It’s a good week of lights.. chanukah candles every night, the xmas tree now lit up, and the canldle for Sam last night. And.. I’m staring into a roaring fire in the fireplace as I type. I love having these bright sparks in the house on this 2nd darkest week of the year (I think it would be.. since solstice is next week) .

Here’s Saurdays ‘s chanukah lighting .. Dylan and Gabe do the honors..

along with Latke dinner number 1 (or was this two).. Diane’s latkes are great..   I can smell them now.. We have some left over in the fridge.. bit if I get up and eat one  now I’ll regret it. You can’t fall asleep after eating those things cold.

Kristen and Gabe do the honor last night…

and of course we lit the candle in Sam’s memory. Thanks ot all of you out there who wrote to tell me you’d lit a candle for us too. I like thinking of all those candles side by side lighting up the planet..

Here’s a still life in mixed cultures.. the christmas tree, the menorah, and the memorial candle for sam.. That just about sums up our lives.. joys and sorrows, .. It’s a rich soup to be sure.

After candles came the obligatory game of Dreidel the wooden top used as a gambling device on Chanukah. Story goes that the Assyrians forbade the jews to study the torah.. so the jews pretended to be gambling every time the Assyrians came into their studies. Leave it to the jews to make up a game that was more boring than studying.. !

Ah.. but there was one moment of excitement !.. My dredel spin landed on the edge of the top !.. How often does THAT happen ?

THat was all last night.. today was a long interesting day.. The first half I spent in meetings.. and the second half I psent hosting some students from Olin College.. The Olin kids were amazingly, amazingly bright and fun.. they told me about their research projects.. and we told them about IBM.   They are working on somehting very central to my new project at work. it was one of those cosmic alignments that seme to be happening to me ofent now.. I really look forward to collaborating with them.

They even weighed in on the rap video I am still trying to finsih !

One quick funny story from today. Late this morning I was sitting in my office tryign to do several things at one. I noticed my plants were a bit dry.. so I looked around for something to carry water.. Aha !.. My garbage can.. I dumped the garbage on the floor and went down to teh restroom to fill up the can with water.. I never asked myself if the can could hold water.. answer was that it couldn’t.. By the time I got back to my office.. I was soaked.. I quickly started bailing the water into my plants to prevent further leaks.  That seemd to help ntil I realized I’d badly overfilled my plants with water.. so they started gusihng out on the floor with dirt filled water.. I bolted out of the room to go get paper towels..As the door clicked shut, I remembered  that my keys and my cell phoen were sftly in my jacket pocket inside. What’s more my admin Kay was at lunch. and sh has the only other key..

I had to go find her at lunch .. on my way back I ran into my Olin quests.. l I was dripping wet and covered with dirt.   The great thing about it i was that everything went better from that point on  🙂

OK.. gotta sleep. nite friends, Night Sam !
-me