Started today with a haircut with my newly married buddy Deb.. Not much hair left to cut.. but it’s still a good time to catch up on what’s going on around town.. If it’s happening, Debbie knows about it. She’s such a great person..

She’s got all sorts of Sam stuff around her shop

My work day was full and productive.. a good mix of stuff. Nothing much new..

Tonight I hosted a pickup meeting for part of the Haunted Forest ‘project X’ team at my house.. We had quite a crowd

Here are Seth, Leo, Homer, Buddy, John and Brandon out in the lab.. trying to get one of the microcontrollers to speak to us. The controller is going to work the face of our monster.

Jana, the goddess of the haunted forest was there tonight.. She has a year round. full time job planning for halloween.

And from what she tells us.. there are many more in her profession than we might think.

Homer brought over his models for the creatures arms.. You can tell form these models that this is going to be very. very cool.

Meanwhile, inside.. while we geeks were out in the barn.. the ‘cool kids’ were inside writing on each other and singing ribald songs. Here is Nicholas and Carolyn.

And Selene

Last saw, Max, Nicholas, Carolyn and Selene were heading out to go caroling.. in June… ?

OK.. gotta sleep.. but before I do.. I gotta share a great video that I was sent today..

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I just gotta give this guy soem SamStones !

Ok.. time for sleep.. gnite all.. Gnite Sam..

Today’s highpoint was short and sweet. Diane and I took Kasey P to Advance Music to pick out the guitar he won with this years Sam Cohn Musical Soul Award. Every year kids, teachers and staff at MMU can nominate any student in the school who has a musical soul… We then select the years winner out of a hat… so Sam can have his say.. Ths year our super close friend Kasey was the winner.. It could not have been a beter choice Sam and Kase were freinds for years.. Sam was always over at Kasey and Jakes.. or they were over here.. They were always up to fun and mischief.. like the time Sam managed to run their snowmobile into the house… sweet memories..

Our firend and neighbor Kyle was working there in case we had any questions. We gave him a SamStone to put in the store. Look for it next time you’re there.

It was really fun watching Kasey walk into the acoustic guitar room at Advance. He really was like a kid in a candy store.. He started pulling down guitars and strumming them. I’m sure it was a hard choice to make.. After about 30 minutes of trying things out, Kasey found this beautiful Taylor acoustic/electric. Its got a very sweet tone.. The two of them fell in love immediately.

It was wonderful seeing Kasey sitting there playing a guitar he got from Sam.. I’m sure Sam approved of his choice..

I can still hear Sam playing that guitar in my head… I love the sound.

Gnite folks.. gnite Sam.. keep on playing …

-me

Two very different stories for tonight… First.. my day.. I had a long one.. the kind where every moment of the day from 8AM until 9PM was proscribed.. no free time.. but still it felt OK. Lots of variety and progress.. or at least it felt like progress. One of my friends asked me today why I never write more specifically about my work .. I hadn’t thought of that much before. I gues smost of what I do is IBM’s confidential business.. not something I should shre here.. also .. I do enough thinking about work while at work.. I don’t want it to take over my life anymore.. even if I do really like it (which I do)

Anyway… Work was good.. then around 5:30 I packed up my gear and headed to Champlain College for a Jolts and Volts show. I was tonight’s entertainment at the Governor’s Institute for Games and Media. My buddy Ann is the director.. It was so much fun doing a show for them.. All of my friends are working there as councilors this summer. They welcomed me with a hand drawn sign (guys.. can I get that sign if you still have it .. it was so… so .. ‘dynamic’.. (inside joke))

The show went well. It’s allways challenge to adapt the show to older kids like this.. I have to ‘dumb it up’ on the fly.. This time it worked pretty well.. The crowd was already self identified with high geek quotient.. just my kind of folk.

After the show, my friend Awesome demonstrated her mastery of Kendo on poor defenseless Tony. (“Luke.. I am your Father…”)

Then I let some of the kids and councilors take turns on the go cart. Here is Emily.

and awesome.. (we call her that as a joke.. but I always have to think to recall her real nake which is alllllison.

Here are Awesome, Kate Emily Tony and Lauren.

I came back in from my last packing run to the car and found they’d created a 21 hand salute for me… Sorry you’re missing the sound effects.. it was truly wonderful and bizarre.

OK,, that was my day, or at leas the end of it..

The other thing I wanted to call to folks attention was the very cool efforts of our friend’s Steve and Annie’s son Aaron.Aaron is the founder of the Student Peace Alliance (SPA). The SPA is is the student version of The Peace Alliance.. the Peace group that is lobbying for the creation of a Department of Peace. Think about it.. we have Departments of Defense.. and Armed Services.. Why don’t we have a Department of Peace.. After all.. you get what you work for !

Anytway.. Aaron’s SPA orginization was just recognzed by Ben and Jerry’s, the estate of John Lennon and Peace One Day as a ‘Peace Pioneer’ .. SPA has created more than 100 student chapters… and is promoting many initatives to focus people on waging peace. We’re really proud of Aaron

There’s an info meeting at Aaron’s home on Wednesday night.. let Diane or I know if you want instructions on how to contact him.

SInce we’re on the topic of Peace.. check out this video from the Peace One Day founder ..