Today was a day of contrasts.  I woke early-ish to start my trip down to NY.. I had hoped to get on the road by 6AM.. but I’d stayed up to late last night wiring the trampoline and blogging.. It was closer to 7:30 when I actually hit the road.

  The ride down to NY was very peaceful.. The day was beautiful and I had tons of good music to listen to . I notice when I drive now I no longer automatically get on the phone. I will occasionally make or take a call. But more often than not I’m sitting quietly in the car thinking… or talking to Sam.   I find I get places much more relaxed and composed this way…   I took the more scenic route and stopped for a brief rest at Ironville to take in the sites..at the perinieally closed Penfield museum.  I even found the memorial marker for the owner’s horse ‘Billy’. That was unexpected !

Some of the buildings on the Penfield Museum site

The memorial to Penfield’s horse !

   It took me about 5 ours to get to Poughkeepsie. My first stop was at my friends Bruce and Mary Beth. Mary Beth and their kids  Brad and Danny had made a beautiful vegetarian spread for me. I had a great meal with them.. then Bruce and I took a long walk to talk about work stuff and personal stuff. It was so great seeing all of them ! Stopping there was a great way to break up the trip…

Mary Beth and Bruce

Yumy lunch

Me in their bathroom

They had a SamStone in their living room

   From there I headed south to Mt. Kisco for the visiting hours for my friend Bill’s wife Linda who died at age 60 the week before last. I got there around 4 and stayed for about 2 and a half hours. There was a steady stream of folks coming and going. I spent some good time listening  to Bill, and looking at their pictures . It was nice to see a slice of their home life. Bill seemed to be doing pretty well. … though I recognized that coping ‘bubble’ that we had immediately after Sam’s death that insulates you a little from the world outside.  I kept having to swallow my instincts to say things like “I know what you’re going through:  because a)   I don’t   and b)   I realize from the vents we had around Sam’s passing that the last thing any grieving  person wants to hear is about other people’s tragedies.. I even wore my Sam button on the inside of my pocket as not to draw questions away from Bill.    I spent some time talking to some of the other guests and to Bill’s kids and their spouses. I was very glad I had come.     While at Bill’s, I ran into this  group of  mystery  women who I’ll just call Aents X, Y, Z and Q.  Mystery women.. you know who you are !

Bill

Agents X, Y, Z and Q

     Around 6:30 I headed out. My friend Joanne and I decided to have our meeting this evening  instead of trying to meet up tomorrow morning. Next October, Joanne is going to be the next president of the IBM Academy.. which is the job that Bill currently holds. I’m going to be the VP of the Academy for the Americas. We spent about an hour brainstorming on how we were going to approach  our Academy jobs to  help the organization.    At  around 8   Joanne headed north to visit her daughter .. before she went she demonstrated the very cool convertible/hard top thing she has going on her car.. Very cool

   At that point, I headed into Somers to my friends Ruchir and Rashi’s  house., When I got there Ruchir was their with his two daughters Isha and Anika as well as his father in law who is visiting from India. Rashi and her mom had stepped out to catch a movie.

 We had a great couple of hours playing with the kids talking, cooking and eating.   Ruchir even showed me how to cook my own pratha ! 

First you smash it flat

Then you roll it

It was supposed to be a heart.. but now it looks like Africa

Yum.. Hot and delicious

 Dinner was wonderful.. we had lentil balls, dahl , curried okra and a wonderful potatoes and dill curry. On top of everything was fresh coriander chutney and three types of indian’pickles’.. Rashi and her mom showed up around 10- and we had a nice talk with them. 

Rashi and Anika

Pickled fresh Tumeric yum !

My pratha
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Okra

Make it hot !… Mixed pickles and coriander chutney.. yum !

Letil balls.

Isha’s plate

It’s now about 12:30 and I’m about to fall asleep . Today was a strange mix of happy and sad… I’m glad I came down. More tomorrow. Gnita all.. gnite Sam.

-me

Where to start ? I went around today with some sort of weight on me.. not really knowing what was troubling me. When I sat down to write I realized that today was the eighth month anniversary of Sam’s passing.. Sam was on my mind so vividly and so close to me today,,, all day.,, it’s amazing that my heart knows this stuff even when my brain does not..   

 
   The only thing I had planned today was to take Hannah, Avery and Brittany F to Homer’s to learn about CNC (computer numerical control) routing. Homer is one of the best people I know for transforming ideas into stuff (My brother Billy is great at that too) .

Hannah showed up at around 9…Before we left, I tried  to sweat talk  our pool heater into restarting after it ran out of gas. It responded to my kindness by blowing it’s front door off and singeing all the hair off my forearm.. yikes ! 

