Today was Take Your Kid To Work Day (or TYKTWD for those of us in the biz). This morning there were over 800 kids roaming the halls of IBM. I always find it very cool to have all that ygood kid energy inside the walls of Big Blue. My  job this morning was to entertain roughly 500 of them with stories about how video game consoles are put together.

My  hope is that kids that like playing video games will get psyched about  learning more abut how the game consoles and game software works. It really, really  is cool stuff. I took the kids through ‘Game Tomorrow’,  a story that starts with the  history of video game consoles.. how the current ones are put together and the amazing stuff we expect from the next generation of machines. I was using a presentation from IBM Corporate Communications that I’d help put together back in November. In fact, the story line for the presentation was the thing I was working on the day that Sam died. Going through the same material today .. especially in a room full of kids really started out hard, After the first few minutes the feeling eased up and I was able to get into the material. I got pretty good audience participation and I think the kids ‘got’ the message. I had a whole bunch of them come up tot alk to me after I was done WCAX and the FreePress were there.. I just saw that there’s a short piece on WCAX’s website about the event.  (http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=6420872) Maybe there will be something in the paper tomorrow.  I can say that it really feels good to be ‘back in the saddle again’ and doing some education outreach work. I feel good when I’m working with kids.. and I think it’s a good way to honor Sam with my work.

    The rest of the day passed pretty quickly.. I managed to write Sam’s name in the snow of the parking lot.. I added some mud ofr contrast. I plan to do this until all the snow dissapears,

I got home about 6:30 just in time to leave with Diane and Gabe to go see ‘Citizen Cope’ at Higher Ground. I love live music anytime.. but live music mid-week is a great and rare treat. It was a  really young crowd at Higher Ground tonight.. which was funny because the music was definitely not  just for kids. Stylistically, Citizen Cope has a little of everything . including reggae, R&B, conutry and jazz . It grew on me as the night went on.

I loved the young crowd. At one , point I decided to take some of our spare French fries down to Gabe and friends who were right up near the stage. As soon as I walked into the crowd it was like a feeding frenzy.. hand were coming out of every ware to grab for the fries.. it was surreal and fun.. and a little disgusting.. I felt like I was in the company of piranha’s.

Overall ,he show was pretty good.. we saw lots of friends there including Sumner who’ still on crutches. Notice where those crutches come to on Gabe.. that Sumner is one tall boy

   We got home just before midnight to find Max studying hard. When we came in he took a break to make the world s most perfect baked potato.. Here he is just before the sacrifice…

   Oy.. I’m sleepy.. I’ll end here. Sam.. I wanted to let you know that I was in a book store today and saw one of your favorite books It made me sad and happy to see it.. I’m sure your know it…

 
-jc