And they said it would never happen...

On the day after my 33rd birthday, I agreed to a job offer with for a R&D Engineer with a medical equipment company. Despite all my best efforts, I'm actually going to have a real job. I start after Thanksgiving.

CMB Likes Chocolate Cake

Continuing my theme of more cmb and less me, here he is at his birthday party.

All Hallows' Eve

Technically, this is c's 2nd Halloween, but this is the first time we could dress him up and go trick or treating. So we drove out to the suburbs and met one of j's attendings to go down a block with about 10 kids between 1 and 4 years old. Needless to say, c makes an extremely cute giraffe.

You say it's your birthday...

Wow, I can't believe it has been a year already. c keeps growing like a weed. He's now 30 inches long (50th percentile, which is good for any child of mine) and 25 lbs (75 percentile). And now he's starting to walk, it's really cute.

c turned 1 last week. Rather than throw something here in Memphis, we decided to go up to Louisville to celebrate with the whole family (luckily my brother e's family came down from Chicago) and some friends. We were able to make it a dual celebration with c's cousin n.

c seemed overwhelmed (and confused) with the presents, but since we've gotten home he's taken to them quite well. But he certainly enjoyed the chocolate cake and all the other kids that were around (6 cousins plus the 2 daughters of our friends, since my family is intrigued that babies come in female form).

Enjoy the pics:

The Bucket...

So about a week ago, we made it in to Louisville for some fun, celebration, and a little bit of business. One of things we were able to do is catch the UL Red-White scrimmage in the new fancy downtown arena (officially dubbed the 'KFC Yum! Center', but will heretofore be referred to as 'The Bucket').

My parents, eldest brother's family, and our family all went and while the play was sloppy and didn't mean anything, it was fun to get in the mood for basketball. This was also c's first basketball game (having now become a fixture at baseball and football venues we have visited during his first year).




The arena was impressive. We did a lap along the lower level, with the East side providing an all glass view of the surrounding downtown, the North side had a balcony overlooking I64 and the river, and the West side had a fairly blank wall. 2 out of 3 ain't bad. (The Southside was the main entrance which looked to be quite well done).

The seating that we had was in the lower level corner, about 20 rows up, provided nice site lines and a decent view of the arena signs and jumbotrons. Things I noticed: (1) no banners for the previous championships or Final Four seasons, (2) some complained that the white-on-red stat jumbotron was hard to read since there wasn't enough contrast (my problem with it was that the had the teams reversed on the stat boards than they were on the scoreboard), (3) there was obviously an attempt to maximize luxury seating (2 rows of suites, club boxes in the endzones, etc...), and (4) those seats at the top of the upper level look pretty high up.

Still, the arena is impressive, even if I suspect that paying for the arena will be a continued problem in the upcoming years (just not enough home games for the primary tenant of UL Men's BB, and the women's team doesn't play Tennessee and UConn every week).

Back to the back of the line...

Another town, another effort to show I can officiate football.

I am entering my 8th season officiating football. Unfortunately, it is in my 4th city, and each time I move, I have to start the process all over again of establishing my abilities on the field. This time is a little more frustrating because if I had stayed in Philly, I was in line to make a college crew (The picture above is from a Div III NCAA game I worked last season). Now I'm just trying to get on a supplemental list for next season. I understood that this would happen, you can't move into a new area and get plum assignments, nobody knows you or what you can do. So I've been working many scrimmages, working positions that I haven't worked in years, just trying to show people that I know what I'm doing, even if I'm trying to do it from the LJ position (I haven't worked wings since moving to Philly).

Bike Ride

Before we moved from Philly, a neighbor gave us a child bike seat that they said they weren't going to use. Before we moved to Memphis, I mounted it on my bike (regretfully I had to get rid of the milk carton basket that was on the back of my bike) and thought that it would be nice to try it out once we settled in. Little did I know that the weather in Memphis would not cooperate with record heat, and we really haven't left the apartment much to walk down the street, let alone ride a bike.

So today, a cold front was approaching, so we tried it out. CMB was rather nonchalant about the entire ordeal. He wasn't excited to be riding, but he wasn't upset. We might ride to the zoo tomorrow, we'll see how we're feeling. Anyway, here he is with his new cool helmet...

License to Kill

Well, in the spirit of the possible demise of Mr Bond. I was going to bring up my own double-0 status.


This is my ID from Penn. Aside from many of the other names, numbers, and identifiers, is the number "00" which represents the number of duplicates you had to make. In my case, 00, means that I never had to make a duplicate (or I lost a hundred, I guess). So for 5 years, I was able to hold on to the same ID (I saw at least one individual with double digits), and in the end I was declaring this my 'double-0 status,' which gave me the license to kill. Which I took advantage of by shouting new lab members with my fully automatic Nerf dart gun...

Staying in shape

Trying to stay in shape is hard with a baby and the fact that it's always over 100 degrees outside. So, I've had to improvise by lifting things around the house...

The word of the day is: HOT

So we have pretty much moved in here in Memphis. It's been tough, trying to cram all of our junk into a smaller 2 BR apartment, but I'm hoping it will help prevent us from hoarding so much crap in the future. And maybe, I'll actually throw out some things we don't need. On the plus side, our new kitchen is really open to the Family Room/Dining Area, so I was finally able to hang my pot rack again. That helped open up more space in the cabinets, and I love the aesthetics of a pot rack.

It has been crazy hot since we've moved into Memphis (it might be normal for them). I think that every day that we've been here, the temperature has been well into the 90s with a heat index in the 105-113 range. So we've mostly stayed in air conditioned areas or by hanging out in the pool, which we've taken CMB to almost everyday that we've been in town. The good thing is, we've gone enough that he is not afraid of the water. The bad thing is, he's not afraid of the water. We believe that he thinks he can swim. But as long as we're with him, he has a blast.

After hunting through some of storage, we have now accounted for all of CMB's toys, which he likes to bury himself in...

Update

Update for anyone that cares.

1. I defended my thesis about a month ago. Passed, so now I guess I have a PhD (I guess officially it will be at the end of the summer semester in August for me to get the diploma). It went well, a lot of nervous energy followed by me trying to clean up 5 years of junk in my lab. Now I guess I need to find a job...

2. j has her boards tomorrow. She's been studying like mad, while I've been trying not to bother her.

3. j, cmb, and I are moving to Memphis is a couple weeks. j starts her fellowhip in August. I have been floating my resume/cv around looking for a job, but nothing yet. Until then, cmb and I will be hanging out.

4. Speaking of young cmb, apparently he likes saag paneer.



He's already a less picky eater than I am.

PS with nothing else to do, I hope to post more often in the coming weeks.

Baby Laughter

CMB has discovered the cat, and he thinks he's hysterical.



Sorry about the heavy mouth-breathing, I'm trying not to laugh myself.