This evening we celebrated Maya’s 13th birthday as a family (the official day is actually tomorrow). It is hard to believe we now have three teenagers although this will only be true for a few more weeks until Kyle turns 20. Jeanine recreated an award-winning cake she had baked when she was 13. Jeanine and I gave her the latest model iPad for a present. Her stellar academic performance this year made it east to justify the bigger than usual birthday gift. Her brothers have offered to take her shopping to find a suitable cover/case. Cousin John Quinn joined us for the celebration.

My children are quick to observe that it is hard to buy presents for me and yet my perfect Father’s Day gift rarely takes the form of an object. My request this year was for a meal prepared by all three kids to be consumed while watching a Euro 2012 soccer match as a family. I requested Caprese salad for an appetizer, Cobb salad for an entree and strawberry shortcake for dessert. The sounds of the children working collaboratively in the kitchen to fashion their master pieces was as enjoyable as the delicious meal. I am not one to watch sports on television but must admit that I have been glued to the the Euro 2012 matches this week. My own game this morning produced a 3-0 win and advances our team to the Divisional finals to be played next weekend. I had a very nice assist on our first goal before suffering a mild concussion late in the first half. I went up for a header and came down with a large knot over my right eye. I felt rather nauseous but continued to play until we scored our second goal. At that point I wisely elected to sit out for the remainder of the game to give my noggin a rest.

During the early afternoon we had a rare visit from both of Jeanine’s sisters as the entire group returned from their week long stay on Martha’s Vineyard where they had celebrated Susan’s 60th birthday in style.

A Father’s Day posting would not be complete without a picture of the father, this one courtesy of Maya was angled to minimize the appearance of the bump over my eye.

Occasionally it is nice to spend the day with no specific plan in mind. I retrieved Maya from a sleep over and she assisted Nicolai as they prepared chocolate chip pancakes from scratch. I posted several items for sale on Craig’s List and generally organized my study, workshop, and camera equipment storage areas. Another several hours went into tagging my photo collection (a process which will take several months to complete but will allow me to find specific photos very quickly). As the day came to a close I found myself in the garden looking for some nice photos for the day.

Kyle has completed his freshman year at Santa Clara University and returned to Concord this morning for the summer. We are extremely pleased with his academic performance and he appears to be very happy with his choice of schools. His studies have proved very useful as he continues to develop his business. Yard Dogs is now a LLC (Limited Liability Corporation), duly incorporated in the state of Massachusetts. Pictured here is the raised seal which bears witness to the legal status of his company. He slept for most of the day catching up on sleep lost while studying for finals. Late in the afternoon, he enjoyed catching up with his siblings and me while watching a very exciting UEFOA Euro 2012 soccer match between England and Sweden. We ended the day with a boy’s night out at Paparazzi while Maya spent the night at a sleepover. Kyle offered sage advice to his brother about the best approach to picking a college.

Hard to say which girl is cuter. The pair are certainly hard to match. Although I find Nala lacking in virtually all desirable canine attributes she still manages to elicit great adoration from the women in this family. Admittedly she does make for a nice photo prop and therefore I am willing to dismiss her otherwise annoying feline characteristics.

As a result of his contract with SideStix, Nico will be featured in the company’s marketing campaigns. We received an advanced copy of this advertisement which will begin appearing next month in selected magazines. In theory, I can now add commercial photographer to my resume as well. Nico is very excited about his new role with SideStix and is looking forward to getting through his finals so that we can start working on a new video to promote the company’s crutches.

I spent my second day on the campus of Babson College at their Executive Center attending a strategy planning session for iRobot’s Home Business Unit. After our session ended I drove around campus hoping I might bump into my nephew who is attending school here. No such luck but I did enjoy my tour despite having turned my ankle at a 6 am soccer practice this morning. Hopefully, it will heal in time for our playoff match this weekend.

This evening I attended a presentation of the Peabody Middle School Drama Class of which Maya is a member. This term’s assignment was to create a short video project. Students worked in small groups starting with a storyboard, followed by shooting, and finally editing their masterpieces. Maya’s group of three created a movie trailer for a horror film. It was the final project to be shown (a position reserved for what I will proudly assert was the standout project of the class). I am working to obtain a link to the video and hope to embed it on this page in the near future.

Meanwhile, Jeanine reported in from her vacation on Martha’s Vineyard where she is spending the week with her sisters and a few friends to celebrate Susan’s 60th birthday.

