All posts by johncohn

Monday night – seattle

friends..
    It’s really late and I need to get some sleep before my talk tomorrow… so I’m going to be ultra brief… I’m in Seattle to give a talk at the ISCAS conference.. My talk is going to be on the importance of education outreach.. I hope that I know what I’m going to say.. I’m so passionate about this stuff… if I can tap into that.. it will be fine… I’ll let you all know..
    The trip out here was peaceful.. I ended up getting here in time to get some good day job work down.. then .. believe it or not, I met up with Homer, Mary Raye and their friend Andreas.. Homer and Mary are out here visiting Raye.. Raye currently lives on a boat in Seattle harbor.. It was so cool seeing all of them out here..   Even though it wasn’t an accidental meeting.. it tells me again just how small the world is.
   OK.. I need to get some sleep.. I’ve got plenty of pictures from today.. I’ll post them in the morning after my talk…
    As I’m sitting here nervous about getting up in front of all those folks.. My mind just starts racing when that happens. I bent over to pick something up. My Sam button slipped out.. Sam’s smiling face brought me right back into my body.
   Thanks for that my son.. wish me luck tommorow.. Gnite all.. Gnite Sam !
-me

ps. That’s not my picture 🙂

Saturday eveining – nice slow day

Nice slow day. I needed that. I stayed up most of the night working on a talk for next week.. so I only got a few hours sleep. We just hung out around the house this morning enjoying the sun.   My folks and I took the dogs for a walk along the rivershore..  the ferns are now up to my waist.. .. amazing because the ground was bare just a few weeks back.

Around 1 I drove my folks to South Burlington to watch Gabe’s Lacrosse games.. They played well again. and it was wonderful just hanging out in the beautiful weather..

Gabe came over during a break between the games.. he was quite fragrant as we took this three generation shot with my dad.

The team was looking a little green.. since Iforgot to turn off the color filter in Gabe’s camera.

The games were in the field behind the South Burlington ice rink… so I went and stuck my feet in the scraped snow to cool off.

We got back to the house around 5 and have stuck here since.. My folks are here and are behaving nicely.. Aren’t they cute ?

We were sitting inside talking when we heard Satori start barking like crazy. I went out to find that she’d climbed into the old climber thing and gotten her leash completely tanlged in it. She couldn’t get out… It was cute and sad.. I felt like a jerk running in to get my camera before letting her go.. Am I a bad dad ?

Max and his friends had decided to rehabilitate the old big raft. It had been serving as a snowboard rap for the winter. The guys took it down and strapped the 4 barrels back on and hoisted the monster down to the river.. It must weigh 350 pounds. It took them 3 and a half hours for the six of them (Max, Alex, Mason. Abbott, Nate and Justin) to make it down to the green from here.. They got beached several times.. and the raft started to break apart.. but they made it !
My mom and I happened to drive by just as they were pulling the raft out of the water.

I helped them hoist the waterlogged beast up on to the van.. It took all 6 of us to lift the thing up.

We spent the rest of the evening just hanging out.. no on really felt like doing anything. a perfect day.

OK.. time to sleep… Gnite all.. Gnite Sam
-me

Friday night – Hannah and Matt’s birthday (and Brit’s too )

I got home around 6:30 tonight after a super busy day. My folks were already at our house.. they’d driven up from Boston this afternoon. the house was also full of kids. Tonight was the surprise party that Morgan had put together for Matt and Hannah T.  The house was all decorated, the cars were hidden.

.. then around 7:30. Deb’ drove up to the house with the kids. We all ran up the fornt staircase and hid..

As they came in the front door we doused them with silly string and confetti. You could tell that they were completely surprised !

The party was really nice.. I think there were about 30-40 kids.. I found out that today was also Brit’s 18th birthday.  (I was using gabe’s camera without a flash.. sorry for the blur !)

It was a beautiful sunset outside as the kids went out to the tramp.. and messed around the campfire

We even had a pinata !

We do love fire here…

Then folks came in for icecream and cake. The kids had made a double cake for the twins.. it had two photographs  of the guys made into the icing.. very cool

Things started to quiet down around 11.. we started to clean.. but Hannah decided to lie down in the mess

Dad and Mom enjoyed the chaos too. They fit right in !…

It is really nice having all the family together

Dad and I fell asleep upstairs.. Mom caught this picture.

While the kids played sketchy songs in Sam’s room..

A really nice night ! Sam.. I sure felt you here in spirit.. you belonged OK.. Gotta go work some now..  Love you all.. Love you Sam..
-me

Friday night – home !

Ahhhh.. home again !.   Diane and I just came back form our 3 day trip to CTRE. It was a really nice trip. It was really good having some quiet time together with just the two of us.. It was also nice being out there with all my IBM friends. I really do love those folks.
   Note much to report for the day.. we spent it all on a plane getting back . It was so wonderful waling back into the house and seeing Max and  Gabe.  the dogs and . a beautifully clean house… To top it off, Max had made us a welcome home snack of pizza, spinach pie and cake. around a candle. Now that’s a homecoming !     I love my family.. I love my home…    I love you sam…
-me