Home again.. I was so happy to land in Burlington this morning.

The trip last night was surprisingly easy. The planes had all been on time and I’d slept miraculously well. Scott picked me up at the airport which I really appreciated.. it’s always nice to have someone waiting for you. .

Walking into the house is always strange now. It feels so good to see everyone.. It still feels like Sam is here.. I feel him strongly in our home. It’s like he’s just in another room. Diane has said its like he’s just behind some curtain, ready to come out.. but he can’t come out. I know he’s here and it feels good to be around his stuff.. It’s a funny thing.. I miss him always.. I like to miss him here the most.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day.. I feel asleep several times as the red-eye and jet lag caught up with me. Around 5:30 I went for a run because Chai was giving me that look that made me feel so guilty for not having run. We got out on the trail and the snow was almost all gone.. I had to find a place in deep shadow to find enough snow left to write Sam’s name. I got back just in time for men’s’ yoga night. This was our second.. 5 guys from our father’s group came. Diane is so great with the class.. She knows how far to push us without making us feel like inflexible klutzes. Yoga is the best thing to cure a back that’s been on airplanes all day.

Tonight was pretty uneventful.. Scott helped Gabe with his homework while Max worked on his school work. He’s heading back to Pratt this weekend to finish up his coursework from last semester. He’s working very hard… Tonight he showed us his film project. It had to be done in 8mm film.. like we used when I was a kid. Max filmed his project in 8mm then digitized it then worked some digital magic using AfterEffects and Motion.. the result is amazing. He is just so creative. Speaking of which.. he just came into Sam’s room where I’m typing looking like this:

I guess that’s some strange form of study break… Stranger still.. he just came in again with a piece of paper he used to take the black goop off his face.. It looks like the paper towel of Turin ..

What a goofy and wonderful kid…

Gabe was also very funny tonight to.. Diane was lying down to go to sleep and I was in saying good night when Gabe burst in with a wooden club and started thrashing around with it and screaming like he was in some sort of epic battle.. I wasn’t in the mood for violence… so I pointed a pretend remote control at him and told him I was changing the channel. Gabe started doing lightening quick improv.. his sword changed to a baseball bat (sports channel), then into a sausage (cooking channel), a clarinet (MTV), a hunting rifle (animal planet), a murder weapon (CSI).. etc.(not bad for a family without cable) He was very funny We were all laughing hard which felt good..

I took a look at the sky a little earlier .. Venus and the crescent moon are very close in the western sky. It looks like my heart/mind diagram from several months back.. Take a look to the west tomorrow after sunset.. it’s really beautiful.

It’s even cooler when the wind blows your camera a little…

OK.. time for sleep.. my internal clock is still all screwed up, but I think I should be tired now.. G’nite everyone.. g’nite Sam.

-jc

Today was the last day of my trip to the Technical Leaders Exchange mmeeting in Anaheim and boy am I glad to be traveling home. I’m missing my family so much.

 I’m on a 3 stop (LAX-SFO-ORD-BTV) red-eye which will get my home at 10ish tomorrow morning.. It’ll be a tough night.. but heading home is always easier.  It’s been a good trip.. Over the last 3 days I’ve had the chance to spend hours talking with some very good friends.  I love this part of my job.  

   Today our meetings started at 7:45. The first speaker was Gini Rimetti  a Sr. exec in our Global Services group. She’s a great speaker, funny, natural and convincing. I liked her talk.. Then came the guest speaker Maestro Ben Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic.  I satyed for the first few minutes of his talk   he seemed funny and engaging.. . but I had arranged to  meet my friend George to catch up. I walked out to meet without thinking much of it.. more on that in a bit… 

  It was very good talking with George.. George’s wife Anika died last May. He and I have spoken several times since Sam died about our healing process. I’ve written about our conversations a few months back Even though our circumstances are very different, it’s been very helpful sharing stories. Our work situations are somewhat similar. Last fall George was having trouble getting his head back into his day job so he worked with our senior management to get a sabbatical in research. He gave me an update about how that’s going.. It seems to be working out well for him. George’s sabbatical is another example where the company really takes care of people when they need it most. It’s comforting to me to know tht a sabbatical is an option if I should ever really need it… but for now, I’m staying put..   George and I spent a very good hour or so talking about his situation. My situation,. Our families and our work. It turns out that thatere might be an interesting pint of collaboration between George’s new role and my day job.. Finding opportunities to work with new folks is one of the coolest thing about these cross disciplinary conferences.

