Friday night – on my own

Friday night and I’m on my own. Diane and Gabe are in Stratton with Dylan and Sue at the US Open Snowboard competition.. Max and friends are at higher ground watching friend Willa play.. It’s just me and the dogs here in this very big.. very drafty house.. Nice and kinda sad.. It’s good to have some quiet time. I had a good day..It started early.. Diane woke me before 6 when she and Gabe left in order to watch the puppy.. I seem to remember that having human babies required less work .. but then.. maybe I wasn’t paying as much attention 🙂 ?

I took the dogs for a great walk in the woods at around 7:30. I was surprised to be moving at that time of the morning.. but there I was outside on a beautiful but blustery and cold morning. I had had a troubled sleep.. but the fresh air and dog play chased it out of me. I came back .. stuck ’Tori in her crate and went to meet friend Jason at On The Rise for Breakfast. Jason and I work together at work.. I always enjoy talking with him. On The Rise is great.. but might not be the best place for a business meeting. Half of Richmond came and went this morning.. which made it hard to have a technical discussion. Fun nevertheless.. One cool thing of note… As I was about to leave, Lisa-san from Tyko drumming ran in and gave me two bags of Matte that she’d bought for me a few weeks back. Diane saw her in the coop and told her how much I liked it. It was so cool..
   From there I went to work and met up with friend Mark and his son Austin. Austin was skipping school today (like Gabe)  to do a job shadowing thing with me. Our main event was to do a Jolts and Volts show at Orchard School in South Burlington. . Austin is in 8th grade at Browns River MS. He’s a really great kid. He and his dad helped me load up my gear while we talked about my job and about engineering. He has to do 2 job shadowing things for his class.. He already did a physical therapist.. which is an area he liked.

We then went to Healthy Living for lucn.. There I ran into Peter-san.. also from  Tyko.. He told me that our Tyko  Sensei Stuart-san actually built the giant stand-inside drum that he’d been talkign about. That was cool to have a 2nd Tyko person contact in a single day. Mark and Austin and I sat down and Austin  asked me a whole bunch of thoughtful questions.. It was fun being interviewed.. Some of his questions really made me think.. like ” What do you do every day ?”   ) If you read this often .. you’ll understand.. that’s not an easy answer. )   I ran into Homer’s wife, Mary B. there while I was eating.. which is pretty funny because my cell phone  called her at 11:45 last night.  It’s a really small state…

In keeping with my ’disgusting drinks theme.. they had a display of Noni (sourbag) juice on the way out of Healthy Living.. Austin hazarded a smell .. but wouldn’t venture a taste. This is the same stuff that Rashi’s dad had me drink when I was visiting Ruchir one time.. nasty !

From there we went to Orchard School.. I did a show for all the 4th and 5th graders.. they were an awesome audience.. Austin played photographer. It was a good show. I’m so in the moment when I’m doing these shows.. I know I’m serving my life’s purpose when I’m onstage doing them.

Here’s mark with a suspicious object

I got packed, backed ot IBM, unloaded and home in time for my afternoon meetings. It was a productive evening. I worked until about 7.

Jeff and his band ’Forever They Said’ was here practicing.. their practice was so good that they blew an amp. The big news with them is that they’re playing in a hardcore fest at higher ground in a few weeks. Sam would be proud.. Jeff, Pucket and Sam were in the band’s predecessor.. Black Night Vengeance.

Speaking of Higher Ground.. I thin I’m going to go and try to catch Willa’s show.. so gotta sign off. before I do.. 2 things.. First.. RJ was here last night after dinner and almost showed us a trick.. (or he showed us an almost trick) .. it was impressive

Finally.. Bad E. found this on the web. I think it’s awesome. Think we could do this in Burlington . Think anyone would notice if we did ?

 

OK all.. Gotta run.. Peace out all.. Peace out, Sam

-me

Wednesday evening – leftovers

All I have for this eveing is leftovers. I managed to have a completely uneventful day. The first I can remember in several months. In fact.. Im still in my jammies and it’s 8PM. I worked all day at home.. on the phone from 8 until 6:30PM got lots done.. but nothing memorable to report… For that reason I’ll resort to a couple of images left over from yesterday and the day before  that I would like to share before I forget..  

So.. Monday.. on my way to work I drove behind a pickup with a giant stuffed (real) bear…   it was the most bizarre sight..

I guess the guy was just exercising his ’right to bear arms’…  (ugh)


I had a good meeting at Champlain on the next steps on our joint project.. and only then realized that I was not wearing green. Like friends Sara Ray and Ann had done.. 

