I have absolutely nothing to report today I spent the entire day in the yoga studio working on my paper.. .. well that’s not completely true.. I did about an hour of painting this morning. Then  Diane and I took a short but beautiful late afternoon hike with the dogs up between Honey Hollow and the Catamount trail.

I have a funny relationship with this paper..which is on why folks like me should be workign with kids and teachers to get kids more interested in engineering and scientists On one hand I love doing it .. I think the message is pretty important.because the world needs engineers and scientists to work on hard problems like energy efficiency. healthcare, etc.. . On the other hand  I hate doing  it. As with anything involving writing.. I struggle trying to get my thoughts into words.. or at least words that make sense in a linear order.   I spend long hours staring at the screen messing around with the same four or five words. .. Sometimes I don’t get as much as a paragraph after an hours work…

You know I just had one of those wierd aha moments sitting here typing (and procrastinag from working on my paper) .. For soem reason I have no trouble at all sitting down every night and writing here.. In fact I’ve written problemy close to a million and a half words over the nearly two years since Sam died..

Why is it hard for me to write about stuff other than what I’m thinking.. Hey.. I can sit here and ponder that instead of writing my paper.

I guess I should get back to it..   Before I do, let me share the following pictures I got today from our friend Georgia who lives down in Guatemala (I think.. you still down there Georgia ? ).. I was doing some  maintainance on the SamStones website today (Instead of working on my paper) .. I was looking through the spam filter and found a comment that Georgia had posted on the site.. I guess it got picked up because it had several html links in it.. as many spam messages do.

Georgias message had the scanned image of a thnk you card that Sam had written with Dianes help for his 7th or 8th birthday.. here’s the front

I can remember sittingdown at the computer wiht Sam to make that picture as if it were yesterday.. We were so jazzed that we could  wiggle that picture of the kids at his party. Oh man…….

I love finding stuff like this…  Thanks so much for sending it Georgia !

I could stare at it all night.. but.. I gotta get bck to my paper…

Gnite folks..  Gnite Sam..
-me

..

The day passed mercifully quickly.. I took tow of my meetings outside.. The first with friend Norman.. we walked down to the river as we talked about IBM stuff..

The second with friend Jason.. another IBM meeting. b I took him to Catamount trail to the palace where the Haunted forest  is goign to be. I wanted to check out the place that the project X monstoer is goign to be…

Here’s the site we’re going to use.. nice and open and flat !

Here’s Jason innefectivly covering the beers we smugged on to the trail..

Man this place brings back all sorts of meemories for me and the three kids..

Here’s where Max played ‘Jack’ in the original Jack-o’-lantern story.

And here’s the pumpkin patch where Sam, Gabe and I hung out for several years as part of scareforce.. I loved sitting here scaring people…

We also stopped in and saw Jana before we left..

THere was a car in the parking lot there with good bumper stickers..

I got hhome around 5L30 and no one was here.. so I decided to blog.. One less thing to do later.. . This weekend I have to finish my $%ing paper.. THat calls for soem interesting new way to procrastinate.. I know.. how about a nap ?!   More tomorrow.. Nite folks, Nite Sam
-me

Today was the most important day in the Jewish calendar.. Yom Kippur.. The day you’re to atone for all the bad things you did in the last year..like being  mean to people. not workign hard enough, disrespecting freinds and family . And I didn’t…   I mean.. I didn’t atone much.. I certainly did my share of  bad stuff last year.. In fact.. I’ve been quite a grouch all year.. but.. htats part of the process I guess.

I woke this morning with good intentions of goign to services soemwhere.. but jsut couldn’t make myself do it.. Soemhow the ‘organized’ part of organized religion just isn’t feelig right to me now. I did fast for 24 hours as I have every Yom Kippur since I was a kid.. that felt good.. its almost liek biening a vegan.. I feel like I’m always fasting 🙂

I also stayed home to think.. I took Dianes mornign yoga class. then we took a short walk up the Catamoutn trail.. It was really beutiful

We followed an old tone wall in the woods and tlked about the people who built it.. Wo were they.. What were they doing up here ? Was the land all cleared ?

