Thursday night – hoop

Difficult day at work.. made a bit harder because I stayed up too late last night .. But I did it for fun. Jackie came over around 10:30 and we finished making her light up hoop. She and Caroline and I have been scheming about this for weeks. I love helping folks make cool things..
  Jackie was a quick learner with the soldering gun.. with two of us working.. we had the whole thing put together in about 2 ours.. .. The hoop is made out of high pressure polyethylene tubing. We bought a kit with the LED’s and a nice Lithium rechargeable battery.. It was fun putting it together.

It was a thing of beauty.. blue and green .. and then 7 color changing lights  that go from red to green to blue slowly..

We were so excited to give it a try.. it as almost 2 AM at this point..

Perfect rave toy, no ?
I just love making stuff with friends.. Thanks Jackie for giving me that opportunity to help !.

nite all.. nite sam
-me

Wednesday – aftershock

Sometimes I struggle for a topic to write about .. sometimes i have so much.. I don’t know where to star. Today was one of the latter. .
The big news of the day was the magnitude 5.5 earthquake that rolled throguh the region at 1:44 this afternoon. I was on a conference call when my whole office started shaking. It was SO cool..  I guess it was centered somewhere in Candada.. but it was plenty strong here.

Here’s a Seismometer reading soemone posted fro somewhere in Canada.

Immediately. Facebook and Twitter just exploded .. It was amazing how quickly the discussion on the quake spread.. One freind sent me this very funny and appropriate XKCD comic about that..

It was a great break in an otherwise quiet (but interesting) meeting..

I got home around 6 in time for us to meet  Peggy. Jen and Tim for dinner.. Peggy is moving back to Ohio now that Devon has graduated. Devan will be at the niversity o fMontana.. (with several others from his MMU class).

We’re really goign to miss Peggy.. she’s been a bright, kind presense in our lives these past four years.. she’s wonderful !

We went to the Cider House in Waterbury.. we had fried pickles.. .. which taste just like they sound..

It was a great night..

The real aftershock in our life.. a nice but powerful one.. was in the mail. Jen B , our friend and the Principal of MMU sent us a Diploma for Sam.. We weren’t expecting it.. it was a wonderful and heartbreaking surprise. . Jen sent us a beautiful note.. She and the rest of the staff at MMU have really been great..

Holding this in my hand was somehow harder for  me than the graduation itself.. I was sitting there crying and both dogs came over to make me feel better.

Our lvives are full and challenging..
I welcomdme all the emotions..Nite folks.. nite sam

-me

ps here’s a birdbath that Gabe helped make at chris’s the other day.  He’s gettign to be quite a stone artist !  I liek having this on our sam rock in the garden.

Tuesday night – hegira

We have a calendar that displays a new word every day. Some are obscure, some are commonplace. Like many things  in my life, I sometimes like to find  significance  in the word the calendar has chosen for my day. Yesterday’s ‘s word was Hegira.. a word I ghenvt heard since Joni Mitchell went from folk to Jazz in the 70’s. I ave to admit I only sort of knew the mean ing of the word. I knew it pertained to a journey..

Here’s what the calendar told me iabotu the word.

he·gi·ra
Variant(s): also he·ji·ra ..hi-ˈjī-rə, ˈhe-jə-rə..

Function: noun

Etymology: the Hegira, flight of Muhammad from Mecca in a.d. 622, from Medieval Latin, from Arabic hijra, literally, departure
Date: 1753

: a journey especially when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation

I was vaguely familiar with the first definition. The flight of the Prophet from Mecca. The second definition was new to me .. It felt meaningful to me.. I am looking for an escape of sorts.. not  from danger.. but from the undesirable state when my efforts are not lining up with my passion and life;s mission..

Reading that..it doesn’t make much sense.. but it makes sense inside me .. which is what counts..

Anyway.. I found the word a good portent..
So.. now what ?

nite folks.. nite sam

monday night – Solstice

Today is the loingest day of the year…. the first official day of Summer.    our ancestors celebrated this day with wild orgys ,  and ritual sacrifices, I settled for several conference calls and a nice salad for lunch.. Truth be told, the day did feel a little longer.. but that might have been the conference calls.    I didn’t even run naked through any woods (though I may go skinny dipping later 🙂

The solstice is one of the very few holidays that man has not created or shaped. It’s an astronomical reality.. whose precise moment may be measured to microseconds.. No popes or state legislatures have ever  messed with the dates, It’s a wodmderfu thing to realize that our ealrliest ancestors had an inling of the improtance of this day.. long before hallmark created a card for it..

For me it  really first day of summer .. after the emotional weight of the last few weeks it feels wonderful to sit here and not have anythign to do (except work)..

I wish you all a lazy summer.. that’s what i’m going for.

As my Wiccan friends say on this date  

Blessed be folks.. Blessed be Sam
-jc