Great day.. great weekend.. I was getting so stressed by the end of last week with all I had to do I was having trouble sleeping. This quiet weekend was just what I needed.

Somehow I managed to sleep until about 8:30.. We got up and took the dogs for a fast long walk up the Catamount ski trail about 2 miles down Duxbury rd from our house. We were trying to find a place that was a bit more open since everything here is so soaked from all the rain. The trail was beautiful and clear.. the flax was out with its beautiful blue flowers. The air was warm and dry ….. for a change.

All of the streams were filled with rushing water.. the sound was very cool .

We took a detour through the woods on an abandoned logging road. The rains had spawned a huge vaiety of mushrooms.. Wish I knew which ones we could eat !

It was a great walk.. we went all the way to the top.. as we turned around. Satori ran right into me because she wasn’t looking. She really hurt herself… she was wimpering.. we thought she might have broken soemthing.. she managed to get up and walk.. but whe was really favoiring her left front leg.. We took our time getting down.. She’s fine now..

On the way down we met another Labradoodle.. This one’s name was Khrama.. and her owner drives a prius and a subaru.. (but the subaru was in the shop getting new kayak rack).. I told her she matched the perfect profile for a McCain voter.. She looked at me. horrified… She couldn’t figure out that I was kidding..

I ran home while Diane and the dogs drove.. A bit later we got back in the car and drove to Charlotte to the MIT Club picnic. It was at the summer home of John and Alice Outwater. John was one of the original founders of the the MIT Club of Vt (AKA VoMIT – Vt’s own MIT club) .. John’s now 83 years old and is in a nursing home because his memory is failing.. He’s an amazing guy.. He graduated from MIT with a PhD in 1951 after graduating from Cambridge University in the UK.. He was an inventor, professor and entrepreneur for more than 60 years.
Even as he could no longer remember our names, he was able to tell us amazing facts about all sorts of scientific curiosities.. i remember him tellign me how tree’s were able to lift their sap much higher than could be explained by simple capillary action. I also remember him giving me a very eye opening and risque treatise on the sexual prowess of drysopholae (fruit flies).

Alice hosted us today.. Though John wasn’t present in person today. .. he was very much in spirit.

There were abotu 40 people at the picinic.. the largest turnout we’d
ever had. TheThere are about 380 MIT grads in the state of VT.. so
today’s take wasn’t bad. it’sa a very interesting and diverse group of
folks.. Lots of different interests, professions and skills. We even had two of the three kids who have bene accepted as freshmen there in the fall. I’ve known one of them , Colin S. , since he was little I worked with him in science camps when he was in elementary school. He’s a tru math prodigy
. He got 1st place in the US math olympiad this year.. and helped his
team win 3rd place (after china and russia) in the international math
olypiad in Spain last week..

My freind KC was there (her licence plate is KCN..
her initials.. and the chimical symbol for Potassium Cyanide.. one of
the worlds most dedly poisons)

We stayed at the picninc for about an hour and a half.. went shoping.. then came home.. My folks called to talk about the vacation we’re taking with them next week. As I was speaking with them I noticed that we had our first ripe tomatoes on the vine !!!!

Diane used them to make a great dinner for the 8 folks here. , cuke and tomoatoe salad, fresh Pesto pasta and garlic bread.. all the veggies and the basil for the pest were right out of the garden.

As we were cleaning up, nicholas serenaded us.. This is a song he wrote since he’s been staying with us.. I relaly like it (I apologize.. there are 2 short gaps in the recording.. but you can get the idea)

Since I’m adding movies, I wanted to share this one that Gabe and I made ysterday.> We put up blue tarps behind the trampoline then ised the ‘chorma key’ feature in Adobe Premiere to drop out the blue.. Digitial video rocks

OK.. I have a few hours of work to do now.. so I’ll quit here.. This is goign to be a wicked busy week and I need to prep for it. Love to you all.. Love you Sam
-me

I am victorious… Our lawn mower was conspiring to take the day off. but we would have none of it. A couple of weeks back the cable that controls the power drive to our mower snapped. I did an emergency cablectmy and fixed it with two plastic tiewraps.. A couple of days ago the kill switch cable mount broke.. ad I countered with a clamp to allow us to pull the cable. This morning the whole assembly that holds the kill switch broke off.. I had to create a multi-part steel contraption to tension the cable in order to get spark to start the mower.