My soccer season also ended this weekend. We won decisively, 4-0 over Lexington to complete an undefeated season and promotion to Division 1 in the fall. I scored the final goal of the match on a break away, beating the sweeper with a nice cross-over move and slotted a strong left footed shot past the advancing keeper to the lower left hand corner of the goal. Our over fifty league has 5 divisions, each with a North and South section. The top two teams in each section will compete next weekend for the right to advance to the Division Finals the following weekend. I have fully recovered from my hamstring injury but my conditioning is not where it needs to be, something I hope to address over the coming weeks.

Maya’s last soccer game of the season ended in a 1-2 loss to Natick and a good bit of controversy over an obviously missed offside call (flagged by the linesman, ignored by the referee). She had a great game (and season) contributing on both the front line and the back line. Over time, I see her migrating to a midfielder position given the play-making ability she shares with her brothers and her endurance. When it came time for a team photo I had nothing but my telephoto zoom (300-800mm) and had to improvise with this unusual perspective.

Maya’s turns 13 on the 19th of this month. This evening she celebrated her birthday with close friends, many of whom will not be able to join her on the actual day. Pictured here is the masterpiece cake she created to share with her guests. It is called a Zauber Torte (Golden Cage), a recipe she selected from the Cake Bible. The cage which hovers above the lemon poppy seed pound cake is made of caramel and garnished with crystallized violets (from our neighbor’s garden) and is a challenge for even the most experienced cooks. Maya did all the work save for the frosting and it was impossible to say whether it was more beautiful or delicious. During the party the girls had a scavenger hunt, played a game they invented called Freedom (two girl’s seek to capture the rest who are hidden throughout the house, once captured they are confined to base unless they are rescued by a teammate), and watched a comedy about a female bounty hunter.

I spent the night at the Wiley Inn and was up at 5 AM hunting for ocean scapes. On the advice of a colleague, I made my way to Magnolia where I found plenty of opportunities to keep me busy until breakfast. Another long but productive day during which our management team focused on the theme of doing less better. In the end there was pretty strong consensus on our priorities and I feel very comfortable with the decisions. I was back in Concord by 6 PM but too tired to attend soccer practice.

iRobot’s executive management team began a two day strategic planning retreat today at the Wiley Inn at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. I left two hours early for the one hour trip with the idea of getting in some photography before the 8AM start. Skies were overcast with intermittent heavy rain. I found myself in Rockport with a 15 minute window of perfect shooting conditions.

Twelve hours later I had an opportunity to shoot the Inn and signature fountain by twilight.

It was appropriate that Nicolai was dressed in business attire this morning (he has a mock court appearance today in his constitutional law class). He is pictured here signing an endorsement agreement that we have negotiated with SideStix, the maker of his forearm crutches. Nicolai is now an Ambassador for the company seeking to promote sales, provide marketing collateral materials (video and still photos), represent the company at tradeshows, and generally evangelize the product. It is hoped that his accomplishments on the soccer field for the American Amputee Soccer Association’s US National team will make SideStix the crutch of choice for serious athletes. In exchange for his endorsement, he has received a modest equity stake in the company and will receive a royalty stream on all SideStix sales. He joins his brother in owning part of a business before the age of majority. Nicolai is excited about his new role and I am confident he will help SideStix grow significantly.

With all the rain we have had this spring everything has bloomed with greater than usual magnificence. I spent a few minutes after work exploring our gardens and settled on this pair of beauties for today’s photo. Jeanine spent part of the weekend in Schenectady with my sisters Mayela and Alissa and my mother and her sister Maruja. They completed what turned out to be a very successful estate sale as we continued to prepare the home of our youth for sale. It looks like the house should be ready to list in a few more weeks.

We enjoyed the first corn of the season as Jeanine prepared a wonderful dinner on the grill. We were joined by my nephew, John Quinn, who spent most of the weekend with us. I was in action on the soccer pitch this morning and played very well as my team kept our perfect season intact with a 2-1 win.

At Nico’s request, I added some glow-in-the-dark tape to his crutches so that he could find them in the dark. We have passed the idea along to SideStix and hope they will include this feature on future crutches. Next, I plan to add some reflective tape to make the crutches highly visible to night-time drivers. These two improvements add almost no weight or cost but significantly improve the safety and convenience of the crutches.