It did finally start so Hannah and I headed off to pick up Avery, Brittany and Avery’s mom, Jen. We showed up at Homer’s around 1-:30.

The girls talked with him for awhile and came up with the idea of making a metal stencil for making (appropriate) graffiti. The design was a hand.. with the girls three initials in it ‘B’-‘A’-‘H’ and some curly-queues and what not. They drew the picture and gave it to Homer. He scanned the image and ran it through his miraculous programs that transformed it into cutting instructions for his giant router.

The girls looking at the setup

The router was scary and smelled funny

Homer shows them the ropes

Brittany looking wistful

The scanned artwork

Avery featured on Homervision

Staring Avery’s eye !

A short intelude for me to show them the fire organ idea

He then used the router to cut the girl’s design our of perforated aluminum.   It’s amazing to see that giant machine doing such delicate work

. I think it’s so cool when you have the tools and material to take something from idea to object in less than an hour. We used the stencil and the scrap to paint some pretty cool street art.. and make some cool shadows. It was very cool.   The girls loved it (I think !) . 

Some frolicking was allowed

It was a nice way to spend the day.. but I was somehow grumpy.. I think because of thinking about Sam.

   That ended up taking a good portion of the day.. I came back here to find Diane and Kevin  in the new Adirondack chairs that Scott has been building for us.. It looks like Diane  had a peaceful day.. She’d spent some time up watching the Voices movie filming.. which she enjoyed.   Diane ended up taking Kevin back to Avery’s while I started to putter in my lab… I’d had an idea bout creating a set of lights that bounced in synch with the person jumping on the trampoline. I’d seen someone synch of a flamethrower with his tramp. So I figured lights would be pretty easy.   I though about a few ways to do it.. and finally settled on using ultrasonic. I took a Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller and hooked up an ultrasonic transducer.. Then I adapted some code that sent pings to the transducer and then measured the time for the response.. That roughly correlates to the distance. I wrote some rudimentary code that would allow me to stick the sensor under the trampoline   and measure the distance the trampoline surface was deflected. I then wired up some solid state relays which would let me control lights with that information. I got something crude working just before dark. At that time, Diane suggested we go out to eat.. (India house yum !).. and go by Barnes and Noble.. to pick up tour reserved copy of the Harry Potter book. By the time we got home  there were a ton of Voices people here. I hooked up my circuits to the lights and stuck it under the trampoline.. It Worked !, Travis made some good suggestion on how to improve the visual effects.. by measuring the lights on the amount the surface changed.. not just on it’s absolute deflection.. It Worked Even Better ! . Max was kind enough to test it out for me.. Pretty cool. I think Gabe is going to love it…  Sam.. I hope you were watching.. you would love it too !

OK.. Gotta sleep now.. I’m heading off to NY tomorrow at 6AM to go to a memorial for my friend Bill’s wife.. I’ll be back on Monday…  

Love to all.. you, too Sam.

-me

What a full day !  Once again i had calls starting in the early morning.… it’s one of the challenges of working with folks all over the world. No time is good for everyone.  I had so many calls all crammed together today that i had to take one in the shower with me… i had to do that to get out of the house in time to get to meet Diane and Jen at Camp Abnaki to see Gabe and make SamStones with the kids. i got to the camp at around 11:30.

it was a great scene. There were about 15 kids and counselors crammed into the art room making SamStones. The table was nearly full by the time i got there and they were just about to complete the first box of clay. Gabe was in there with the. it was SOOOOO good seeing Gabe. i can’t tell you how much I’ve missed him this week. He looked good. And seemed to be having a good time at camp. i could tell he was happy to see u… and probably missed us a little. i wouldn’t have it any other way. We all sat there making SamStones and talking for a while until the lunch bell rang.

i went up to lunch with Gabe, while Diane and Jen stayed behind and kept working on stones. 

   it was so much fun eating with Gabe and the kids. it brought back memories of being in my own summer camp (Camp Rim Rock . Wimberley Texas 1970) except the weather was about 30 degrees cooler here.  i got to talk to some of the kids and eat pizza (Gabe ate my cheese). After lunch, the camp councilors invited me up to say a few words about Sam and to invite any  kids who wanted  down to help us make a few more SamStones//

 The guys waiting to go in for lunch

Gabe’s cabin posse read for lunch.

