Woke today to hear that my brother and sister in law Joe and Pat were coming up for a quick visit. Always nice seeing them !

Spent the morning doing some post holiday cleanup . I was able to admire all the cool socks I’d received. That was my wish for the season

Diane modeled her new overalls

Joe and pat showed up around noon . Joe helped me leak test my new propane poofer. (The boosh) gabe and i built it yesterday . We had a few leaks but sealed them up easily .. then it was time to test

http://johncohn.org/base/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/img_9246.mov

Tomorrow’s build the base and the electronics . We’re bringing it to the S’morstice celebration in Middlesex on Saturday.

https://www.madrivervalley.com/event/camp-meades-winter-smorestice-celebration

There will be fire spinners, fire dancing , fire toys and the making of the worlds biggest s’more

Come check it out !

Finished the day with a great dinner at stone corral with joe and pat

Ok time for bed .

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

December 26 is known as “boxing day” in England, Canada, Australia and other places with interesting accents. I know the origins had something to do with the Lords and ladies giving gifts to their hired help… But for me Boxing Day meant shipping presents to people and doing a few returns at the post office. I felt like a post man.

The one big accomplishment for the day is that gabe and I put the finishing touches on our new three-quarter inch poofer. It will have more than twice the output of my old half inch Boofer that I made many years ago. It should be pleasantly scary

Tomorrow we leak test and then perhaps a test fire…

Ok . Time for bed

Nite all, nite sam

-me

We did our family Christmas yesterday.. so today was bonus Christmas. I had to wake up at 3:30 in order to get Max to his 5:45 plane .it was good getting to hangout with him this morning

I went home and got a couple of hours more sleep.

I got up around 8:30 and had breakfast with Gabe and Diane.

Diane had some more of Max’s delicious home smoked salmon

We the got ready for a hike up camels hump which is getting to be a family Christmas tradition .

It was about 15F and sunny at the bottom of the Burroughs trail. We had snowshoes on but only really needed them for their crampons . There was about 2 feet of snow but it was elk packed on the trail. Believe it or not there were about 10 other cars there for hikers . It’s only2,4 miles to the top but it gets pretty steep .

Once you’re above tree line you are in gale force winds . We were fine till we hit the top. We’d read it was about a -35 degree windchill on my Mansfield which is only 10 miles away and a few 100 feet higher

We put a samstone up there

It was nice coming down and de-icing

It was a beautiful Christmas sunset on our drive homem. Here a view of my Mansfield from about A mile from home

We had a nice quick dinner of home made spring roles .. the. Gabe and i went i. To the shop and started building our new 3/4 inch propane poorer . We can probably finish it off this week . I’ll let you see

Ok . Time for sleep

Happy bOnis Christmas everybody!

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

. Max is heading back to Santa Fe early tomorrow so We chose to celebrate our family Christmas early this year. It was a gray lazy day. I’m proud to say that it’s almost 10 pm and all of us are still in our pajamas .

the dogs are as in to Christmas as we are ..

Chai always finds her stocking . Not sure how she does it .. Kota almost like she can read !

Here we are all looking sleepy and santalike. . I think we we started about noon

Sam is always with us .. and especially on a day like this . Missing him is always part of anything fun and meaningful. It’s part of life now

Mac surprised us by bringing smoked salmon he’d made at home . It was SO delicious!

The rest of the day passed wonderfully slowly … we slowed down around 4

Mac and Diane made dinner . General Tsaos tofu and chicken . And eggplant

We harvested our first ripe Meyers lemon that was part of our dinner

Here s one thing i made for the family.. matching light up headbands

I’m feeling very grateful for my family and our lives here . I love my family so much. Missing you Sam

Nite all, nite Sam

-me