Working in high tech can be both thrilling and terrifying especially when you are developing a product or process that has never been done before. Above you are looking at the result of years worth of effort and a major breakthrough for my team at Digital Alloys. We successfully printed the pyramid pictured above in H13 tool steel. More importantly, it was printed with a closed feedback loop and no human intervention. Today, we crossed the threshold of believing we could print with metal to proving we can print with metal. Over the course of my career, I have enjoyed perhaps a dozen or so such monumental milestones. I have learned to recognize them for what they are and pause to enjoy them.

Sadly, in a week where we were poised to purchase one of two properties, neither deal has come to fruition. The cliff house in Nahant went to a higher bidder and the final Kent Cottage price was just too high to make a proper renovation financially prudent. While we will keep our eyes open for new opportunities, in all likelihood we will put off buying a new home until next year when most experts believe it will be a buyer’s market rather than the seller’s market we are in now.

Pictured is the Ellingwood Chapel, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1920, located in the Greenlawn Cemetery on Nahant. I did a practice commute this morning before putting in our final offer.

The painting of the exterior of our house was completed today. The workmanship was excellent and we are very pleased with the outcome. Regrettably, when I made a final inspection, I noticed that significant damage had been done to the slate tiles at the edge of the roof. This damage was caused by incorrectly placed ladders. The owner of the company, Union Painting, was quick to acknowledge responsibility and discounted our price to offset for the repair work that will now be needed. Despite this admitted significant issue, we would still strongly recommend this company to others.

Nicolai has been working his way across the country on a combination vision quest/traveling amputee soccer training camp/golf outing/family and friend reunion/vacation/camping adventure. We are thrilled every time he checks in to let us know where he is and what he is up to. By the time you are reading this post, he will probably be in southern California with plans to work his way up the coast and thru the national parks. We look forward to the photos he has been posting on his Instagram account which are every bit as good as any photos I have ever taken.

After 2 years of looking for a smaller home for our retirement years, we have arrived at two choices that could not be more different. Last night, we put an offer in on Kent Cottage. It is located in Burlington, walking distance from my office and includes 22 acres of beautiful wetlands. The home requires a top to bottom renovation and is located in the center of an otherwise commercial area. This home only makes sense at the right price given home much investment will be needed. Still, it is oozing with potential and the thought of doing a full restoration is very appealing to us. If our offer is not accepted, we will put an offer in on the Nahant home we visited over the weekend. It is situated on 1 acre and overlooks a beautiful ocean cove. The house would need extensive updating but the “bones” are good. The downside here is that access to the island is through Lynn which is hard to get to from just about anywhere.

Earlier this week, our yellowwood tree, pictured in the background, was struck by lighting. Approximately 1/3 of it was laying in our front yard with the remainder of it seemingly unaffected. I spent the better part of two hours this morning lopping off branches and making a very dense pile of them in the driveway. I used my cordless chainsaw to make quick work of the larger limbs which are stacked in a different pile. If the root system was not damaged, it is possible that the tree will survive, and if it does, a good chance that it will fill back in the lost areas. Only time will tell.

Nahant is an island just north of Boston connected by a causeway to the mainland. Before the roadway was constructed, it was only accessible at low tide, when a natural land bridge emerged from the water. Jeanine and I spent the better part of the day touring the island after revisiting a home we are thinking about purchasing trying to get a sense of what retirement would feel like in this tiny community. The house we are looking at is in major need of renovation but priced as if move-in ready. As we prepare to make an offer, it is unclear if we will be able to negotiate a more realistic price or if we would be better off putting a bid in on Kent Cottage.

For almost 2 years now, Kyle has been renting a posh apartment in Boston’s very chic Seaport District. While working at Cengage, it was literally across the street from his office, a 1-minute commute. When he took a new position at Touchplan, his walking commute increased to just under 20 minutes. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck and we encouraged all the kids to come back home and shelter in place with us. With his lease expiring at the end of this month and Touchplan’s decision to encourage working remotely, it made no sense to renew his lease and Kyle is now in the process of looking for a home to buy. The only question is where.

This evening after work, Jeanine and I helped Kyle pack up all his furniture and other belongings into a small U-Haul truck demarcating another new chapter in his life. Meanwhile, Nicolai continues the westward leg of his road trip/vision quest. When we checked in with him, he had just entered Arizona on his way to California. A future post will be devoted to his grand adventure.