I gcame home and worked quietly.. I tried to make progress on a paper I’m writing.. but got nowhere.. then around 2:15 Homer called to tell me that a local TV station (WCAX) was coming over to doa short peice on the Project-X mosnter. I was conflicted a little.. should I sytay here and

1. Contemplate for Yom Kippur
2. Work on my $&ing paper
3. Drive 25 miles for 5 minutes of fame with our animated and very tall robotic freind

I asked myself.. “what would Sam want me to do” ??? I was in the car driving to Homer’s in minutes.

Here I am not writing my $&ing paper on the way to Homers.

Homer and Michael had rolled the beast outside which was great.. he could stand all the way up.. he’s really quite big

We gave a quick demo for the TV guys Jack and Lance..

I understand that it was on TV tonight..  But.. we don’t have a TV that’s hooked up to the outside world.. If anyone saw it.. please let me know.. There’s a text article on their website..

We finished the day by all going to see the Bill Maher documentary Religulous  . It was really pretty interesting.. I’m not a tv guy.. so I’v never seen Maher… but this was a pretty compelling roast of all organized religion. It was a little mean spirited in places.. but he got his point across. It was the perfect end to a religious holiday .. Diane and Gabe liked it too !

One small irony was that there was a scene in the movie  of a man blowing a shofar.. a rams horn. Jews are supposed ot hear the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur services.. So I got lucky !

Okay my friends.. I’m goign to go work on my paper for a bit.. A good new year to you all…
Love you Sam
-me

Hi all. tonight is the star of Yom Kippur.. erev Yom Kippur.. the end of the jewish new year and the strat  of the yom kippur fast.  and day of atonement.. It’s the days where jews go around and figure out how they’re going to atone for their sins through the pervious year. You’re supposed to apologzie to anyone you may have wronged during the year.. so . if I pissed any of you off.. and you didn’t deserve it… then.. I’m sorry.. If you did deserve it.. I’m still sorry 🙂

. I’m home in bed sick… ugh.. I think I may have what Gabe had.. whcih we think was Coxhaxie virus… I’ll know better tomorrow…  Right now it’s about 8:30 and I am lying in bed trying to stay awake.

I still ahve a few pictured from last night.. .. which began with a beautiful late afternoon soccer game at CHMS..

I ran into Brianna H.. playing field hockey. I’ll always remember a conversation she and I had where she told me she wanted to be a scientist (Marne biologist) .. but said she couldn’t cuz she wasnt good at math… I hoped I talked her through that.. she’s a good kid.. and would make a good scientist.

We got home just at dark and it was about t dip below freezing. Diane went out and made what must have been the last harvest of the year.. she rescues all of my hot peppers and the rest of the eggplants.

She’d made a cake in honor of her mom’s birthday.. so wedug into it and sang Happy Birthday Marcia.. (Hope she sent you a piece Marcia !)

Right after dinner I headed to Homers to work on the hundered s of small remaining details in project-x

Seth and I were workign on the head to finish integrating all the elctronics.. we had the debate on.. so the creature was doing a fine time of lip-snching John McCain.. This looks ready for YouTube, no ?

I didn’t get home until 1:O0.. and boy was I tired..

Today was interesting.. There was more  churn from the financial crisis .. again.. that stuff is so mcuh in a differnt world for us.. the churn it was causing me at work actually became a bit surreal.. and from that it actually became a little bit fun in an absurd way. That was a much more fun way to view the situation.

Listen folks.. its’s only money. in the ned it dwosn’t matter much.. I called DIane midday to talk about soem of the weird stuff that was going on.. and we both came up with the interesting perspective that in soem ways.. a crisis like ths is an opportunity for change, learning  and surprise.. Call me an anarchist.. but I think this financial slide is going to be fun in a scary sort of way..

Speakign of slide.. I’m sliding out of conciousness.. .. so more tomorrow..
Nite folks.. love you Sam
-me

Today was interest