{"id":975,"date":"2007-12-15T00:27:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-15T04:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/12\/15\/friday-night-pratt-parkign-lot\/"},"modified":"2007-12-15T00:27:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-15T04:27:00","slug":"friday-night-pratt-parkign-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/12\/15\/friday-night-pratt-parkign-lot\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday night – Pratt parkign lot"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’ writing from the parking lot at Pratt. I’m sitting in the car while max tried to cram a semesters worth of stuff into a duffel bag. I think I’m helping him the most by staying out of his way. As soon as he’s done we’re going to drive back home. It is great having him back for awhile…
    My trip down today was really nice.. as these drives usually are. I got on the road at about 7:30… rather than 6AM as I had originally intended.. I just couldn’t pry myself out of bed. I finally got up in time to take Gabe to school.. then took off from there. The late start was just as well since the roads were still a mess.. I had to take it really slow until about White River.. Still, the day was beautiful.. and the company was good (I often ‘talk’ to Sam in the car)… I spent most of the drive down in calls of one type or other..  I find these calls in the car to be some of the most productive I have.. There’s nothing else .. keyboards, text messages… etc.. to distract me so I really pay attention to what’s being said. Consequently, the miles just melt by. Before I knew it I was approaching NYC.  My original plan was to try and catch a talk at CUNY main campus on 5th in Manhattan.. The speaker was Prof James Gee, a word recognized expert in the educational use of video game technology.. It would have been great.. but as I neared the city, the traffic started slowing down.. I was goign to be cutting it clos.. and then there would be parking. The final straw is that my friend Nora from the NY Hall of Science who’d told me abotu the talk called to tell me she was goign to blow off goign because she had too much to do. So… I aborted the mission.. But I had a good ‘plan B’ I drove down to the NY Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows.. and had a great meeting with Nora’s boss, Eric. <\/p>\n
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Eric, Nora and I are all working on this same IBM video game proj. This was the first time I’d had a chance to sit down and really talk to Eric one on one. It was so much fun. We have very similar backgrounds, raised Jewish, device physics background, love of education outreach… and both vegetarians !.. We took advantage of that fact to go have our talk over veggie Chinese food nearby.. It was GREAT !.. Everything there from the ‘pork’ buns to the ‘fish’ were all vegetarian.. It’s a place just made for  veggie Buddhists and Kosher-keeping Talmudists.. So cool. NYC  is just amazingly diverse.. something for everyone if you know where to look!<\/div>\n

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Eric and ‘pork’ bun
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tofu disguised as tofu
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It truly was
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I left Eric about 4 and headed the last 10 miles to Pratt.. I know pictures never do sunsets justice.. but there was an amazing one happening as I turned off the BQE towards Pratt.   <\/p>\n

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I got to Pratt about 5:00 and finally found Max around 6.   He looks great.. and he’s so happy to be done for the semester. I can tell he’s pretty beat.. so it’s going to be just me and the road on the way back.. still it’ll be nice to have him near. <\/p>\n

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I did happen to notice these signs in the common area in Max’s dorm.. I thought it was funny.. since I’ve done C-A-D (computer aided design) my entire working life.. here it means ‘common area damage’
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Now I’m just sitting in the car and working i.. I found some free WiFi.. so I’m pretty comfy !      <\/p>\n

A really cool\/weird  thing just happened… as I’m sitting here typing !.. I turned on the satellite radio for some blogging tunes and turned to the Indie station I always listen to (XMU).. As I did that I was thinking of the time I turned on the radio last year and this station played ‘Organ Donor’ by DJ Shadow.. just as I asked where Sam was out loud to the cosmos .. Right after that they played a really obscure DJ Shadow cut ‘ Building Steam from a grain of Sand’. That song has some very Sam like lyrics. I blogged about it  on Dec 21st<\/a> and Dec 22nd<\/a> last year.. raw times.
   Well.. just as I was thinking back on that weird coincidence.. on comes ‘Building Steam’   I jumped I was so shocked !<\/div>\n

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Building Steam from a Grain of Sand by DJ Shadow. <\/span>
From listening to records i just knew what to do
I mainly taught myself
And, you know, i did pretty well
Except there were a few mistakes
But um, that i made, uh
That i’ve just recently cleared up<\/p>\n

And i’d like to just continue to be able to express myself
As best as i can with this instrument
And i feel like i have a lot of work to do
Still, i’m a student – of the drums
And i’m also a teacher of the drums too<\/p>\n

What makes cancer tenatious?<\/p>\n

The moon rules the fluids
Including the inner juices of human beings
That which assimilates and feeds the body
So the crab feeds his astral plane
Assimilating and distributing all he receives
Slowly, until it becomes apart of you<\/p>\n

I fly to the strangest lands<\/p>\n

And i would like to able to continue
To let what is inside of me
Which is, which comes from all the music that i hear
I would like for that to come out
And it’s like, it’s not really me that’s coming
The music’s coming through me<\/p>\n

The music’s coming through me<\/font> <\/p>\n

OK.. Max just came out.. time to start helping him load the car.. It’ll be a long drive home.. but nice… My family is coming together.. I love you all.. love you Sam <\/p>\n

-me<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/center>\n<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ writing from the parking lot at Pratt. I’m sitting in the car while max tried to cram a semesters worth of stuff into a duffel bag. I think I’m helping him the most by staying out of his way. As soon as he’s done we’re going to drive back home. It is great having … Continue reading Friday night – Pratt parkign lot<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}