Today is Diane’s birthday.  Happy birthday Diane !  Wonderful, sweet , beautiful love of my life ! 

Gabe had the great idea to get tattoos in honor of Diane’s birthday.   We opted for the kind made with sharpies… they don’t hurt as much. We wanted to have them to show her at breakfast this morning, but there was a catch. I was going to the Victor Wooten concert last night.. and Gabe was going to be in bed by the time I got home. We came up with a great evil plan. Gabe drew his tattoo and took a picture of it with his camera.   He left me this note by the back door when I came in.

This morning both Gabe and I came down this morning super sleepy.. We both pulled out our ’ink’ to wish Diane a happy birthday…   

Diane thought it was pretty cool… I was so intent on having them match that I didn’t even realize that mine should have said ’Diane’ or ’Wife’ until mid day. You know you married the right women when she doesn’t even point out such a goofy mix-up !

I took Gabe in to school and noticed that the temperature outside was 55 at 7:30.. that’s amazing.. All the melting snow is creating this cool fog everywhere.  .

It was raining a bit, but Diane and I wanted to take a birthday walk. We took the doggies up on the catamount trail. It was surreal weather.. probably in the 60’s.. but more than a foot of snow on the ground.

It was so warm that I  couldn’t resist the urge to jump in the honey hollow creek.

 I had to slide down in the snow.. Diane stayed up above.. so I had to take this picture by hanging my camera on a tree.. this is the only G rated one that came out.  

That water was cold …

When we got back to the house I noticed that the inside and outside temperatures were the same. 63 in April with all this snow is a cool combination.

Diane went to Marci for a massage/reiki..while I stayed home and worked a bit.  around 3 Diane and Gabe came home… Around 5 a bunch of friends showed up spontaneously to help us celebrate Diane’s birthday !  Nate, Julia, Abbot and Jen were there. Jen made a cake and I had one made at Chef’s Corners.. We had lots of cake..   I put 5 candles on each…   a group of 2 and a group of 3… the prime factors of Diane’s age.. 48… she’s proud that she’s 4 times older than Gabe.. how often does that happen ?

Gabe’s lighting the Sam candle

Marie showed up for a few minutes on her way up to see Evan . I made him a special piece of cake for her to take… It had a big layer of mustard between theslices.. I know he liked the mustard filled twinkie I made for him before.

It’s so nice.. our house is full of flowers  for dianes brithday.. Here she is talking to her dad.. with the flowers her parents sent.

OK.. we’re going to take Diane out for dinner now.. so I better get going.. Happy Birthday Diane…   We all love you so much.. Sam we’re thinking of you today, my son..
-me

It was an easy trip home yesterday morning. I used the ferry trip to blog which always makes the time pass quickly. I did stand up once to toss a SamStone into Nantucket Sound.

which reminds me… … the SamStones website is having some major trouble.. Our hosting service ’upgraded’ their software and all the database queries that drive our website now take minutes instead of seconds. They say it will be fixed this week.. but that’s what they said last week !

Anyway… I got home yesterday after a nice drive.. it was a bit of forced mindfulness… I had lost my phone handset so I couldn’t talk much on the phone…
My ipod ran out of batteries, XM satellite public radio was doing endless pre-pre-election analysis and broadcast public radio was doing fund raising.. I just sat there and thought.. and not-thought for 5 hours. It was cool to see the climate shift from the cape to here.. it was in the 50’s and cloudy there.. but it was in the teens and full of snow back here… Some of the flowers are getting tired of it by this point. !

I got home around 2.. and we had a pretty quiet day. Gabe was at Jay with Dylan… so we just hung out and read… We’d been invited p to Deb’s for Fish Tacos… and Diane had the great idea to make sugar on snow !.. That requires donuts… so Diane started the closely guarded secret process of donut making.. Actually, I think she said that she’s only made them once before in her life.. and that was before we met 26 years ago…

It’s a pretty cool process.. it’s a yeasted dough.. a little softer than bread dough..

She roiled it out and cut the outside with a beer glass and the inside hole with a film container..

Then they got fired in shallow oil.. This is actually what I’m supposed to be eating for this ayurvedic diet.. sweet and oily food.. some diet.. eh ?

They looked perfect..

Are those for me, Mommy ?

The one catch is that one side of one batch got a little crispy when I called Diane over to see this cool video I’d found on Quantum entanglement … I think it was from ’What the Bleep do we know’ I wrote the author.. Dr. Quantum (aka. Prof Alan Wolf) asking him about how he made the animations.. I think they’re great.. there are several others out on YouTube like this one on the ’double slit experiment’ .

Anyway.. back to yesterday.. We went up to Deb’s around 7… It certainly still looks like winter up there !

