Uneventful day.. I felt pretty low energy today which was tough because I had lots to do.  I began the day with a science show at the Baird school in Burlington. Baird is run by Howard Mental Health Service and is an alternative school for about 55 kids from 3rd through 8th grade.   We had the show in their beautiful new GYM. It was a great audience.. the kids were really into the material and had lots of great science background.   We had a really good time… Near the end of the show this kid Ely shouted out that his shoes were lighting up every time I ran the tesla coil.. It was amazing.. he was sitting halfway across the gym.. and every time I hit the button to start the coil.. his shoes started blinking.. Since is wonderful !

My friend Dave showed up to help me with the show. Dave is trying to learn the spiel of my show so he can do the show for the Vermont School for the Deaf Winterfest net Thursday. Dave, who’s deaf, is signing the whole show in ASL… I’m just there to make sure he doesn’t zap himself. We’re working on making the audio parts of the show.. e.g the Theremin into something you can either see and or feel. It should be fun.

After the show today, Dave and I loaded my gear back into the van.. I then realized that the emergency blinkers had drained the battery. The van wouldn’t star. Dave and I tried to jump start it using my go-kart batteries.. it almost worked.. but it wouldn’t turn over. I ended up getting a jump from Paula the principal .

From Baird, I stopped at Champlain Chocolates to pick up some chocolate for Diane’s fondue tomorrow night,   While in there I sampled a bunch of different chocolates.. I’d heard a great interview with a chocolatier on the radio yesterday and was in the mood to sample the wares.. I settled on some that I liked and bought some for the folks at Champlain College. I  then went to Champlain and worked the whole day trying to finish up our first draft of our project.. … and eating more chocolate. Today was our deadline.. and.. we almost made it.. I’m hoping to be able to put the first version of it up for comment tomorrow morning.   I so much appreciate all the hard work the students and staff at Champlain have put into this thing.. I hope folks like it..   It’s designed to be a companion piece to the Educational Video Game that IBM announced today  (see powerupthegame.org). We’ll see how that goes.  I was in work calls all day as well.. so it was kind of schizophrenic.. I was trying to be in two places at once and basically failed at being completely in either.

 I had to take off at about 4 to take my show gear back to IBM…in time for me to make a meeting I had in Montpelier at 5. The meeting was with the Vermont State Science Teachers’ Association .. I’d been invited to their meeting to brainstorm about fun science activities for Vermont school kids. It was an absolutely fantastic meeting.. many cool ideas came up. One I liked was having a YouTube video contests about science topics.. We’d get high school students to help us make videos designed to get middle school students more interested in science.   We’ll see where it goes.  Here are a few of my friends in the association.. They’re a great group of folks !

I got home around 7 and had a nice quiet dinner with Diane.. It was great catching up after a busy week. We have both been really, really  missing Sam this week.. We always miss him.. Sometimes it becomes almost too much to bear.. When it’s like that somehow our friends just start showing up. Sometimes we feel like Sam whispers to them that we need a visit.. It feels like he still takes care of us..

OK.. That’s all for now.. I’m going to jump in the bath. I feel so lazy !  Gnite to you all.. gnite Sam.. more tomorrow.
-me

ps. I apologize for adding another geeky cartoon. This one’s for my brother.. I think he’s traveling now (Last week sweden.. this week cancun). He’ll get the message.. It’s an inside joke