 

Well to be fair.. I thought  I was  wearing green.. but it was pointed out to me that what I thought was green was actually brown. It’s times like that when you realize that we really don’t see things the same.

On my way back to work (still on Monday)  I took a quick detour to get a pair of shoes. Diane had pointed out that my old ones were getting worn down to the point that it might be messing with my hips and back.. I generally don’t notice things like that.. but.. sure enough.. check this out.. It’s a good visual metaphore for the wear and tare on my soul over the last year (ugh again)  Any more and you would have to start calling me Eileen.  (ugh yet again)   .

I got home in time for Diane’s yoga class.. then an impromptu St Patty’s day feast.. again.. all green.. Pesto noodles and salad..   It was good.. but I’m eating other colors the rest of the week..

Now.. here are some shots from my bizarre  pointless travel day yesterday.. It started with running into  Sawyer and  Mac-and-cheese-Deb at the airport. at 5AM Sawyer was on his way to Mammoth out west. Deb had just slipped him a SamStone when I ran into them. You can see it in the picture

Here’s a blurry shot of us landing at Philly at sunrise.. I rarely see sunrise unless I’ve stayed up.. so it was worth noting.

On the trip down to Dallas (or so I thought at the time)/.  saw this cool ’S’ in the sky… A Sam echo

As I recounted yesterday.. I never made Dallas.. instead I spent a strange 6 housrs stranded in the Little Rock airport on work calls. It gave me a chance to plant our first SamStone in Arkansas, though.

The woman on the right is Jen.. the most wonderful gate attendant who handled all four of the stranded planes that flew into Little Rock unexpectantly. As you can imagine she was putting up with some pretty irate people.. She remained nice, helpful .. and best of all, funny, through our 6 hour acquaintance..

Here’s the scene at mid day.. the photo doesn’t do justice to the level of chaos. This was Bedlam.. It was seriously fun to watch.   At one point I went and bought about 6 bags of candy (small hershey bars, milky ways. reeses cups) and opened them on the counter to calm down the crowd. It actually worked !!!!

Here’s the ambulance that met our flight when we were stopped at take off by the guy in back who was short of breath. I’ve been thinking about him all day.. I hope he’s doing OK ..

And that, my friends, clears out my backlog of pictures… Ahh.. one more thing I want to pass on is something Jessie showed me the other night. It’s called StumbleUpon and I think it’s going to destroy my productivity completely. It’s basically a thing for suggesting web content that you might like based on a profile you set.. It then lets you rate content and sharpens it’s recommendation preferences. It’s amazing.. So far I’ve found stuff like:

Ball toss It’s hard to describe but cool
The Integrator:  A program that does free symbolic integrals on the web
Special numbers A list of the special property of common numbers
Blue ball machine Blue ball weirdness
Equation Sheet The ultimate formula cheat sheet
Future me Send a note to your future self
Tower of bears Bears falling and stacking
Disney leftovers Too shocking to describe !

It’s addicting. Help.. stop me before I stumble again !!!!!!!!!!!

I gotta go.. nite folks.. nite Sam
-me

Monday night – Thoughful St. Patty’s day

Happy St. Patty’s day folks. .. the day that everybody’s Irish. Even Sam had a bit of it in him.. he loved the band Flogging Molly. He had a Flogging Molly shirt that was on of his favoirtes.. he wore it all the time. Here’s a picture of him wearing it that Sam R. took.

And here’s a cool version that Sam R made of the same photo

What a beautiful, beautiful kid

All day long I’ve been humming a song by them.. It’s called ’If I ever leave this world alive” . Max played a beautiful version of it on the night of Sam’s Celibration at Memorial Auditorium..


If I ever leave this world alive
by Flogging Molly

If I ever leave this world alive
I’ll thank for all the things you did in my life
If I ever leave this world alive
I’ll come back down and sit beside your
feet tonight
Wherever I am you’ll always be
More than just a memory
If I ever leave this world alive

If I ever leave this world alive
I’ll take on all the sadness
That I left behind
If I ever leave this world alive
The madness that you feel will soon subside
So in a word don’t shed a tear
I’ll be here when it all gets weird
If I ever leave this world alive

So when in doubt just call my name
Just before you go insane
If I ever leave this world
Hey I may never leave this world
But if I ever leave this world alive

She says I’m okay; I’m alright,
Though you have gone from my life
You said that it would,
Now everything should be all right

She says I’m okay; I’m alright,
Though you have gone from my life
You said that it would,
Now everything should be all right
Yeah should be alright

I found this scratchy recording of the Band singing it on YouTube.. I hope you enjoy it.. I can’t get it out of my head tonight !

