All posts by johncohn

Saturday morning – three years of blogging..

Folks,
    I mentioned 2a couple of posts back that I now have passed the three year mark with this blog. As many of you know,  I’m a numbers junky. I wanted to know what three years of blogging ‘looked’ like. so I stayed up way too late and wrote soem more code (I love programing in Python !) .. and extracted all the text I’ve written here in these last three years . For those interested.. here’s the stats..

– I 3,417,863 characters ( 2,789,693 without spaces)
– That made  627,021 words
– and 3357 paragraphs (seems I’m a little light here.. need moreparagrap  breaks !)
– In 1118 entries
– it’s been read here (meaning at myspace) 313,484 times.. but that doesn’t cout reads from elsewhere such as my homepage, work, twitter, etc.
What I find more interesting is the word cloud I created using http::/www.wordle.net.  The size of the word reflects its frequency in the glog..

Sam’s name is by far the biggest.. no surprise there.. some of the other stuff is interesting.. ‘cool’, ‘great’ . ‘like’ ,good’ .. I like seeing those !

What do you see in there ?


I’ve done this the last two years.. I’ll dig those up later.. to see what they looked like
More later.. TTYL folks.. TTYL Sam
-me

 

Thursday night – giving thanks

We’ve just pulled away from the table at a wonderful thanksgiving dinner at Max’s apartment in Brooklyn.   Present are  Diane, Max, Gabe. Will , Alex and me…  It was a really peaceful day here.. Diane and I went for an early-ish walk down for bagels.. It’s fun sampling city life…

The city looked cool and beautiful this morning.. lots of cool surprises.. We came across this one place offering New Orleans style  fried turkeys.. there was a line all the way down the street !

and signs of a prehistoric bird party.. turkeys ?

.. and many reminders..

One thing I love about this neighborhood is hte mix of cultures.. THere’s a big Chassidic community here wiht all the store signs in Yiddish…

and next store some of the coolest named small store front churches..    I saw many more than these.. just didn’t have my camera with me most of the day..

At dinner was a

feast of many cooks..

  Gabe made the apple pie, Diane made lots of

stuff,

Max made the fake turkey,

Will carved the real turkey. Most of the meal was vegetarian

..//. and I

basically sat on the couch and watched (and I got most of the dishes. )

Dinner was about 7.. it was perfect..casual, interesting food, great company..

I substituted hot sauce for cranberry sauce..

It was wonderful hanging out with my family and our friends,

We toasted Sam, our families, and absent friends (and a shout out to my friends at the Colony… as promised)..   We truly appreciate what we have.. and think about it every day.   I think I was always thankful .. but have been so much more mindful these past three years.

Which reminds me.. I forgot to mention that yesterday marks the third anniversary of this blog. My first entry was Nov 25, 2006.. just 4 days after Sam’s passing . and I’ve written every day since.. except for the days I was offline for the Colony.. Diane helped out there.. .. so I think there are only about 15 days missing. I sometimes o back and start reading form the beginning.. .
This has been such a source of healing for me.. and made such a connection for us to our firends and family during this tough period of our lives..   I remember last year at this time I was thinking of giving up writing.. but someohow.. I feel more energized about writing now than ever.. I guess I’ll keep at it daily for the forseable future…. I still find it helps..

Well.. we want to wish you all a peaceful and meaningful Thaqnksgiving..
Nite folks.. nite Sam.. we’re missing you Sam..
-me

Late Wednesday night – Brooklyn

Greetings from Max’s apartment in Brooklyn.. Diane Gabe and I drove down this morning to be with max for thanksgiving. It was a great and lazy day.. even with the driving.
Most of Max’s roomates are home for the holiday.. so there’s plenty of space for us We’re hanging out here with Max (and our)’s friend Alex who’s visiting from VT and Max’s roommate Will.. who’s a great guy.
    Diane, Gabe, Alex, Max and I went to our favorite restaurant in NY.. Red Bamboo tonight. The place is amazing ..  It’s all vegetarian (as are we).. but the menu is loaded with fake meat-like things as in ‘fish sticks’ … and ‘chiicken wings’.. the ”s mean that the stuff is made out of some sort of wierd veggie stuff.. but it tastes great.. ..  Just call it our part of observing hunting season 🙂

