It’s about 9ish on Friday night an Diane and I are (almost) asleep on the couch. The wind outside is howling and it’s sleeting/raining/snowing something firece. Everything is covered with a sheet of slushy. heavy ice.. which is why  …..   Diane and I are (almost) asleep on the couch. The wind outside is howling and it’s sleeting/raining/snowing something firece. Everything is covered with a sheet of slushy. heavy ice.. which is why   … Diane and I are (almost) asleep on the couch. The wind outside is howling and it’s sleeting/raining/snowing something firece. Everything is covered with a sheet of slushy. heavy ice.. which is why    …

OK.. no fair  , I was goign to keep doing that, but I already got away with one gibberish post for the week. It feels good being inside on a night like this.. This old house is creaking and groaning like soem sort of old ship. Everytime the wind kicks up the house sways so much that you can hear the old ciggarette machine we have clunk agains the chimney. Theis house just can’t stay warm on a night like this. e once had a friend of mine come in here with an ‘air door’ to guage the tightness of our construction.. The report came back saying that we have the equivalent of a 3 foot square hole in leaks…   But I like it when it’s like this. It’s like the house has some sort of story to tell.. think of how many students sat in here on stormy days and listened to the same thing.

I spent the day inside with students, too.. though not here.. at Champlain. We’re trying to finish up the project we’ve been doing together.. and still have a long, long way to go. It’s so much fun workign with these creative students. though. I think it would be so cool to go an be a professor somewhere.like here. or maybe a student again… I dunno

Speaking of creative students.. I have a treat for you all today.. my friends Professors Nate and Kevin have given me permission to post their definitive research on the true nature of BigFoot. Watch it and learn the truth …

And since we’re on the topic of deep science… I’d liek to also turn you all on to one of my favorite websites: xkcd.com. It bills itself as A Webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.  It bears the follwoing warning:

 Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

The site has tuff like this

and

Ok… enough for now.. my batteries (and my laptop’s) are low. More tomorrow.. have an ice night !

Love you guys.. love you Sam
-me

Ok… No pictures tonight. I’m blogging from the bathtub on my blackberry. I’ve had a long day and need to relax. I hope this thing is waterproof.
My theme today is forgetting…. Or not. I’ve found myself getting increasingly forgetful as the pace of my life begins to accelerate again. This morning, for instance, I almost forgot to run because I started working on my laptop. When I remmbered, I only had 20 minutes before my next meeting. I grabbed my cell phone and Chai and headed out. I couldn’t figure out why I couldnt see… Then I remembered I was still wearing my reading glasses.I dialed up my conference call on my run and almost forgot to put my phone on mute. I came home and almost forgot that I was due at Champlain at 11. I took a 30 second shower then hopped in the car. I forgot my ibm badge.
The whole day kept in that vein. So many things I’d forgotten to do, say, bring or think. Late afternoon diane called me to tell me that we’d both foegotten to bring in the pump from the pool. It had frozen and exploded ….oooops.lots of dumb stuff. No real consequence.. Kinda funny when you think of it.
All this stuff came back to me a half hor or so ago wheb I talked to my friend larry on the phone. He’d called a few days back to tell me he had dreampt of Sam. In the dream, Sam said “tell my dad that its ok to let go a little”. The funny thing is that I’ve been worrying/thinking about some of the Sam ritules I’ve been doing for the past year.do I always touch his pictues.? Do I always touch the Sam rock ? Do I always have on my Sam pin. I think the message from larry is basically reasuring me that the rituals are not what keeps sam in my heart. He’s there forever. That’s the way I rewad it whether its the view of a concerned friend or a message from another world. I’m not forgeting you, sam… There”s no way in the world.

Ok enough of this tiny cellphone keybaord. More tomorrow

G’nite all g’nite Sam
-me

Grrrrr… I have already typed in this blog once.. I’d just hit save then my browser froze. I think it was due to a @%$& malware infection… I just spent 20 minutes looking through the browser cache trying to find shreds of what I’d written.. It would have taken less time to re-write it… but it was a point of pride.. Here’s what I was able to salvage :::

The day started drizzly, windy and warm.. The snow is starting to get pretty thin… the jump we made in the yard is looking pretty dubious at this point.

I came down stairs to find Mason’s snowboard in the entrance way. He must have stayed the night. He sometimes does when he has to be up on the mountian ealry in the morning.. I like his Sam sticker.   Turns out the mountain road was closed.. so he didn’t have to go to work.

