Today was different than I expected. Yesterday I felt like I was over programmed and overwhelmed. Today I felt like I was almost back at full strength. It’s so strange not being able to predict how much energy or focus I’m going to have on a given day. It’s always an interesting surprise. Today I had several opportunities to express my opinion in front of large groups of people.. for some reason I was in the mood to do it.. and it felt good to talk passionately about technical stuff. I can feel myself getting a little more excited about my work each day. What was even better was that I managed to have several non-hurried deep personal conversations about family, about Sam and about how I was doing with friends from work. Each time I reminded myself to slow down and make the time to have the conversation I wanted.. not the conversation that my meeting schedule thought I could afford. . My work day was good partially because I was looking forward to what I was doing after work. I’d arraigned to meet my friend Homer at UVM to see a cool set of machines for scanning and ‘printing’ 3D objects. . Homer brought two of his buddies, Eben and Carter (who is a chimney sweep.. so very good luck !) .

We all met at UVM around 6:30. We tracked down my good friend Victor and he took us down to see the equipment. UVM has had the 3D printer for about 2 years.. it’s a very cool piece of equipment that can print and 3D solid object. The machine can convert anything you can draw on your computer in 3d inot a real live object in a few short hours.

The cool new addition is a 3D scanner that can take any small object and scan it into a 3D model on the computer. Victor just got the machine running and is still experimenting with it. . He wanted to give us a demo so I asked him to scan in a SamStone. First, I put the SamStone in the scanner..

then the thing scans it with several Laser beams..

Then it turns the object a little and scans the object again. In the end you have a 3D model that you can edit on your computer

 and eventually send to the 3D priner. In some ways it’s a very simple 3D copier.. After the demo… Homer and I headed over to India House for a very nice

dinner. I absolutely love talking to Homer.. he’s an artist, inventor and sign maker who has one of the most creative minds I’ve every encountered. He is both a wonderful storyteller and a wonderful listener.. a rare combination. We talked about our kids, our wives.. and about blowing stuff up.. which I what most guys talk about when they get together. Towards the end of the meal, Victor came and met us which was also very nice. It was a great guys night out….. I guess the 2nd in a week after yoga.. or I guess that was really a ‘guys night in’ since it happened at our house… I really appreciated that both Victor and Homer were so generous with their time. It was so fun talking to guys who really make things for a living.. hardware is so much more real than software !

    Speaking of generous.. I wanted to alert folks to an extreme act of generosity on the part of our friend Michael Adams. Michael is a freshman in college and has already started a company,, Eddie’s Energy Bars (www.eddiesenergy.com “The Best Handmade Energy Bar EVER!” , The company makes energy bars out of all natural ingredients. Michael is participating in an event called ‘beCause’ which brings together vendors of all sorts of items who will be donating 50% of their profits to worthy causes. Michael is donating 50 % of his profits for the day to Sam’s Foundation .. which is unbelievably generous. I encourage everyone to go check out the event… It’s this Saturday, April 14th from 9-4pm at the Grace United Methodist Church on Maple Street in Essex Junction….to the right of ADL Middle School. Admission is free, but donation of a canned good is appreciated.. Please show up and give Michael and the other vendors your support for this good set of causes. This community is full of really wonderful people Sam….. really wonderful.

-jc

Another busy day. I seemed to be running from the moment I woke up. First a real run with Diane and Chai.. then a mad dash for work when I realized that my 9:30 meeting actually started at 9: That first meeting was really a good one. A colleague of mine, J,  at work had set up the meeting to check in on me. He’d also suffered the loss of family members about 9 years ago and he wanted to talk to share some stories about our paths through healing. I did quite a bit of talking about Sam and my friend told me about his family’s experience.   It was particularly useful  to hear about some  of his struggles to get back to being effective at work. We had some similar stories relating to how difficult it is for your co-workers to gauge how ‘back at work’ you really are. He also observed that I appeared to be always ‘doing’ things around Sam’s memory.. He wondered if I was getting enough time to  think quietly. That really struck me as Diane had said a similar thing to me early this morning.. not that I was trying to ‘do’ to much.. but more that I need to take more time for myself to just ‘be’ .. I’m going to take both of these observations to heart and try to carve out some more quiet time for myself each week. .  It was really good talking to .J. it meant so much to me that he took the time to meet with me.

   From that point on the day was a swirl. I was double booked 2 to 3X at some times in the morning  and kept dragging myself from meeting to meeting late. I realized about lunch time that I was really not absorbing most of what I heard. The afternoon was considerably better. I was on a long conference call and had time to sit down and work on a work  project as I listened. Even there. I don’t seem to have the ability to multi-task as I once did. I really struggled to make progress  It really helps me understand what it must be like for Gabe and Max to try and get through a school day at this point.

