dj whitebread

Update

2010-03-08T11:56:00.000-06:00

The riding continues. Last week I put in a good bit of hours on the bike, along with a killer strength workout at the gym with Drew. This week is even more hours on the bike. I believe I am in the thick of base mileage.

I feel pretty good on the bike these days. The new saddle is fantastic. I also think my backside is getting used to being on a bike seat. The combination of these two things is leading to much more comfortable bike rides.

I do think I may be to low, however, the new saddle is a little bit shorter rail to top than my old fizik, so I probably could use a centimeter bump up. I don't think that I need massive enough adjustments to go get fit. However, with spending this much time on the bike I feel getting the fit right is very important.

I'm also noticing several things that probably need your normal periodic maintenance. The bottom-bracket squeaks something terrible. I need to change my brake pads. I still need to go and get my nicer back wheel fixed. I need new cleats. All the stuff that just needs to be dealt with over time.

On the weight front, I've lost a little bit. I do think I'm a little smaller. In the past I've always had slow weight loss at first, and then it kicks into gear. I'm hoping that "kick into gear" is coming soon. My two casual sport coats seem to hang better when buttoned now, so I am taking that as a good sign.

With our anniversary this weekend, I am saving my cheat day for Saturday. However, we are going to a CM cooking class tonight and Perla's for Austin Restaurant Week on Wednesday, so I will need to be careful about my food choices.

That's about it on the Resolve Your Resolution front. Today is a rest day, so no time on the bike. With the weather outside (nasty and rainy), I am okay with that.

The LT Test

2010-02-25T13:43:00.001-06:00

I showed to Pure Austin Quarry Lake with my bike ready to do this. Drew was there along with the guy who was actually administering the test, and they took my bike upstairs while I got changed into my cycling gear.

The setup is pretty simple. They put my bike on a trainer that can measure power output. It's pretty cool; you set the power, and it adjusts the tension on the wheel based on your cadence so that you are keeping a consistent power output regardless of gearing. I was glad to find out that I did not have to wear the mask. I was going to get finger pricked, however, but that didn't really bother me as I don't have a blood issue or anything.

The format of the test is that they increase the power by 20 watts every minute until you want to die (after warming up, of course). At that point they prick a finger and get a blood sample. They then drop the power output significantly and take samples every three minutes, upping the power at each of these three-minute intervals. The initial point represents you at a Lactate Threshold, then you come back down and reach a steady-state where your body can process what's being produced. Eventually at one of these three-minute periods they should see a spike in lactic acid, and your heart rate at that point is your Lactate Threshold.

The power output at that final interval is considered to be your 1-hour power output potential. Putting everything into a magical spreadsheet, I was given both my power zones and heart rate zones for training purposes. This is really cool: I've always wanted to know this information, so it's really nice to have.

One of the really cool things is that based on that predicted one-hour effort number, they extrapolate a 20-minute effort power output. Then, using my weight (or mass rather, in kilograms) the spreadsheet tells me my power to mass ratio. There is this big chart based on values from huge samples of cyclists. They call it the performance prediction chart. From untrained non-racers to ProTour level pros. I currently fall in the untrained non-racer category.

This, not really surprising.

The thing that really killed me in the test was not wanting to vomit or anything like that. It was my legs. I just don't have the leg strength right now. But what's kind of cool about the prediction chart, is that I drop weight that number goes up. If I were to not get any stronger, but say get down to 185, I would be in the high cat 5 category/low cat 4. Now, hopefully I both get stronger and lose weight, making the number go up from both parts. I am working hard to make that happen.

The whole process was really fascinating. My science-oriented data-loving brain just ate the whole process up. I am really looking forward to repeating the test at the end of the 4 months and seeing a difference.

Other assorted bike notes:

I really need a new saddle. Well, I had my saddle pushed back, so I moved it up. But I can't go beyond 1.5 hours outside or 1 hour on the trainer without ... well, becoming quite uncomfortable. I have never had issues like this before. I think the saddle may have reached it's end time. I plan on taking care of that this weekend.
I have not spent this much time on my bike for this long of a period ever. Hands down.
I am sleeping like crazy. My body is probably wondering what the heck is happening. I keep telling myself that the sleep is good because it means I'm getting stronger.
Not specifically bike related, but the strength workout Drew has me doing is killer. It's fun, but man... it uses me like a ragdoll. I guess that's the point.

On the food front, Carrie and I gave up cheese for Lent. So I am actually making an effort to eliminate dairy completely. We have been drinking almond milk at home (delicious!) and I got a soy latte today, and well, found it quite enjoyable. I need to eat more raw fruits and veggies each day... this has always been one of my weaknesses. But now's the time to make it happen.

This post has gone on long enough, take it easy, everybody!

Blogger FTP Migration

2010-02-22T11:11:00.000-06:00

Luckily, Google has decided to push the shutdown of Blogger FTP services back to May. This doesn't fix the problem (the problem being that they are shutting it down), but at least allows me to not have to deal with it for the moment.

