Yearly Archives: 2008

Sunday night – fixin’ to

I’ve spent the whole weekend… actually the whole previous week getting ready to do soemthing.. It’s been a fun and productive week in many ways.. and a very strange week for me in others. It’s been fun just hanging out with Diane.. It’s been hard not havin any of the kids round.. We’ve cleaned and hauled.. and repaired so much in this week while Gabe’s been away.  The old lab the new lab and the pantry are now clean and uncluttered.. The lab in particular is a thing of beauty.. it’s all ready for… what ? I found that work to be easy to start, fulfilling and engaging.. but the moemnt I sat down to try and work on my day job stuff.. or the paper I’m writng.. I feel like I hit a brick wall. it’s liek I’m enjoying getting ready to wrok.. but when I try to execute.. I’m stuck.
   I’ve tried to shake  myself out of tat mood and mode several times this weekend.. Diane and I started the day with a nice short and fast hike on the Cattamount trail with the dogs

Just before 9 Diane and I headed down to New Haven Vt for a late breakfast with Homer and Mary.. We’d been trying to get together for months.. and here was the opportunity. We Homer and I were thinking of going to an auction of machine tools at UVM.. but opted to stay home and save money together, instead.

One other purpose of th visit was to take our whirligig in for repairs. it managed to shake itself to pieces in the high winds over the last 2 days.. from the look of it, it through a fan blade.. then vibrated itself to pieces.. Homer has promised to nurse it back to health for us.

We moved inside for breakfast. Homer took charge and made the pancakes. it was really nice talking to those guys. We shared stories on what brought us to Vermont and how we met our life partners

One thing we also talked about was the plaque that we’re making for Sam’s Musical Soul Guitar givaway. Jen is making us some hand painted tiles to inlay in it.. Homer is helping with the plaque itself. We discussed the options of wood vs. metal natural vs. colored, straight vs.curvey. I  love watching how Homer thinks.

We looked at some of Homer’s older pieces for ideas. We really liked the frame on this cute older picture of Homer and Mary’s daughter Raye

Homer came up with a plan for the plaque.. then it was time for us to head back home. Before we did.. I had to take a look around at all of Homer’s cool stuff. his house is like a museum.

I likd this post card he had on his ‘fridge.. Resonated deeply with me today.

I also liked this freaky stainles stell mirror ball in their pool.

Ans the little caged alien guy

And the bent wood shed…

And the scary snake/camel dude

Or tis shelf of wax heads…

It was great spending time with Mary and Homer.. I always come away from their house creatively charged.

I channeled that creativity into some pretty basic repair items when I got home.. I  rebuilt and reglazed the window that blew out of the upstairs bathroom window.

And I repaired the broken rocker on our old rocking chair..

Towards evening Mason and Mo-walka came buy wit the new and improved Rusty !.. Rusty has been out west in Durango Colorado at school. He’s realllllly lving it. It was great to see him.. and her about how much he loves his school. He cut his hair which is freaky ! He looks good !

We started talking about asparagus.. which reminds me to tell an interesting.. if somewhat gross story from dinner last night… and a few nights before.   If you’re like me.. eating asparagus has a strange impact on your… uh.. excreta… If you know what I mean.. then you know what I mean.. If you don’t , it means that  you’re one of the 60 % of humans who can’t experience what I’m talking about. I originally believed it was a metabolic difference which either did or did not allow a certain family of sulfur containing chemicals (mercaptins) that pass through your kidneys undisturbed when you eat asparagus.  I’ve since learned that the chemical passes through everyone’s   kidneys.. What makes the difference is that 60% of humans lake the gene that allows them to smell these compounds. For those 40 % of us who can smell that chemical.. it’s very distinctive. I found in Wikipedia that the French Author  Marcel Proust  claimed that asparagus “…transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume.”  .. For you other 60% .. you don’t know what you’re missing.
   An on that strange note… I think I’ll sign off.. Gnite all…. Gabe.. can’t wait to see you tomorrow..  Gnite Sam..
-me

Saturday evening – clean the lab

I was totally focus on leaning out the new lab today. The lab is a smallish room in the barn under Diane’s yoga space. It’s where I keep all of my electronics and weird science stuff .. My personality.. my ego.. is totally connected to that space.. which s why it disturbed me so much  that it’s been such a mess over the last few months. Diane and I have been cleaning daemons over the last several days. We’ve thrown out a ton of stuff.. and given a bunch more away .. We are trying very hard to un-clutter our lives. . I couldn’t find my camera for most of the day.. so I don’t have the normal play-by play pictures that Id normally have.. … it wasn’t much to see.. I walked in there about 7:30 this morning… and left about 5:30 PM. I fund so many things I’d forgotten I had.. then through them out !  by the end of the day the placed looked like a place whee you could work !

