Yearly Archives: 2008

Sunday evening – Lutsen

I just realized that today is the 27th anniversary of the day I started at IBM. I cna think of no better way to celebrate it than by hanging out and relaxing by the lake here in Lutsen MN. We’re out her with my parents, my sister mary. herhusband john and thier kids ellery and jake, and my brother, hiw wife shaun and thier kids betsy ‘berto ,and chris. Their other two , ben and billy will be coming in Tuesday.

We got here yesterday around 1 AM.. after two flights and a 3 hour layover in the very cool Detroit airport. It has some great art installations like this ever changign light tunnel

This cool fast indoor train

And the coolest computer controlled fountain

e’re staying at the Lutsen Resort.. it’s a 126 years old collection of a main lodge and soem log cabins

Here’s our cabin

The cabin has one thing in common with the 3.2% ‘near beer’ they sell in Minnesota on Sundays

They’re both very close to water !

Diane and I woke early and drove 20 miles to Gran Marais.. the site of the nearest grocery store. The store did not open until 10.. so we spent some time wondering around the town.. We found the list of activities in the area.. it’s pretty quiet here !

Gran Marais has a nice beach front..

The town was being set up for a street fair of some sort. There were lots of food carts being set up

THere were two enterprising young kids were sellign rocks

We came across a group of folks gathering with musical intruments..

It was a church service. we stayed around for the first song.. a young guy on guitar.. His music was very mooving.. We think he said that he had a child that just died.. but we wern’t sure we heard.. .. Iv ebeen thinking about it all day…

We walked around town for another half hour or so.. We wwer checkign out the stores, the signs, the people and their bumper stickers.. like this one.

and this one.

We found a great family run donought place…

Ans d a commemerative painting of the Edmond Fitzgerald… a frighter tht sank in a gale in in75. It was commemorated in the Gordon Lightfoot song The Wreck of th Edmond Fitzgerald.

We got our food shoping done.. then came back to Lutsen. Everyonewas awake by then including our nephew Jake..

… And his sister Ellery

Shaun brougth us soem wierd food she’d found including caffinated (!) , lemon flavored potatoe chips.. Yummy max ?

Max and Jake played guitar for a while

I went over to see Bully and Shaun and their kids.. Shaun has some great bumper stickers..

Rad this one twice.. Evil but funny

How many of you get this one ? (Cosmological physics humor 🙂

We came back to find all the donoughts had been eaten but one sliver.. A Cohn traight.. no one will ever eat the last morsel. its’ like Xeno’s paradox for food !

Around 4 Diane. Mom, Dad and I went for a nice hike in the forest.. it was beutiful.. and a bit buggy.

I found red, white and blue berries !

We crossed their ‘onion river’.. Our Winnoski means ‘onion river’ in Iroquis.

We placed a SamStoen at the point we turned around.. and sat and talked about Sam for a bit. I felt him here with us all day …

On the way back we ran into a group of girlscouts who were from a camp nearbywere so cute.. They flocked together like wood eleves.. They asked us all sorts of questions..so we asked some back They were from Dulth and had been at camp for 8 weeks ! We told them Sam’s story and gave them 2 Samstones to place for us.

Thye were like walking commercial for Krocs !

When wegot home. we set up to make SamStones. Diane had orded the clay and had it shipped to here lat week. . The kids and and adults all worked throught the rest of the afternoon making SmStones. many of these folks had never made them..

Gabe and I took soem time to go prtend to be playing golf. i say pretend becae we found the glub a wedge shaped thing and the two balls in the woods. Gabe taught em how to old the thing and how ot swing.. We hit it around thie tiny course until we ran into a couple of womenwho told us we were going backwards.. we told them that we didn’t care.. but evidently they did care !

We came back to the house for dinner. Jake was on the floor playing duims.

The rest of the kids were playing board games..

And we all ate.. Max and Billy got ou their guitars and did soem wonderful jams. I’ll try to record some of them tomorrow.

I did catch Max doing his song to Dinae..’My mother the spider’

OK.. I’m really sleepy and that’s all I have for today.. gnite to everyone.. Sam.. we’re really missing you here buddy.. ‘nite
-me

Saturday afternoon – en route

Diane, Max, Gabe and I (and.. ) are sitting at the Burlington airport waiting to board our flight to Lutsen MN by way of Detroit, Duluth then a two hour drive. As always. getting packed took about 10 times longer than we figured it should.. The car was 95 percent packed by about 12:30.. but we didn’t get out of the house for aanother 2 hours or so.. Diane’s the only organized person in this family.. but anyone who knows us… knows that.

When it came time to lave we had to say goobye to the dogs.. that’s really hard to do.. they could sense that we’re heading out. We’ll have to call and talk to them

Luckily Nicholas wsa there to distract them.. Maybe we should have given Nick a bone too.

