I’ve just arrived in Armonk at about 1AM… only to find that I do not have a USB cable to download pictures. That’s pretty funny because just 2 days ago I had three of them in my backpack.. Oh-well, It’s just as well… I need to get to sleep now.
   The abbreviated report from the day was:

1) sloshy snowshoe in melting snow
2) work calls all day
3) late afternoon meeting at Champlain
4) 5 hour drive to NY

Ya know. 1-3 seem to be a repeating pattern lately.. Not all that bad.. I’m really enjoying what I’m doing and I’m feeling pretty productive.   I guess the most remarkable thing about the day was the warm weather. We had to put in a screen in one of the upstairs windows.. I think it might of hit 50 outside !!!!  It’s supposed to rain tomorrow which could mean some pretty bad flooding. when the rain hits all that snow.  I remember the January   thaw of 1992.. We were pregnant with Sam.. We were forced to evacuate the house late at night due to imminent flooding. It never did hit the house .
     The most remarkable thing about the drive down was how the news channels could take a 20 minute story about the New Hampshire primaries and stretch it into 5 hours of news… What was even weirder is that I listened to it. I have to admit I took a 5 minute detour into New Hampshire before I headed south on 91 just to say that I was ‘there’ for the NH primaries.. So.. Hillary won one.. this could make things interesting.. I like both her and Obama… it’s not a bad choice to have I think..
   OK… that’s really all I have now.. sorry not to have pictures tonight.. I’ll double up tomorrow.. Gnite all.. nite Sam
-me

ps.. Aha.. I do have some pictures to post. My friend Laura just sent soem really cool pictures of the site of the southern most SamStones

The first is of the Martial glacier on the soutehern tip of Argentina..with the  town of Ushuaia  in the distance.

the second is of the summit of Mt. Demaria in Antartica.   It is about 635 M tall, and is at 65 degrees, 17′ south and about 62 degrees 32′ west.

Not much happening today… I guess the big news is a powerful January thaw.. It was 50 degrees Fahrenheit at 4PM today.. which is about 65 degrees warmer than it was about 4 days ago… All our beautiful snow is turning into… yuck.. The thaw is supposed to last a least the week.. so Diane and I got out for a snowshoe this morning to enjoy the snow before it disappears. The one good thing about the thawing snow is that it shows us exactly where we need to dig when we replace our failing septic system in the spring..

(insert loud cursing here.. Myspace at my blog at this point after I’d completely typed it in… the rest from this point is retyped as best I can remember it)

Where was I ?? Oh.. I think I was talking about my day.. not much special there… though. I had back to back meetings this morning.. then ran to Champlain at 1 for an afternoon of working with Ann and Ray on the Good Games media application we’re developing. We had a great brainstorming session about the content of our media application..

I also spent a few minutes talking to Kris,  the Champlain’s media relations person, about the project.

Then  i spent a few minutes working with Lauren, one of the students who’s working with us.. She’s an ultra-creative programming artist… or artistic programmer.. She’s very good at Flash programing. She can take a goofy idea and making it work beautifully on the screen in minutes. Watching her work reminds me how much of an artist I am not.

Speaking of artistic.   after yoga tonight I came in the house to find a present from friend Abbot. Abbot is taking welding at MMU. A couple of days ago I sketched out a picture of a ram’s head that I’d learned to make in blacksmithing when we lived in England 20 years ago. From those junky drawings he made this in class today. 

The idea now is to flatten the other end and sharpen it into a knife to make a ‘buttering ram’ .

We’re all feeling pretty low energy tonight. We decided to hang out and watch a movie in Sam’s room. We were watching the Matrix III

I’m proud to say that I still don’t understand that movie.. but it was fun to hang out and watch something mindless.