    After the hour was up. George and I wondered back into the arena and Maestro Zander was still at it..I could tell something amazing had happened to the crowd.. everyone  in that auditorium was  absolutely in love with this guy… The most telling thing was that  there was not a single laptop open  or blackberry going.. These people were hooked. Zander was just about to lead the nearly 5000 people in the room in the choras to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.. . He took the crowd through it 4 times, coaching the crowd on how to do it with more feeling each time.. by the fourth time this crowd of geeks sounded like angels.. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen a group that large do…   I was speechless.. I’ve tried to capture it on this movie.. but it doesn’t do it justice..

First Verse of Ode to Joy in Beethoven’s 9th,

German original

Freude, schöner Götterfunken
Töchter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

 Joy, thou glorious spark of heaven,
Daughter of Elysium,
We approach fire-drunk,
Heavenly One, your shrine.
Your magic reunites
What custom strictly parts;
All people become brothers,
Where your gentle wing alights.

   After the music died down, Zander told a short story and the crowd filed out.. everyone seemed to be floating.. some folks were aactually crying.. and.. I had missed nearly nearly all of it..    For the next 2 hours I had tons of  folks come up to me to ask me what I thought of this or that part of Zander’s presentation. No-one could believe I missed it..   I picked up bits and pieces of what he’d said through other people.. the basic message was about the wonderful possibilities presented by everyday life.. even in times of adversity.. I can cetaily relate to that..  The story I heard most often was that he played a Chopin piece twice.. first briskly.. then he played it again asking everyone to think of the loss of something they loved.. more than 30 people came up to tell me that they were thinking about Sam and our family I was so touched… and sad that I had missed it…  

    I eventually made my way down to lunch. Everyone I met was still talking about Zander’s talk.. I was getting more and more bummed about missing it..   I walked into the lunch room, and there he was. I went up to him and told him how sorry I was to have missed his talk. We started talking and I mentioned how many folks had thought about Sam during his Chopin piece.. He started asking me more about Sam and sat down and had lunch with me.. He was an amazing guy.. interested in everyone and everything.. distracted and focused at the same time..  We talked a bunch about Sam… I gave him a SamStone.. he dug into his bag and gave me one of his CD’s and a book that His wife and he had written called ‘the Art of Possibility’. .then he hugged me..  The morale of this story is… what ? I should pay attention to schedule better ? .. that all things work out in the end ? dunno.. I was very moved by the whole exchange.  Here’s Maestro Zander  on the left with another IBM guy, Jerry

   On the topic of hugging.. I lost track of the number of folks who came across crowded rooms over the past three days to give me a hug and ask about my family..  I feel emotionally recharged… at the same time it was surprisingly hard to re-tell the story so many times.. about Sam’s accident.. about how our family is doing… Sometimes when I talk about it , it seems like I’m hearing it from a distance.. like it’s someone else’s story.  Every time I say something like.. ‘when my son died’… I think.. ‘what did I just say !? ‘.. I will never get used to that….  You never do..

   Diane told me that today is the one year anniversary of the day Amanda Emberly died in a car accident  Amanda lived in Bolton and went to MMU . I remember so vividly how I felt the night she died. Our thoughts are with her family tonight…

    Looks like our plane is boarding.. I’ll upload some pictures and that video of the Ode to Joy tomorrow when I get bandwidth.. It’ll be good to be home…

I love you my family…  gnite

-jc

Ps. Happy birthday Jessie

Yikes… another late night. I’m just getting back to my hotel room just before midnight. I  had a full day of meetings then a dinner. I am beat and my head feels like it’s in a vice. . I tried drinking a glass of wine at dinner and found again that I simply cannot drink anymore since Sam died. one glass of beer or wine gives me such an incredible headache.. it’s strange how my body and mind have changed over the past 4 and a half months, Oh well… it’s no great loss I suppose.