We turned off (most of) the lights up there in honor of the ’Earth Hour’ which was being run yesterday to bring awareness to the need for more energy conservation in light of global climate change. After a great fish taco dinner we switched the lights back on and Diane went into sugar on snow production.. it took a good long while to cook the maple syrup down..

When it was ready, the kids brought in snow and Diane poured on the hot syrup . It’s amazingly good.. and amazingly sweet.. folks ate the donuts to cut the sweetness.. traditionally you’re also supposed to eat a pickle with it.. but none of us felt like going that far.. even though we had a jar of pickles with us just in case.

We got home around 10:30 – 11 and all went straight to sleep..

This morning was pretty sleepy, too.. we just hung around the house… Gabe and Will headed up to the mountain at around 11 with Victor. I noticed that Victor’s gloves and glasses made this cool fish-like guy on our counter.

Once Gabe was up boarding, Diane and I took the dogs up the honey hollow road for a hike.. The road is not plowed and  the snow was still deep.. but packed enough that we didn’t need snowshoes.. at least most of the time … At one point we found an old fence line with boarder markers and decided to bushwack up the hill. It was a beautiful walk.. 

It was cool following this old land line.. You could tell that this used to be some sort of pasture sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It was  probably for sheep.. Nearly this whole area was cleared then for grazing. It was hard to see that now except for these old fence wires embedded deeply in the trees.

The new markers were for the state forest…   We walked the boarder up several ridges.. it was clear you could get all the way up Robbins mountain this way. it would be a great hike back to our house if we had a GPS..

This area is know to have lots of bears.. Diane and I saw a big one up here a day or so before Max was born. We didn’t see any bears today.. but you could sure see signs of them.. Their scratch marks were everywhere.. and man, were they BIG !

YOu could see where a big one climbed all the way up this tree !

Satori was having a great time.. but she stayed pretty close to us.. maybe she instinctivly knew she’s still the size of an hors devours.

OK.. That’s it for today.. Diane and I are going out for some errands in prep for her birthday  this Tuesday… Talk to you all tomorrow. Nite Sam
-me

It’s about 7:30 in the morning on Saturday and I’m on the ferry. halfway back to Hyannis from Nantucket.   I’ve had a really great trip to the island.. I have a bunch of pictures to log here.. hopefully I can get it done before we doc.

The boat is pretty full of people this morning… I had it almost all to myself on the ride over Thursday night.. Here I am the other night with my only friend on the way over the other night.

I found a big stack of newspapers on the boat the other night.. I was the main article on the second page.. It was pretty cool….

Luckily the boat had warning signs as not to let things like this go to your head….

Eric was there at the dock to meet me when we got in… I followed him the few miles to their very nice house. It was cool how … I don’t know.. how ’islandy’ the whole place felt..   Even the car thought it was cool

 Pam, Eric and I talked for a couple of hours until about 12:00.. It was cool getting to know them better. Eric grew up with good friend Deb in Detroit.  Pam is from Texas, like I am..
I ended up working for a while.. then went to sleep around 1ish..   I woke up the next morning to find the house decorated for their middle son, Zach’s 11th birthday. They had printed a ton of 11’s  and spread them all over the house.. it was cute..

Eric and Pam took the kids to school while I went out for a run..   As I left, I spotted one of their bikes. The brand name was the same as my old friend Rosario… Rafe’s dad.. who passed away quite a few years ago. It was nice sitting there thinking of him. He was an amazing guy..

The run was nice.. it was definitely spring here.. flowers blooming, pretty warm and overcast. The place is full of cedar shaked beautiful homes.. It’s empty this time of year.. but you can imagine how busy it must be in the summer !

I got back to the Goddards just as they’d come back from the drop off.. Their house is really cool.. lots of good kids things.. they have a huge koi pond in the back and a cabin with fussbal, pool table etc.. Looks like a great place to grow up.

We grabbed a quick breakfast then drove down to the school. Natucket has one big public school . it combines kindergarten through high school in one really nice complex.

I was going to be doing two shows in their main auditorium. It was a big venue for this version of my show. It has a raised stage, sloped seating, great lighting and acoustics . I think it seats about 800 folks.  Eric and Pam helped me move my gear and set up

The first show was kindergarteners through 5th graders.. I heard that we had about 660 kids.. It’s a challenge to aim the show such that you can keep both  6 year olds and 11 year olds with you .. But it really worked this time.  

The show really went well.. The kids stayed engaged.. My timing was OK.. and the equipement worked well.. can’t ask for much more than that. he kids mobbed me when I was through which was pretty fun.. and freaky..

We had about 45 minutes between shows… so we shuffled off to the school cafeteria.. On the way I saw this very cool whale skeleton   they have hanging in the walkway.. It’s a ’Right Whale’ that washed up on the beach a few years back..    I think our schools need one of these.

