Thursday evening – at sea

Avast friends, greetings from the Motor Vessel EAGLE.. I’m about one hour off shore of the Massachusetts coast halfway to the island of Nantucket. I’m heading there to do a series of electricity shows for three schools on the island. I’ve blogged from many places in the last year and four months… 9 countries, 10 states, cars, trains, countless airplanes.. but never from a boat before. This one is nice.. it has free wireless…, electricity.. even food. The catch is I’m really getting seasick trying to type.. Let me see if I can through this with out having to heave-ho…

I ended up having a busy and productive day down here.. I woke in my folks guest room this morning … and couldn’t figure out where I was for several minutes..   I was so confused. !

They both woke up and fed me and said good bye. and sent me on my way.
Even though I didn’t grow up in this here.. my parents house is fulled with so many memories of my kid-hood… I ate my peanut butter and jelly staring at this picture that’s over my folks dining room table.. it was over our table in Houston… Who are these kids ?… And why are they staring at me ?

It had been a really nice visit. I left my parents house about 7:15 drove the 20 or so miles to Lexington for my talk at IBM Rational Labs.   The traffic was nasty so it took me over an hour…
When I got to the IBM site, this nice woman, Lois,  came up to me and asked me for a funny favor.. She asked me to take this envelope and mail it from Vermont.. It’s some sort of secret pen-pal thing that her scrapbook club does…. or it’s a letter bomb… I’ll let you know which.   I gave her a SamStone as a swap..

I arrived just in time for my talk. The audience was a group of developers and support folks from IBM Rational in our Software Group. I was giving a general career talk.. I think I tried to cram too much in. but it went OK…   There were about 20 folks in the room and 25 or so on the phone.. not bad…   I love getting perspectives of folks in different parts of the company like this.   Here’s my host Jennifer.. and her beautiful crew.

I had a bunch of phone meetings for the rest of the morning .. so I hunkered down in the IBM office and worked there. Since nearly all of my work is now on the computer or phone I can truly work from anywhere now..   I cut out around 1 and went to meet my folks for lunh.. As I left the building I noticed how much closer Spring felt down here.

I met my folks at a bakery in Nattuck.. the building was the old Odd Fellows hall. It was a nice irony because one of the meetings I’d had this morning was the Council of all the IBM Fellows..   .. and most of them are Odd….

I found my folks tucked neatly in a corner of the bakery.. We ordered lunch…  The food sucked.. but the conversation was great.. so it was great… It was a nice bonus seeing them twice in a day..

I stayed with them for about an hour and a half then headed off to my next meeting. I was heading to another IBM office (Westboro) to see my friend John P. ..   On the way I found this bit of regrettable nostalgia..

I spent about an hour with John at the IBM Westboro site.. we had a short, productive meeting..   I’d never visited the site.. it was a really nice place

I  left Westboro at 5:30 in order to  make the ferry dock by 7:30  .. It was an easy drove down.. a few more work calls and a call to Homer and I was there.

The ferry dock was a pretty lively place…  

I only had to wait about 10 minutes until we loaded… This boat is HUGE. there were a ton of cars and trucks to load..

They won’t let you stay in your car…..

But I did notice the GPS showing the car already out in the water.. Don’t know why.. but I thought that was cool

I wandered upstairs and was pleasantly surprised about how nice the boat is.. they have a dining room, lounge, V’s, free WiFi, wall plugs.. you name it..   In fact you might forget it was a boat if it wasn’t for the queasy rolling of the floor (I’m really feeling pretty sick at the moment … )

I had a vision of standing on the point of the bow of the ship with the stars bright above and the wind whipping through my hair.. but then I remember theres was now pointed bow… it’s cloudy and I don’t have that much hair.. so I’ve settled for the more tame fantasy of sitting here at my own Formica table sipping a diet Pepsi and trying not to loose my lucnh…

OK you landlubbers… (what the heck is a lubber.. anyway ? ).. I’m going to go outside  and try getting some fresh air… or possibly heave over the rail..  

Smooth sailing folks.. ’nite Sam
-me