Saturday night – Rafe !

Busy. peaceful and beautiful day..   It started off very early. We had to get Gabe to Alex’s house by 6AM for them to begin their trip down to South Carolina.  Gabe is with his friends Ales, Jack and their family for the week at Hilton Head. We’re really happy that he’s getting a chance to go. We just heard from him… (15 hours later)  they’re there and it’s warm and beautiful.   Here he is with a basket of food Diane made for their trip

Here they are ready to go at 8AM .. Alex, Hayden, Jack. John and Gabe.. Mom Phyliss is inside soemwhere. I have to confess it was tough saying goodbye to Gabe.. I’m really missing him.. but it’s a great chance for him to have some fun over school break.   He’ll even get to see alligators !

..

I got home this morning and found a note form my folks in my email. They had commissioned a memorial brick for Sam in the park in their town. It’s a nice thing to have there…

I spent a few hours working on a new shirt design for the next Friends of Sam event… We’re having a Skate night at Talent in about 2 weeks (I’ll send out a bulletin). The proceeds will pay for Deb’s friend Abraham to bring his wife and baby over from a refugee camp in Sudan. Working on the drawings for the shirt is a true act of love.. I worked with Brit to edit out one of our favorite pictures of am… as a pirate at Camp Abenaki.. I had to edit out his mustache.. I sent hours staring at his face.

We wanted a softer image for this shirt. I think we’re going with something like this.

While Brit and I worked on the shirt design. Brit’s brother. Matt worked in the lab drilling wholes in 3/8″ plate steel to make decorative brackets for their post and beam house frame. He put in a ton of work drilling these holes. 

Shortly after noon my great friend Rafe showed up. He’d driven down from a conference in Montreal. Rafe is my old suite mate from MIT.. and now lives in Palo Alto..where he’s  the head of the Math Dept. at Stanford. Here he is looking very professorial..   It is so good to have Rafe here.. first order of business was to see some baby pictures.. Rafe and his wife Laurence have 2.5 year old Sabine and 6 month old old Sophie.. Both exceedingly cute.

We fed Rafe. then decided to take advantage of the beautiful warm weather and go for a hike up at Bolton.. .. and I do mean warm !!!  The car said it was 82 degrees !

We drove up to the ski area.. where we found they still had a ton of snow.. We didn’t need snowshoes.. but the snow was still quite deep.. it was mid thigh in some places if you feel through the surface.. other places it was less than a foot.

clear blue sky !

We kept climbing until we reached the very top. We took a short brake at the warming hut..

And checked out some of the Sam graffiti there.

Not sure why this metal thing is an ‘S’ .. but I took that as a Sam thing too..

Since we’d made it this far, I decided to go up the fire tower. It’s a place of special significance to us.. Thats where we sent up some of Sam’s ashes in fireworks in December of 2006.  It looks like something out of an old movie set.. but not as well built.

Diane,. Rafe and I climbed p the rickety ladders..

The view was so worth it !.

The dogs sat below barking.. ‘Where’d’ you guys go ? , Where’d you guys go ?”

Here’s Waterbury Reservoir.

The walk down was gentle and sunny.. What a perfect hike !  We got to the car and headed back to the house.

A few of the music kids were down at the house practicing (and sounding great0.. They helped me take down a few of the storm windows.. While I was out there I fixed most of the lights on the Sam guitar man sculpture in the front yard.

Meanwhile Diane and Rafe cooked dinner. Rafe had been talking about Risotto all day.. so we forced him to make us some.. It was delicious.. We also grilled some fish.. it was a great meal.

As I went out to get the fish… I caught a beautiful rise of the full moon.

Rafe and I decided to take a short walk up to the rock.. As I was leaving. Diane called down from the upstairs bathroom window.. I say window.. but there was no more window. It had blown off in the wind…  !

It now lay in a thousand pieces in the back yard.. Yikes ! Never, ever a dull moment around here.

Rafe and I too k the road over to the high meadow.. It was nice having the guitar guy lit up again !

We got up to the rock.. and in the  moonlight I saw that a daffodil had bloomed today up there !.

The moon was now clearing Robbins mountain.. Rafe and I sat up there and talked for a while It was a clear and warm night..

As we walked home. the moonlight was bright enough to cast our shadows..

We got home and Rafe told me a little about his research. I nodded politely to pretend I understood what he was saying.. (Actually.. he’s a good explainer.. I think I actually did understand what he was saying. tonight)  .. Rafe went to bed about midnight..It’s now about 1.. and time for me to go to sleep.. More stuff tomorrow. 
   G’nite everyone.. G’nite Gabe in South Caroline.. Max in NYC.. and Sam.. everywhere.. We love you !
-me

Friday evening – Hag sameach

Hag sameach (happy passover) everyone.. ok, it’s a day early.. but we decided to do our seder tonight since Gabe is going on vacation tomorrow with his friend Alex.

We all met over at Hannah and Dave’s around 6:30. They have the coolest house.. it’s down a long dirt driveway.. It looks out over the Brown’s Trace River in Jericho

We walked down to the river to check it out.. It was still near flood stage..

And still quite cold !

I got a cool tour of all of Hannah and Dave’s artwork. they have some cool stuff like this.. All of it made by freinds of theirs. This was one of my grandfather Dave’s favorite expressions.

One of Hannah’s friends made all of this cutout art.

They bought tihs picture from Max’s friend Chris at the Friends of Sam auction in December.

And they made this Warholization of a picture of daughter Adah.

And of course, tehre is Sam.. they said that this picture always wants to hang at an agnle.. nothing they can do to make it stay straight !

And a drawing of Hannah’s dad’s Bar Mitzvah.

