Today had many twists and turns. It’s carnival or fasching as it’s cold here… The last craziness before the Catholic Lent.

A couple of things made it remarkable… First of all I was running to a meeting from my hotel over to our headquarters when I decided to take a shortcut by running down a hill. I quickly found out that underneath the green grass was still ice and I slipped and fell and slid down this big hill. It was so much fun, so embarrassing, and so practically difficult

Here’s the hill looking down from my office

Here’s my very dirty sports coat… And I just had it dry cleaned

At the end I was covered with mud… Yet I still had a meeting to go to. I was able to run back to the hotel and change my clothes and get back to the meeting before it was really started… That was great…

I also managed to get in my mud covered clothes into the laundry.… What I didn’t realize is that I had left my wallet in my pants pocket… So when it came to the end of the day and I had to go catch a cab somewhere… “No cash”… No nothing. That that that I was able to locate through my hotel the laundry people and luckilythey had saved my wallet. I had to wait a little bit to get it but then I was able to go downtown and meet friends for the carnival celebration. It was a zoo. There were so many people out in crazy costumes.

I love carnival… I love you all…
Night all, night sam
-me

.

Nice to be back in my other home… I’m in Munich for the week attending a large sales conference. So many friends I haven’t seen in a while. It’s great.

One funny thing happened on the flight over last night. I got to my seat on the plane. I looked up and my friend Tamara and her husband were there. They had not been given seats together but I was in a position where when I swapped they were able to sit together. So she was right behind me. It’s pretty funny we actually work together fairly closely. She’s in “influencer” in my industry and we keep running into each other. But never in an airplane. It is truly a small world

OK… Going to try to sleep. More tomorrow
Night all, night Sam
-me

ON my way back to Germany after a week at home.. being home now feels like a vacation. Woke an hour earlier than DIane and lay in bed thinking about how much I love where and how we live.

Working over there has it’s benefits  too. I am really enjoying the work and the people…

if they could just build a tunnel !

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

 

Another amazingly warm day . It was almost 67 degrees !!! (the average temp in Feb is 22 degrees !)

We to0k advantage of the heat to take the dogs for a hike.. we were wearing shorts !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we used to stop and take family pictures in this tree .

we decided to bushwhack a bit because of the slippery rocks. Good thing we did.. because we found this mylar balloon.. and today is Diane’s brother’ Joe’s birthday !

 

 

midday our friend James came over with a cool surprise. He’d managed to hide a SamStone  in the mouth of an Ices culpture..

and it  was captured on a TV news report

http://www.mynbc5.com/article/tom-live-at-ice-palace-1-10-17/8730885

 

 

 

Later in the day we decided we could not stay inside on this warm and beautiful day.. so we went for another j=hike..

We came across a beaver chewn tree that the road crew had to finish off.. .. Any one have a good funny caption for this ?

 

 

the lower gorge was pretty messy.. still lots of snow..a nd the water was too fast for aswimming..

 

 

so chai made a snow angel…

 

 

 

so I did one too.. !

 

 

 

Got home and took a  quick trip to the store.. there I saw Gary who’s collecting for a trip he’s making to Haiti.. he’s installing some solar equipment there for a village.. and he’s taking donations

if you want to donate.. please check out http://solarseedproject.org/haiti

 

last stop this evening was a birthday dinner for nate and coming home dinner for Kevin who’s been deployed in the meidesast for 3 months.

 

birthday cupcakes from Diane !

 

then we realize our 67 degree day had becoem a 30 degree snowy night..

thats all the encouragement we needed to go outside and light a fire !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

all ity takes is a little kerosene and a leaf blower !

 

 

 

 

 

 

ok.. .. long and fun day !.. gotta sleep now

 

more tomorrow.

 

nite all. nite sam

-me