That worked beautifully.. Nicholas offered to use it to cut the grass which was about 4″ high at this point.. Unfortunately on the first pull,. the starter rope snapped.

mama mia !… Nicholas decided to go with it anyway and managed to cut more than half f the lawn without letting the mower stall. All this while Dian. Chai. Satori and I ran up Honey Hollow.

Shortly after we got back, my friend Chris dropped by on his way to cut wood up in Honey Hollow.

He dropped off some new SamStones he’d sandblasted for us !.. He and his family just came back from a cross country oddessy where they dropped SamStones at places like Mt. Rushmore and the Cascade mountains.

I spent some time of the mid afternoon working with Gabe and Trevor on shooting trampoline movies.We put blue tarps around the tramp and filmed s we could chrom key tings out.. Here’s what we came up with .

Late in the afternoon. Tom. Aton and Selean came by

Sleena brought us the most amazing surprise.. This week she’d gone woth her mom down to Boston to see Ama.. the Indian guru AMA… Ama is famous for hugging people… We were only 30 minutes from her ashram in kerala last fall.. Meanwhle we keep hearing what an amazing presense she has.
Anyway… Sleena asked Ama to bless a SamStone for us..here it is !

The kids all decided to go tube the hintington.. The water was way up which made the tubign much easier..

later in the afternoon, Gabe and trevor went up to Ian and Matt’s .while we wne tto Owleshead to a party thrown by Pat and Larry.. It was eally nice.. great food and great company !

We even had some fireworks !

Beleive it or not.. it started raining.. who would have thought hrain in vermont during the summer :-)/ I actually got a little cold.. so Krista wrapped my head in her scarf.. it really helped.. and it made me feel… well.. Sheek (ugh) …

Great party.. great setting…

OK sleep beckons.. More tomorrow. Nite all. Nite Sam
-me

12:30 and I’m just stitting down to write. It’s been a long, hectic and overly busy day… My brother in law, Joe and his son Vincent are up on part of their college looking trip. Today they were at Brown.. tomorrow they head to Dartmouth.. We’re glad to have them here for the night.

Dane and I tried to go for a run first thing this morning.. got about a quarter of a mile into the trail when we came across deep water in the trail… like 6-9 inches deep. The rain we’ve been getting for the past weeks finally pushed the Winooski well over its banks. It was too much water to run through.. so we abandoned te plan and went home.. not before getting our shoes all soaked.. luckily it was going to be a sunny day… which is good shoe drying weather.

First stop on my work day was a breakfast meeting with my freind Camil at the Inn at Essex. It’s touch to find stuff that I can eat while I’m doing this Vegan thing. I was able to order a lox and crean cheese bagle.. just hold the lox and cream cheese. Honestly.. it tasted the same once you added capers, tomatoes, onions, lemons and lettuce.

It was great seeing camil and catching up.. we had a great personal and work discussion.

The rest of my work day was a blur.. 100% booked solid as most days are for me now.. Not much time to think.. I was beat by the timw to go home..

Around 7 we all piked in the car and drove back to Burlinlington. it as a beautiful night.. and none of us felt like cooking.. so we decided to go out… Here we are on top of the Burlington parking garage.

Wewalked on down to chrch street. Here we see Trevors head being attacked by a giant monstor ?!?!?

Church street was pleasantly crowded as folks came ou to enjoy a break from the rain.

Max joined us for a little while .. He was just at the end of a 3 day juice fast.. He said that he feels great.

It was great all being together down town.

You can see some resemblance between max and his cousin Vincent.

We made dinner reservations or 9:15 at ‘A Single Pebble’.. one of our favorite resturants.

Dinner was really wonderful. they have a wide variety of interesting and tasy vegitarian stuff.

They have all these cool flouroshes in their service.. like … horse shaped carrot slices… ?!?

As we left A Single Pebble.. we ran into our Bolton Mountain friend Zach H. It was so wierd seeing him down off the mountian and in summer. It was as wierd as running into Santa Clause in the summer..