All the test equipment was neatly stacked…

And the electronic components were neat and snug in their closable bins.

Ans the machines were neatly spaced on the workbench.   I Know that it will only stay in this pristine state for a day or two.. but I’m going to enjoy that day or two very much !

We took off around 5:30 to go to hire ground. Our house band :Forever they Said’ was playing in a Hardcore Festival at Higher Ground tonight.  Three of the band guys.. Pucket , Nick and Jeff  Thad been in Sam’s band Black Knight Vengeance.  This week.  .. Pucket, Jeff, Nick. Jordan and Kyle had been practicing so hard for fear of sucking.. and it payed off.. They were Amazing !.. They opened the show and instantly … had the crowd flailing.

I could sense Sam moshing with the rest of the kids there.. It was a short 20 minute set.. and I just loved being there. I was so proud of the guys !! They really, really sounded good !.

Pucket wore the Sam shirt he designed to the show…  That made me really happy !

Once the ‘Forever they said” set was over, we took off.. We had to get back to our friend’s Bill and Gina had invited us for dinner. Gina’s brother Kevin is up visiting… He’s a very cool guy. Very smart and very interesting.

Bill and Gina’s last name is Haddock.. and they served us Haddock.. very convenient

We had lively discussions about cosmology, biology, snowboarding, astronomy, climate and personalities. I alway love talking to these guys.

Right now I’m having trouble staying awake.. so I’m going to stop here.. More tomorrow.. more cleaning planned.. who-hoo.. Talk to you then.. you tomorrow, Sam !
-me

Friday night – reruns

Well folks..I’m feeling pretty lazy. I had a hard, hard day at work (but fairly productive.. I think)… Then I took off around 3 to work on the house with Diane.. Today’s project was the new lab… my workspace in the barn.. It’s a pretty amazing mess..and it feels good to go through it… But . I’m not through cleaning it yet.. and I didn’t have my camera today.. so I’ll write about that tomorrow. So I got the idea to do today’s blog as a rerun .. I figured I’d go back to a year ago today (April 25, 2007) and see what I was up to .. It’s pretty interesting for me to read back like that… I had just returned from an IBM conference (TLE ) in Anaheim. I’d been frustrated in feeling out of step with the world at every turn.. I remember feeling at the time how difficult it was for me to get motivated to work hard…and that’s just where I feel I am this week… looking back gives me some perspective on where I’ve been and where I am now.. the funny thing is that it actually makes me feel better… not worse… I remember wondering to myself at the time how I’d make it through the year… and I did just fine.. more or less…

So without further explanation.. I bring you my blog from a year ago tonight… I’m shading it in an appropriate flashback color so no one gets more confused than they already are .. Gnite all. Gnite Sam !
-me

John’s Blog from 4/25/07




I feel like I have been just a little out of step the world for these last two weeks. I seem to be constantly in the wrong place at the wrong time… or… actually … not at the right place at the right time. It’s like my whole ‘be in the moment’ thing has slipped a few hours into the future. Not wildly so .. like it used to be.. but just enough that I keep missing stuff I feel like I’m intended to see. None of it’s earthshaking stuff.. I’m thinking of stuff like missing that Ben Zander talk at the conference last week.. and having everyone come up to me and tell me how much the message was perfect for me.. or at the same conference last week.. always being in the boring conference presentation while hearing laughter or loud clapping coming from the meeting in the conference room next door. Monday I managed to miss an important meeting at work in which the secrets of the universe.. ..actually the secrets of our product roadmap and the budget for the year…. were finally revealed.. Everyone has been talking about that ,meeting all week about wha a great turning point it was for our area… sigh.. Tonight I had another one of those things. Several of our friends went and saw the Nobel prize winning Holocaust witness Eli Wissel this afternoon at UVM. Wissel was in town to receive an honorary degree from UVM. I’d thought about going.., the talk was free and open to the public, but I had work meetings throughout the afternoon and miles to go before I sleep…

From what I heard from Deb, Jen and their kids Wissel gave a memorable talk. They said he talked three types of reaction to tragedy like the holocaust: the first is to close off the past, try to forget it and live for your own pleasure and preservation.. the second is to become bitter and angry about the wrong that has happened to you and to stay angry at the world.. the third is to become a witness to the world of what has happened to you and to become a force to teach and to prevent others from ever having to face that same pain. Those descriptions sounded alot (I know alot isn’t a word, mom 🙂 like the way that people react to a tragedy like the death of a loved one. Since Sam died we’ve met folks who’ve reacted in each of those three ways.. I always try to live in the third way….. that is live in such a way that we help others learn from Sam.. and learn by our experience of his passing. but I don’t always get to choose how I react. In fact, I’ve come to believe that people generally don’t get to choose the way that they react.. It comes from your nature, circumstance and surroundings more than from choice.. and for that reason, I’ve also learned not to pass judgment on people who react in one of the first two ways. Deb told me that Wissell said exactly the same thing.. I think grief has no scale.

