Almost 2 AM after a very long day here in Munich. It was a funny next day. I had more than my share of normal businessy stuff… Meetings, politics, budgets… All part of my job… But not part of my core wiring.

Mixed in with that though with some real wiring. I was able to laser cut some stuff in the fab lab , do a little coding, and help my friends Andy and Jochen wire some new cognitive functions into our wonderful building here.
I absolutely love when the physical meets the digital. I still managed to make time to actually do some hands-on stuff

OK lights out for me… More tomorrow
Night All, night Sam
-me

Little monkey and little horse…

my friend Markus L told me about them at dinner . .they wre born the same year as I was .. 1959…

they are animals that came up between cartoon features..  little like our Rocky and Bullwinkle..

but these guys had full on Schwabish accents.. The super strong regional dialect from around Stuttgart , Boeblingen , Tubingen.. the accent they have is so think that it almost sounds like another language to me..

 

Ive just spent 30 minutes of valuable sleep time trying to find a you tube video of them saying something like this I heard

horse : “how are you””

Monkey “im fine”

hore : “thats good”

monkey  no if I were good, i would be better”

I haven’t been able to find it.. it doesnt help at all tat their dialog is written in an accent.. .. ie.. its intentionally misspelled to  make it sound like the spoken accent  (eg. THank  Ha for “hi”, go’n for “going”)

I never found the one I wanted..but these guys are pretty funny.. for the 15 seconds or so they have…

 

 

I love them.. but I just fell asleep
more tomorrow

nite all. nite sam
-me

On a plane back to Munich.. Fever is pretty much gone… (pretty much)

Not much happened today, so I’ll go back to last Friday. Diane and had the sad and happy pleasure of attending our 10th Mount Mansfield Union school awards ceremony . Every year we do several things in Sam’s memory.. You can check them out on the legacy tab on http://samstones.org/WordPress1/?page_id=31  .  We give a scholarship to the Camp that Sam and his brothers went to and loved, we give away  a scholarship to allow a kid to spend the winter riding or skiing Bolton Mountain which Sam really loved.. and we make the Musical Soul award .

The musical soul award invites anyone in the school, teachers or students to nominate a kid.. other than  themselves.. who has a musical soul. Sam loved music.. and was an excellent guitar, bass and drum player. He was great at classical guitar and ad head banging metal.. and he loved to play…  The kids who are nominated dont have to be the best musicians.. they just have to love music and tell us how and why.

Each year we stand up in front of the students and tell them about Sam.. We put the nominations into a bowl and one of us closes their eyes (so sam can choose) and we pull one out. The winner gets to go to Advanced Music to choose a guitar or bass of their choice.. Advanced gives us a good price.. so basically the kid can choose any instrument they want

 

This year it was a kid named Nick.. He’s a perfect match.. a natural musician.. .. We heard how he’d fixed all 13 instruments the school owned to make them all playable.. He had recently been working on “Asturius” by Ibenez.

 

Sam had just learned to play that whole beautiful piece just weeks before he died. It still makes me cry to hear it…  you can too

Here’s Sam’s guitar teacher James… playing Asturias  at Sam’s memorial 

I passed on the only instructions for the award.. I tell them they cannot use the instrument to play billy joel or elton john .. because , I say, Sam hates their music

actually.. I’m not sure thats true… but .. I don’t like them.. and I help make the rules

nite all, note sam

-me

 

Woke this morning in Hartford after 10 hours of fever-wracked sleep.. I felt better.. but still not all there…

DIane and I took a ewwalk fro the hotel while the kids slept.. Hartfrord was surprisingly pretty../ we walked over the bridge to the  river.. the place was full of  pulic art, plantings, etc.

 

 

 

we were in a busy financial district whcih was almost empty on a bright sunday morning..

 

we went back to the hotel and met max and beck for a ‘liftgate party’.. teir van is funky and fun.

 

we said goodbuy tot eh residence inn (our room was the top floor here

 

and walked to breakfast.. even got a little puppy love along the way

 

we stopped for brunch at a really nice slavadoran place.. ‘rositas’

 

then back tot eh car for our rides part..

nice weekend !.. nice family !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me