Yikes !.. 12:30 and I’m just sitting down to blog.. there are many days that I say to myself “Self..,.. why don’t you just go to bed and skip the blog for tonight ?”.. But.. I can never bring myself to break that chain: 484 posts. without missing a day. One day it will happen.. but not tonight.

Today was peaceful and productive. It started well. I had 45 minutes between taking Gabe to school and my first call that allowed me to take a quick snowshoe with Diane and our friend Jill and her 2 dogs. The day was a brilliant white and blue. It was barely below freezing so it felt very much like spring.

I always like looking back at our house from the rock on the high field.. everything looks so complete and peaceful from this distance.

Here are my two pretty snowshoeing companions…

I got into work in time for my first face to face meeting. as I walked in to the building  I ran into this guy that I vaguely new many years ago. He came up and introduced himself as Carl Hoffman, Wendy’s dad ! It was so cool to make that association ! He’s working or Qualcomm now… in fact he’s working with our friend Fram, Diane’s old office mate. I love making connections like this.

The day was super busy.. not too much time to think.. many calls and several face to face meetings. I’m realizing how much I’ve missed the social part of being at work.

Around 6 I went home and picked up Diane for our last meditation class at the shambala center. Once again, it was a really interesting class. the last of 4. I’ve grown to really like the other folks in the class and the instructor, Robert. Here again. I’ve been reminded just how much I love sitting around and talking  .. and listening to other people talk.  We spent the last class going back through the central tenets of  shambala teaching: that everyone and every thing is blessed with basic goodness, that each of us is as deserving of love and joy as any other of us, and that the living in the present moment is the only thing that really matters  in the world. I really like thinking about this ‘in the moment’ concept. Sam’s passing and the time since have pushed us face first into the moment… where everything is clear,and  beautiful, real and sometimes overwhelming. The shambla folks call this in the moment-ness ‘great eastern sun’ .. or ’10 o’clock sun’ because everything in the present is so bright and illuminated. Living out of the moment, in the future or in the past, they call ‘setting sun’ . That is living in the future of worry or the past of regret. I resonated so deeply with that . I really feel a bonding to the other 20 or so folks in the class.. yet.. today is the final class. I’ll probably never see most of them again.. that’s sad.. and yet it’s OK.  We ate  few more cookies, drank a glass of tea , shook hands with each other and said good bye forever.. They became our past, while our present went on to the grocery store to by toothpicks, straw and toilet paper.. A it turned out.. all things on Aisle 15. It just goes to show, that all your needs can be met in one place if your needs are simple enough .

I couldn’t leave the store without leaving a little constructive vandalism.. I’m hoping that the new owner of these mushrooms will have a cool moment when he/she figures out the meaning of this stone.

OK.. I gotta sleep.. I’m only doing about 5 .5 hours per night again and that’s probably not good for me. . So.. I’ll say g’nite  all, ‘nite Sam.

-me

ps. I still can get over this picture in the Louvre that Julie sent yesterday .  It looks so much like me.. Who was I then ?????

Somedays all you have is a beautiful sunset….  

I am up late finishing the first pass of my project with Champlain College. We were supposed to have it in last Friday.. but just hit send on it.. so one day late.. not even if you count the holiday weekend.  Not too bad when you consider that it was all volunteer labor. It really was so much fun to put together.. n. I feel pretty good about it. I’m incredibly grateful to the talented students and staff at Champlain.. Now we’re going to start getting lots of feedback/bug reports, but the bulk of the work is behind us  Whewwwwwwww. Here’s page 2 … Meet Jai, our mascot.

That was all I had until I just read my mail. I got a note from my friend Julie, by way of myhigh school  friend Sandy that a likeness of me has been spotted in the Loure Museum in Paris.. I have to admit.. this is one handsome guy. What do you all think… should I sue ?

OK..al for now.. gotta sleep. Gnite all.. Gnite Sam
-me

I really needed a day like today.. I didn’t do anything I had to do .. only stuff I wanted to do.. We woke up late and puttered around the house for a while until Gabe and Trevor got up to go to the mountain. I took advantage of the downtime to begin installing the new PC we got for video editing..   As I was putting new memory in the machine I started thinking about all the memories already in there.. we have about 300 Gig of movies .. most of them called Untitled_xyz.avi or something like that.. Many of them are Max’s old projects.. many are by or about Sam. As I move them to the new machine I wonder what I need to keep.. and what I can clean off. I opt for saving everything for a time when I’m strong enough to look through and catalog what’s there. Computer disks are the new ‘attic’ of our lives.

I took the boys up to the mountain and came back for a snowshoe with Diane and Chai. today we began our normal route.. then opted to turn and bushwhack back towards the house . That simple turn makes all the difference (as Mr. Frost so aptly said.. ).. once we were off our trail we discovered an amazing playground of steep descents, ravines and cliffs we’d never seen and it was all  less than a quarter mile from our house.

I got home just in time to leave for lunch with my friend Dave D. who’s up visiting from Austin.  Dave’s a cool and eclectic guy.. we like the same books and have many of the same interests.. though he likes Jazz.. which I guess is not a major character flaw.  Diane stopped in and ate some sushi with us which was great.. It was fun catching up with him.