I spent the walk back to the car ‘harvesting’ bumper stickers..with my camera..
Here’s one.

And one on Church Street.

Here are soem other nice ones.

This one is one of my personal favorites:

Hekkow Mr. Strongbad !

Sign on an autmatic gas pump.

I loved this one ,, too

We got home after 11… to find Max here throwign a small party for our frind Mason. It’s his 2oth birthday today !.. Happy birthday Mason ! T

OK.. I’ve fallen asleep a few times writing.. I need to sign off here.. More tomorrow .. Gnite folks.. Gnite Sam..We love you !

-me

ps. sometime today my blog had it’s 150,000 thousand read…

I hit red-line today… too much to do.. too much to think about. Nearly all of it stuff I’ve taken on by choice.. not because I had to. I had to stop around 4 because my rain was full.. literally. I could no longer think. My life feels busy in the way it did before Sam died.. and I don’t like that.. yet.. I really like most of the stuff I’m involved in.. A curse of riches… Just too much stuff.. I’m trying to find enough time to step back and pare off some of the less critical things before I go crazy .. It will mean some hard choices. I even wonder about this blog sometimes.. It takes up to an hour every night… .. Time which I could be sleeping, reading, hanging with my family. For now.. it still seems like a good investment. Writing helps me calm down after a busy day

Enough whining.. I have some pictures left over from yesterday to share.. and some from today.. Here’s a few pictures from my stay at Ruchir and Rashi’s night before last. Here’s one of Isha with a loose front tooth

Isha and Anika took my camera and took this flattering shot of me brushing my teeth…

Nika and Rashi’s dad come to say good bye as isha and Ruchir and I drive to work. We dropped Isha at her summer writing camp.

One shot from my day at Yorktown.. My friend Peter turende 50 yesterday.. He looks actually younger now than he did when we were in gra school together nearly 20 years ago. he and my freind Chandu helped me get through a very tough but interesting linear systems class in grad school. Happy birthday Peter !

Flash to today… I woke early and took Diane’s early morning yoga class. then we took a run. It was a good balancing way to start the day.

In the middle of a packed moring, my firend Anirudh showed up..He’s another one of my grad school buddies. I haven’t seen him in at least 2 years.. he’s now a big shot manager at one of our suppliers. It was really nice catching up with him.. we had a good talk about Sam, life, fortune.. and circuit simulation. It was good to see how much un he’s having in his work..

Tomwards the end of the day there was a receiption for folks who’d been honored at IBM in the past year. It was a really nice reception with creat finger food… and even wine and beer !.. Thomas Watson Sr. (founder of IBM) would never have imagined this ! ere’s a picture of a cluster of the honorees. ..

I ran into so many good, good friends at that receiption that I hadn’t seen in months !. it reminded me that I need to get out of my ofice more an walk around the halls.. I saw my freind Kim.. and she howed me her Moreno glass ring that I traded her (vindirectly) for soem work she did to help me..

I also saw my friend John who was happy just to be over in Williston.

After work we had another of our Haunted Forest ‘Project-X’ meetings. We’ve been making progress.. but having soem technical difficulties as well. The pneumatic ift we bought onebay has a mechanical problem. We either need to pay to have it repaired.. or get itreplaced. This is a critical piece of our scary creature.. so we need to reslve this quickly !..

Our goal tonight was to create a mechanical mock up of the head/fave animatronics. We had a good crowd their tonight including Ed.. another VoMIT (Vermons’ Own M.I.T. club) member. He’ looks appropriately crazed in this picture.

We also had KC, Seth and Brendan..

And Lucy and Ceasar… Buddy showed up too..

We were trying to figure out soem proportions for the monstors jaw and face. Seth ran upstaris and did some trials with the jaw size..

We at below and watched.. I’m sure this would have looked pretty wierd to anyone not involved in the project.. It looked pretty wierd to me !

Just as we were begining to work, a huge thunderstorm came rolling in.. the sky turned pitch black.. Here’s Admiral Gabe braving the storm..

By the end of the night, Lucy, Cesar and Seth had built a really good mock up of the monsters head.. complete with eyes and moving jaw.

Oh no.. it ate Seth !

OK.. sleep beckons. More tomorrow.. Nite all. nite Sam !
-me