Monthly Archives: February 2008

Sunday night – Late arrival

Friends..
    I apologize but It’s 2:15 AM and I just got to my hotel. I drove down to Armonk, NY tonight for a meeting tomorrow.. I decided to take a 2 hour detour to go deliver a hug and some cookies to Max down in NYC.. It was really nice to see him. I’ve got a bunch of pictures and stories from that as well as other stuff today.. but I really need to get to sleep now. The one thing I will say now is that I was listening to a book on tape on the way down, Echkhardt Tolle’s “A New Earth”. I’m about half way through. and I really like it. It’s a very powerful message about how consciousness is evolving . Diane turned me on to it.. Evidently there’s going to be a 10 week online course sponsored by Tolle and Oprah Winfrey about the central messages of the book.  I understand that there are over 500,000 folks signed up for it. .. which I believe will make it one of the biggest interactive online events ever held. I  know it sounds weird , but based on what I heard of the message so far, I think it’s worth checking out..  You can check out the registration here. If that’s too much… check out the book..
OK… gotta sleep now… Love you all.. love you Sam
-me

ps. We still haven’t settled on a name for the puppy..She and Chai are now coexisting in the same room.. which is progress 🙂
  

Saturday afternoon – Dog day

Here’s a surprise..   Diane, Gabe and I had been talking about getting a 2nd dog on and off for several months. Chai has been getting pretty lonely in the house by herself… and frankly, sometimes, so do we. Yesterday Diane found an add for labradoodle puppies in the Free Press.. and here’s what happened this morning:

Diane had us all up and in the car by 8AM.. no small task for a Saturday. Friend Kevin was coming with us, too. Chai was waiting by the door with her best “don’t leave me” eyes.. so in the last minute we gave in and piled her in the car, too.

The puppies were in West Charleston, a few miles outside of Derby Line on the Canadian border. It was a long, pretty 2 hour ride to get there. By the time we rolled up to Dwayne’s kennel, we were pretty excited.. and tired of driving. He met us and led us directly to the puppies. There were 11 puppies in the litter.. 10 black ones and one light one. They’d put the girls and the boys in separate pens. We were pretty sure we wanted another girl.. so that’s where we started.

A few of the puppies came out to give us the sniff test.. Two in particular were interested in us.. the whitish one and one of the black ones.. In the end, this one black one really won us over by following us around. She was definitely the most playful and curious of the bunch.

We all gave her the hug test…

And she won our heart over ! …

We went in and sealed the deal with Dwayne.> The adoption was pretty quick. Dwayne has been doing this for 30 years.. so he really knows his stuff. !

He told us about puppy “X’s” parentage.. Her mom is a first generation labradoodle named Karen and her dad is a standard poodle named Silver..  Here they are :

Now came the moment of truth, time for Chai to meet the puupy.. here’s the first meeting… Neither knew what to make of each other.

We all said goodbye to thedog guys and got in the car for the ride home. Chai could not stay far enough away from the puppy. She insisted on sitting in the ront seat with first Diane…

Then Gabe…

We stopped for a bit to eat…. Here’s Puppy “X” with her first sampling of snow..

Again. Chai chose to observe the puppy from a distance.

We finally made it home at around 2… We got both dogs out of the car to see what would happen. The puppy saw Chai .. may she though of her mom…

Chai didn’t know what to think.. but she made it quite clear that she was not to be bothered.