   Before  I knew it It was 5:30 and I’d gotten a a fair amount of work done. not as much as I needed to get done.. but I had something to show for a day’s work.. I had to zoom to make it home by 6 because Diane had invited my Father’s group to the barn for a first-of-a-kind men’s’ yoga night. (Our slogan.. our schedules are flexible even if our bodies are not !) . It was a really nice evening. About 11 of us showed up.. Diane tailored the class perfectly to the group. It was a gentle class.. so gentle that I nearly dozed off twice.. It was so relaxing. It was so peaceful that no one wanted to get up after the class. Whene we were done, Diane invited everyone in for a really beautiful Greek dinner (Spanikopita, dolmari, hummus, olives, foccacia, feta, pita, salad.. yummy)  to thank them for all the help they and their families had given us over the last four and a half months. I know I’ve said it many times before.. Diane is wonderful. Anyway, we spent a good hour and a feasting and drinking beer. Way to much fun for a week night.      

   Everyone drifted off around 8:30 in time for the second night of family movie watching in a row. We spent this evening reviewing some of the finer dramatic moments of ‘Tenacious D – the pick of destiny’.. it is so stupid. Irreverent and downright idiotic  that it’s worth watching multiple times. I’ve decided in my next life I want to be Jack Black.

    I’m now too tired to keep my eyes open  now. I’m wondering how I’ll ever be prepared for my 7:30 AM conference call tomorrow morning.. or the 9:00 project presentation I’m supposed to  make tomorrow…   I am such a slacker.. I can’t figure out why that isn’t worrying me more…

   Anyway.. tiem for bed.. I love you family   I love you Sam.

-me…

It’s 11:45 at night and I’m just sitting down to write. I’m that the pace of my life is accelerating to the point that I’m ‘full’ again just like I was before Sam’s accident. I’ve been trying to be very good about not letting work take over my life again.. In fact, I have not worked at home after hours since Sam died. I’ve tried to reserve every home hour either to my family, or to myself to do personal/healing stuff like blogging. These last two weeks my day job work load have crept up to the point that it’s getting hard to keep that promise to myself. I have a couple of important pieces of work to get down this week.. yet my days are full of meetings.. . I used to rely on late nights to get things like that done . Now I’m not sure how I’m going to make this work. Several times tonight I picked up my laptop with the thought of doing some work.. and each time something family oriented came up. .First we had another plumbing crisis (our septic system appears to be shot.. sewage in the basement again.. ewwwwwww).. Looks like well have to replace the spetic system.. which is a bummer because that will probably exhaust our cash reserves.. The joys of an old house.
  The next time, I got a better offer.. which was to watch Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny for the second time with Gabe.. (it’s totally idiotic , horribly obscene, vile, pointless and funny as hell.. it’s Jack Black at his best/worst.. perfect for 11 and 48 year olds).. The third request was to create some lettering for a new version of a Sam Cohn T-shirt . Diane asked me to scan some of Sam’s writing to write Sam’s name and some other stuff.. I ended up finding enough text to build up the complete alphabet.. Since I’d done that I went ahead and created a TrueType font of it. Now I can write anything I want in Sam’s handwriting.. what a curious thought

It was such an interesting emotional exercise finding each letter of the alphabet in the few pages of text I was using of Sam’s writing. I really stared at each letter. I felt like I was learning more about him by doing this. Now I find it almost midnight and I’m out of day.. out of energy.. and my work for the day is not done.. Tomorrow I’ll start a little more behind.. but I ‘m sure I’ll get some family priority interrupts.. at least I hope I do.. Gnite Sam.-jc

We woke to a bright day this morning long befre the kids would wake. Diane and I grabbed tea then took Chai for a walk up to the sand pit.. It was beautiful and quiet  in the woods.. the snow was sparkling and sifting down through the trees.. a perfect winter day.. but  it’s April !  As soon as we got back to the house, Diane went into Richmond to get some bagels..   When she got back, we woke the boys. They cam down and we did our small family Easter celebration. We came together to invite Sam in.. then the kids dug int their candy baskets.. and searched the house for candy filled eggs. It was fun..  

We had quite a haul.

I dedicated my first Reeses peanut butter egg to Sam..   He always gave me one of his.

We then sat down to a nice breakfast of smoked salmon and sweet roles.

As soon as breakfast was over, we switched into high gear and  got down to the day’s mission of planning for the Bolton Valley pond skimming.

