A friend of Aaron’s at work, Chichi, and her husband Geoff had a baby boy a few months ago. We wanted to give them something to celebrate Gabriel’s birth, so I decided to challenge myself and try out a new knitting project. This hat offered me the opportunity to learn some new stitches and to use the smallest circular knitting needles I have ever seen (US#5, 12″ for you knitters out there)…and the end result was quite cute. Recently, we had dinner with Chichi and Geoff and another work friend of Aaron’s, Wendy. We got to meet Gabriel and present him with the hat pictured above. Isn’t he adorable?

I took this while traveling home tonight on the commuter rail, at 5:15 PM. If the window was a bit cleaner and the power plant wasn’t in the foreground, it could have been a nice shot. Oh well, isn’t it trendy to be gritty?

So it was my birthday recently and those of you who follow this blog may remember a post a while back about some co-workers of mine who started a birthday countdown for me here at work. Well that same group of co-workers teamed up and hired a fluorescent pink gorilla to come in to work and wish me a happy birthday. I was lured into the office cafeteria with the promise of a low-key celebration, and ten or fifteen of us sat down and enjoyed some homemade cupcakes and ice cream. Fine. Just as the little party was winding down and I was getting ready to go back to work, in walks the pink gorilla with a big bunch of balloons, followed by half the office (apparently they were intrigued at the site of the pink gorilla and had decided to follow him and find out what was going on). As he danced and sang my response alternated from embarrassment to amusement to horror. One of my thoughtful coworkers (please note the sarcasm) took the above picture with a disposable camera and passed it on to me. It’s a bit grainy as it wasn’t digital, but I think you can still get the gist.

A bit of good news. Last week I was promoted to Web Technology Manager. Now I’m responsible for all web projects for the college. I’ve been working to grow towards the web arena for the last few years, so I’m quite excited about the new position. My first initiative is to replace our old, tired CMS with a shiny new one so that our staff can get their content up on the website quickly and easily.

At work, I have spent the past couple of months training several new clinical data managers. They are young and eager to work and full of all that first job enthusiasm (ah yes, I remember those days). Anyway, I have spent a considerable amount of time with them the past couple of months. A couple weeks ago we were discussing birthdays and when they asked when mine was I replied that generally I preferred to keep my personal life separate from my professional life, so nothing personal to either of them, but I wasn’t saying. So over the next couple of weeks I was harassed for the information and finally gave in. A couple of days later the sign in the photo above was posted in the cubicle of one of my devoted trainees. They update it everyday and are enjoying my extreme discomfort. Oh, of note, I also mentioned my strong dislike of bananas – hence their adornment of the sign.