An 11 AM return flight to Boston afforded me a few hours of photography this morning. The Fremont Troll, pictured above, is a mixed-media colossal statue, located on Troll Avenue, under the north end of the Aurora Bridge. It is clutching an actual Volkswagen Beetle, as if it had just swiped it from the roadway above. Locals are quick to point out that the VW bears a California license plate. Despite a late departure from SeaTac which nearly cost me my connection through Dallas, I arrived in Boston by 11 PM and was fast asleep in my bed, exhausted from the jam-packed 3-day excursion, by midnight.

iRobot is negotiating with the University of Washington to expand a technology license agreement. I am here to conduct technical due diligence (assessing risk and development cost). My meeting lasted all day and was quite productive. For dinner I was joined by good friends, Rob and Cindy Shurtleff as well as my mentee from the MIT Gordon Engineering Leadership program, Nora, and her fiance Simon. We enjoyed sharing tapas at the Terra Plata (earth to plate) organic restaurant in the Capitol Hill neighborhood (roughly equivalent to NYC’s Greenwich Village). It was truly a memorable evening and I was thrilled to introduce my friends to each other.

I left the house at 4 AM this morning for the airport. Today is a travel day to Seattle where I have business at the University of Washington tomorrow. I traded the ridiculously early flight for an early arrival in the Emerald City permitting some photography in the late afternoon. My first stop, pictured above is Snoqualmie Falls of Twin Peaks fame. I was not able to hike to the bottom due to construction but was lucky to catch them at peak flow. My next stop was Kerry Park which offers a classic view of the Seattle Space Needle and skyline. I was fortunate to catch a brief window without rain and a clear view of Mount Rainier some 60 miles in the distance.

My final stop was Seattle Center which is a treasure trove of photographic inspiration.

Boston has its Marathon… Pamplona has the bulls… New Orleans has Mardi Gras… San Francisco has the historic Bay to Breakers 12k run.

The 101-year old event is one of the world’s largest and oldest footraces, held annually in San Francisco. The name reflects the traditional course which takes tens of thousands of participants from the northeast end of the downtown area near The Embarcadero (the “bay” side of the city) to the west end of the city and the “breakers” of Ocean Beach. The 7.46 mile (12 kilometer) race features world-class athletes in addition to costumed runners and ‘fun-loving’ folks out for a great day of running and walking through San Francisco.

Kyle and a group of his college friends participated in this years event and he just sent us this photo. More than 30 years ago, while at Stanford, my college roommate and I also ran in the race. I am glad Kyle embraced the spirit of the spectacle by wearing what appears to be a monkey hat. My conventional track suit stuck out like a sore thumb in a field which included a 100 person centipede and several naked runners. Only in California.

Our peonies and azaleas are in full bloom right now, thanks to the efforts of the local bees, which pollinate them. It took some time before I was able to capture one of these flying wonders in focus. To my eye, they appear quite drunk as they migrate from flower to flower, covered in pollen.

Less than 15 minutes from Ferry Beach I never fail to visit the Scarborough Marsh, Maine’s largest salt water marsh. It is a wonderful bird sanctuary and one of my favorite photographic subjects in this neck of the woods.

My team’s soccer match against Hudson this morning proved to be an epic battle. We secured an early goal and defended vigorously until the final minutes when we put the match out of reach with a second goal. This victory gives us a first place finish in Division 2 and guarantees promotion to Division 1 in the fall. I took great caution (jets dialed down to 95%) to keep from re-injuring my hamstring and saw a lot of action. I had a nice midfield run beating a couple of defenders to set up our final goal.

I spent the balance of the day configuring a new computer which is blissfully faster than my last one. As image sizes continue to increase and my photo library expands this upgrade was more of a necessity than a luxury.

Ferry Beach means different things to each member of our family. Jeanine enjoys biking, socializing on the porch or beach, and playing games in the evening. Up until two years ago her favorite activity was preparing meals for the camp in its industrial strength kitchen. This is now handled by the camp staff and I know she still misses the opportunity to cook with big pots. Maya enjoys the talent show, running in and out of the waves on the beach, playing “nukem” (an odd variant of volleyball) and being reunited with her twin, Maia (pronounced Maya) Rose Pedula, pictured here in the first portrait. The girls share first and middle names and are like peas in a pod. Nicolai enjoys hanging out with the other teenagers in his peer group and is always the first to initiate a serious game of volleyball or to compete in the croquet tournament. Kyle always enjoyed Ferry Beach and we really miss not having him with us this year.