The puppy went running the other way… and that’s where their reationship still stands at this hour (4:30)

The puppy is still trying to figure out what to make of us and our big house.. she is spending most of her time hiding in corners…

Or in her new crate…

Now.. what do we call this little girl ? .. (and how do we help her big sister Chai get used to her new baby sister ? )

Really.. please send us any name ideas.. we’re still stumped.. OK.. All for now.. More stories certainly coming..   You’ll hear them too, Sam…
-me

ps. The morning was bitter sweet as many things now are.. I was thinking hard of Sam and  the time 4 years ago when we went to Montreal to pick up new baby Chai from the airport

Here’s Sam and baby Chai…   I think you’d like this new puppy too.. Sam…

Thursday morning – Today’s today

Folks…
I think we got our 1.5 seconds of fame today.. As I related last night, the NBC Today show is broadcasting from Sugarbush for the next couple of days. Their head news person Meredith Vieriera did a penguin plunge yesterday along with about 50 of us. The segment came on this morning.. and even though you have to look VERY carefully.. Team Mexicali is there !


Here’s the completeToday Segment for your viewing pleasure.


The whole thing was very much worth it.. by this morning Meridith’s plunge had raised another 21 thousand dollars fro VT Special Olympics .. and that’s over the 390 thousand we all raised two weeks ago ! Not bad for taking a quick bath !

More later… ttyl Sam
-me

Tuesday night – great eastern sun

Yikes !.. 12:30 and I’m just sitting down to blog.. there are many days that I say to myself “Self..,.. why don’t you just go to bed and skip the blog for tonight ?”.. But.. I can never bring myself to break that chain: 484 posts. without missing a day. One day it will happen.. but not tonight.

Today was peaceful and productive. It started well. I had 45 minutes between taking Gabe to school and my first call that allowed me to take a quick snowshoe with Diane and our friend Jill and her 2 dogs. The day was a brilliant white and blue. It was barely below freezing so it felt very much like spring.

I always like looking back at our house from the rock on the high field.. everything looks so complete and peaceful from this distance.

Here are my two pretty snowshoeing companions…

I got into work in time for my first face to face meeting. as I walked in to the building  I ran into this guy that I vaguely new many years ago. He came up and introduced himself as Carl Hoffman, Wendy’s dad ! It was so cool to make that association ! He’s working or Qualcomm now… in fact he’s working with our friend Fram, Diane’s old office mate. I love making connections like this.

The day was super busy.. not too much time to think.. many calls and several face to face meetings. I’m realizing how much I’ve missed the social part of being at work.

Around 6 I went home and picked up Diane for our last meditation class at the shambala center. Once again, it was a really interesting class. the last of 4. I’ve grown to really like the other folks in the class and the instructor, Robert. Here again. I’ve been reminded just how much I love sitting around and talking  .. and listening to other people talk.  We spent the last class going back through the central tenets of  shambala teaching: that everyone and every thing is blessed with basic goodness, that each of us is as deserving of love and joy as any other of us, and that the living in the present moment is the only thing that really matters  in the world. I really like thinking about this ‘in the moment’ concept. Sam’s passing and the time since have pushed us face first into the moment… where everything is clear,and  beautiful, real and sometimes overwhelming. The shambla folks call this in the moment-ness ‘great eastern sun’ .. or ’10 o’clock sun’ because everything in the present is so bright and illuminated. Living out of the moment, in the future or in the past, they call ‘setting sun’ . That is living in the future of worry or the past of regret. I resonated so deeply with that . I really feel a bonding to the other 20 or so folks in the class.. yet.. today is the final class. I’ll probably never see most of them again.. that’s sad.. and yet it’s OK.  We ate  few more cookies, drank a glass of tea , shook hands with each other and said good bye forever.. They became our past, while our present went on to the grocery store to by toothpicks, straw and toilet paper.. A it turned out.. all things on Aisle 15. It just goes to show, that all your needs can be met in one place if your needs are simple enough .

I couldn’t leave the store without leaving a little constructive vandalism.. I’m hoping that the new owner of these mushrooms will have a cool moment when he/she figures out the meaning of this stone.

OK.. I gotta sleep.. I’m only doing about 5 .5 hours per night again and that’s probably not good for me. . So.. I’ll say g’nite  all, ‘nite Sam.

-me

ps. I still can get over this picture in the Louvre that Julie sent yesterday .  It looks so much like me.. Who was I then ?????