   Pond skimming if you don’t know, is traditionally held on the last day of the ski / boarding season. Everyone hikes up the hill and comes down on boards, skis, or whatever else.. then tries to make it across the top of  a small pond without getting wet.. Being Easter, today was a particularly good day to try our hand at walking  on water.. and we were not going to be left out.   Last year, Sam and I had dragged our 2 person kayak up there and tried to go down in that.. we did go down.. just not in the direction we intended.. after a few flips we both ended up underwater.. it was a hoot. This year, Gabe had the idea of going down the hill on an old raft that Sam had made out of two inter-tubes, a piece of plywood, a few 2×4’s and a bunch of duct tape..  He’d used the raft to drift down the Winooski last summer.    Max had a secret project for his outfit.. we didn’t see it until right before the event. Over the last couple of days Gabe and I took the old raft and reinforced it with screws, then he Scott and I rigged up a platform that rode under the intertube that had 6 old skis screwed to it.. Last night we lashed the whole thing together with nylon webbing (our only purchase for the project) and built a mast out of PVS. Gabe tied a pirate flag to the top.

his morning we all wrapped ourselves in garbage bags then dressed up as pirates. We made a sign for our ship (“The Spirit of Captain Sam”) and we were ready to go. Around 12 Chris Perren (Plow not Skoobie) came by with his trailer.. we loaded the raft on his trailer and headed up to the mountain. .

   Scott, Nate and I dragged the raft  up the mountain to the starting point for the pond skimming. We’d never tested this thing on snow.. but I can tell you it wasn’t meant to be go up a mountain. 

As soon as we got to the starting spot, Diane brought the bags and we all got into our best Pirate  gear and raised the mast and prepared the ship for skimming. Argggghhh  Matey.

Max showed up with his secret outfit.. he  came as a Ninja.. he’d made a wonderful banner with a picture of Sam as a Ninja.. with the message “Sam Cohn: Beloved friend and Ninja”.. he looked GREAT.

He launched down the hil and made it all the way across.. then fell in the water at the ending ramp.. a nice wet finish. The rest  of us   had to wait for all of the rest of the skimmers to go.. Finally it was our term. First Gabe and Paulo went down as lead pirates.. Gabe did a graceful skim ending with a magnificent face plant in the drink.. He looked great ! As soon as they were clear, Scott lit the smoke bomb on the ‘Spirit of Captain Sam”  Scott, Casey, Matt, and I  jumped aboard, Chris Perron fired a spud gun to send us off and we set sail.. sort of.. It occurred to us as we started to pick up speed that steering would have been a good idea.. maybe next year.. It was terrifying and hilarious as we hurtled down the hill. The crowd started to scatter.. All I remember is seeing about 30 people’s shin bones getting closer and closer to a half ton of us moving down the hill at dangerous speeds.. I was kicking like crazy trying to get us back into the center.. I don’t know if I helped.. but we didn’t hit anyone.. we did however hit the corner of the ramp. I had one of those slow motion  moments imaging us flipping through the  air.. no such luck.. we headed straight into the water. And all of us were thrown  into Davey Jone’s locker.. and a cold locker it was.. no hot was this, Matey.. I think the water was just about 32 degrees..   The nice guy from Colchester Ice Rescue plucked us out of the water… but not before I noticed that the Spirit of Captain Sam was floating proudly in the pond. Our friend Sam Rodgers caught all the pirates in film.. you have to check it out !  (See Sam Rodger’s pond smimming movie)

  We were totally frozen and happy..

Note how happy Diane looks because she’s warm and dry 🙂

With the help of Chris and Scott’s dad, we managed to get the  raft down the hill… I emptied the water out of my boots and headed into the lodge to change and see if I still had  all my fingers and toes. . What a fantastic time  Sam was proud of us I could tell..   I spet about 15 minutes under the hand dryer in the bathroom trying to get feeling back into my fingers.. Once it started to return it was time for the awards.   All of the kids we’re hanging out trying to get warm

We all crowded into the tavern.. We won best float.. (hey we were the only float !)  and won t-shirts for the entire crew.. Max won best tribute for his Ninja Sam .. I was so proud of him. They handed out the rest of the awards.. including ‘Best dressed’ for Ian.. whoo-hooo.. When all of the awards were handed out it marked the official end of the 2006-2007 Bolton Valley season.. the bar emptied and so did the parking lot.. it was a perfect ending for a very fun.. and very difficult and sad season for all of us..

The only downer of the whole day was that in our haste to get down the hill we managed to loose track of two of our three spud guns and a white plastic bag of tools (If anyone has seen them .. please let me know !).. I got home to the Schoolhouse before I realized it.. I quickly got in the car and drove back up to see if I could find them.. I looked through the lodge. No luck.. so I headed up the hill on foot to see if they’d been stuck in the woods somewhere.. I got up there and didn’t see them.. Then I realized that I was in some sort of unofficial way.. the last guy on the hill for the season..   The mountain was empty and the lifts were shut.. it was just me and the snow and the breeze.. So.. I sat down and had a long talk with Sam.. I told him how strongly I could feel him there.. and how much I’d come to love the mountain and the people there this year..   I felt liked he missed us.. but was happy..  .. It felt very pretty peaceful up there.. I toasted him with my last red bull then climbed one of the lift polls and left the can there as a tribute.. (or is that vandalism ? .. not sure)..

It has been a hell of a season my son.. I won’t ever forget it..

Happy Easter everyone.. hug your families today.. it’s time for spring..

-jc