Sunday night – The Upside of Quitting

Woke up, hugged my in-laws then Gabe, Diane and I drove back to Vermont.. it was a beautiful day to be out driving.. The way is easy now with all three of us able to drive. We listened to podcasts of Freakanomics for part of the drive. I really enjoy them.. especially one on the Upside of ‘Quitting’ .. The story told of the advantages of giving up what you’re doing when it clearly isn’t going to work.. It paid particular attention to the fallacy of ‘sunk costs’ .. that is.. ‘I’ve spent so much effort so far on this … that it doesn’t make sense to quit’. Actually.. the opposite is often true.. as soon as a negative outcome is likely.. it makes sense to give up.. Goes against the old adage ‘Quitters never win and winners never quit’.. but they had good economic theory to back it up.

I’m not suggesting that any of us quit anything in particular… just saying it’s always a good idea to reevaluate your situation.

One thing I did not quit today was driving.. a couple of hours after getting home tihs afternoon, I went and picked up friend Chris and we drove to Lebanon NH to see Mike Gordon and his band play. It was an awesome show..  and even though it was an hour and a half away.. I ran into many friends..  It’s fun to see Gordon playing his own stuff.. with a little Phish thrown in. His stuff is very cool, fun and quirky.. and always musically really, really good.

 

I left a samstone at the Lebanon opera house.. too

 

ok.  It’s really late and I need to sleep.. More tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

ps. Here’s a picture i just got of my cousin John meeting his Holiness the Dali Lama. John is the director of Global Health Studies at U of Wisconsin in Madison. John and His Holiness were  together at a convference on global health. how cool is that ?!

 

 

Saturday night – Happy birthday Grandpa Gabe

Happy 77th birthday Grandpa Gabe..  (It’s also Max’s Girlfriend Jac’s birthday.. as well as Neil Young’s and Charles Manson’s ) Diane’s dad is 77 today.. we’re down in Endicott to celebrate with him.  He’s such a great guy.. kind, gentle and smart. He’s been a machinist for 60 years and has taught me much over the past 30 years. After a peaceful and lazy day, Diane’s brother Joe, is wife Pat  came over for Chinese food and cake .. It was really nice all being together..


As a joke we got Gabe 7 lottery tickets as a birthday present.. With our Gabes lucky touch he won 53 dollars ! I didn’t think people really won these things !

THis is the first time I’ve been down to Endicott since the terrible flooding they had in September.. Marcia and Gabe’s basement was destroyed and had to be comeplety orn apart.  The small neighborhood they live in (West Corners)  was hit so badly that it made CNN !

Driving around today even months later it is stille asy to see the destruction

Gabe and I went running on the flood wall this afternoon and saw the water line from the flood.. it was 1 foot from crestign a 20 foot earthen damn. if that had given way  the destruction would have been even worse !

It’s good to see Marcia and Gabe and their neighbors getting back to normal.. though the town will take a long time to recover..

 

OK.. time to watch scooby doo ! (we don’t have TV at home.. so I catch up when I visit here.. .. and Sam loved scooby doo:-)

note all, nite sam

-me

 

 

 

 

Friday night 11/11/11

one one – one one – one one.. how we’ve waited for this day.. and now… what ? the calendar clicked over today to the 11th of November, 2011… many things were queued for today..weddings, contracts,.. stunts.. all because of an arbitrary clicking of our social odometer.  I was thinking about that on the drive down here to Endicott.. (we’re visiting my inlaws).. In 10 days. we’ll mark the 5th year since Sam’s passing.. Nov 21st.. 5 times around the sun since the universe changed. completely .. I’m trying to figure out what i want to do to mark that day…

nothing more to say tonight..

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

 

Thursday night – tools bouquet

 

Friend Jen just asked me to make a ‘tools bouquet’ for her hooked rug show that begis this weekend at Shelburne Museum and runs from the 12-through the 20th. .  It’s called “Hooked in the Mountains” and it’s put on by the Green Mountain Rug Hooking Guild . I’ve seen the shows before and it’s really amazing artwork.. paintings.. really.. but done with yarn. I recommend you take a look This years theme is “All the Live Long Day – A celebration of working, industry and innovation” . Evidently there are many themes there this year including technology, biology, art, industry etc.. all depicted in hand made hooked rugs. . Jen is runnign the show this year and asked quite a few folks to put together ‘tool bouquets’ that showed the tools of their trade. I had originally thought I’d just put some soldering irons and stuff in a flower pot.. but Jen asked me to jazz it up a bit more.. soemthing a little  bigger more flashy. I only had a few hours to think about it.. so I put together a  pile of tools: an oscilloscope, a frequency generator , a frequency meter and a power supply all hooked together in a way that invites to viewer to play with the knobs. and see what happens on the screens. Then I sprinkled on a bunch of blink bling just to make it a little less sterile.. Not beautiful.. but certainly geeky enough..   I still have a few hours to think about it if anyone has an idea how to spruce it up.. or make t look a little more presentable..   Any idea most welcome..

 

nite all.. nite sam

-me