Short post tonight. A slow day today. Diane and Max left early to help out with the Voice’s Movie fundraising banquette at Shelburne Farms. Max dropped me at Toyota in South Burlington so I could pick up my car. I got back home around 11AM. Gabe was lying low as he still had a slight fever. He needs to gather his strength.. He’s leaving for High Cascade snowboarding camp in Oregon tomorrow at 6AM. He’s really, really excited.. He’s heading out there with his friend Sumner and Jeremy to do a little mid summer snowboarding. Sam went there last year and absolutely loved it.
Scott and Mary were around this morning. They let us know that they’ll be moving back to Scott’s house .. I think they need a bit more privacy than this house can give right now. The kids from the Voices movie will start showing up next weekend.. and it will get pretty zooey around here. I’ll really miss having both Scott and Mary around. They are both wonderful people. They’ll only be 8 minutes down the road, so I’m sure we’ll still see them around.
I had no real plans for the day so I started to see if I could salvage our downstairs computer. It’s got some sort of progressive hardware problem that prevents it from booting up.. or staying up most of the time. I checked online and found that it’s a common symptom of this model of eMachine. Evidently many. many people are now having this same problem n this now out of warranty model. Based on what I read today.. I’d really avoid that brand altogether. I was able to get it to boot and stay working up long enough to recover our critical data.. I had to keep a fan on it to keep it from overheating.
Sam’s passing has made some of the data on all of our computers unbelievably precious. There’s music movies and pictures that we just can’t afford to lose now.. I’ve got them all backed up 3 ways. Like anything else in this house.. going through these files for salvage can cause great emotional ups and downs for me.. Sometimes seeing a picture or movie of Sam’s can make me so sad.. other times it makes me so happy. The whole process put me in a pretty soulful place…
As the data was copying I started to thumb through the ‘memories book’ from my 30th high school reunion. My buddy Marie sent me a copy of hers. The reunion was in Houston on June 9th in Houston. I didn’t want to go because it was Gabe’s birthday. The memory book was really fascinating.. I had trouble putting it down after I started reading. It was really weird seeing what people had done.. or not done.. with their lives. How had kids, how didn’t… who married who.. who divorced who.. what they’d done.. where they’d traveled.. what dreams they’d followed or given up. My name was in there.. but no picture and no story. They hadn’t contacted me at all for the reunion. I was pretty surprised. I’ve been in the same house for 25 years.. and I’m pretty easy to find on the internet.. What would I have said to my 634 friends of the 1977 graduating class of Memorial High School ? .. I’ve been writing the paragraph I would have submitted in my head… had they found me to ask. I think I would have told them how wonderful my life was.. how much I loved my life up here.. how much I loved my family and I would tell them about Sam’s passing.. I think I would even have said that despite. Our deep tragedy.. I still loved my life.. maybe I love it even more now.. since things are so precious to me now.. I want to reach out to all the folks who wrote their stories in the book to hug their kids.. to …..what.. pray for us ? Think about us / .. hug hteir kids ? .. at least that for sure…
I was starting to spin on that when Diane called to tell me that our friend Arthur …was desperately in need of extra kitchen help. Arthur, who’s a professional cook.. and his family had very graciously offered to volunteer their cooking and serving to the Voices movie fundraiser He was cooking for 175 folks and it required more than his two capable hands. Diane and I showed up to do whatever we could. It was a great experience. I ended up dipping several hundred chocolate cookies in chocolate, dusting a bunch of almond meringues with sugar , making Crème Fraise from scratch, and helping make some really cool Portobello quiches. In addition I washed a veritable mountain of dishes. It was fun to help
I had planned on going to the fundraiser myself.. but when I got home, I could tell that Gabe was bored. He did not want to go all the way to Shelburne Farms to watch the voices folks serve people dinner.. Even if max is a cast member. Sensing his mood, I changed the plan.. I invited Gabe to just hang out with me … first we went to Cody’s for dinner.. (yum) .. Here we are just goofing around…
then we went to the Essex Cinema to see , Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer. It’s a pretty good movie.. though I can’t tell if the story is true or not J .. Seriously.. I loved Silver Surfer comics when I was a kid.. they were so cool and bizarre..
We got home around 9 just a few minutes before Diane and Max. Diane and Gabe quickly finished up packing Gabe for his trip. IN addition to all of his snowboarding gear.. Gabe is taking a box of stuff from the Friends of Sam which High Cascade will give to the kid Tyler.. who broke his neck a few months back and is now paralyzed . In the box is a letter form the group, a bunch of SamStones and a letter with a check for the $2500 the kids raised for Tyler‘s care. I’m glad that Gabe can take this with him. He’s also taking a small amount of Sam’s ashes to spread on the mountain out there.. Sam would really like that.. It was an interesting emotional challenge for me to get the small vial of ashes for Gabe to take.. I though it would be harder.. but that just isn’t Sam.. it’s just…. stuff…
Anyway.. we need to wake up at 4 to take Gabe to the airport.. so I’m going to sign off now.. How everyone had a good weekend. Love to all..
-me
Ps. our friend Erin B/ has just posted two songs she perfromed and recorded in her living room. You just gotta check these out. on Erin’s myspace music page. The first is Billy Holiday’s : G-d bless the child.. You have really got to hear this record ing. The second one is Regina Specktor’s ‘On the Radio’.. it’s got that line.. “... so you stick your heart into soemone else chest, pumping someone elses blood’… “ She is simply amazing !