Sunday – telepresence

Nice dayy.. record setting warm weather.. ti was nearly 60 degrees at a time where we often have our coldest weather.. it could be 80 degrees colder next week.  Diane, the dogs and I took advantage of the warm weather to take a hike up Catamount Trail.. the snow was deep enough to be slow walking.. but not deep enough to need snowshoes. We were both down to tshirts abotu 5 min into the walk.. it felt lieke spring.. and we’re less than a week into winter !

We spent the rest of the day puttering around the house, doing odd jobs and hanging out. Diane finished the cleaning job we started on the toy room.. and I started welding a frame for a very cool (and quite heavy) wooden painting that one of Max’s roomates painted for him right after Sam died.

My borther called while I was welding to see if we could get the robotic cameras he got us working.. the thing hooks up to your home wireless and lets folks see through its camera and drive it  around through any web browser.. I talked Billy though doing the secret handshakes (port forwarding, IP setup) that allowed me to access his robot.. then I did the samw on my router.. we spent abotu an hour driving the robots around each others houses and looking around. it was fun and erie.. The amazing thing is that this technology is primitive compared to what will be available in a few short years.. it boggles my mind.  Here’s gabe explorign Billy and Shaun’s hallway

About 5 we all cleaned up and headed over to Hannah and Daves for our second-to-last hanukah party.
They had ther friend Toby and Mark and their kids and Adj and Andrew and thier kids. We had the four of us as well as Abbott and Jessie.   Hannah and Dave have a great christmas tree too.. I loved their ‘star’ a Sam ornament.. !  It was wonderful to see it up there ..

Diane and Hannah went to work heating and frying latkes.. we had normal ones and sweet potatoe ones.. both great.

Yummmmm

Meanwhile, Dave and I tried our experiment with Sufganiot, the fried jelly filled donoughts that folks soemtime eat on hannukah. Diane had made soem yeasted dough for us.. we took Lindt chocolate balles

 

and wrapped them in the dough ,

sealed them up and let them rise some more.

Then fried them up

We even tried soem filled with chile con queso   (not traditional.. and not that tasty :-D)

Before dinner we lit the candles and said the blessings… Adah and Ava did the candle part..  They were so cute !


Gabe is cute too ..

Then it was tiem to eat.. I don’t know if I can look at another latke…  at least until tomorrow night.

Right after dinner I Skype called Deb and the guys in Peru.. they wanted to say hi to all of the crew.. we had a camera with us as well.. it was great talkign to them.. it was really like being in the same room. This technology is so great….   I wish we could use Skype at work

Right after that Adah stole my amrea and went aroudn taking pictures for awhile lots of pictures of the floor and cieling.. but she did get this flattering one of me.

Hannah had just baugth a banjo for 5 bucks at a garage sale..but no one knew how to play one.. Max hs never even touched a banjo.. but picked it up and started playing a pretty passible version of dualing banjos… by swapping back and forth between dave’s guitar and the banjo.. Who knew ?!

OK.. that was today.. gotta sleep now.. I’ve still got the bug that I caugth last weekend on the way back from Endicott. I need to sleep it off.. Oh.. one last hing. Here’s the movie that Gabe made for Max as a present.. He said I could post it..

OK freinds.. Happy last night of Hannukah.. nite all. Nite Sam
-me