Had lots of stuff to do today.. and it was making me a little ‘Mondayish’ on a Sunday.. no fair. I .. went for a longest run this morning to clear my head and downshift.. worked pretty well. I reframed my day to lower my expectations I ran up Dugway road and marveled at the springlike weather and the sound of spring birds.. Tomorrow is March.. wow.. 

Later in the morning, diane and I went in to buy our first mattress in nearly 20 years.
We had fun testing on all the beds Then on to home depot for some scrounging.

Gabe and I had wanted to build a forge for the last three months and this was the day to build it.   Gabe and I went scrounging through the garage for parts.. our only constraint was that the forge had to cost less than 10 bucks (I’d seen one that cost 10 bucks online.. had to do better than that)

We used an old steel wheel rim that phil had given me .. and an old brake disk from the Subaru… .. We took an old pumpkin can  through the hole between the two  and bent them back..

We stuck some hardware cloth over the can to hold the colas up..

We stuck an aluminum piece of duct work and a a dryer hose..

Gabe stuck the hair dryer into the other end of the hose.

We loaded up the charcoal and gabe torched it..

Pretty soon we had a white hot blast furnace.

We got a piece of stell yellow hot pretty quick.. Gabe pulled it out of the fire and started wailing on it with a hammer

Then.. back in the fire ! .. heat, beat and repeat..

We went through a half a bag of  of charcol shaping, bending and twisting stell. it was awesome.. and .. only about $9.20 .

Next project.. was to install our new energy monitor. It’s a TED5000 .. Gabe and I installed it in the junction box.. When I turned off power to the house, I managed to scramble the memory in our DSL modem. That took an hour to fix.. but soon.. we were back online and had a real time measure of every watt being used in our house.

The main event today was the Main Event, another snowboarding competition for Gabe at Stowe. We got to stowe around 7:45  The morning started with a little impromptu yoga stretching encouraged by Diane..

While Gabe and the team practiced, Diane, the dogs and I went for an hour and a half snowshoe through the thick snow. It was thigh deep in many places.. Slow going for the dogs, but beautiful

Gabe had a really good day.. three good runs, made the finals.. I’m so proud of the progress hes made this year. I like the other kids on the team too.. here they are wolfing down luch between the heats.

It was about 5:00 when we finally left Stowe.. we got home in time to clean up in time for a dinner invite to Tim and Jens.. I, jen and Jim L , Peggy and Martha were also there. It was a great night.. lots of laughter/ The general theme of the evening was .. outrageous things happening in the world.    We decided we should make a summer camp for grown-ups where people could come and just rant about anything they wanted.. world politics, kids, food, etc..

It was really fun just hanging out with other grownups.. we agreed to do it again next month.. but this time. someone was going to bring Twister !

While we laughed.. I constructed a burning man for the table..

.. and caught myself staring at my knife..
 

I love this picture of Sam that Tim and Jen have on their ‘fridge.. this si the basis for Jen’s sister Coco’s wonderful painting of Sam as ‘Wonderboy’ at Camp Abenaki in 2006.

Not much else new to report..  As always. . I love these very quiet days stuck in the middle of  my normal ‘way too busy’

Gotta sleep now.. more tomorrow..
nite all, nite Sam
-me

Last night was what I needed to get back in my flow . I’d been feeling increasingly hurried and ‘in my head’ through the busy week.. I had gone to bed around 9.. but then found myself wide awake at 1 AM.. I tried to fall back asleep.. but no luck. I came down and worked for a couple of hours.. then .. just before I was ready to go back up to bed i got really really sad.. I put on a piece of music that I sometimes listen to from Sam’s memorial service and fell apart for awhile.. the dogs knew something was up and both came over and stayed with me until I stopped crying … At that point I  went up stairs and fell instantly asleep

I woke refreshed and went on to work.. The day offered a ton of cool technical and people surprises. .   It seemed that many things I needed both for work and for my peace of mind just decided to appear.   I discovered that my friend Jen’s dad who passed away last June was my friend Thor .. I’d known them both.. but never associated them despite their same last name.   I don’t knwo why it was so comforting to make that conenction.. but it was..

I  also had a good conversation with my friend Ronald in Switzerland about how good things  often come when you let them.. but how tough but essential it is to sometimes know when to turn them off. Both of us, we discovered, have the experience of inviting too many cool things into our lives at once to the point that things that should be fun become stressful.

I’m going to work on saying ‘no’  a bit more..   .. no, make that ‘no thanks’ (because I am grateful)
 
Later in the day my friend Steve chased me out into the parking lot to give me these two pictures that he’d found as he’d cleaned his office.. They’re from Marcho of 1992 .. it’s a picture of Diane, Max and me (yes, that’s me !).. Diane is 6 months pregnant with Sam.  It was probably the last time I was on ice skates.

Here we are with our neighbor Chris P.. It was a wonderful thing to have these pictures..

I feel happy right now.. and I’m glad for that..

Oh.. Diane pointed out that I hadn’t really said much about my dinner last Sunday with Vice President  Gore.   I remembered that today withne ny firend Jane sent us some pictures from that night. We weren’t allowed to take pictures at dinner.. but here we are afterwords. Jim, Matt, Jane, Lloyd and me standing outside of the ‘Mansion’ at the MGM Grand.   They’re all great folks.. we had a ton of things to discuss just among ourselves.   Missing from the picture are Rod A and Al Z, two Sr. IBM mamangers who’d also attended.

VP Gore was really an amazing guy.. very dedicated.. and very, very smart. I think I already said this .. but I was so impressed how he’s taken on this mission of spreading the message about climate despite the personal costs.   One thing he passed on to us was the message from his father which was.. ‘you should always bite off more than you can chew’   .. I certainly am living by that..

Here is the VP at his talk the next morning..

OK.. that’s it for this busy day.. we’re up at 6 tomorrow for a snowboarding event.. more then
nite folks, nite Sam
-me

ps. I got soem surprise help today translating the captions of ‘Engineering Paradise‘
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0DxmthvkKU) into Portuguese by Gustavo C. a guy I just met in brazil   . My friend Rodolfo in Gudalajara has offered to translate the captions into spanish. Is there anyone out there who can offer to translate the lyrics into any other languages ? I’d love the help !