When Maya returned from work this evening she entered the house inquiring why one of the trees in our front yard had fallen over. At first, I thought she was joking but a quick excursion and close inspection revealed that it had been hit by lightning and split in two. What I don’t understand is why this tree was struck and not the pines surrounding our house that are easily four or five times taller. Jeanine was particularly upset because this tree was her favorite, planted only a few years ago when we relandscaped the front yard. It is the only tree on our property whose leaves turn yellow in the fall.

Although I am not at liberty to offer many details, I can say that the image above represents a significant milestone achieved by my team at Digital Alloys as we continue to refine our metal 3D printer.

I made an early morning trip to the coast to tour one of the properties Jeanine and I thought might be interesting for our retirement years. The house, in serious need of remodeling or possibly total replacement, is situated above a private cove which is quite lovely. We have thoroughly enjoyed the view of the field in our back yard for the last 16 years and are hoping to find a home with an equally enjoyable vista. We have been focused on wetlands, mountains, or a lake view but now have expanded the list to include an ocean view.

Not one of the more photogenic insects I have managed to photograph recently, but all I could find today. He was sunbathing on the picnic table outside my office at lunchtime. He seemed quite content to share the bench with me. Judging by the amount of pollen on his body, I am guessing this guy was taking a breather after some heavy-duty pollination.

For a change of pace and locale, Jeanine and I spent the day house hunting on the Atlantic seaboard. We started in Beverly and work our way down through Marblehead to Nahant. We found a couple of interesting properties that will make our “saved” list as well as two lighthouses. Pictured above, is the Hospital Point Light Station (now a private residence) named for a smallpox hospital built on the site. It is one of 5 Massachusetts lighthouses that still retains its original Fresnel lens. Pictured below, is the Marblehead Light Station, one of about 14 examples of pyramidal skeletal lighthouses surviving in the United States today, as well as the only one of its kind still standing in New England. The 105-foot tall, cast-iron structure with a central tower cylinder was built in 1896.

We are having our house painted this week including the 34 shutters that flank the windows on the front side. Of that number, four were in need of repair of one type or another. I spent several hours fabricating and installing missing or damaged parts. Thus far, I am very please with the work of our painters who are taking the time to do the job right. Today they spent the entire day doing prep work and probably will not start painting for a few more days.

I joined Jeanine for an evening stroll to Mattison Field just as the sun was setting. Pictured here is the barn of one of my former soccer teammates and brother of Christopher Reeves of Superman fame. On the way home, we enjoyed looking over our cornfield at the home of another neighbor.

Some days at work are more fun than others!

Today, I received an e-mail from a favorite Truevision colleague. She reached out to get copies of the photos I took at her daughter’s wedding for an album to celebrate their five year anniversary. She was specifically interested in photos that the couple may have not seen before. I was able to send her 40 images from my archive. Just to put things in context, I have known the bride since she was 7 years old and she is now pregnant with her third child. Boy, do I feel old.

Occasionally, I have an opportunity to utilize my photography skills at work. Often, it is for marketing photos or employee headshots. Today, it was for forensic failure analysis. I am not at liberty to divulge what you are looking at but can say that having this image helps my team and I identify the root cause of a failure we observed.

A quick visit to Great Meadows on the way into work netted me this image of a Great Blue Heron perched atop a birdhouse. I really liked the composition. The birdhouse has a similar silhouette to the heron and the colors are also very similar.

A gift from my mother, this Japanese lantern has graced our garden since we moved in some 16 years ago. It looked on, as the entire family worked together to clean, declutter, and organize the shed that is attached to the back of our house. The intensity of work was matched only by the oppressive humidity and temperature of the day. The transformation after a couple of hours, however, was nothing short of dramatic. Elsewhere in the yard, there were many late-blooming flowers left to enjoy.

Our corn crop is getting fairly tall despite this guy’s propensity for dining on the plants. It will not be long before s/he is able to traverse the field unobserved. Pictured in the foreground and outside the depth of focus is a birdhouse with its resident sun tanning on the roof. If you study the aerial photo below carefully, you may find another instance of our frequent diner.

I recently photographed a dragonfly with a macro lens at a very close range. Today, I used one of my telephoto lenses to shoot one from about 3 feet away. Even so, he was quite skittish. Fortunately, he kept returning to the same perch which made it somewhat easier for me to get a nice photo. I just love the faces and variety of colors that can be found among these magnificent little helicopters.

