While I was doing some filing today in my office, I took notice of a photo on my digital picture frame; one Jillian bought me several Christmas’s ago. See below:
This photo was taken at a friend’s house during an Auburn football game. I was inebriated and decided to play my friend’s old trumpet. I was a mess, and somehow I had managed to work this photo into the rotation of pictures displayed in my office. Unfortunately, it appears the rotation had stopped rotating because I noticed this picture was not changing.
I should note that from time to time, the maintenance department shuts down power on campus to do electrical work on certain buildings. From what I can only assume, these power outages managed to clear every picture on the memory card in that picture frame with the exception of the one in which I’m drunk and playing a trumpet. I don’t know when this happened or how long that picture has been prominently displayed in my office, but I’m pretty sure it has been long enough to include visits from both the Vice President of Finance and the school’s Treasurer. It’s certainly embarrassing, but at least it’s not a photo of me doing a keg stand.
I walked out of my office this past Friday and was immediately drawn to the really nice cars parked out front. I thought the University President had bought himself a new ride, but they were just loaners from a local dealer that were going to be used that afternoon in a Homecoming Parade. Still, they were really nice rides. I wish someone would loan me one for free.
We took our annual trip to Auburn for the Ole Miss game. Unfortunately, we didn't get the win, but it was a close, enjoyable game. I got to spend a little quality time with some college friends and Jillian and I did some shopping after the game.
Auburn had asked fans to wear section specific colors to 'stripe the stadium'. I think 90% or more of the crowd got the message. The end result was impressive.
I'll throw in a couple extra photos from the day. We were able to catch Tiger Walk, even though we were driving in from Montgomery that morning and it was an 11am game. That morning in Montgomery we got a nice little surprise as the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile was parked outside our hotel room
I nearly forgot the best part. We made a quick, morning bathroom stop at Jillian's old church; St. Dunstans. While we were there, the pastor (whom Jillian knew from her days in college) blessed Jillian and the baby.
Things are coming together pretty well with the baby room. Pretty much all of the furniture is in the room and assembled. I think all that remains are a side table by the chair and a trash can.
Jillian and I recently celebrated our second anniversary. I'm not really familiar with the materials associated with years of marriage, but apparently year two is cotton. Being extremely limited in options and imagination, We both ended up getting each other similar gifts.
The tree Jillian purchased came with a ziplock bag full of leaves. Apparently, we're supposed to add a leaf every year. Great in concept, but I have a hard time believing that we're going to keep up with it. The "portrait" was not purchased. It took me a little over a week's worth of lunch breaks to stitch. It was worth it though. I think it came out really well. So did Jillian's wrapping job. Her fabric wrapping pretty much owned my bag from Walmart.
We're having a baby and this post is long overdue. As of this past Thursday, Jillian is at the 21 week mark and our baby is "half-bake", as she has joked. We wanted to know the sex as early as possible so we could start planning accordingly. We did the early term blood test that's pretty accurate and it was confirmed with our second ultrasound. I've included the video below.
Like most parents of our generation, it was important to have some kind of special reveal party for family, friends and coworkers so we decided to make cookies. Oreo was making a strawberry filling so we thought they would be perfect to cover with white chocolate and have people bite into them to find out.
After we found out ourselves, it didn't take Jillian very long to get into the spirit of buying girl clothes and baby furniture. We've already cleared out a room in our house, filled the closet and assembled the patchwork furniture. Jillian even spent this morning painting drawer knobs to make them match the walls I painted last weekend.
I was encouraged by a member of upper management at work to
attend an accounting/business office continuing education class this year. A
couple other accountants (Jacob and Kelly) in the building were going to one in
Lexington, Kentucky so I decided that I would join them. I had never spent any
time in Kentucky so it sounded like a pretty decent paid vacation.
The trip started out well enough. A 7 or 8 am flight out of
Mobile had me awake and on the road before the sun came up. I may have
overestimated the time required to drive to the Mobile airport and get through
security as I ended up sitting at the gate for about 3 hours. A solid hour
before the first person, apart from myself, showed up.
Our first flight was to Atlanta were we all grabbed some
breakfast before getting on our connecting flight to Lexington. The flights
themselves were short enough. Flying into Lexington was a sight. I knew horses
were a big deal, but I didn’t realize the extent. Looking out the window on our
decent, there were nothing but horse fields and stables as far as the eye could
see. It was later explained to me that Lexington is essentially the horse
capital of the world and it’s not uncommon to see kings and sheikhs arriving in
their private planes on a trip to buy and sell horses. I wasn’t lucky enough
for a sighting though.
