Thursday, October 2, 2014

If I had picked for both Isabella and Liam, I would have been wrong.

To my surprise they both headed north. Liam to Middlebury College in Vermont, and Belle to Baltimore, Maryland to work as an analyst at T. Rowe Price. I was extremely proud of both.

Liam was going to be going on a full-ride as a student athlete on the baseball team. He had finished his high school career with a .383 batting average and a total of 115 home runs and 482 RBI's. Not bad for someone who started the varsity team as a freshman. He would take his basic level courses and decide on a major later.

Isabella decided not to stay at home in Asheville with Merrill Lynch, and also turned down Jeffrey's offer at the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond. She had opted for an analyst position covering health care and biotechnology at T. Rowe Price. I was concerned about where she might live in Baltimore. While parts of the city are very safe, if you go one street over, trouble looms. We searched for a high-rise apartment with security in the financial district and found one that suited. It was a loft on the fourteenth floor, but it was heavily secured and always watched by camera.

Each of them had a successful fall and winter. Liam had played on a traveling "fall-ball" league until the weather got too cold in late October. Isabella was busy perusing 8K's, 10K's and Annual Reports. When she wasn't at work, she was reading the work of other analysts and doing her own analysis as well. She was up for the challenge, and picked some undiscovered market winners for the quarter ending December 31st.

Each of them came home for the holidays and stayed until January 5th. They each had some time to catch up with friends and we talked about what we would do for the summer. We had all; all three of us, decided we would return to Casa Amor. Isabella had to get permission to work remotely, but she plated-up the idea in such a way to her boss that he agreed. Reluctantly, but positively. Isabella would do some of her best work over the next four years at Casa Amor.

I pondered where they would end up. "Would Isabella return to graduate school and get an MBA or Law degree"?  "And what would Liam major in?" These were the thoughts I had regularly at home.