Gabe and i walked down again and there were about 20 kids crammed into the small room. i ung out for awhile then had to head back to the car for another meeting. Gabe helped me load up a bunch of the SamStones into a wagon for me to take back in the car.   it was hard for me to say goodbye to him again. i won’t see him for another week.

i was a little sad as i drove away from the camp. Frustrated too as i tried to find a place with enough cell signal to take my phone call. As soon as i found a spot i stopped the car, plugged in my lap top and started working. it was about 20 yards  beyond the gate of the camp that became  my office for an hour and a half. Nice view at least…

Me and my mobile office.

From there i headed in to Burlington so i could catch the Rock Camp show at 4. i found a place to park near Memorial auditorium and plugged in to my next conference call. This was a listen only call so i sat their listening carefully … i thought… until i realized i had fallen asleep. i woke up disoriented with loud Rap music on the radio… which had somehow worked itself into my dream about work. your mind does funny things sometimes.

After a  few more calls in my car/office i ducked into 242 Main for the Rock Camp concert.

Both Max and Sam went to Rock Camp for years and hit helped htem both musically. if you don’t know already, Burlington Rock Camp is a fantastic program run by Burlington parks and recreation. They run several sessions each summer and now an after school program in the fall and spring. The idea is kids come learn about playing in a band, music theory, stage theatrics and attitude.  it’s just like ‘School of Rock‘ the great Jack Black movie. The guys who run the program Richard and Greg are great guys and have been really supportive of before and since Sam’s passing.   We’re using Sam’s fund to sponsor some scholarships at the program every year. This year there were a whole bunch of bands,. They had some hardcore bands, some jam bands and some reggae bands. and they were all truly awesome.

A page of Rock theory

I gave Ian my Sam button to wear while he played

Practice or Suck !

“Make good choices Children’

Learing the fine art of loitering

Our friends Nate and ian were in a band called 28 strings. I  caught some of their set here

After Nate and ian’s band i had to leave for more work calls. i was just about out the door when i heard our friend Bobby take the mike. Bobby is a good drummer who helps out with the camp. He’s also a great friend. Bobby has been a great comfort to us. He and his wife Tammy also had a son who was killed in a car accident. it’s a sad and deep bond between us. Bobby got up there and said some great things about Sam and his son. and all the musical kids. He got Diane and i up on stage with him midway. so i had to stop fiming  it was wonderful what he did.  there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. certainly not mine. There was so much love in there.  i could really feel Sam. He was there !

 I wandered up to the 3rd floor of memorial auditiorium. I realized that the last time I was there was Sam’s memorial celibration. It brought back strong memories.

After the concert we were all tired and starving. We all headed back to Tim and Jen’s i Deb and i both went to City Market. the Burlington Food Coop and stocked up on veggie foods and hauled it to Jens.

Jens shirt reflected in her wine glass. Sam’s always with us .

Som inedible fake sheese we bought.. Highly toxic !

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Marie and her friend’s pet turtle

We had a really nice quiet night over there…  Which was good because or house was full of people when we got home,  Amazingly though all the Voices kids were in bed by 11:30. they have another 6 AM stage call tomorrow morning.  Boy are they working hard.

i’m struggling to stay awake myself so I’ll end here. What a full day.   lots of love gnite all,  gnite Sam

-me

Another quiet day. I’ve had 7:30 calls three out of five days this week because I’m working with friends in China and India. I’m not a morning person so waking up that early throws me off a little. Diane had already been up to MMU and back before I woke up.  We were still able to get a run in before 7:30 when I had to get on the phone.   I like working at home in the mornings.. though the world got to hear the sound of 3 cords of wood being dumped in the back as I was trying to run the meeting.

    I worked in a bit of a haze this morning.. then managed to sneak out to lunch with my friend Kerry. We bought sandwiches at a deli then sat in the gazebo at Fort Ethan Allen ain the steady rain. I love talking to Kerry. He’s the guy that’s helping us organize the memorial sculpture we’re trying to create for Sam. Kerry and I have much in common. It was so good talking to him…

    I had a back to back meetings all day.. then finally broke free around 6:30. I’d arranged to meet my friend Raminderpal and his family over in Essex. He and I sat with his wife and kids until their Pizza came.. then we went next store to Tiny Thai.  We had a nice time talking.. His family is beautiful..

    I finally made it home around 9:30. The Voices kids had just made it home. Max had to shave off his beard for his part in the movie.. he looks good with or without it.. Here’s a before and after shot..

   Tomorrow Diane, Jen  and I are going up to camp Abenaki to see Gabe and make some SamStones. Diane’s mom donated a kiln to the camp last year.. and they’ve just wired it up. I think it will be very meaningful to make SamStones with the kids at camp. I’ll take pictures and let you know how it goes… I’m very excited about seeing Gabe. I miss him so much !

Gnite all. Gnite Sam

 
-me