The dogs woe us this morning.. Gabe is down in Hilton Head with Alex and Jack… so all we had to do this mornign is wake up and feed Rafe… Actually eh fed us .. we we went to the Daily Bread and had a late lucnh.. then sent Rafe on his way.. He’s spending a few days with our mutal freinds Richard. another MIT mathematician .  and his wife Jillian who live part time near Danville.   It was so great seeing Rafe yesterday and today…

As soon as Rafe’s wheels were rollign we got to work. our goal for the week is to do some serious house cleaning.. today’s task was the ‘old lab’ .. a small cloet like room on the north west cornr of the hosue.. At one point it was the kitche of the school.. then it was a pottery studio.. then an unheated bedroom.. then my first laboratory.. and now.. a huge mess of a storage room. our only goal for the day was too make it possible to walk across the flor in there..

As you can figure… doing serious claning means touching … and getting rid of all sorts of things with associated memories..  As if to underscore that.. Diane found this note she’d written to Sam last time we did a major cleaning..   The question was even more improtat now.. What would he want us to keep .. and what wouldn’t he care about ? So wierd to talk about him in the the subjunctive …

 Honestly.. I’d been dreading this memory jolt  all week.. but like many things we dread.. the reality was not as bad as the expectation.. I had several tough moments today.. but all in all my biggest challenge was untangling stuff, figuring out what to throw away and getting rid of the dangerous stuff I found..

Diane took first turn at untangling.. it’s actually a cool Zen thing that you can’t really hurry. She successfully untanlged this rats nets of cords, transformers string and wire.

I found tons of memories for all three kids.. Here’s some stuff from Sam.   Here are some odl running ribbons. he was a fast kid !

A version of Nirvana’s Ltiihum from his guitar case.. (the MMU chorus along with Max and Gabe sung it accapella at Sam’s memorial service )

Here’s one of Sam’s best inventions.. the ‘MagnaBoard’. a skate board that held unto your shoes with strong magnets.. still a cool idea, I think ..

And.. the first thing we welded together.. he did this grappling hook at Kerry’s house when he was about 10…

I also found stuff from Gabe, Max.. Diane and me.. Like number 3 piston from my old Volkswagen camper.. complete with a broken off value top still stuck into the piston head.

And a big bag of what turned out to be Zinc/Sulfer/Sulfer smoke composition.. I took it outside and burned it to get rid of it.. Pretty green flames.. (no more ‘Booms’ .. I promise !)

I also found a few scraps from the old Jonesville bridge. You can see from this how the crane had to twist and tear the old bridge apart.

I also came across an anciet treasure trove of very old electronic components.. I felt liek I was looking through a box of vacuum tubes ! This stuff is ancient.

For example .. a 1000 bit  static RAM (you can now buy 1,000,000,000 bit flash  at Best Buy for nearly the same price)

.. and a 256 bit read only memory.. this is like finding an artifact from the stone age.. I’m trying to figure out what to do with this stuff. I’ll never use. them .. but they’re too cool to through away.. Anyone out there want this stuff ? I probably have 300 ‘brand new’ 74xx (TTL ) , 74LSxx  (low power schotkey ) and 4000 series (CMOS)  ,logic chips..  You want them ? They’re yours.   ( if these acronyms don’t make sense to you.. you probably don’t want this stuff)

Well.. abotu 9 bags of trash , a car load of goodwill stuff and 10 hours later.. We can finally see the floor. (Don’t worry Gabe or Max.. we kept all of your stuff) ..
Everythign is isn sealed and labeled boxes.. it actull looks nice in there !.. It feels good

I was cleaning up when I found this print out of the t shirt design we’re working on in a pool of water.. it looks pretty cool this way..

So cool in fact.. that I’m going to go jump in some water myself.. I’m dirty and tired.. Time for a bath then bed..  

Talk to you all tomorrow. Thanks for the help with cleaning Sam.. I neede all the advice I could get.
-me

ps. Gabe just called from Hilton head and is having a great time !!.. He and Jack saw a big alligator down there this morning.. !