We made a spur the moment decision to head down to Houston for two days…   >> one “nice” thing is it we won’t be shocked by the hot and humid weather down there… We have it up here in Vermont.… It reminded me of Houston day when I got out of the car with air-conditioning and my glasses fogged up as they hit the muggy air

“We headed down to houston because Max is in town working on the new meow Wolf and Billy and his family are there. Billy’s just been part of an amazing scientific and medical advance…. For the last several years he’s been  working with the company by Bivacor on a totally implantable artificial heart. There had been artificial hearts before, but this is the first one that doesn’t actually have a pulse. What’s more is it only has one moving part. It’s an amazingly ingenious design. They tested it on hundreds of animals. it is a huge advance towards, creating a permanent heart replacement. The initial FDA approval stipulate that it can only be used as a bridge to transplant… But eventually, it will be a permanent replacement. Several weeks ago Billy helped the team implant that a very ill 54 year old man… The surgery went perfectly and by the end of the next two weeks, a donor heart had been located and was successfully transplanted into the patient. The guy is now up and around and eating donuts and ice cream for breakfast. The news of it was embargoed for about two weeks until the health outcome was known… And now we’re able to talk about it. It’s all over the news.  .. Just google william e cohn  and bivacor.. .. there are tons of articles about it .. like this one !

We are so proud of Billy and his team!… There’s a great opportunity to go down and celebrate with him… When we got there, we found him instead of tampering with somebody’s internal organs… He was breathing life into an old BMW to see how he could make it remote control for a parade next April… Totally ingenious

We spent the rest of the day hanging out with Sean and Billy and the kids… So super fun getting to spend time with them… They are also full of information and fun facts and house has gotten all sorts of cool gadgets and toys

Fight me evening Max came to meet us and we all went to an all night Mexican restaurant. It was so fun and so good.

One fun thing we did was to take the New York Times dialect test… By answering about 20 questions it tries to identify where you are from. Check this out it nails me directly as being from  Houston…!
Billy and Shauns son Billy Jr took it and it identified him as being from Boston, which is technically true

Super fun being down here even if it’s for just for a day aor so

nite all , nite sam

-me

Hot day here .. everybody’s moving kinda slow… Diane worked on soem new samstones. 

WHile I went to UVM for an early meeting. One was about a grant  I’m helping with.. THen I dropped by my freinds Doug’s lab to see if we might collaborate on a project at beta.   DOug and his students do laser spectroscopy.. super cool stuff !

Cool stuff.. aside.. it was hot and getting hotter. 

Diane and I had tickets for an outdoor concert at Shelburne Museum for Joe Russo almost dead (they go by the name of JRAD).It was a nice crowd there..t he band sounded so good. THey are my favorite Grateful Dead cover band. Joe is the lead singer and he plays while drumming !

The concert was sponsored by Ben & Jerry’s, so there was free ice cream… We needed that to beat the heat. To be honest, the heat kind of took some of the fun out of it. So we didn’t even stay to the end… But it was still a great time.

We’re traveling again tomorrow… Better get some sleep

nite all, nite sam

-me

Worked from home this AM .. then headed in around lunch to give a tour to our friend Deb.. and her cousin Roxy and her daughter Ella. Roxy is a 787 transcontinental pilot for American., so it was really fun touring her and Ella around. We had a good time even thought only had a short while for the tour.. Both Roy and Ella did well in the sim.. we “flew” over Jonesville just to check it out.

Ella wanted a picture of them doing this thing .. I guess it’s a thing on the thing these days ?

After dinner diane and I took a walk around to check out the rivers and survey how things were going to restore the roads..

Check out these chunks of Wes White Hill rd !

Nite all, nite sam
-m3

I was working in St Albans today when friend Ross ran in with our friend Sophia on the phone. Sophia recently moved to Sweden .. SHe’s got a great job over there and is hiking all of these beautiful trails. We miss her like crazy.. and love that she’s over there having fun !

Driving home, I caught this rainbow (those pics never come out !) .. hi lighting the clouds..and some of the residual smoke that we’re still getting from the fires in Western Canada.

Finished the day with a really nice dinner and catchup with Shosh,. Aaron and Leica.. Even got some fluffy work done then too !

Nite all, nite sam

-me