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).