Man.. I’m really missing Diane.. it’s different missing her from here .. normally it’s me who’s traveling.. and missing her from some hotel or other. she comes home tomorrow.. yeah !
One thing that’s going on this week is that friends Tim, Jamie and John are here working on the roof of our tower.. It’s been leaking for a couple of years.. to the point that it’s been growing mushrooms… Time and Jamie pulled off the ceiling to uncover a million cluster flies napping (ewwww). .Unfortunately.. they also uncovered a fair bit of rot.. John is crawling on the outside of the roof patching the holes in 100 year old copper ..
oh.. I forgot these pictures from yesterday.. I went to pick up gabe at Chrises.. and found him carving a hunk of limestone with an pneumatic chisel.. Chris is teaching him to sculpt stone.!?!? .. I love that my kids are good at making stuff !.
Speaking of making stuff. with the help of Scott and his friend Aub. and their machine shop.. . and Gabe.. I’ve managed to get a good bit of the mechanics for my new portable tesla coil done this week. It’s starting to look like.. .. uh.. well.. a tesla coil !
Hmm.. what else happened today.. not much.. Gabe and I caught soem sushi on the way home.. that’s always nic.e I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with him this week..
eeeek.. my batteries are almost out..better sign off.. nite all, nite sam-me
Chai Mariano Cohn – aka ‘chai baby’ turns seven years old today.. She’s been such a wonderful warm friend in our life.. She has an almost human presence. I remember so vividly that day 7 years ago that we went to canada to pick her up. She was 6 weeks old.. and made the flight from Toronto to Montreal by herself.
That first winter she was such a cute puppy.. here’s on of my favorite pictures from that time.. Sam holding chai…
When sam died.. it effected chai deeply.. we even had a ‘dog whisperer’ come out to try and listen to her..the women said that chai was sad and tired of having all the sadness around her.. (not sure you needed to be clairvoyant to know that)
I remember how comforting chai was to me then.. she’d just come up and lie with me and we’d be sad together. i swear she could speak with her eyes.
Things sowly got easier.. for us and for cha.. until 2 years ago, we got her ‘sister’ satori.. chai’s still trying to get used to that.. They do love each other now.. but chai is a dignified middle age lady.. and satori still acts like a puppy.. it’s funny to watch.
Anyway.. Gabe and I were not going to let Chai’s birthday go uncelebrated.. We stopped on the way home and got some ground meet and doogy treats.. Gabe fried up the meat..
chai was starving and looked on wiht interest..
we then added cheese and chicken dog treats
then peanut butter
and some bacon dog treats.
and finally some puparonni ‘candles’
Then it was time for happy birthday !
lucky dogs ! They’re all full and asleep now.. and so should I e..
more tomorrow.. night all you dog lovers.. night sam -me
So.. i’m now into my second week of staying home.. really home.. No travel.. and no night meetings.. I gotta say I like it ‘alot’ (I know ‘alot’ isn’t really a word.. but I say it ‘alot’.. I like it ‘alot’.. and there are not ‘alot’ of words that convey the concept of ‘alot’ so clearly.. ya’ know ?) ..
Being home means going to ed at normal times, eating at regular hours.. getting exercise at the same time every night.. doing homework with gabe.. hanging out with diane (thought she’s gone this week)..
I’m sitting here actually wearing slippers. ..scratching my dogs… maybe I should start smoking a pipe ?
I feel like ward cleaver
maybe I should get a tv to watch….. maybe I should get a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.. maye I should learn to play bridge or canasta..
waye I shouldn’t think so much about it…
the devil finds work for idle hands.. .. I think I’ll go build something…
Happy 10/10/10 everyone.. one of the the few ‘binary’ dates (only 1’s and 0’s) we’ll have this millennium. … so what ?!?!)..
I spent the day celebrating the pure binary nature.. either doing nothing .. or working like a nut..
While DIane is away at a yoga training.. my instincts to do anything good for me (eat, sleep, exercise, relax, play) are about half what they usually are.. that’s all stuff we tend to do together.. Even so, I did manage to get outside some to enjoy the awesome fall weather..
I took the dogs up running in the mountains.. kinda a bummer that it’s also bow season.. the dogs wore their hunter orange.. I looked rather deer like I’m afraid. I gotta say.. walking on a fall day on these trails in the moods is among my favorite things in the world (I think it’s about number 7)
Gabe was at a dance last night.. so I whipped up my favorite bachelor meal.. no one else would eat it.. black beans, braised seitan (wheat gluten) and an insane amput of hot sauce.. .. that’s the one advantage of eating alone.. you can eat stuff others wouldn’t eat.
I ended up spending yesterday doing lots of small errands.. it wasn’t until 11PM that I actually started my main project. I’m uilding a larger musical tesal coil.. It’s one of the more advanced things I’ve tried to build… hope I’m up to it.
My friend Scott and his friend Aub helped me by doing some machinining of some plastic parts..job one last night was to assemble them.. Aub had done such a nice job on the machining !
The next job was to wind about 20 feet of copper tubing through about 50 small holes. Thank goodness I had Gabe helping me hold and rotate the thing. It was a ton of work..we were sweating and cursing and laughing as we got it all done. It was about 1;30 am when we got the first part done..
By 2am .. it looked like this.. not bad for a nights work.
Today I did soem odd jobs around the house, took Gabe into work, went for a run, then sat down to start the next step on the tesla coil.. the secondary.. .. it means winding about a quarter mile of wire perfectly. around a 4 inch pipe.. .. I built this jig and started turnign in the beutiful fall light outside..
It’s a long job.. this is 30 minutes of work.. and I have another 11 and a half inches to wind.. yawn..
Around 3 I headed over to homer’s.. we’re doing some maintainance on the giant pumpkin robot for the haunted forest.. I’m giving it a radio control option.. it was nice to see the thing up close again without it’s haunted forest costume on.. It looks scary to me like this
Homer and our friend Jim had another project going at the same time (how come none of us can do one thing at a time ?! 🙂 .. he is tryoing to breath life into this wonderful 6 axis router he’s been been building out of stuff he baught at action.. I just happened to be there for their first test in wood.
Things actually worked.. though.. you can see by the smoke something wasn’t quite right.. turns out the bit was turning backwards.. that didn’t stop the huge machine from pusing it through the workpiece anyway.. This thing is awesome .. I’ll put in more movies as it starts to do more !
Last stop this afternnon was to pick up Gabe and go shopping. it was a guys only food fest.. .. I’ll hilight our creatoions through the week.. .
Now it’s off to homework.. gabe’s and mine.. More tomorrow
nite everyone.. nite diane if you’re reading this.. we miss you ! nite sam -me
