I ended up spending the whole day working in prep for going back to work tomorrow. I know it sounds ironic.. but overall, it’s been a good tradeoff.. I was able to really get offline this break and recharge. I can’t remember when I was able to free my head from work so much.. ..

thats worth a whole sunday..  don’t you think  ?

nite all, nite sam

-me

Quiet day at home.. starting to ramp up for a running start at work. I realized as I started revving for work just how relaxed i’ve gotten over the break.. that’s a really nice thing ! I know I’m going to be even busier than last year .. which is hard to do.. I’m looking forward to it, though !

Our  one real accomplishment today was to clean out the “old lab”.. once upon a time before we built the garage-yoga-studio-workshop/lab .. the boys and I used the large closet in the front of the house as our workshop.. I started getting uneasy about keeping some of the chemicals I own inside the house.. which was My big motivation for building a garage  (in addition to having a place to park the cars and do the occasional downward dog 🙂

We now use the old lab mainly for storage.. and it gets to be like a coral reef.. there are layers and layers of stuff that gets stacked in there.. and only the outermost layers are reachable. We decided to attack at least that reachable layer as a good way to start the year

there were four  big bins of computer cables , wall adapters , ac cords and audio cables.  The contents of each looked like this. I’d love to understand the dynamics that take a bunch of nicely coiled cables and over 5 years or so turn them into a gordian knot.. seriously there must be some super cool mathmatics at work there !

I find I’m always rummaging  through here looking for adapters.. you never know what you will need .. .. Ahh the rummaging must have something to do with the mess..

it took hours to untangle each of those messes, sort them (eg.. now all the hundreds (yes.. literally) of wall warts are sorted into bags marked <5v, 5v,  5v>x<12v,12v,>12v)  .. what a great metaphor for getting your life together.

many hours later things started to look a little better

look.. you can actually see the floor !

i can now charge into 2016 …  you can’t stop a man once his cables are untangled.. !!!

nite all, nite sam

-me

We had a very quiet start to 2016.. really didn’t do much. Took a walk out with the dogs.. but the snow was too crusty and slippery to make for good hiking.

Did spend some good time with Friend Scott doing some final tuning on the tesla coil Scott rebuilt for me to replace the old SSTC coil I built for travel. We got it to consistently hit about 30″ of spark which isn’t bad for something that weighs just 15 pounds. We’re still trying to debug a glitch in the midi interface circuitry which keeps us from bringing it to full power.. hope to nail that soon.  Other than that.. this thing is working great. it’s the perfect addition to my shows.. as it can stand in for my old reliably spark gap coil that weighs over 100 pounds !

Later in the day we went and saw freind Bradley and Justins new beautiful home..

Aside from that.. our biggest accomplishment today ws to eat all the leftover from 2015…

starting the new year with a clean fridge is a good thing !

nite all, nite sam

-me

Happy new year everyone. Diane and I are just back from a good night of music in Burlington then a meetup with friends. We were just reflecting that we’d been in four churces today.. the las three were music venues for Burlington’s First Night.. We hear folk, jazz, and prog rock music from a a bunch of local artistis in three differ churches down town.. it was nice to see all the other grey and scraggly Vermonters scurrying between venues for some good wholesome new years cheer…

it’s the first church that’s stuck with me though.. This morning we went to St . Thomas in Underhill Center for the Funereal of our friend Rob.. like last nights wake .. it was packed. I think the entire towns of Jericho an Underhill were there..and many of us from Richmond and Huntington. we got there nearly an hour early just to get a seat. The building was packed completely full of Rob and the Mosca’s many friends.
The service was traditional.. a roman catholic mass.. I’ve been to so many this year, that I can even recite the stuff from memory.. there was a comfort in the familiarity of it.. The priest did a reat job of personalizing it for Rob. He summed Rob up perfectly by saying he was completely about love.. and he was.. i looked around to see about 400 folks nodding in agreement when he said that

my favorite… and by far the hardest parts where when 3 family and friends got up to eulogize rob. His oldest son… and my good friend .. Marcello did such a beautiful job paying tribute to his dad.. folks .. me included… were laughing and crying.. as he told crazy stories about his dad.. Rob would have been so proud.. I was for him

there was so much love and sadness in that church today. I know that Rob’s family will get great support from all of us in the community..

we left the church and went on our business.. and like most … celebrated the end of the old year. // I had a good time… and at the same time I kept Rob and his family close in my heart.

Rob would have definitely wanted us to have fun… and we did

i wish everyone out there a peaceful, healthy and happy 2016.. I know wishes don’t count for much.. lets all work to make it so !

night all. night sam
-me

ps.. here’s the view of today from our new weather cam