Very full day.. Diane and Max left early to go catch Jessie’s graduation, which I heard was very moving. A bit later, I went and retrieved Gabe from Dylan’s house. Gabe had two Lacrosse games scheduled all the way down in Middlebury.  We left how around 12:30 and stopped at On the Rise to grab a byte. So many of our friends work and eat there… it’s like home coming every time you step in the door. Today we bumped into Collin.. he was wearing his Sam shirt which I love seeing. Collin still writer’s Sam’s name or initials  everyday on the blackboard  in the entrance of CHMS.

   The ride down to Middlebury was long… Gabe and I talked about everything from snowboarding to nuclear weapons. I lie that car time for catching up. The games themselves were long and hot. Gabe was playing well which is always fun to see. I had brought a book to read (Slow Man by J. M.  Coetzee .. (my same initials !)).. but put it down.. it starts with a guy getting hit by a car.. and I had trouble getting past that.   I busied myself during the times that Gabe was not playing by sleeping and  fiddling with my camera both worthy pastimes.

   After the second game we headed back to Richmond by way of Lime Kiln Road.. where Homer lives.. coincidentally. Homer called me as I was just about to go by his house so we stopped in..  Gabe had never seen Homer’s shop.. Everyone should see Homer’s shop. He has one of every type of tool, and a mad variety of impractical and impressive contrivances.. For example. He built a wireless control to open and close his windows. He also has a sculpture of a mask with chains on it that beats itself when you turn it on.  His favorite project right now is a 6 axis robotic arm that very smoothly move a video camera only inches from the surface of any object The effect is lie  flying over some vast landscape in a hot air balloon. It’s fascinating. Home let Gabe drive the thing over a table full of interesting doodads..

Homer’s now thinking of letting people explore a human figure in this way.. Homer has a very interesting  mind.

   While  we were there, Homer worked with Gabe and me on a birthday present for Max. I  have lots of pictures of us making it.. but I’ll save those or tomorrow as not to give it away to max in case he reads this tonight… Once done, Gabe got in the bat mobile and zoomed home. We got there just as Max and Jessie were heading out for the all night Project Grad. I grabbed one last picture of Max as an 18 year old.. He’ll be 19 tomorrow morning.

    We washed up and headed up to David’s beautiful log home up on Bolton.

It was a really , really nice evening. There was a small group of interesting folks from different facets of David’s life, excellent food and beautiful weather. It was magical. Towards the end of the evening we noticed a HUGE moth flittering on the  screened window. I tried to get some pictures to give a sense of the scale. Suffice it to say that when it grabbed on to my toe, I was afraid it was going to carry me off J .

 
Well tomorrow is going to be a full day.. Max’s 19t birthday, two more lacrosse games, a voices project script read through and… Father’s day. I’m not sure why thinking about Father’s day is not bothering me as much as I expected.. maybe because everyday is fathers day of a sorts for me. Even so, let me take this opportunity to wish my Father Hugh, my father in law Gabe, My Brother Billy  my brother in law John and all Father’s everywhere the very best father’s day. I’m proud to be a dad… it’s always been my best job…. It always will be. .. G’nite my sons and my dad’s

 -me

ps. Max just called at midnight to spend his turning 19 with us ! I love that kid so much !

pss. A firefly just came in our room and is zooming around. It’s a spark from Sam 🙂

Man.. I have got to change my schedule.. for the 4^th time this week I’m sitting down to write at about 1:30 AM (you may have noticed that I sometimes fake out the posting times to make sure my posts land on the right day). I need to either a)  figure out with how  to add a few extra hours in each day.. or b) I need to figure out how to start earlier. I think I need to work on a).. since b) is so unlikely to happen.  I like being up late.. several of the kids in the house are still up at this time… the thing I have trouble with that  is that I still have to get up early..   I think Diane would let me sleep in.. but Chai would never let me .. Every morning at about 6, I get her giant paw on my shoulder or neck.. and she will sit there until I’ve scratched her for a few minutes.. just long enough to wake me up

I shuffled downstairs and saw Gabe’s new Snowboarding pants and jacket.. Now THAT woke me up !