I headed in to Champlain to deliver the morning bribe of donuts . The students are working so hard to get our project completed.. Right now my main contribution is to keep them well fed.   I’ve spent several days camped out in their parking lot taking work calls in the car and snagging free wireless from one of the dorms. Whenever I get a break in my meetings I run in and shout encouragement , pass around more donuts and run back out..   Here’s the view from my mobile office.

Last weekend I sat on Ray’s desk and it collapsed.. now they have a warning up.. I’m proud to have taught them at least this one lesson.

The day was blustery and raw.. around 10:30 it looked like the sun was abotu to set.. dark clouds, sleet and hail…

Around 1 I dashed back to IBM.. I wanted to see my friend Sharon’s talk.. good thing I made it.. Turns out I was doing her introduction.   We had more than a 100 folks turn out to hear Sharon talk about IBM’s new focus on alternative energy, climate protection and water management. It was really interesting. It was really great having Sharon visit !

Sharon’s travel plans got messed up when her return flight got canceled. Her buddy Gina was able o book her an earlier flight, so I had to speed her to the airport.. we got there in plenty of time, though . After dropping Sharon, I was going to head back to Champlain… but I couldn’t figure out if anyone was there. Instead, I stopped at Talent and borrowed some of the internet and worked there for an hour or so. I had some email stuff to do.. It was fun working there.. they kept feeding me !  i got to see Hannah, Dave, Adah and Senyah…

And even got to meet their frind Matt, who runs an after school program fro the South Burlington schools.

After that I had about another hour and a half of work calls. I took them in the parkign lot of the Japonese resturant.. (again.. free wireless !) ..I had good calls with friends Wolfgang and Ruchir.. always very good to talk to those guys !  Then picked up some take out and headed home. I ran into Bark W, Mallory C and two of Brandon Kilborns’ cosuins. It was good talkign to them. We were all heading up to Jen’s for a psuedo-suprise brithday (real birthday.. only the surprise was ‘psuedo’) . Deb and Hannah had made jena collage of pictures Hannah had taken of Nate and Marie.. they were really god pictures !

We drove up to Jen and Tim’s with Deb and the kids.. We had to sneak past the stair railing that their dog Wilbur had pulled off when he tried to chase a scent while on his leash.. He actually managed to get pretty far with the banister banging behind him until Nate caught up and jumped on him.

Jen was sitting upstairs not expecting us.. which was great… Here’s the table she made…complete with SamStone.

She loved the pictures from the Townsends…

Then out came the feast. it was a standard P.M.S. dinner.. (Pizza, Meatloaf and Sushi)

Here’s Gabe taking his first ever bite of meatloaf.. Amazing that a kid 12 years old has never had meatloaf.. but stranger things have happended. He said ‘it tastes like meat’

After dinner it was time for cake and candles.. Jen did the honors

The icing on the ice cream was an attractive blue

Tim gave Jen a book called ‘Porn for Women’.. don’t worry.. it was pretty tame..

Lots of normal dressed guys saying stuff like:

and …

It got late pretty fast.. so we packed up and headed home. Jen gave us a brand new box of SamStones that she had fired recently.. Good thing.. we were almost out..

Folks
   Not much to report today.. I had a productive morning at Champlain. working with Iain, Allison and Mike.. then a packed.. if not productive afternoon at work. About the only noteworthy thing I remember about the stretch in my office  is that I uncovered a bag of peanuts that was more than one and less than 10 years old. I bet on closer to one and ate them for lunch. So far.. so good.

The high point of my day was dinner with my friend Sharon who’s visiting from NY.   We had a great dinner.. and even better talk at the Inn at Essex this evening.  We did a bunch of catching up… talked about families, jobs and mutual friends. We also discussed Sharon’s cool new job. She’s running IBM’s focus on all things ‘Green’. Her area includes work on photovoltaics and water conservation. It’s really cool to see how the company is committed to working on those big problems.. and making them pay off at the same time. It’s going to be very cool to see how the company does in this arena. We have so much excellent technology .. and even more excellent smart people.

The food was very interesting.. and artistic. It started with a spoon of… something buttery and artichoky.

Then came a great soup  of Jerusalem artichokes !.

The chef made up a spicy dish for me.. it was stuffed cabbage with hot sauce.. pretty good !

Then lavender sorbet (no joke) for desert !

Sharon and I had talked for nearly 4 hours.. before I realized what time it was.. I checked with eh Champlain guys by phone.. I wasn’t needed there.. so I came home.

When I got home, there was a sheet of glittering ice covering the walk from the house to the driveway.. It was beautiful and treacherous… !

OK.. that’s it.. I can’t keep my eyes open anther sec.. Tomorrow is a busy day.. Talk to you zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Gnite Sam.. we love you
-me