And That is a Rutgers....First Down

Gavin loves football. This is a good thing because, as some of you may know, I do too. On the surface my new job appears to have nothing to do with football. But when you work for a public university amidst a surge in popularity resulting somewhat from the success of its football program, it takes on a more significant role in everyone's day-to-day activities. Particularly if your job function involves interacting with alumni as often as possible, and tens of thousands of them come to you for a home game.

I get to go to all the games. We have season tickets so I get to go anyway. But now it's actually part of my job. I took Gavin to the first game of the season and he had a blast. Ironically, his favorite part is the cannon. It gets fired after every RU score. For some reason he doesn't like it when the crowd cheers really loud, but he loves the cannon. His other favorite part is when there is an RU first down and the PA announcer shouts the title of this post. He gets pretty into it and says it along with the announcer. We also record the games on the TV at home. For the entire week all Gavin wants to watch on TV is the Rutgers game. He pretends to be Ray Rice and runs plays along with the team right in our living room. He also spends at least 30 minutes every evening playing football in the yard with whomever agrees to "be the yellow team". I can only hope this all works out well for us in the long run.

Separate from football the job also goes well. I am still getting my bearings and learning the ropes, but all in all I have avoided doing anything silly. The group I work with is only five people, so I am pretty comfortable with who they are and what they do And there are another handful of people whose names and functions I have figured out, but there is a long way to go. We have over 150 people in the three buildings on this campus and on two other campuses across the state. In some ways it's been easier for me to meet alumni than it has to meet my colleagues. But none of that was meant to sound negative so if it does chalk it up to bad writing.

I do miss some things about my old gig, but all in all I am thrilled with the decision to move. And I am looking forward to going back to some L'ville events as an alum, rather than an employee.

OBX

Our vacation to the Outer Banks was awesome.

Seriously, I am not sure there is any other way to describe it. Basically, it was precisely what the doctor ordered. The one down side, if there has to be one, is that The Boy almost needed that doctor. Gavin contracted some variety of stomach bug that effected him most severely at night, although it made him fairly irritable during the day as well. But it didn't have too negative an impact on things. Like I said, it was awesome.

My goal was to read, relax, and spend a lot of time in the sun. I was very fortunate to get to do all of those things.

Since I was technically between jobs I was actually able to leave my Blackberry in the bed side table for most of the week. Those of you who know me probably realize how difficult that was. That piece of equipment is practically attached to my hand under normal circumstances [since then the Blackberry has actually been retired as my new employers have forced me to adapt to a Treo; I miss my Blackberry].

I was also able to fly through the first three plus installments in the Harry Potter series. The first three went really fast: no more than a day and a half each. Then the fourth one (this is the one where they jump from 3-400 pages to 7-800 pages) became something of a road block [I have since finished the fourth and am now fighting through the fifth...there are seven. Don't even think about telling me how it ends].

The weather was incredible; the beach was 300 yards away; and the house had a pool. Every day was pretty similar in schedule: early morning run, beach, lunch, pool, beach, pool/happy hour, dinner, hot tub, sleep. If you think that sounds monotonous you're sorely mistaken. That schedule was precisely how I wanted the vacation to go down.

I came back relaxed, tan, and obsessed with a skinny, little wizard. I'm really hoping to pull off a similar vacation next summer.

Television Debut

Many of you probably remember the triathlon fundraiser for the T18 Foundation, and the article that appeared in our local paper the day before the race? Well one of the local news stations must have picked up the article and decided we might make an interesting story for their show.

On August 15 Erin, Molly, me, and Victoria Miller from the T18 Foundation, filmed an 11 minute segment for Perspectives: New Jersey, which aired on August 18 at 5:30 am. I understand it has replayed a few times since then, which is great because I'd bet Erin and I were two of only about a dozen people who caught the opening show [we actually prolonged the start of our vacation one hour to see it].

The host did a great job of asking the right questions. We talked mostly about Molly and the challenges she faces, as well as about the challenges facing all T18 diagnoses. The fundraiser was only the very last thing we discussed, which was nice because all the previous topics should be more useful to the general public. We're hoping we can get a video of the show to put on the T18 web site, and of course, on here as well.

I should not go without saying how impressed I was by my wife. She gets extremely anxious when she has to speak in public or do anything where she is the focus of attention. Well she totally nailed it. She was unbelieveable. On top of looking incredible on screen she managed to speak eloquently about the condition and our experiences. She was simultaneously honest and knowledgeable. And she totally stole the show.

Of course Molly did quite well herself.

You Mean He's Still Around?

Yes folks, I am still around. And I have to apologize for being such a slacker. I've actually had the nerve to fill my free time with things like -- well, actually, I don't really know.

So I promise to make this the first in a series of posts over the next several days relating to me, the new job, our family, television, vacation, politics, religion [hopefully some of you were paying attention? it can't possibly have been so long you'd forget the rules: no religion, no politics]. But I'll post on those other things soon.

First things first, Molly is doing great. She had a bit of a bug a couple weeks ago that lingered longer than we'd have liked, but she kicked it on her own (well with Erin taking super-good care of her, actually) and has now fully recovered. She's been quite happy since then. In fact, she might be the happiest baby on the planet. More on that later.

I know you guys have been checking in and I am sorry for the lapse. Thanks for staying on me to update. It's good motivation.