I found these pictures on Nico’s Instagram account. He recently started training with CrossFit (“constantly varied functional movement at high intensity”) and competed in his first CrossFit Games, placing 69th worldwide in the Open Division.  I am fairly certain he is lifting more weight than I ever could. My dad was an accomplished weightlifter as a young man and would have been so happy to see his grandson performing at this level.

My nephew, Rory, just arrived in Tuscany, Italy where he will be working on an organic farm for the next 3 months. It specializes in producing Parmesan cheese from its cows.

WWOOF is a worldwide effort to link visitors with organic farmers, promote an educational exchange, and build a global community conscious of ecological farming practices. Visitors, or ‘WWOOFers’, share in daily life with their host and learn about organic agriculture while spending about half of each day helping out on a farm.

HVAC work began on the River House today. Many of the needed ducts were assembled and insulated in preparation for placement in the joist bays. Supply register openings were cut through the subfloor in locations that were a necessary compromise between the ideal placement and clearance from floor joists and obstructions below. Based on the pace of work and the size of the team, I suspect the work will be finished rather quickly. I am now on deck for the installation of the ventilation system which I hope to tackle over the weekend if not sooner.

We will be using closed-cell foam for the insulation on the River House. Originally we planned on using 2″ of closed-cell foam with 5.5″ of mineral wool batts. Next, we opted for blown-in cellulose in lieu of mineral wool. Then we switched to open-cell foam over the closed-cell base. Finally, we have decided to use 100% closed-cell foam applied to a thickness of 5 to 5.5 inches yielding an R-value of 40 for the exterior walls. Today, the insulation crew treated areas of the exterior walls that will be difficult to access once all the mechanical systems are installed. This included the vertical chase behind the stairwell and the rim board joists between the basement and first floor. In addition to having the highest R-value/inch of any product on the market, closed cell foam adds a ridiculous amount of strength to the wall structure. It was necessary to heat the interior of the house with propane heaters to ensure proper curing of the foam which went in beautifully and I am very pleased with the results. The green circles are from the openings I cut in the sheathing for the ERV vents. They are taped to the pipes I installed to keep heat in and birds out until the vent caps are installed.

On Monday, we will have selected portions of the River House sprayed with closed-cell foam, the insulation product we will be using throughout. The areas that will be addressed are ones that will become impossible to reach later as more and more of the mechanical infrastructure is put in place (ducts, pipes, vents). Two such vents which I added to the house today are for the ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilator) which is a critical component of a tightly sealed house. It is responsible for continuously bringing fresh air in to replace an equal amount of stale air. The intake and exhaust vents each require a 10-inch pipe placed through the siding of the house. The pipes need to be installed with an exact amount of protrusion from the siding to facilitate the later installation of a vent cap. This is the sort of task that is very difficult to do precisely when working alone but led me to a very clever idea for simplifying the task. I measured and marked the distance from the back face of the sheathing to the end of the tube. I then installed four pop-rivets and left their tails in tact. This gave me four bearing points to register the depth of the tube in the siding while I anchored it in place with screws.

Maya will be dogsitting for a colleague next week. Apparently, she charges by the pound.

Jeanine flew to Minnesota today so that she could attend the opening night performance of our niece, Rose, in her school’s production of the Lion King. As do all of my brother’s children, she has a beautiful singing voice and played the role of Simba. My brother also had a hand in the production and is said to have constructed the “gorge” scene but I have yet to see any photographic evidence to support this claim.

Jeanine has joined the Board of Directors of Minuteman Arc. The non-profit seeks to improve the lives of children and adults with disabilities by increasing lifelong independence, personal choice, and self-advocacy.

She was recruited for the role when she announced her departure from OpenTable but wanted to give herself some time to decompress before accepting the position.

Minute Man Arc offers a variety of programs and services in three main areas: Early Intervention, Pediatric Services, and Adult Services. Their programs focus on integrating service delivery into local communities, organizations, and employment sources. The agency is committed to “valued inclusion in the community” and makes this happen by creating and nurturing a diverse array of partnerships with community groups, neighbors, state agencies, and other funding sources.

I have been ordering many of the long lead items that will be needed to complete the River House construction. Items are arriving almost daily at the Road House where I have learned to unpack and inspect each one even if the packaging looks fine. Today, one of the medicine cabinets that will go into the main bedroom arrived via FedEx. The outer box showed no signs of trauma. The interior packing was very robust and also intact. Despite this, when I removed the cabinet, I discovered one corner of the frame and mirror were damaged. I am glad I caught this now rather than in mid-summer when this cabinet would have been installed. Still, I am not looking forward to the replacement process which generally involves a lot of finger-pointing and paperwork.