I finally did get out of bed today. I had a 7:30 call again.. then calls all the way up until 10:00.  I looked at my calendar and saw that my friend Jleigh had managed to find me 40 minutes  to go visit Williston Central school to make SamStones. Our friend Corrine (Crnn.. how do you spell your real name ? )  had set it up with the help of our friend Lyz (aka Jeff D’s mom aka Ms. Demis the art teacher to them.. ). There were about 25 kids that had made it including the kids from the Vermont Center for the Deaf.  I told them all about Sam.. and about SamStones  and I showed them the SamStones website. . Many of them already new about Sam.. We took the clay and stamps that Lyz had gotten from our buddy Jen and started making them. Lyz put on her Skanky Green music and the kids got to hear Captain Sam .. the song the guys write about Sam. .   It was really , really fun and sad,,, and fun.

    Here are a few pictures I took today.. Thanks to all who helped set it up !

 
That’s all for tonight Sam… Sleep well everyone !

-me

Late night – short report. I had a really full day with back to back meetings at work that went from 7:30 AM until 5:00, 6:00 if you count the phone calls I returned at the end of the day. OK.. to be fair.. the last meeting of the day wasn’t so tough, it  was a reception for some folks at work who’d recently gotten promoted.. They were actually serving beer and wine in the IBM cafeteria.. We’ve come a long way since T.J. Watson !

After work I met my friend and work colleague Garry for dinner.. we were heading towards Mexecali (my favorite).. but their computer was down so thy had to close. We walked over to  Nicco’s instead and sat outside.  The  food was excellent.. and so was the weather. It was really great talking to Garry. He and I are in the same department.. Until recently, Garry was working here in Vermont, but living near Poughkeepsie NY. Every week he’d commute back and forth.. a few months back he was able shift most of his job back down to NY.. which is much better for his family life.. but leaves me as a department of 1 here in VT .The last couple of times Garry’s been up, I’ve been out of town. … so our meeting was long overdue.  We talked about work, people, life, family, and Sam…   Garry’s a thoughtful and wise person.. it was fun to connect.   Mid way through dinner we heard a loud clatter and saw a kid pushing another kid as fast as he could in a shopping cart.,.. it was Mikey  pushing  and Casey in cart… I told Mikey to keep the receipt .. I wish I’d managed to get a picture of them. About a half our later two women walked up to us.. One of them approached me and asked  me if I was me.. I mean.. she asked if I was john cohn. When I said I was, se said something like ‘this is to show how powerful Sam is’ .She told me that she’d never seen me,, never seen a picture of me.. had not seen my Sam button.. but had figured out that  was Sam’s dad by ‘my energy’ from seeing me across the restaurant. She then introduced herself as  Jeannie L.  a new friend of Diane’s . . Our common thread is a sad one. Jeannie’s 8 year old daughter Ila died 3 years ago. Our friend Mark knows Jeannie through a number of connections. Mark connected her to Diane and they’ve gotten together several times to share stories. We talked about Sam and Ila.. and about other parts of our very changed lives. It is such a strange bond we have with others that have suffered a loss like ours.. but it’s such a strong connection. I could have spoken with her all night.   Garry was kind enough to snap a picture of Jeannie, Me and Jeanie’s friend Sue.. (I just realized I didn’t get a picture of Garry !)

  Several months ago Jeannie gave us a very cool picture she call’s Ila’s Moon. It’s a beautiful picture of the full moon .. which was very special to Ila’s life. On the picture is a poem  that a friend ‘s daughter, Alyssa, had written for her.

 
Ila’s Moon by Alyssa T
If you are up at half past nine
When the moon is up in the starlit sky.
You will know why the moon is there
To shine a bright glittery trail.
To a place where happiness is all there is
No wars, no guns, no need to fight.
That’s the place I’ll be tonight.

 We have that picture on our ‘Sam table’ downstairs.

 
After Jeannie and Sue left, Garry and I talked for a good bit more then I ran into BestBuy to do a bit of Max birthday shopping. I was surprised to  find Mikey working there looking very professional ! 