     On the bright side, I’m really enjoying this meeting. It’s such a hoot  being around all of these friends from so many different parts of the world. The day started out wiht a huge gathering in the arena

The rest of the day was divided into 4 meeting sessions. The first one I tried was supposed to  be about using improve techniques to make meetings more fun.. ironically it was a very dry and process oriented discussion about being spontaneous. It just didn’t work for me.. so I skipped out and joined a session on ‘dealing with difficult people’ . That session tried to categorize the 16 ways that people can be difficult. .. It was sort of a Meyers-Briggs for jerks. Later in the afternoon I saw a talk by Jeff Jonas, the CTO of IBM’s data analytics organization.. he’s a brilliant and funny guy. He had wonderful hand drawn animations that were both funny and surreal.. Even better he gave us some completely insights on database query management.. I can honestly say I  can’t  ever remember learning more about a new topic in one hour talk.

   I managed to skip out of the last session today to get a run in with my very good friend Bruce. Bruce and Jim and I had been hanging out  today.  Jim   couldn’t run because of his recent hip replacement aside from that he’s getting around perfectly.   Jim did manage ot take a wlak with us mddiay

Bruce and I did a loop around and through Disney Land,  Here’s a picture of Bruce from my hotel room

   After the run, I  called home and talked ot Diae and the boys.. Sound like things are going OK there. Gabe told me that he, Hannh and Kevin put one of our kayak’s in a pool of melt water in the back field and paddled around.. Diane got pictures that I’ll post when I get them. I miss those guys so much !

After the call, I went to a reception and dinner for IBM Distinguished Engineers  and Fellows. I have so many good friends here. I still haven’t been able to sit down and talk  to all the folks I’d like to see.. just not enough time.

 My good friend Glenn from Australia had challenged me to bring a gadget.. of sorts to play with at the meeting. I had decided to bring th color changing LED headband that I made on Saturday night. I used the LED ribbon that I had aught in Shanghai last month.

All of my friends took turns wearing the ‘crown’ as they called it.. Here’s a quick clip of the band going on my friend Lori’s head. That’s Nick D next to her.. he’s the ‘chief scientist’ of all of IBM.. (and a hell of a nice guy)

It was a really nice and low key evening. Many folks came up to talk to me about my family, about Sam.. and about  how I was doing.  As always, I’m overwhelmed by peoples kindness and compassion. We’re well cared for Sam !

-jc

ps I just  got back to my room ad heard about  the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech. My heart goes to all the victims and their families.. I feel somehow like I can feel each of the families as I write this.. If I prayed.. I’d pray for them… I wish them peace and strength

It’s 3AM east coast time and I just got back to my room. I’m at the IBM Technical Leaders Exchange meeting in Anaheim. It’s in the 50s and clear out here tonight.. a far cry from the snow and slush that I think we’re getting back home. Here’s some Palm trees just to show that the whole world is not covered in snow.   (oops.. I don’t seem to have enough nandwidth to upload pictures tonight.. I get it fixed in the morning !  got it fixed.. here are the pictures)

The trip out here was uneventful. I miraculously got bumped to first class which was a nice and welcome treat. The flights were all on time which is nice considering the impending weather. I sat next to my friend Mark on the trip from BTV to Chicago.. Mark’s younger son plays in a band with our friend Nick Rose who played guitar at Sam’s memorial service. On the trip from Chicago to LA I just sat and worked quietly by myself.. it was really relaxing. The only noteworthy thing on the flight was that Gilbert Gottfried, the voice of the bird Iago in the movie Aladdin was sitting two seats behind me.. he even let me share his luggage bin. I talked to him for a bit.. he was very nice.. and kind of shy…

   I got of the plane and found a clump of IBMers and followed them to the shuttle bus to the hotel. I got here about 7:30 ish then headed on over to the conference site right next to the hotel. The conference officially starts tomorrow, but there are already a ton of folks here.

   I understand that there will be more than 5000 IBM technical folks attending this meeting. 5000 ! that’s significantly more people than live in Richmond. They are coming here from all different IBM divisions, locations and countries. Its such a strange thing to see folks I know from so many different places and jobs all together in one place. I must have run into 100 folks I new just in the 3 hours I went over for dinner. What’s more.. almost everyone I saw already knows about Sam.. I had so many people come up and hug me this evening .. it’s remarkable. It really does feel like a big family to me. Tomorrow I’ll start giving out some of the fresh SamStones that Jen brought over this morning. This group will take them all over for us. Well. I know this is a pretty non exciting post.. but I’m feeling a bit non-exciting myself. It’s hard traveling and being away from the family. It’s funny though.. I like the quiet time in the hotel room.. Sam feels very close to me here I love you Gabe, I love you Max.. I love you Diane.. I love you Sam.. Gnite !
-jc