Afterwars, we came back home and did the quentesntial college hang out thing.. Gabe, Max and Alex hung out and played a Zombie shooting game (looking like zombies on my cheap phone cam)

Meanwhile, I worked with Max to get the EEG thingy working on his MAC.. none of the code for the thing runs on a mac so we had to cobble some things together in 2 languages to get them to work.. but.. ultimately we were triumphant.. at least to the point of getting brainwaves on the screen.. Here they are again for our viewing entertainment. For the record.. the periods of fast wiggles correspond to gritting your teeth.. so they’r enot brainwaves per sec. they’re neuro muscular activity..

Yikes It’s almost 2.. gotta get to bed.. More tomorrow.. Nite folks !
Nite Sam..   we’re thinking of you..
-me

Monday night – Halt Die Knaupfen

Fun day off work today..  For me it’s sort of a relief to be past the weekend. I loved the way we marked Sam’s passing day.. at the same time, I’m also grateful to be back to my everyday observance . We spent some time  getting the house back in order after the gathering here. Yesterday, Gabe and I took down the few unburned parts of the Burning Man for Saturday night.. That was a great observance..  

I used a large magnet to retrieve all of the metal hardware that the fire didn’t consume. I got a full coffee can full of them. I don’t know why I find this stuff so cool.. but I do..

The big news this morning was the visit by Ernie, the Chimney Sweep. Sweeps are very good luck !..

When I lived in Austria we would say ‘Halt Die

Knaupfen’ (hold the buttons !) whenever we saw a sweep.. to bring good

luck.. It’s also good luck to get a handshake or a kiss from a sweep

I remember the story of Sweeps being lucky came up in Mary Poppins, too  !

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey

Chim chim cher-ee!

A sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey

Chim chim cher-oo!

Good luck will rub off when I shakes ‘ands with you

Or blow me a kiss and that’s lucky too

Now, as the ladder of life ‘as been strung

You might think a sweep’s on the bottommost rung

Though I spends me time in the ashes and smoke

In this ‘ole wide world there’s no ‘appier bloke

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey

Chim chim cher-ee!

A sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey

Chim chim cher-oo!

Good luck will rub off when I shakes ‘ands with you

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey

Chim chim cher-ee!

A sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey

Chim chim cher-oo!

Good luck will rub off when I shakes ‘ands with you

I choose me bristles with pride, yes, I do

A broom for the shaft and a brush for the flute

Up where the smoke is all billered and curled

‘Tween pavement and stars is the chimney sweep world

When there’s ‘ardly no day nor ‘ardly no night

There’s things ‘alf in shadow and ‘alfway in light

On the rooftops of London coo, what a sight!

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey

Chim chim cher-ee!

When you’re with a sweep you’re in glad company

Nowhere is there a more ‘appier crew

Than them wot sings, “Chim chim cher-ee, chim cher-oo!”

On the

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim cher-ee, chim cher-oo!

Around 10:30, Jen came and picked me up and took me into Richmond. She has a cool  tile project in her head and she needed me to model for her.. She’s doing a piece with Atlas as an old man.. he’s put down the world and is taking a rest..

I was happy to do it.. it’s one benefit of looking old !

This afternoon, Avery, Owen and Ben came over to help me with the engineering rap song that Gabe’s working with me on. My singing was so bad that Max and Diane forbade me to sing any more.. hence I hired soem pro’s ! It was fun workign with them on it. When the project gets further along, I’ll post it here for comment.

Around 8:30 I headed into town for the Matisyahu concert at Higher Ground.  Matisyahu is an ex-Phish head homeless kid who became a Chasiddic Jew and now goes around singing excelent Jewish regae/ska songs.. He’s amazing.. if oyu ever get a chance to hear him. check him out.. !

It was a great show.. and I had a chance to see many freinds.. including Andy from HG who’s abotu to leave and sail around the world. I gave him a bag of Samstones to take with him. It’s goign to be such an adventure !

OK.. that’s it for tonight. I need to get soem sleep.. More tomorrow. Nite all, nite Sam !
-me

ps. Today I came across these earings we made for Diane with all of our initials.. I liked seing us all together again  on these thin wires.