Jeanine was treated to a fine dinner prepared by Kyle and Nico who spent the evening catching up with Mom. Maya was in crunch mode at school with just one week left to graduation. The meal included lamb chops, a greek salad, and asparagus.

I spent the earlier part of the day readying the River House for demolition. I wisely chose to give my knee and ankle another week to recover before returning to the soccer pitch. My team managed a 2-1 win which made me feel better about my absence.

I spent the bulk of the day working with Kyle on his renovation project. Today we concentrated on framing and electrical rewiring. Our most visible accomplishment was the mounting of his heat pump condensing unit on the side of his house. We located the unit to cover the holes left where we removed the fill pipe and vent for his old fuel oil tank. Those holes will be repurposed to carry refrigerant and electrical power respectively.

An aspect of my visit to the Lazy Q Ranch yesterday that I failed to mention, was the fact that we spent an hour at a dead standstill on the highway to La Grange. A serious accident occurred less than 2 minutes in front of us that required a medical airlift. At first, I thought we were unlucky to have not started our journey a few minutes earlier. The more that I thought about it, however, I realized we were very lucky to have left exactly when we did. When traffic started moving again, I could see only one car off the road. Presumably, another was also involved and had been moved to the shoulder.

I spent the day in La Grange, Texas at the Lazy Q Ranch, a 2,200-acre state-of-the-art training facility for power line workers. Here, one of my clients has constructed a test facility for their robot which helically wraps fiber optic cable around power lines. A series of non-energized power lines near ground level (~8ft) are strung between shortened power poles. This allows testers to closely observe the robot as it crawls along the cable and over and under the insulators at each pole. Seeing the robot, pictured behind me, in person was extremely valuable. Although I had seen many videos and CAD files of the design, I still found myself completely surprised by some of the features I discovered and behaviors I witnessed. Fireproof clothing and hard hats are required while in the test area.

Another flight, another kidney stone. This makes four stones in five flights. I flew from Boston to Austin, TX today for a business meeting tomorrow. For reasons, I have yet to figure out, flying seems to initiate the passage of kidney stones in my body. This one measured just over 3mm. My current working theory is that this phenomenon is due to the reduced air pressure that exists in an airplane cabin.

Maya shared her core workout with us. Looks pretty brutal. I was very inspired and initiated my own core workout.

Over the weekend, students at Olin College enjoyed Soirée. Conceived of and orchestrated by Maya it was a formal gathering to celebrate the approaching end of the scholastic year featuring food prepared by students, art created by students, and music created by students. Based on Maya’s description of the event, it will likely go down as the premier social event of the year and I would not be surprised if it will become a tradition going forward. From the food to the art to the decorations and live music it was an elegant affair. Although it was a massive undertaking, Maya put her skills as a project manager to work, enlisting broad student participation and effectively delegating work when necessary. As is the Olin way, many students volunteered to help and when last-minute problems surfaced, the team found ways to overcome the challenges.

Making the celebration even more special for Maya, she was joined by her childhood friends Sarinnagh and Fiona.

This season, I am playing soccer for the Boston Villa Football Club instead of Concord United. The team was formed last year and the players represent all the countries whose flags are shown above. Since I am half Ecuadorian, I should petition for the addition of another one. I enjoy the diversity of my teammates but with it comes a distinct lack of unified leadership. Management of the squad is more of a committee affair and is as fractious as one might imagine. Even so, the team has many talented players and we secured another win this morning beating Hopkinton by a score of 3-1. In stark contrast to my performance last week, I played like shit. I had two opportunities to score and squandered them both. I had a nice diving header but it was not strong enough to beat the keeper. I made several poor passes resulting in interceptions. To add injury to insult, I rolled my ankle and strained my patellar tendon. I will likely miss a game or two while recovering and can only hope my next appearance on the pitch is less stinky.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, let’s see. We have boxes that have markings for fragile contents and this side up. Apparently, these symbols are of little significance to delivery people. This morning we received a shipment of 8 dining room chairs that Jeanine and I picked out while visiting Minnesota. Fortunately, they arrived unscathed despite the improper handling. They are destined for the River House but we decided to purchase them right away concerned that we might not be able to get them later on. They will work nicely in the Road House until then.

Earlier this week, I proposed an idea to one of my new clients for a lower costs wireless electric vehicle charging solution. It is not practical for a number of reasons but, as is often the case, has led me to an even better idea that I will propose when I meet with them again next week.

Between meetings with clients, I spent some time adding color and framing details to the River House model I built last week. I find it much easier to visualize the final house with these added details. As a result of the exercise, we will be making some very minor adjustments to the window placements. The solid black areas represent portions of the siding that will be vertically oriented in contrast to the horizontal orientation used elsewhere on the house. These “panels” also represent an architectural nod to the original home design as seen below.

Since the beginning of our River House project, Jeanine has wanted to have a place to feature “found objects” from nature as you enter the home. For months, we have had a placeholder in the floor plans for such a feature but had no concrete concept of what form it would take. Today, I proposed the idea of a wall with illuminated niches and it resonated with both of us. Even better, the location of the wall in the entryway simplified the structural support of the roof in that area and eliminated the need for a steel beam. Illustrated above is one concept of dozens we found when searching for art niche walls. With agreement on this feature, I believe the floor plans are now officially done. Subtle refinement of the window sizes and placement are all that remains to be finalized.

This evening, I was invited to a company team dinner by one of my clients. It is a small startup on the verge of launching its first product. The dinner was the first non-virtual gathering of the entire team. After making a big deal about the importance of taking photos of the early days, I proceeded to take the worst team photo of my life. No amount of post-processing can make up for an out-of-focus image or poor composition. Earlier in the day, I had been working on a project that required me to switch my lens into manual focus mode and I failed to switch it back to autofocus. As luck would have it, the focus distance was close enough that I did not notice the problem when I checked the photograph in my viewfinder after taking it. When viewed at full resolution on my computer monitor, however, the missed focus was apparent. Making matters worse, the composition is all wrong. I should have intervened and asked the larger men to stand in the back row and added a third chair to the front row for the smaller individuals. Fortunately, the dinner and conversation were most enjoyable and my epic fail has seared the lessons learned into my brain. (1) Don’t rush: check all camera AND LENS settings, (2) Zoom in to check focus on all faces, and (3) Take charge of composition, even with people you do not know well.

Today, I got to preview an 8-minute video created by Grammy and Academy Award-nominated film producer Geoff McClean of Nico and the US Amputee Soccer team while at the World Cup Qualifier in Mexico. It is absolutely amazing. Geoff would like to make a film about the team’s journey to the World Cup and will use a version of this video to pitch the project to NetFlix executives. Some of the captured dialog quality was less than ideal and Geoff asked Nico to re-record the audio for those segments. To that end, I fashioned a make-shift recording studio in the River House using moving blankets suspended from the ceiling. The acoustics proved to be excellent and the resulting audio clips turned out very well. We are keeping our fingers crossed hoping the project will get greenlit. Stay tuned.