All I’ve got heart for at the moment..
folks

Gnite folks.., Gnite all
-me

Sunday night – green

It actually felt like spring today… gray, warmish (mid 30’s)., overcast with occasional snow..   Diane and I took a morning run.. we had a plastic garbage bag with us.s o we did a little spring cleaning on the last 1/4 mile of our road.. The melting snow always leaves it’s bounty of crud. Note that in mys experience. Budweiser is the preferred beer of litterers

After that I took Chai and ’Tori out for a walk..   Unfortunately Chai bolted before I could get her shock color off and got a nasty shock as she left the yard. She gave me a lok that said.. “you bonehead” . On top of that.  Chai’s still got a hurt paw.. so we didn’t go fast..  The two dogs are actually playing together a little now..
’Tori goes where ever Chai goes.. And Chai is tolerating it about 98 percent of the time at this point.

I love the places where the mudslides  from the rain have oozed over snow pack. t looks so cool.

One of my goals for today was to repair a Theremin, a piece of equipment from my show..  A Theremin is a musical instrument that you play by moving your hands in the air near it’s antenna’s. Your body’s capacitance changes the frequency of one of two otherwise matched oscillators.. You hear the small difference between the oscillators as a tone that varies with the nearness of your hands It’s got a cool other-worldly sound.. Think of the “eww-woo-oooo-wooo-ooooo-oooo” part at the beginning of the Beach Boys song ’Good Vibrations;… or the sound track for the Sci Fi classic “The day the earth stood still” ..   Theremins were created by a Russian engineer/musician named Lev Theremin back in the 1920’s..

Anyway.. I absolutely love debugging circuits. It’s one of the most absorbing and challenging brainteasers I know. It’s like doing detective work.. kooking for clues, forming hypothesis.. going down blind alleys.. and eventfully, i you’re lucky,  finding the culprit.

Aha.. here’s the culprit, a bad JFET .. probably eaten by a stray spark from one of the other high voltage pieces in my show..   It felt good to find the source of the problem. but where was I going to find an n-channel JFET in Vermont on a Sunday afternoon. The best I’d be able to do would be to order one on Monday and wait until Wednesday or Thursday for it to come.. .. and I need this to work on Thursday.. I decided to rummage around and see if I had a replacement. I felt it was pretty unlikely.. there are literally thousands of types of these small components.. and this type is pretty obscure and is rarely used anymore I wasn’t optimistic. .. But wouldn’t you know it.. the first drawer I reached into..there they were. It was a total fluke. I bought these as part of a going our of business sale in 1995.. I offered a guy 20 bucks for his whole supply of small parts.. and these were among them.  It would be like having your exotic sports car car break down in the desert and having the diner you stopped in have just the weird part you needed to fix your car being used a paperweight to hold down the lunch orders.. OK.. maybe it wasn’t that weird.. but that was the best analogy I could cook up.  .

Anyway. I popped the thing in, tuned it up and voila !. A very satisfying outcome..

At that point I came inside again.. Max, Emma, Jesse, Alex, Mason and Abbot had gone to Burlington to Victoria Secrets.. They were giving away girls underwear today.. so Jessie and Emma grabbed their panty posse and went .. Here they are modeling their wares..   OK.. so this IS a wierd picture…

The big event today that we’d decided to have a putluck tonight with only green food., It was really cool.. there were about 20 folks.. and about that many green dishes.

We had green mac and cheese.

Roasted brussels sprouts

Spanikopita

spinach salad

Pickles and green olives

Spinach bake

Green pasta salad

green pea soup

asparagus salad

pesto noodles

I made green eggs and ham in honor of Sam
apple, kiwi, grape salad

Mountain dew and green margarita mix to drink

Green jello

and finally green ice cream cream puffs from deb (yum !)

the kids took the couches and the grown0ups took the dining room.. it was fun !

And afterwards… video games and horror movies.. the end of a perfect day.

The dogs were happy when the house quieted down.. Here’s ’Tori with her foot in the food bowl..

.. and here she is drinking my tea before I could !

There are still a bunch of kids here.. but I need to sleep.. so I’ll end here. Happy ’s St. Patrick’s day eve.  Top of the evening to all of you. Gnite Sam !

-me