Hello from Las Vegas… I got here late afternoon after leaving gabe’s this morning. It was so much fun visiting gabe and helping him Fix up the house. Still a lot to be done… But I’m really proud of all of the stuff we got done. (Look at all the scratched off items on our list)

I got to Vegas about 6 PM just in time to Register for the conference I’m speaking at… And go down and see the venue. It’s always important to me to be able to see the room I’m speaking in… It makes me 6% less nervous once I’ve seen the room 🙂

A good sign is that I ran into my friend Karla about 30 seconds after I arrived.

From there I was able to go to the poster session and I am mediately started running into friends. I hadn’t been at this conference in probably eight years… But there were so many familiar faces

It felt like home sort of

I particularly enjoyed running into old friends Nagu and Viresh. .. Something about running into old friends makes me also less nervous

The three of us Took an Uber (a Tesla driven by a Bernie sanders fan !) To a party held by one of the suppliers. It was in a building where I had seen one of the best concerts of my life ( Phil Lesh) in 2015 . It brought back great memories Of hanging out there with my friend Shmuel And running into my friend Ricky from Vermont totally randomly

There were so many people there tonight that I knew that it was overwhelming. I knew I had to get a good nights sleep

so I did a quick circulation and then we headed out

OK… I have to wake up early for my talk. So I’m going to sign off now. More tomorrow

Nite all, nite Sam

– me

Super busy day here I Portland. Woke at 4:39 am because I could t sleep. Too many work dreams . I used the time to put another coat of urethane on one and more bucher max on the other First call was 7am and it kept going until almost 7pm.. which is when Gabe got home . I did manage to get some of the tasks for the house done while I was on the phone . The biggest task was to make and mout two sharlves . One is a cutting hoard work surface near the stove job the kitchen .. the other is ha hung over the basement stairs and is made for plants . We’d been looking for nice wooden shelves hit most of what we found were yucky laminated . I finally found some stair treads and had them cut .. they are perfect shelves

Zoe helped me install them

Nice Thai dinner with Gabe Sean and zoey… lthengabr and I worked on some paperwork

It’s been a great visit.

I love this house $

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Spent a really fun day helping gabe, Shaun and Zooey decorating the house . I went for a walk this morning and stopped in a nearby Asian grocery

I cut the grass, went for a run with gabe the. We spent the rest of the day putting up pictures

Tucker and Cole came over for a cook out tonight

We were visited by a very bold raccoon !

It’s so fun being here !

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Hello from Portland… It’s about 1230 and I’m at Gabe’s new house In Portland… It’s so nice ! It’s cute and bright and wonderfully welcoming. You can tell how hard Gabe , Diane , Raya, shuan and gabe’s friends have been working .

Tomorrow I’m going to start helping with the next round of organizing

I’m so happy to be out here to help !

Now to sleep off some of this jet lag

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

He spent the afternoon hanging out with Sean and his girlfriend Zooey