We first had to go and pick up Rose and Max2 (not our max.. but a rental Max) … who will be house/dog sitting… Then we all went to New Wold Burritos for a quick lunch. The place is great they sell burritos that are the size of your head. !

We used the time to go over the dog and house care manual.. Our house is not all that simple.. it’s like an organism..

We got to the airport about an hour before the flight which worked out well. Max2 and Rose dropped us off and drove off . We’re on our own..

Hey.. looks like we’re boarding.. I may update this as we go.. but if not.. More tomorrow from the wilds of Minnisota. Wish us luck.. talk to ya’ll tomorrow. ttyl Sam.
-me

ps. We just got to Lutsen.. The second we got out of the car, Max and I saw the hugest shooting star.. Sam’s here too !

Thursday night – no camera

Fun and very busy day./ Full day of work from 8 till 6 plus a few fun things thrown in. Unfortunately.. I forgot to bring my camera.. so you’ll have to settle for my drawings…

One fun thing is that I had a breif meeting with Dr. Peter .. the Neurologist. And my friend Ray from Champlain. My freind Casar and I are helping them hook a breathing device ( a spirometer) to a new video game they’re creating. the goal is to make it more fun for kids with breathing disorders like CF to do  their breathing exercise. We’ve figured out how to interface to the spirometer and we gave them a short demo of how the thing works.  We showed them ..how you can show someones breathing rate as a real time graph on the PC.  Peter and Ray thought it was coolk, I think. It’s a really fun project. I’m time constrained.. so Cesart’s help in the commuincations programming is gong to be a big help

I also had a cool lunch meeting downtown with Ben C. He goes around the country talking about the gross missalignment of our countries spending priorites… He’s made a pie chart that shows how pentagon spending relates to other things like education spending, health care, housing the poor., energy research . etc…  . YOu can cehk the story out at TrueMajority.org

We were talking about ways that some simple but elegant science demos could be used to illustrate some of his points regarding US and World spending priorities.. It’s got me thinking. Think ‘Geeks for Peace’ !

It was good talking to him… another bonus was a quick lunch at the new NY style deli just down the street. I had Cold borscht and a knish.. Ben had real corned beef . you can’t beat that/ What’s more they gave us real NYC pickles.. I took one back to Ben’s office and zapped it for him with 110 Volts.. to illstrate my point about scince as a way of making a point (what point ? .. I wasn’t sure 🙂

The rest of the day was busy with meetings.. I got out around 6 and headed up to Tim Ferrils.. Got my back fxed.. then dropped in breifly on my freind Dave’s 30th IBM anniversary party. It was really wonderful. Lots of friends from IBM and mutual freinds from his neighborhood. Dave and his accapella group sang 50’s and 60’s music.. they were excelelnt. It was great seeing this side of Dave I’d never seen. He has a beutiful voice..a nd he plays a mean air trombone..

I got home around 8:00  just in time to take a late walk with Diane and the doogies.. Now.. II can’t keep my eyes open.. so I’ll sign off.. Nite all.. Nite Sam
-me

Wednesday night – fried green tomatoes

Oy.. what lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng day.. My frst meeting was at 8.. and my last … albeit not a work meeting.. ended at 11:30. I’m very. very glad that I’m taking next week off. I need it..

I had a fstrange Sam dream just before I wokke up this morning. I reamed I’d made a huge holographic pictrure of Sam playing guitar. I was headign downtown tot eh formal unvailing..and I couldn’t find a place to park.. So .. what’s that mean ?

Another interesting Sam thing.. All of a sudden I can hear/ Sam’s voice in my head.. For some reason it’s been hard for me to imagine his voice for a while.. now it’s back.. and I’m really glad..

It’s late now.. so I’ll doa quick once over on my day

First… I disobeyed a sign !!!!!!!!

Then I had dinner with my friend Chuck who’s visiting from Austin and my buddy Pete. Chuck wand somewhere Vermonty. so we went to the Kitchen Table. We were so loud and animated in our work talk that once of the other couples asked to be reseated !

The restaurant embraced my veganism and worked up a special just for me.. fried green tomoatoes with wild chanterall miusrooms.. Yummy !

Around 8:30 I managed to get to Homer’s for a Haunted forest work sessin. Tonight it was just me, Homer and Brandon. we got a ton done !

Here’s one of the sholder joints of the creaure..

And one of the elbow joints.

We als managed to build up a framework of the face animatronics. We were using the monster servos that I’d bought online. We got the jaw working pretty well:

..

Finally, the face is coming together.. Here’s Brandon with the Face skeleton

OK.. I’m falling asleep. Time to go to bed.Talk to you all tomorrow
Gnite Sam.. Gnite me
-jc