I walked into the lunch room while the high school kids were eating. I was still wearing my blinking lights. The kids seemed to like it.. Quite a few came over to talk to me..

In the cafeteria, found myself on the discussion list from the last teachers meeting.

The second show was about 330 kids.. these were 6th through 8th graders.. a totally different challenge. You have to aim a little more goofy.. a littl e more sarcasm.. a few marginally off-color references to bodily functions… and t-you have them. This show went great too. I did have an equipment problem with the large Tesla coil.. The grounding strap broke off as I was moving the device.. It’s an important part of the function.. I was able to do a hasty field repair using some alligator clips.. I was expecting it to catch fire.. it didn’t.. so all was well.   The kids seemed to like the show.. and again they mobbed me at the end.. A bunch of the kids came up and started hugging me.. .. about 50 of them came up and did that.. it was weird but cool

Pam, Eric and Bob the facilities manager helped me pack up. Bob couldn’t resist a ride on the go cart.. he was a really good guy.

Eric helped me place a SamStone in the theater. He’s almost 6’ 7″   so he was able to reach a good high spot for the stone. It felt good to leave one there.

We dropped the kids off at home then Eric took me to see the Maria Mitchell museum.   On the way we saw this old house being raised for a new foundation. Pretty cool.

Maria Mitchel was a self-taught  Astronomer who worked on the island in the mid 19th century.   There’s a research facility set up here in her name. One of their primary missions is outreach.. They have a great intern program here in astronomy, life sciences etc. They’ve got a great summer program for young girls interested in science, too.

Mitchell is like a goddess in the community of amateur scientists.   Though I guess she went pro.. she ended up teaching Astronomy at Vassar… even though she was completely self taught. I have just read Dava Sobels’ book ’The Planets’  which contains  excerpts from some letters that Mitchell wrote to Caroline Herschel, .. part of the famous English family of Astronomers.. in which they discussed the Herschel’ss recent discovery of the planet Uranus.   That made this a cool pilgrimage for me.

The main astronomer, Vladimir welcomed us there.. but then retreated because he was sick. He introduced us to his co-worker, Gary… who showed us around (Gary’s on the boat this morning)

Here’s one of their telescope installations. it’s a 12 inch Takahashi folded path reflector with a great imaging set up. They do a bunch of quasar/blazar research.. and extra solar planetary research. I was really impressed.   They’d just upgraded it to a carbon fiber tube.. They’re going to replace it wuth a 17″ instrument in the near future..

Here are some raw images they’d just captured with the scope on Wednesday.

It was cool seeing this ultra modern scope on the 19th century cast-iron pedestal from Maria Mitchell’s old scope…

The old scope’s tracking clockwork was on display in another room.. It’s amazing to me  that folks could figure out mechanical mechanisms for tracking that were this accurate.

They had a bunch of other antique instruments on display including this mid 19th century 5″ refractor

And the main lens form the original 7″ (I think) refractor.. This would have been an amazing instrument in it’s day

Mitchell used instruments like this to do important comet observations. She was the first to identify and track one of the most visible comets, Comet Mitchell.

The US named a crater on the moon after her, too !

Here she is.. looking very scientific .

On the way home we drove by one of the other sites from the Mitchell observatory. This is their big ’scope. a 24 inch reflector.. That’s a pretty sizable scope.. It’s in active use for research.

I loved the little cobble stone streets on the island. I’ll bet their tough to navigate in the summer , though.

Eric and I headed back to the house.. where we were met by 3 of the islands science teachers and some kids. We had a nice time talking, listening to Eric and and Pam’s collection of old LP’s and eating..   Still no beer for me , though.

When it got dark we went outside and did science crazy stuff.. Like the swirling steel wool…

And fire blowing.. this time with starch.. It was great..   but tasted so nasty !

The teachers had brought over a bunch of thank you notes to the Goddards for bringing me over. We had fun looking at the drawings the kids had made of me.

Then we did a little more science in the kitchen.. we did the milk/food color experiment..(Put food coloring in milk.. then add soap.. it all swirls around)  then made birds nest sugar candy . You do that  by melting sugar and pouring it into cold water.. very dramatic.. We had a near disaster there.. when Keegan added the peppermint extract, the alcohol in the flavoring caught fire.. It singed the hair off my hand.. cool, but scary !

I went to bed around midnight… I tried to blog these pictures… but was too tired.. It seemed like I had just closed my eyes when the alarm rang at 5:30… ughh.. I packed up and drove to the ferry doc.. It was a pretty morning..

Hey.. looks like this worked out. well. we’re just pulling into Hyaninis now.. I better pack up..   Now I have about a 5 hour trip home… which I don’t mind. It’s been a great trip…

More tomorrow.. CU folks.. CU Sam..
-me

ps. I liked this sign behind the Nantucket High School Secretary’s desk.