Speaking of hard to understand movies.. Gabe just pointed me at this out on YouTube.. It’s Gabe’s principal, Mark Carbone doign the ‘Crank dat Soulja; dance with his hair died pink. He did the dance and the hair after the kids at CHMS collected more than 2000 cans of food for the local food shelf. Now that’s a good guy.. if not a good dancer 🙂

OK.. That’s it for now… More tomorrow. Nite all. Nite Sam
-me

ps. Here’as picture Trevor took of Gabe at Bolton yesterday..yow

We had a very peaceful day.. not much happened. It was a good rest. I’m still  absorbing in all that I saw at the Paul Zaloom Puppetry workshop I went to yesterday… I picked up several ideas from the workshop that I can apply to my own  Jolts and Volts shows.. The main ones were:

– On keeping material fresh:  do each show for the sound guy (or the roadie.. or whatever).. that is the guy who sees your show so many times that he/she would be sick of it.. If you can make him/her laugh, you’re keeping your material fresh. That’s good advice to me.. I sometimes hear myself repeating these same old geeky jokes in my shtick and worry about it getting stale.

– On making mistakes – Paul said never apologize for mistakes.. or even apologize for a lousy show.. Embrace your screw ups and go with them..  Sometimes the funniest parts are recovering from errors.  Never give the audience reason to believe that you think you suck…   I know that sometimes during a show I get myself mentally tangled in something that doesn’t work and it can make me loose my focus.. I’ll try this next time some thing blows up figuratively or literally .

– On building new material – he suggests writing down little sections of ideas whenever they come to you.. .. At some point sit down and explore different orderings of the ideas.. I like this idea of slicing and dicing.. I tent to do all my thinking in one linear  shot.. which makes  changing it hard..

‘m thinking about revamping my show for ’08.. I’m currently scheduling no more than 2 shows per month.. but some of my friends fill in .. so I’m guessing we average about 3 per month overall.   As I have said here many times before, reaching out to kids with this geeky science is the thing I do professionally that really feels most kharmically right.

Anyway.. As I said yesterday,. I was so impressed with Zaloom that I bought a standing room ticket to the show at the Flynn Space..  The show was so amazing.. It was also impossible to describe.. It started with a monologue on Zaloom’ trip to a biker festival then transitioned to a bizzare and amazing shadow puppet show.

The show was basically an hour long shadow puppet show with amazing articulated cutouts casting shadows on a small sheet. The hero of the show was Karagöz, the Turkish equivalent of the English character Punch. The story was incredibly goofy., twisted and fun . In Zaloom’s telling,  Karagöz in trouble with the law in Syria for being gay..He ends up escaping from jail and ends up accidentally blowing up the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore.  The whole thing was full of wonderfully gross humor.. uh… anatomical exaggerations.. and .. uh… excreta of all kinds,   and .. oh forget it.. I can’t retell the story here because of the family audience.  Just trust me it was amazing to watch and hear. Zaloom is a magician with puppets and sound.

There were several of the workshop folks in the audience and we hung out for a little while after the show talking..   As we were standing there, my buddy Gina came in and invited me to catch the last part of the Bottine Souriante show that was still going on in the Flynn main stage. Bottine Souriante is  a famous Quebecois folk band with amazing dance and stomping rythyms. They play and dance so hard that you get exhausted just listening to them. It could not have been more different than the show downstairs.. It was a pretty eclectic evening .

Afterward there was a small reception for the Flynn members  and the band.. I hung out for a short bit talking to Gina.. then headed home.

One of the and members was wearing this shirt which I thought was cool. I never did learn what it meant.

Today .. was really peaceful. Max had a Voices movie recording session . Gabe was up at the mountain.. so Diane and I got a chance to hang out and putter around the house, which was just what both of us needed.

Mid morning, Diane, Chai and I headed out for a snowshoe up the long trail north of Bolton Notch road. We wanted to take in some of the powder before the thaw projected for this week sets in.  I always think it’s funny the way that Chai sits in the front seat.

It was beautiful out in the woods.. I loved looking at the bark on some of these trees.. looked like eyes to me.

Especially when you put two of them together in photoshop 🙂

We found lots of bear and woodpecker  markings too.

Here’s some more beautiful scenery  – my girls..

The rest of the day was very quiet..   Around 6 we went up to Tim and Jen’s for a great dinner.

Gabe was playing with Crunk-beast the cat… which inspired Tim to lend us the Alien Trilogy.. Wonder why…