I got home just before Diane was leaving for the Girls slumber party over at Deb’s.. It was a perfect cold, blue sky late winter day.. the back door window captured the blue of the sky and the red of the barn.,

 I was lying by the fire with Chai when I noticed this log in the shape of a valentine burning in the stove.. I thought it was a cool image.

After Diane left, Abbot showed up with an idea to make some light up ear plugs for his gaged earlobes. He had these clear plastic plugs We drilled them out and I glued in some of these very cool color changing LED’s that I picked up in shanghai 2 trips ago. We managed to find small lithium batteries that were exactly the same diameter as the plugs. They look really good and seem to work well.. Last time I saw Abbot he was blinking red, green and blue…

The girls had a lovely party going.. they were coloring mandala’s Eating great, healthy food, listening to quiet music

… playing with Hannah’s kids.

We were so inspired that we guys came back and cooked up some fast fried junk food and sat around and had belching contests… and worse…

To be completely  honest, I must admit that we did have one girl here or part of the night.. Juli Z. was here with Nate.. but that didn’t throw the testosterone/estrogen balance off too badly..

The boys went outside to use the rail that Gabe and I had put in there.. It seems to work well for the skiers.. looks like we’ll need to move it back a bit for the boarders.. Right now they don’t have room to get set up quite right.. Still it works pretty well for our flat backyard !

Here’s Gabe using his head !

I called the kids in once more toe at the Chocolate fondue that Dine had helped us prepare.. It was so good..

Then we hatched a plan.. an evil, sinister plan.. we decided to stage a daring midnight raid on the girls… Why you ask ? Because we’re nasty, evil, male pigs.. .. and we were wired from all that chocolate..   We all got dressed in black pants and black coats and wrapped our heads in black shirts.. we were now a band of silent ninjas.. We drove up to Deb’s in 3 cars.. and parked about 3 houses down.. we got out and finalized our plan for attack.. we were to surround the house where the girls were .. then, at a signal from one of us, start pelting the house with snowballs.   We got to the bottom of the hill.. then realized that the driveway was too exposed.. we all climbed up a gully to the right of the house.. the snow was over my waste.. so it was heard going.. we had to keep hidden as we slogged through the deep snow..

Finally we were all in position. Nate and Matt from on the roof.. Gabe and Tim F were near the hot tub. Tim K, Zion and I were near the back porch.. All of a sudden the girls stated coming outside to use the hot tub.. we started yelling .. but no snow balls… the snow was too cold (about 6 degrees) to pack.. I put a ‘Boys Rule’ sign on the back porch then we all started running down the driveway.. as Gabe lit a big showy firework out in the snow..

We were all laughing hysterically by the time we got back to the car.. We’d been in and out in something like 10 minutes.. I hope the girls thought it was funny.. otherwise.. we have some major apologizing tomorrow..

We all got back here and peeled off our wet and snow filled clothing..

The boys went in to watch a movie… and/or play xbox…

From Baird, I stopped at Champlain Chocolates to pick up some chocolate for Diane’s fondue tomorrow night,   While in there I sampled a bunch of different chocolates.. I’d heard a great interview with a chocolatier on the radio yesterday and was in the mood to sample the wares.. I settled on some that I liked and bought some for the folks at Champlain College. I  then went to Champlain and worked the whole day trying to finish up our first draft of our project.. … and eating more chocolate. Today was our deadline.. and.. we almost made it.. I’m hoping to be able to put the first version of it up for comment tomorrow morning.   I so much appreciate all the hard work the students and staff at Champlain have put into this thing.. I hope folks like it..   It’s designed to be a companion piece to the Educational Video Game that IBM announced today  (see powerupthegame.org). We’ll see how that goes.  I was in work calls all day as well.. so it was kind of schizophrenic.. I was trying to be in two places at once and basically failed at being completely in either.

 I had to take off at about 4 to take my show gear back to IBM…in time for me to make a meeting I had in Montpelier at 5. The meeting was with the Vermont State Science Teachers’ Association .. I’d been invited to their meeting to brainstorm about fun science activities for Vermont school kids. It was an absolutely fantastic meeting.. many cool ideas came up. One I liked was having a YouTube video contests about science topics.. We’d get high school students to help us make videos designed to get middle school students more interested in science.   We’ll see where it goes.  Here are a few of my friends in the association.. They’re a great group of folks !

I got home around 7 and had a nice quiet dinner with Diane.. It was great catching up after a busy week. We have both been really, really  missing Sam this week.. We always miss him.. Sometimes it becomes almost too much to bear.. When it’s like that somehow our friends just start showing up. Sometimes we feel like Sam whispers to them that we need a visit.. It feels like he still takes care of us..

OK.. That’s all for now.. I’m going to jump in the bath. I feel so lazy !  Gnite to you all.. gnite Sam.. more tomorrow.
-me

ps. I apologize for adding another geeky cartoon. This one’s for my brother.. I think he’s traveling now (Last week sweden.. this week cancun). He’ll get the message.. It’s an inside joke