Then it was time for the seder… We even had Grape flavored matzot ,

And the obligatory Maneshevitz

Hannah put out the ceremonial seder plate.. We had a plastic chicken in place of a shank bone..

And xeroxed Hagadot

At last it was time to start. hannah and I colead the service.. everyone took turns reading.. It was fun.

We had a special glass for Sam

And one for Eliahu…

It was fun/interesting mixing our families customs.. Hannah’s folks always cover the rest of the food during the recitation of the 10 plaques. That way your food doesn’t get all plague-y. 

Her family also has egg fights… (We tied)

I ate a ton of gefilte fish.. bit others only ate it on a dare. not sure why.. I love it !

It was a great celebration.   Nice to be with friends. I was thinking of family here and not here. (Hey Max.. Hey Ma and Pa and Billy and Mary and families…Hey Sam)

After dinner the kids all scrawled off to  look for the Affikommen.. Gabe was victorious.. he found the middle piece of matzo hidden in the dish washer downstairs.

For his troubles he won a cool pair of goggles.. Not too shabby !.. I think we used to get a quarter for finding it.

Afterwards we ate ice cream sundaes like my Mom’s grandmothers family used to do.. and played with the babies. here’s Diane with little baby Senyah .

And Adj and Andrew’s cute mowhok baby Lilly.

It was a really nice night… … I’m goign to improve on it further by goign to bed now.. G’nite everyone.. Hag Sameach Sam !
-me

Thursday night – after !

Very cool day.. I worked at home this morning while my friend Kim was working her magic on my office. Today was the day that the furniture movers came and shuffled all of the scavengered furniture that we found into my room. I got in at 11 AM to find that that not only had they moved the stuff.. but they.. or I assume Kim.. had actually decorated. it was so cool and beautiful that I almost cried.. . literally !..  Kim.. you are so wonderful !!!!!

These pictures really don’t do justice to the magic Kim worked. Yesterday the office was dirty, dingy and basically empty.. By noon today it was funky, cool ..and clean !..

Here’s my funky new couchy thing complete with end table..and running water fountain thingy.

And my new workstation desk nee microscope probe station  and cloth noise panels.

And cool book shlefy things..  complete with fll spectrum lighting.

Kim even hung up a couple of well chosen family pictures.. a beautiful and bitter sweet touch that really made it ‘mine’ .

Oh.. I just love this desk.. it’s an old floating granite probe station with microscope. The whole thing weighs 2200 pounds (!!!)   complete with the microscope. My laptop fits in their perfectly too.  It omes complete with 2 high wheeled ESD stools…

But wait, there’s more.. it has this cool radio proof hood that lowers over the whole thing.. to hide the mess. And.. it says ‘DANGER’.. Is this cool or what ?!?

I even have a new window in my door  and a real whiteboard. . It feel like home !
It felt really great to work in there today

I did have ot leave for a lunch time meeting at UVM. I’m on the board of advisers to the CS department there..We had a great strategy meeting on the future directions for the department..

It turns out it was Josh’s (one of the CS prof’s) birthday… there was even cake !

I had to jump right back into meetings after lunch, so I ducked into my friend Allison’s office..and got on my conference call.  Alison’s on sabbatical in Vienna this semester.. It was cool camping out in someone else’s cool office.. I liked her stuff.

I struck a bit by this poem on her wall.

I finally had a break in calls and zoomed back to IBM for the rest of the day. My cool new office. By my calculation the new furniture made me feel 34 percent more productive and 52 percent happier.. Not bad

I cut off around six and headed for my last meeting of the day. The VoMIT  (Vermont’s Own M.I.T. club) board meeting..at Zen Garden.  I always love these meetings.. what a bunch of smart and goofy people.   I leaned that since our last meeting. my friend George had had open heart surgery to replace a prolapsed mitral valve. he looked great tonight.. it’s the kind of thing you prefer to hear after the fact. We talked about the  MIT summer teachers scholarship (recently won my MMU’s Bill Esholz !).. and ‘Project X’,, the scary robotic project that VoMIT is taking on for the Haunted Forest.   It was a good meeting !.

After leaving there, I did a bit of last minute Passover shopping then went home to see Gabe and Diane..  

I found that a whole bunch of kids had come by this afternoon.. Including Colin .. who’d made us this sign..

And this nice message from Brad…

OK.. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open now.. Gotta sleep. I’ll write more tomorrow.. Sleep well everyone.. You too, Spam
-me

Wednesday night – before

Not much to report this evening. I had a full day at work.. got a fair bit done, though I can’t recall what it was. The big excitement in my life right now is the extreme makeover I’m about to give my office.  Earlier in the week I mentioned that my office at work had become kinda non conducive to doing work. i seemed to spend a bunch of time being sad and starign at the empty walls when I go in there.. I decided the right thing to do was to work on making my office space more livable. A few weeks back I cleaned out all the boxes that had accumulated in my office from the two office consolidations I’d done in the past year. Then  I started thinking about getting some decent furniture. We don’t have money to spend on new furniture … so my friend Kim and I scoured the building looking for used stuff that we could beg, borrow or steal. In the end we found some cool and funky stuff  including a ‘desk’ which is actually a giant suspended granite block once used to stabilize a piece of delicate equipment.
   Well.. tomorrow is the big day when all that stuff gets moved into my space… I took a few ‘before’ shots before I left the office today.. By the time I get there tomorrow.. all that new-to-me stuff should be in place… A brand new office.. maybe a brand new me ? Not likely.. but it’s a step towards a nicer work day environment.  


I’ll get some ‘after’ pictures tomorrow. That’s all for now. Gnite all. nite Sam
-me