I usually bring my kayak but this year with only one day to spend at camp I focused on my other passion, photographing all the kids. Pictured here are some of my favorites from this year. The complete album can be viewed at this link.

I need to return to Concord this evening for a pivotal soccer match tomorrow morning against Hudson. A win will guarantee our team promotion to Division 1 and I want to ensure a restful night’s sleep before the match. I was awakened at 4am this morning by Maya’s snoring and was not able to fall back to sleep after I got up to rotate her off her back.

Memorial Day weekend is synonymous with Ferry Beach for the Calabria’s. Each year we travel to Maine for a Unitarian Universalist church retreat with members of Concord’s and Lexington’s First Parish congregations. My favorite iRobot benefit is a summer hours program allowing folks who have already worked 40 hours to take off at noon on Fridays. I used this option to get a head start on the two-hour drive avoiding the otherwise brutal traffic. After the sunset, I put a recently acquired camera through its paces as I photographed Maya and her friends playing with glow sticks in near-total darkness.

I watched this little fellow as he jumped from branch to branch munching away on the tiny blooms and buds of this tree. Not clear to me where all the food was going as every photo I took showed him with a beak full of food. Occasionally he would swoop down to the ground for a worm or grub. Unlike some of the other birds I have photographed, this guy is very easy to keep track of.

Nicolai recently began testing a new pair of crutches from SideStix with prototype grips. In the background, I have been negotiating with the co-founders on an agreement to formalize his relationship with the company. We are hopeful that this will result in a mutually advantageous arrangement for both the company and Nicolai. Details to follow if the deal comes to fruition. Nicolai has been a very effective ambassador for the company over the years and his field testing of their new products has led to design changes that have substantially improved the durability of the crutches.

Following our strategic offsite meeting yesterday, the iRobot board met today for the company’s annual shareholder meeting and a review of current operating results. I did a presentation covering the recent restructuring of the engineering organization which went very well. For a second night in a row, I was invited to join the board for dinner, this time as they celebrated the service of one of the company’s co-founders and former Chairman, Helen Greiner. Helen had just returned from Peru and had hiked the Inca trail. We enjoyed comparing notes on the climb and I learned that we also shared Kilimanjaro and the Kalalau trails in common. I enjoyed hearing stories from the early years of iRobot and getting to know members of the board better. Colin Angle, our current CEO, presented Helen with photos of two pedestal-mounted robots she had helped to develop. The installations were too massive to transport to the restaurant and will be delivered later. All in all a very enjoyable evening.

Each year the iRobot Board of Directors and senior management participate in a day-long off-site strategy planning session. Today we listened to briefs by the former President of Bose and a colleague regarding their entry into the Chinese market, a professor at the University of New Hampshire on the cultural underpinnings of intellectual property theft in China, and President Obama’s Cyber Security Czar on threats in a networked digital age. We also heard from a board member on trends in consumer spending in the current economic environment and finally a look at defense spending projections. Following these presentations, we worked in small teams to formulate major strategic themes for iRobot for the next 3-5 years. Afterwards, a large subset of the participants shared dinner together and I enjoyed getting to know many of them better.

After three weeks off the pitch I tested my hamstring this morning in our match against Sudbury. When we had established a nice lead I went on in short shifts and was careful to avoid any full tilt sprints. It was great to get some touches on the ball and to rebuild my endurance. I had a nice intercept and assist on our final goal but more importantly did not re-injure my hamstring. We easily won by a margin of 6-0 keeping our undefeated record in tact. Nicolai and I worked together to repair the bumper on the Smart Car during the afternoon. He failed to slow down sufficiently for a speed bump at school and tore off the bumper and the undercarriage splash guard. When he learned that the repair would cost $1600 by the dealer he was all to happy to assist me as we did the work ourselves. He will still have to purchase a few parts to complete the repairs but it is unlikely the total bill will exceed $100. Later in the day Jeanine alerted me to the presence of a snake that she encountered on her walk around the neighborhood. I was all too happy to go after it with my camera.

After a week of what seemed like constant rain, the weekend is off to a spectacular start with high temperatures in the forecast for tomorrow. Perfect weather for harvesting hay. A local farmer comes a couple of times per year to cut and bale the grass that grows in the field behind our house. Jeanine and I watched Maya’s soccer match in the morning, had lunch with her at Helen’s after the game, and enjoyed a nature walk on the Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary grounds late in the afternoon, where love was in the air.