I think Sam would think that was pretty cool.
Here’s the guy that helped me figure out why I was having trouble matching Sam’s old bindings to Gabe’s board.. The answer was.. the threads in Gabe’s board was messed up
From there I headed back over to Champlain. we’re in our final crunch I picked up some of the edited interviews from Rafi ..
Then I piked out enough donuts to motivate some late night help
I went back tot the EMC and started working with Iain, Bryan, and Glenn…
Somewhere in there’ my friend Scott’s friend Andrew showed up. . I told him that I worked at IBM.. he asked me if I knew /’John Cohn’ I told him.. ‘sort of’..’ Then I told him the truth.. Andrew and I had once been out to dinner with Scott.. but it had been such a long time.
I left Champlain about 6:15 in the middle of a call. Diane and I were starting a meditation program at the Shambala center. I was sitting outside the meditation center mindlessly talking on the phone when Dian slid up and put this delicious sandwich in my arms. It was a soy protein thingy with sweet potato friesin a tortilla .. yum
The meditation class was pretty full.. more tan 25 folks. It was fun being there.. not sure yet what I make of the vision.. I’ll share it here when I do.
After the meditation seminar.. I headed to Champlain Farms and bought some of my student partners some sweets and caffeine .. I then delivered them to the game lab where many Champlain Techies were hard at work.. making gaming safe for democracy in our lie time.. . 🙂 .
I didn/t get back until after 10.. but the whole family was awake.. Gabe and I started to work the new binding hardware I’d gotten.. In the end that worked !
We were all ready to go to sleep when Gabe crawled into this stove box’ ..chai followed quickly.. then so did we.. it was pretty cozy !
I finally decided to go to bed.. I came over to start emptying my pockets and I found that I hadn’t worn my Sam pin this last day, It was so weird to reach for it in my pocket and not see it there. I found it on my night table where I left it yesterday.. It was good to see it again ..
OK. I keep falling asleep.. It’s time for me to sleep.. much more tomorrow.. I love you all.. I love you Sam !
..
-jc
Ps. I just decided yesterday that I’m going to participate in the 2008 Penguin Plunge this Saturday. The Plunge is when a bunch of crazy people jump into Lake Champlain as part of a fund raiser for the Vermont Special Olympics. The event is this Saturday, Feb 9th around noon.. it’s also my 49th Birthday !.. I’ll be ducking out of an all day meditation seminar to jump in the lake with the fine folks from Mexicali Returant which sometimes feels like my second office. The way this works is plungers find sponsors who pledge to donate to Special Olympics if you agree to strip down to your swim trunks and dive through the ice for a quick 32 degree dunk in the lake. Most folks collect their sponsors well in advance… So I’m getting a late start at this. I don’t expect I’ll get many takers.. but if anyone is interested in making a tax-deductible pledge to Special Olympics for the pleasure of seeing me freeze.. please let me know 🙂 . I’ll be sure to get pictures !