At that point it was about 9:30… I decided to go to the Inn at Essex to  meet up with another old  friend Mike (note this is the third Mike for the night… Open Mike Night !)  who was visiting from Minnesota for the day. I’ve worked with this mike for more than 25 years (!!!).. we go way back and have had many good times together over the years..

He was traveling with our mutual friend  Jeff J. the two of them had stumbled into another colleague of ours, Mitani-san from Tokyo,.. It was like old home week at the Inn at Essex….. It was great catching up with all of them..  It was about 11:30 before I headed home.. Now I’m beat and need to sleep..   What a full day..

   I love people.  I love my family.. I love you Sam.. Gnite

-jc

What if spring never came ? That’s what I found myself asking as I looked at the pieces of the half assembled  trampoline in our side yard.

This was Gabe’s big birthday present.. an item on the list since he and Sam were little.. but always rejected… rejected for what reason  ?  safety ? money ? aesthetics ? Anyway the ‘ you only go around once’ message is so deep in us at this point that we ordered the tramp  last week.  Most of it showed up this  morning.. we were so excited.. we knew that Gabe would be psyched.. unfortunately  there were at least two big problems: First.. there were no springs. Evidently the box of springs was misplaced somewhere between here and Gonzales Texas.. They’re looking for the box.. but no sign of it yet. yet. Second.. the thingy’s on the frame don’t quite fit in the dealies on the rest of the frame.. with mismatched dealies and thingy’s there’s no way to assemble the tramp frame. We called the company and they explained that they thought they had had problems with non-spec  thingies . They’re reshipping a box of new thingy’s the estimated arrival time s this Sat.. , . Overall this is not a major setback.. but it was disappointing.. Gabe took it all in stride.. but I  figured that the trampoline would be my blog topic for this evening.. guess I’m out of luck.

    Trampoline problems aside.. it was a pretty quiet day. It started out when we found these aliens sleeping on our lawn in their weird spacecraft. We made peace with them

,.. I quickly got pulled into several early morning phone calls.. then ran off to my  Reiki/Massage session with Marci.. it was great as usual

. I feel this is somehow keeping me more balanced. Don’t ask me how or why it works.. it just does. When I came out of Marci.. I saw Diane’s car parked outside Pat’s yoga studio.. which shares a driveway with Marci’s.. I quickly created a rock and weed valentine for Diane.

. I then walked back to my car to find this stuck under my wiper blade. Great minds think alike. No ?

After Marci I had time for a short lunch stop at the new On the Rise down near the park. I’m so proud of Ben and Rachel for taking this from dream to reality so quickly and completely. The place is absolutely beautiful. It was great seeing Rachel Jane and Judy on my visit.. I really recommend the Tempeh sandwiches with jalapeno sauce.. yum !

   I went from there to a really busy day of phone and face to face meetings. By 6, I was beat.  I got home in time for me to Gabe and drive him up to his end of season Lacrosse party in Jericho..

We got there to find that we’d forgotten the big plate of brownies that Diane had made for us to bring.. good thing.. as there were already 7 plates of uneaten brownies. Gabe begged me to go and buy something else.. . I went and picked up some doughnuts ant the Jericho General store… I’m proud to say that every last one of them was eaten. .. Now .. the Jericho General Store is worth it’s own blog entry  at some  point..  It was a pretty interesting mix between grocery/convenience store and gun store .. only in Vermont.   I did find this poor guy hiding out behind the cold cuts.. Looks like he has a price on his head !

   After the Lacrosse party, Gabe ad I came home. He Max and I decided to try out an idea that Homer had given me today. I’d told homer about how to swing  burning steel wool around your head to make a giant sparkler.. This weekend Homer and friends and improved on that idea by taping a wad of fine steel wool to the bottom of a Frisbee , lighting it and throwing it.. Its very dangerous as it shoots fire everywhere.. but it’s also very. Very cool… remember kids, don’t try this at home without a responsible adults.. (and that generally means Mom !). Here’s a still picture of the path.. and here’s a move.. very cool to see live.

   Hope you saw it sam.. love to all, gnite !

-me