Each of the teams attending the Amputee Soccer World Qualifier tournament in Mexico has been asked to prepare a short video to be played during the opening ceremony. Nicolai was appointed by the team to create the USA submission. Each spokesperson needed to respond to four questions submitted by the organizing committee. We shot the content in about an hour and I spent several more finishing the edits. It is not a work of art, but it meets the criteria and will be delivered in time for the deadline tonight.

Jeanine and Susan, her sister visiting from Vermont, went into Boston this evening to attend an Orchid Exhibition at the Tower Hill Botanical Garden. This year, the annual event featured 1,400 orchids and the theme was Prismatic. “Prisms capture light, which depending on the type of prism, separate visible light into spectral colors, as you see in rainbows. Plants, including orchids, utilize the energy of light for photosynthesis, which helps create the beautiful blooms.” I had originally planned to join them but got tied up at Kyle’s house. He and I spent the day replacing most of the water lines and some of the drains in his house. When it was time to leave for the show, we had not yet restored water service to the house and I did not feel comfortable leaving until we did. The photo above is one of many that Jeanine took at the show.

Maya shared this photo of the assembly line used to prepare enough grilled cheese sandwiches to feed a small army. For reasons that are still unclear to me even after a full explanation, these and about a hundred more were passed out by Maya and her floormates at an Olin party.

Nicolai shared some photos of his trip to Los Angeles last week. He traveled there to attend training with select members of the USA National Amputee Soccer Team in preparation for the World Cup Qualifiers to be held in Mexico later this month. The camp focused on “finishing” (make sure the ball finds its way to the back of the net) and was extremely valuable according to Nico. I will be joining the team for the five-day tournament to be held in San Juan de Los Lagos and will tack on a few days of vacation at the end in Puerto Vallarta.

Last year we secured permission from the Concord Natural Resource Commission to remove trees that posed a threat to the River House. Today, that work was performed starting with a massive oak tree at least 100 feet tall. At some point, the tree had been struck by lightning; probably the same bolt that hit the house. I found evidence of fire damage to the framing of the house on the corner adjacent to the tree while doing deconstruction. According to the arborist we hired, this tree, in particular, posed an imminent and serious threat due to its size, weight, and the direction it was leaning. The tree service we hired for the work was amazing. Pictured above is a worker being lowered into the top of the tree. After formulating a plan of attack, he secured the upper section of the tree to the crane, rappelled down a bit to cut off that section, and then rappelled all the way to the ground. The crane then lifted the top section up and over the house and placed it in the driveway where other workers fed it into a giant chipper. Clearing this treetop made way for the second tree, a pine which they took all at once. The bottom section of the oak was taken in two sections, each weighing about 5 tons each. I used the drone to take videos of the whole operation.

One of my clients has me architecting a polypeptide printer capable of running 100 times faster than their current machine. I am quite pleased with the current state of the design and we are ready to start early prototyping. The design makes extensive use of peristaltic pumps. Close to 1000 in a fully configured machine. Pictured above is such a pump that arrived today along with the stepper motor controller used to drive it. I am looking forward to putting this little fellow through its paces. It may take a little longer than planned as the controller arrived with no documentation and the printed circuit board is labeled in Chinese characters.

Kyle nearly had a heart attack when his Robinhood app reported that his cryptocurrency investment dropped by $43,000 in 1 minute. Fortunately, it turned out to be a quickly resolved technical glitch rather than the Russian cyberattack he was starting to imagine.

Last week I had my annual eye exam which was very uplifting. Apparently, my eyes are the only parts of my body that are improving with age. The severity of my astigmatism has been decreasing over the last couple of years. Given how bad they were to start, that is not saying much. Nevertheless, I will take the win. Suspecting that my prescription had changed, I have been waiting for over 6 months to replace my glasses which are in a sad state of affairs. When I was working at Digital Alloys, I did some metal grinding and the red hot grinding dust hit the surface of my glasses (better the lenses than my eyeballs). This caused the coating on the lenses to begin deteriorating and the result is what you see above. Two weeks ago the nose bridge broke free of one of the lenses and I made a crude repair with a combination of cyanoacrylate glue and epoxy. Today, in a final attempt to cause me grief, one of the nose pads broke off. Fortunately, my new frames and lenses are due to arrive mid-next week.

When we started out to design our new River House, we asked the kids for their input. One of the requests was for a secret door somewhere. I believe this may have come from Maya. I am happy to report that we have found the perfect place and today I worked out the implementation details (which are anything but straightforward.) From the outside of my office, the entrance will appear as a built-in bookcase.

When you wish to gain entrance, the bookcase will pivot like a door all the way to the inside wall of the office where it will mate up with a matching bookcase on the inside.

In practice, the “door” will remain open almost all of the time. When we have guests or when I have teleconference meetings, it will be closed. I have not yet decided whether to motorize the opening and closing. I am leaning towards manual operation so I do not have to deal with an override to handle a power outage.

Meet Charley who celebrated her second birthday this week. She is the daughter of Jeanine’s niece, Erica. We are both looking forward to meeting her in person now that travel feels like it may be returning to normal.

At Jeanine’s request, and with the help of Maya and Lauren who were here last night, I installed this wall mural in Jeanine’s office. I took this photo while on a hike with Jeanine in the Swiss Alps. Of all the photos that Jeanine reviewed this one worked really well because of how the roof lines in the photo match the roof lines in the room. I was extremely amazed at the printed resolution. You can see a single water droplet falling from the cantilevered gutter. The mural arrived in three panels. Hanging the first one alone was something of a challenge and I was wise to wait for help with the second two where alignment was even more critical. Jeanine is very pleased with the result as is the photographer.

For the past few weeks, family dinners have shifted from the weekend to Tuesdays. Today, Nico is in Los Angeles practicing with the US National Amputee team in preparation for next month’s World Cup Qualifiers and Kyle was busy with work. Fortunately, Maya invited her friends Fiona and Lauren, and Jeanine invited our good friend Eliza. We had a great meal and watched a few family videos featuring Fiona and Maya.

One of my new clients is currently based out of One Kendal Square in Cambridge. I had a meeting there this afternoon and made this photo looking straight up while inside the atrium.

While on a walk today, I took this photograph of a bird’s nest with my camera. If you study the photo carefully, you will discover at least two things that do not make sense. If you can figure out these two mysteries, you will know how I made this undoctored image.