This morning we went to teh MMU awards ceremony to give away the third annual Sam Cohn musical soul award. The award allows the winner to go pick out a guitar of his/her choice from Advanced music. We give this award to a kid at mmu  high school who has a musical soul like Sam’s. Anybody can be nominated for the award by a freind or a teacher. It’s not based on current musical ability, grades or anything else…  they just have to love playing music.

It felt good to be back up at the high school… we saw so many freinds !

THi year we got a bunch of nominations. We put them all in a basket and pull one out at random.. that way Sam gets the final choice !

This year’s winner is Eric M. a very nice kid who loves composing muusic. He was so happy and surprised to have won the award.. His nomination said that music would always be a central part of his life.. .. and his favorite band is State Radio ! Sounds perfect. It felt good to make soemone that happy.

We really appreciate the help that MMU and Jen B have given us in setting up this award !

We got home by 9:30 in time to take delivery of 500 pounds of clay that jen had ordered. It came in a huge 18 wheeler semi truck. The truck was too big for jen’s steep road. It was funny seeing this little load of clay come in such a huge empty truck !  I helped the driver move the clay then gave him a samstone as a thanks fpor brining us all more clay.

I worked soem then ran off to a lunch meeting. I stopped at Homer’s on the way to delvier the remote control setup I’d rigged up early this morning for the 1/4 scale burning man vehicle. I’d bowrrowed a 2 channel transmitter and receiver from my freind bernie.. then I’d interfaced that to a new 3 channeldc motor contrtoller. I only had a few minutes at homers between my meetings, but wr managed to get the motors to work by remote control !.. That felt like progress.. HOmer still ahs to finish wiring the motors to the vehicle.. hopefully he can finish that on Sunday.

OK.. getting sleepy here.. time for bed. Tomorrow’s an early day.. Gabe has a Lacrosse game at 8 in St. Albans… then tomorrow night we have the Jam for Sam at Talent from 6-9. Be there or be an equilateral quadrelateral !

Gnite all.. Gnite Sam !
-me

I got on the road this morning at about 6 AM and got back to Burlington in time for my noon face to face meeting. The drive back was beautiful and restful.. Got some good work done on the phone. I had a full day of meetings at work then came home to find the septic project complete. I’m glad it’s done.. but the yard is a mess.   The guys did a really nice job with the install and with restoring the yard to some semblance of flat.. but now we have these really freaky hatches and tubes sticking out of our grass. It’ll take some getting used to.

 The back step had to be removed for the work which revealed some bad rot around the sill.. We have to fix that before we replace the back step.. so for now.. it’s a long way up or down from the back yard.

Tonight Gabe had lacrosse practice.. He got a ride while Diane and I went to S. Burlington High School to hear Ralph give a presentation for his public speaking class. There were about 14 kids in the class. Each one did a short piece as a tribute to a, parent, mentor or  friend. They all did such a great job !

Ralph had written his about Sam… so that’s why we were invited !

The teacher had written the secret to success on the podium…

Each kids tribute was so heartfelt. I think the format allowed

several of these kids to say publicly stuff that they couldn’t say

privately to their parents. It was really touching.

Ralphs peice on Sam was the last one. it was such a wonderful message. Ralph talked abotu Sam’s easy freindship, his snowboarding skills, his music… and his bravery . It made me cryt and smile at the same time. I was so glad to be there to hear it .. I could feel Sam close by as he read.

Greetings from Somers NY> I’m staying at my good friends’ Ruchir and Rashi’s. I’m down here for a set of meeting over the next day and a half. It’s always wonderful to see them.  I got hear abotu 10:30 after a full days work at home.. I had to work at home today because today was the day we began work on our new spectic system. Nothing beats putting a large amount of money into a hole in the ground 🙁 ..
Honestly .. getting this fixed will be a huge relief to us. Diane’s been having to take our clothes to the laundremat for many months.. It will be nice to wash, shower or flush whenever we feel like it now.

I have to admit it’s exciting to watch the new system go in. The system was designed by our freind Justin.. and our buddy Bill A. is doing the excavation work…   Bill is a true artist with this big machine.. I keep thinkign what a cool robot we coul dmake out of that excavator.

First thing we had to do was to number the fieldstones from the part of the walkway that had to be removed.. we nede ot get these stones back in their original  places.

Here’s comes Bill with the shovel full of work

Here he is lifting the sidewalk stones. He is so delicate with that machine that OI think he could scratch his back with it.

He also had to remove the back step.. I gotta do soemthing about that sill rotting..

Here’s the hole for both tanks of the new system

And the dirt that came out of it….

Here’s the new gravel in the bottom

These guys are perfectionists.

Here come the tanks…

While the guys were placeing the tanks, woody was wirign the septic pup and Bruce and I worked on getting the air vent routed to the roof.. easier than it sounds. We ended up having to put the pipe up through one of the interior rooms.. and then up into the attic. Not easy at all.. The hardest part was cleanign a path through the mess in the attic to reach the place the pipe will come through..

OK.. I need to sleep now. We’ll have soem more piuctures from the spetic system over the next couple of days.. I gotta admit, it’s all pretty exciting .. isn’t it Sam ?
-me