I am coining a new phrase; “work art.” It describes artwork made during the course of work not intended to create artwork. This image, taken last week on Digital Alloy’s scanning electron microscope, provided very important evidence to help us diagnose a problem that we have been trying to solve for some time. When I saw it for the first time, my initial response was that of a photographer, admiring it for the beauty of the image rather than a researcher looking at the answer to a long-standing mystery.

It seems like only yesterday that Nicolai was just a toddler, choosing to navigate the world on forearm crutches rather than use a prosthetic. He has always chosen to stand out rather than fit in and we could not be prouder of him. Today, he turned 26 and we gathered for a small birthday celebration featuring the Thai cuisine he requested. He shared with us his plans to embark on a road trip to visit with his amputee soccer teammates and friends all over the country. All the details are not yet finalized but he plans to bring a camping tent so that he can minimize contact with others. We are less worried about the Covid-19 risk than we are about his car breaking down in the middle of nowhere. Even so, Nico has a knack for skirting calamity and we trust he will return no worse for the wear.

We are in the process of having our house painted and one of the workers removed this robin’s nest from the ledge of our sunporch so he could power wash all the surfaces. Before doing so, he removed the nest and left it under Maya’s care. Naturally, she placed it back in the original position and reports that mama Robin is still tending to it. With the painters set to start work next week, it is not clear if the nest will have to be repositioned and, if so what that will mean for the eggs. Stay tuned for updates.

On the way into the office this morning, I stopped to check out a lot for sale in Concord only to discover it was being cleared of trees in preparation for the construction of a new home. It was amazing how quickly it was deforested with the highly specialized equipment being used. Although the lot is nicely situated on high ground, it offers little more than a forest view and would cost almost as much as our house for just the dirt. I think we will pass.

Jeanine and I have been casually looking for a new home for the past year. Today, for the first time, we found one that we liked enough to tour. It is situated on 320 acres Bare Hill Pond in Harvard. The Lakeview from the back of the house is exceptional. Despite the many other homes on the lake, none are visible from this location creating a sense of privacy unmatched by any other waterfront property I have ever seen. Alas, the house is somewhat larger than we are looking for and the interior layout had problems we were not willing to look past. Having lived in very large homes for the past 25 years, we want to retire to a cozy space about half the size of our current house. Such homes exist, but we have yet to find one that offers a view even close to the one we enjoy now (pictured below).

Nicolai hosted a small gathering of his friends for the Fourth of July and to celebrate his upcoming birthday. With the assistance of his siblings, Nicolai prepared two smoked chickens which turned out wonderfully. The party was held entirely outdoors to maximize air circulation and minimize close contact but it would be incorrect to suggest, as this photo proves, that all best virus prevention practices were observed. Jeanine and I spent much of the day looking at potential new homes and decided to enjoy the party from inside the house.

Two weeks ago, I suggested that our corn crop was on a leisurely pace and that it would likely not achieve the “knee-high by the Fourth of July” milestone commonly recognized in the midwest. I could not have been more mistaken. Admittedly, Maya’s knees are on the shorter side of average, but some of the corn stalks are as tall as her waist. Expect more reporting on crop progress over the coming weeks.

When the kids were young, I built a trebuchet for us to play with. Before the invention of gunpowder, these machines were used to hurl boulders at the fortified walls of castles (the canon of its day). This one, made of solid white oak, is sized to throw a baseball-sized object from ~50 to 500 feet. It uses standard barbell weights (not shown) as the counterweights. The weights are secured to two thick dowels with quick-release clamps. The size of the weights can be adjusted to achieve the desired range and the release angle of the sling hook can be adjusted to optimize trajectory. The design features a safety latch to prevent accidental triggering while loading and wheels allow for easy mobility also serve to neutralize recoil when firing. Lateral supports provide excellent stability and can be removed for transportation.

Sadly, this trebuchet is now for sale on Craig’s List and I hope it will find another family that will both enjoy using it and appreciates the craftsmanship that went into it.

UPDATE: The trebuchet sold in less than 4 hours and will be enjoyed by a North Shore family.

When Maya needed a place to store her tiny house, one of her friends offered to let her keep it on their property. Now she is returning the favor by looking after their animals while the family is away. Under her charge are three cats, 1 rabbit, dozens of chickens, a turtle, a large corn snake, 2 goats, and several fish to name the ones I can remember from the tour she gave Jeanine and me this evening. The food for the rabbit and turtle comes straight from the garden and Maya drops off fresh eggs for us each morning. What would be work to anyone else is pure joy for Maya.