Friday night – Keep Vermont Weird

Hello from Endicott, NY.  We’re down at Diane’s folks. We left this morning at 10.. we managed to follow a snow storm all the way down here. It was slow going.. large stretches of 20-30 miles per hour..  I’m glad to be done driving.

I have a bunch of pictures from yesterday that I decided not to run last night in honor of the anniversary of our friend Kate’s passing yesterday….  May favorite form yesterday was this bumper sticker I saw while out for lunch.. I love it !

Yesterday was a crazy day .. I had meetings all morning.. then I tried to take the afternoon off to do some shopping.. but, I still managed to spend much of it on the phone.

Our friend Julie came by on her way up to the mountain.. she was sporting a Sam shirt.. which made eme happy ~

I had a lunch meeting at the Echo Center.. I’m goign to be part of their advisory board.. That entilteld me to a behind the scenes tour of how they keep the place healthy. That gave me a great face to face with a couple of oversized sturgeons..

I alogot a chance to meet soem of their ‘spare’ poiison arrow frogs.. These guys arent that deadly because they don’t feed on the special teermintes that gives their aamazon cousins such a dangrerous poison on their skin.

On the wat back I stopped for a 10 minute meetign with Herb to fetch ne of the power supply components out of the Pumpkin man. We first had to go figure out which truck the beast was stored in…

THere he is !

I forgot how much I missed this big guy !

THanks Herb !

I went back to work ad got anohter good 4 hours in.. aorund 8 I headed over to Higher Ground to see the Matisyahu show with my firend Gary. THe show was sold out and packed. I ran into lots of friends in the corwd including Gabes freinds Jack and Austin… and our old friend Rachael.

Matisyahu is an ex Phsh-head who found releginon and became a chasidic jew/ His music is a cool blend of ereggae, jewish negun style trance and beat boxing. There’s nothing like it  He was awesome live !.. as were his two back up bands.. really a great musical soul .. and very upbeat message…

I had to leave around midnight because.. beleive it or not.. I had one more phone meeting around 1AM..   As soon as that was done.. i crawlde off for a few hours sleep..

This mornign we decided to try and leave earlier. The big predicted snowstorm  was coming soooner and harder than predicted… we got on the road around 10.. and I said above it was about 9 hours of driving (compared to 5.5 usually.. yuck !)

Gabe spent most of the long drive in his own multi media cacoon in the back…

Meanwhile.. the front seat was having much less fun !  It was a tough day to be driving !

Gabe finally surfaced as we were approaching Ednicott..   The dogs were pretty patient as welll.

OK.. I’m just beet.. 4 hours of sleep last night and a 10 hour drive yesterday.. tomorrow I’m drving  into NYC to grab Max and Reptar…   I’ll be back tomorrow night…

In the meantime.. good luck digggin out.. Gnite Sam !
-me

Wednesday night – Dog ate my homework

I woke this morning (Thursday) and checked my myspace as I usually do..only to find that my post last night hadn’t gone through !

I’ll try to recreate what I remember of it from memory.. I say what I remember of it .. because we’d just come back from visiting our friends M and B.. For some reason I always come back from seeing them a little tipsy.  We always enjoy hanging out with them.

 
Unfortunately, their house burned down at the beginning of the month. They’d lived in that house for 30 years…Of all the things they lost that night . but most important to them were two young kittens.  That was very sad

We also talked about all of the stuff that  they lost and the stuff they managed to save. . What was irreplaceable and what you have that you never need to see again.. like old work papers. I can’t imagine the loss of  going through something like that.

We do have one very tough loss in common, one of their sons passed away about 20 years ago. That similar experience between us makes it very easy to talk about things that are difficult to discuss with other friends. It felt really good to be able to share that stuff… I know it sounds from the outside like a bunch of sad, tough  topics.. but he had a great time over there…  we laughed alot.. They are really great people

Lessseee. what else did I write about last night ? I did have these two pictures folks sent me after Sunday’s Candle lighting.for Sam .. The first is from my folks. Ou can see a great picture of my mom and sam next to the candle (Thansk for the picture, Mom !)

I also got this sweet picture form Hannah.. 

Thank you both for sending those !

I can’t remember what else I might have written about.. but It’s time for me to go to work.. so that’s gotta be it.. Be well folks.. TTYL Sam..
-me

ps. My frienf Peliera in Pretoria South Africa just sent me pictrures of his wedding from last month. 
Peliera is the guy next to the bride  with the very big smile on his face 🙂   COngratulations my friend !

Tuesday night – Raising Cane


Creative day.. lots of small inspirations.. managed to fix several software problems while sitting in meetings. It’s a strange time at work.. many folks are already out on vacation.. many changes occurring and just ahead.. the holidays coming.. Fells like a strange calm..

I did spend a few minutes staring out of the window in my office while on a conference call.. I realized agfter a few minutes that soemone was staring back at me !

Got home on the late side in time for Meditation class.. but no one showed up.. so we decided to skip class and cook instead. Kevin was over for dinner which always adds an offbeat flavor to the meal.. He’s so funny and cool. He taught us something none of new.: that you can melt candy canes and shape them over a candle.  No joke.. just take a regular candy cane.. preferably a flavor that no one likes .. unwrap it.. and hold it over a candle flame.. keep turning it as you do this to prevent burning. in  a moment it will get soft enough to bend, pull  or even weld…

Gabe even figure out how to make a candy cane valentine..

now.. no candy cane is safe in our house… I’m going to go melt some more !

Nite folks.. Nite Sam
-me