Deb and Jen told me that Wissel also talked about how unbelievable it was to him that despite all that the world has learned from the Holocaust that we still have genocide in our time: in Darfor.. in Rwanda, Kosovo in Iraq.. He told a story about when Pres Clinton had said that ‘if Americans had been in Rwanda.. 400,000 lives could have been spared…’ he wrote to Clinton and said ‘why if ?’ . I think that’s a pretty telling story when you think about how fast our country moved into Iraq or Kuwait when our business interests were at stake.. makes you think.. no ?

I really wish that I’d heard Wissel’s talk today… but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time… .. and you already know what that’s like Sam.. you really know

-jc

ps. The TakeYourKidsToWorkDay thing I did yesterday was covered by the Burlington Free Press and WCAX TV. Here’s a low-res video of the story

Thursday night – pantry

I woke today feeling very low .. . no particular reason.. just one of those times that happen now. It took all the energy I had to pry myself out of bed.
I walked into Sam’s room as I sometimes do in the morning and looked at the pictures in there… I realized I was wearing the same shirt as I was in this great picture..  Cool and sad at the same time

I went downstairs and had a great talk with Diane.. she’s so wise.. Her advise is always to just be with whatever your feeling.. and she’s right.. It didn’t make me feel any better.. I just stopped feeling bad about feeling bad.. if you understand what I mean.
I did my best to throw myself into my work today.. and by the time afternoon came I was feeling pretty ‘normal’ again.   Around 12:30 I took a break and took the Prius to RoadResQ to get it’s snows swapped out.. It was good to see Phil and Shawn.. I always like talking to them. I found a sunny spot out of the wind next to the garage and took work calls while they worked on the car..

I got home around 2. I had planned to take the 2nd half of the day off to work with Diane . We’re takign advantage of Gabe being in S. Carolina to do some major house projects. Last Sunday we cleaned the old lab.. Today we tackled the pantry…  A huge job.. First we took everything out.. We found some amazing stuff hiding in there…

About 30 bottles of wine including some that were 22 years old from our wedding ,

15 year old seaweed, a whole crate of Indian pickle…

One of the less pleasant surprises was to find the entrance/exit to our friend ‘Raticus’s basement condo. Whatever is living here is either very big.. or owns a chainsaw. I spent an hour rebuilding the wall.. I boarded the whole thing over with 3/4″  lumber.. hopefully that will slow him/her down for at least a night.

We also found many signs of our past year odyssey.. including bags of dishes and trays from neighbors and friends who dropped off food after Sam’s passing.. These are actually warm memories attached to these trays.  Cookies. brownies, … all made with love.

We also found bag after bag of colored lights from Halloween parties past. I can nly guess that each year we couldn’t find the previous stash and bought more. There must be 30 of them.. I tested them all.. which was kinda fun.

Finally, by about 7:30 we had tossed out a ton of stuff, put a bunch aside for good will and stacked what was left back in the tiny room..This morning.. it was hard to even walk into the room.. now it’s mostly empty. We both felt great about getting this done.

The dogs were looking at us pretty funny at that point. they were adamant about taking a walk.   So out we went to the rivershore.. Diane’s daf’s have really sprung to life over the last couple of days. they were so bright and pretty in the fading light..

The woods were actually full of flowers too. We were really surprised to see Trillium in bloom .. they usually don’t appear until mother’s day. They are my favorite wild flower.

Actually, Diane is my favorite wild flower…

On the way back we stopped by to admire neighbor Jinny’s fairy house.. Her sister Elly has one jsut down the yard.. Notice the SamStone !

On the way home we stopped to chat with our long time neighbor.. She was telling us some wild stories about the tunnels beneath the old Huntington Lodge where she used to work.

As she told the story, I saw a huge raccoon jump off of her front porch> the big guy waddled back to a nearby tree.. climbed up a few feet and turned and watched us. The dogs were going nuts.. but the ‘coon just sat their quietly.

It was getting dark at that point, so we scooted home and drove down to Waterbury to pick up the Subaru.. We found it in the lot looking $600 happier.. It was cool to see the Sam buttons reflecting the street light…

OK.. I need to get in a couple more hours of work tonight.. So I’ll end here.

Oh, We also heard from both Gabe and Max tonight. Gabe is having a really good time at Hilton Head with Alex et. al.   He told us that he ran into Avery on the beach today !.. (Ave called us and told us too !) …Max called to tell us that he may have found another apartment … I hope it works out for him.. he’s been working really hard on finding a place to live next semester. I miss those 2 boys  so much… You too Sam.
-me