First stop was our hotel; a Marriott a few miles from
downtown Lexington and a couple blocks off of UK’s main campus (The site of our
conference). The only thing close by was a race track. Having never watched a
horse race in person, that was a priority. After we got our room keys, I went
and ate lunch with Jacob while Kelly took a nap. That afternoon, we hit up the
race track for a little while before heading to the Conference Meet & Greet
Dinner at the Hilton Downtown.
The conference was as expected. They had put me in a first
year attendee schedule, which somehow equated to an overview of all the things
I learned in college, without actually teaching anything of importance. I
quickly learned that this was going to be the norm for the majority of classes,
with the exception of one on advanced accounting problems. We did some walking
around campus that morning. It’s a really beautiful campus from what I saw. We
had lunch in a student cafeteria and then the three of us took a detour on the
way back to class to buy umbrellas from the bookstore and check out their once
glorious campus basketball stadium (now replaced by the one downtown). The
arena also had a nice “hall of champions” with pictures of players, teams
coaches and a display case with a number of their trophies.
After the first day of classes ended, I had decided that I
wanted to visit the campuses Arboretum, which was highly rated on
TripAdvisor.com. Jillian had said before the trip that if I were serious about
going there, I should take a taxi. I was pretty confident, however, that it
would make for a short walk across campus. The problem was: 1. I should always
listen to my wife. 2. There was a lot of construction between the site of my
conference and the garden. 3. I’m an idiot. This stroll in shorts and sandals
ended up taking a little over two hours to walk to and from. By the time I got
back to my hotel, me feet were covered in blisters from my sandals and I was
exhausted. Jacob and Kelly had been waiting on me to go to dinner, so I had to
ignore the pain, shower and dress for downtown.
Thankfully, you sit down for dinner so I gave me feet a
rest. Our first dinner was at the “Tony’s of Lexington” steakhouse. I saw
walking in that it was a white tablecloth joint, but I had the better part of
my $55/day meal allowance to burn. I ended up getting a salad (as if it would
somehow make my wife happy and reduce my regret for not listening to her about
the walk), their bone in pork chops with bourbon whipped sweet potatoes. I even
decided at the end to order some kind of chocolate cake that rivaled that of
the Carnival Cruise Chocolate Lava Cake (or whatever it’s called).
Day two was more of the same. Boring classes. A tour of the
“Physical Plant Operations” got us good and sweaty before lunch. Afterward we
took our first Uber taxi to the mall for a couple hours and then grabbed
another one to take us to dinner and then a minor league baseball game in town.
Day three was similar. Half a day of boring classes and then
those who had paid a little extra went on a tour of a bourbon distillery and
horse stables. I’ve seen distilleries and horses before so I thought I would
make another unnecessarily long walk, with now healing blisters, to the
“nearby” Lexington National Cemetery. It was excessively hot, which made my
choice to remain in the khaki pants I wore to classes another poor choice. I
got there after my scenic hike and was not disappointed. As a cemetery goes,
this one was beautiful and enormous. Thank god I brought a bottle of water and
my phone to call Uber afterward.
Day four was our last full day in Lexington. We went to our
classes and then did a little exploring around downtown Lexington. We found out
there was a brewery “somewhere” nearby that had some really good local bear and
special beer glasses that were shaped like beer cans. I couldn’t pass up that
opportunity. Turns out, this location was also not “nearby”. So I got yet
another good walk in on feet that were destroyed at this point. The brewery was
a cool as advertised. I was a little bummed that we hadn’t found it early. We
all bought a few glasses and then took Uber back to the Marriott to pack up and
then go watch some more horse racing.
Day five was much longer and eventful than I had planned and
certainly more than I wanted. Because we had a relatively early flight out of
town, we only went to the morning classes and then bailed. We took a quick tour
of a brewery/distillery just off campus that made ‘Kentucky Ale Stout’; a
fantastic local beer. We ate lunch at a crappy Mexican place inside the
airport. Our outgoing flight was on time, but Mother Nature was causing havoc
in Atlanta, so our flight was diverted to BFE South Carolina, where we sat
still waiting an eternity for refueling. The delay was made worse by the fact
that I had failed to recharge my phone before take-off and with no battery, I
had nothing to keep me entertained. I guess I should be somewhat happy that the
lady sitting beside me was an insane person ripping pages out of a fashion
magazine; so at least the fear for my life kept my brain occupied. We ended up
getting back into Mobile around midnight. Exciting.