Of all the choices we have had to make for the River House, none have been more difficult and time-consuming than those related to the siding; materials, colors, and patterns. We received the rendering above from our architect today which illustrates the patterns we will use. The horizontal boards will be used between vertically aligned windows and extend from the foundation to the roof line in between black trim boards. The vertical boards will cover the remainder of the house and be of variable width in either a shiplap or open joint profile. As much as we both love wood, we ruled this out as a material early on because of the ongoing need for maintenance. Leading candidates for the vertical boards are Boral Tru Exterior (principally made from fly ash) and Modern Mill Acre (principally made from rice hulls). The horizontal boards will be either Resysta (rice hull) or metal. We have developed a provisional color pallet, not the one shown here, but that is still in a bit of flux. We need to nail down all of the final choices this week if we are to stay on schedule.

Jeanine and I drove into Somerville this evening to have dinner with Maya at the Bow Market, a short walk from her apartment. She appears to have fully recovered from her bout of mononucleosis that left her totally incapacitated for the last week. Kyle is visiting with friends in Padre Island, TX and Nicolai is in San Diego for an amputee soccer event so our family dinner was much smaller than usual. Earlier in the day, Jeanine and I met with our interior designer to review the tile design for the bathrooms, and are getting close to a final version. I subsequently spent several hours at the River House relocating 16 electrical boxes for the bathroom sconces and outlets so that these fixtures would be optimally aligned with the new tile plan.

Just found this video clip of Nico on the Instagram account of AdaptX Sports. The organization is committed to teaching fitness professionals how to address the unique needs of clients with intellectual and physical disabilities. It looks like they put Nico through quite an extensive fitness evaluation. I would be interested to see how his numbers compared to other professional athletes.

Joseph Smedley was a childhood friend of Nicolai’s when we lived in Indianapolis. He died in 2015 in what police ruled a suicide. His sister Vivianne has been on a crusade to have the case reopened convinced that foul play was involved. From what I know of the facts of the case, I am of the opinion that Joseph died at the hands of one or more members of the Sigma Pi fraternity. The note he left behind in his room, is all you need to study to reach this conclusion. It read: “Had to leave country. don’t try to contact me via cell it won’t works. will contact you once setup overseas. ~Smedley 9/28.” First, this is not a suicide note. It is a note written by someone who wanted to create a narrative where Joseph is nowhere to be found (his body was found in a local reservoir with a book and stone filled backpack strapped to his chest). Second, his sister does not believe it is in his handwriting and it appears to have been written by a left-handed person. Joseph was right-handed. Third, it was dated. Who dates a note like this. It was dated to establish a time line, probably to create an alibi for the perpetrator(s). Fourth, it was poorly written and sloppily scrawled. Joseph was very bright and had excellent penmanship. Fifth, Joseph did not have a passport nor the financial means to leave the country. All of this leads to one obvious conclusion. The note was written by the person(s) who were involved with his death. It was left in the apartment which he shared with fellow members of the Sigma Pi fraternity. He was last seen with members of Sigma Pi on the night of his disappearance. A text with a similar message was sent to his sister on the following morning. It was sent by someone who knew who Vivianne was to Joseph and had access to his phone (which was not found with the body or at his apartment). The coroner ruled the cause of death as drowning. A subsequent autopsy revealed hemorrhaging on Joseph’s back, suggesting to me that he drowned while being held underwater by one or more people who were kneeling on his back. His body was found in 3 feet of water with a pair of binoculars around his neck in addition to the weighted backpack strapped to his chest. There is no way this was a suicide.

I believe Joseph’s death was not premeditated because the cover-up was so ill-conceived. I think the most likely scenario is that he was killed by one or more members of his fraternity either as part of a hazing that went tragically wrong or as the result of an altercation.

Please join me in signing a petition for the police to reopen this case. Details of the case can be found here.

We were joined today by Tom and Karen Metzold for a tour of the River House followed by lunch at Firorella’s Cucina. Tom was my wrestling partner in high school and is my oldest friend. Karen and I share the same birthday and have much more in common. The couple lives in Westwood and is just back from a skiing vacation in Colorado. They leave shortly for their home in Florida so we were fortunate that we could spend time with them today.