It looks like there will not necessarily be an easy solution for me to migrate the blog. I could move it to Blogger's native service, which I might do. This would require the least amount of work. Basically, any other option where I use a different service to do the publishing will require me to redo the template in some way. Now, this probably won't be that hard, I just really don't feel like putting really any time into it. My blog is very simple, and I like that. I don't really want to spend time hacking on it.

Well, I can put it out of my mind for a month or two at least.

First strength workout

2010-02-12T09:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I met with the trainer at Pure Austin to go over the first strength workout set. Well, he has a name, I guess I should actually use it: Drew. Anyway, Drew and I went through all the different exercises. It's basically three circuits of three exercises, all designed to keep your heart rate up.

It's a lot of dynamic strength stuff, which I like. Lots of stabilizer work. It was fun, in that hard kind of way, and should provide many benefits off and on the bike. Looking at 2 to 3 times a week.

I have spent more time on the bike this week than I have in, seriously, I don't remember when. The sun is supposed to come out this afternoon, so I plan on getting out on the road today and tomorrow. Sunday I'll do the strength workout and then go to the restorative yoga class. That class is fantastic, by the way. Lots of stretching, very chill. It will be a good end to the fitness week, and get my body in a good place to start week two!

Resolve Your Resolution

2010-02-08T18:02:00.000-06:00

The gym that Carrie and I belong to, Pure Austin is one of the coolest gyms I have ever seen, that's for sure. We love being members. We noticed that they were having a contest, called Resolve Your Resolution, where they would pick 10 people and over 4 months these people would compete to meet their respective fitness goals. I threw my name in the hat, and amazingly I got picked.

They have paired me up with one of their fitness trainers who is also a Cat. 2 bike racer in town. We met last Thursday and I feel that we understood each other well. For the next 4 months I will be logging all of my food and beverage intake as well as my workouts. My coach at the gym will provide me with workout plans as the weeks go along.

My main goal out of this is to finally cross the line on the bike so that I can actually finish races. Since here in Austin we have the world's best weekly bike race series, I have a great way to measure my progress. I am also going to be doing LT threshold testing at the beginning and end of the 4 months. The starting one will probably occur last week. I am expecting pain.

I am so excited and feel very lucky to have this opportunity. Today was my first official Resolve Your Resolution workout. Went out on the bike for an easy 1.5 hours. It was chilly, but it was nice to get out on the bike as always.

I plan on meeting and exceeding my goals. The main point is to get myself in decent shape finally, but there is a competition involved between me and the other nine people, so I would love to win. A little extra motivation never hurt anyone, right?

Oh, one last thing: GO SAINTS!!!!

Wonderful Christmas Eve and Day

2009-12-26T08:33:00.001-06:00

I will probably not be able to complete Holidailies, unfortunately. The 12 hour delay between posts will keep me from getting up to 31 posts. The last few days I have not posted, but I have had a wonderful time, so I'll gladly take that trade any day of the week.

Carrie and I had a lovely Christmas Eve and Day with our family and some of our friends. From lunch and presents with Carrie's family on Christmas Eve during the day to fireworks with Katie and Steve that night to presents and lunch with my family during the day on Christmas and then finishing it all up with some beer with Diego and Anna last night. We had a great two days, and I feel blessed that we are so lucky to be surrouned by so many awesome people.

I just wanted to catch up quickly with my small readership and let people know that I am going to try and keep the posts coming, but I am going to make sure I enjoy my time home first. Merry Christmas!

Reveillon

2009-12-22T19:39:00.000-06:00

We spent Saturday night in New Orleans, and Sunday morning after mass we headed to Avenue Pub for some lunch. I had a duck sandwich that was fantastic. We spent in the afternoon walking around the French Quarter ducking in and out of some of the art galleries. It was an absolutely beautiful day.

On the way back to the car we swung by the Aquarium of the Americas to look for the brick there with my name on it. I was sort of discouraged at first as there were many, many bricks. However, Maureen was able to find my brick. It was pretty cool; I had not seen it in a long, long time.

We headed over to the Dickey's around 6:30 and hung out while all of our dinner companions collected. It was great, as always, to see everybody. After while we headed towards downtown to go eat Muriel's.

They seemed to be a little behind on reservation seating, so we spent some time in the bar. They made a tasty dirty gin martini. Yay, savory cocktails. When we sat down the Reveillon menu looked good to me. I had duck confit with a pumpkin risotto for an appetizer, a fresh Louisiana citrus salad, a bone-in veal chop with crabmeat and oyster dressing for an entree, and then pain perdu bread pudding for dessert. Overall a fantastic meal, and I think we all enjoyed it.

We decided to stay in New Orleans that night as it was late and were both tired. We had a great time and look forward to continuing the tradition as the years go by.

Travel and Blogging

2009-12-22T11:48:00.000-06:00

As the astute observer may have noticed, I have not posted the last several days. We have been travelling around, and I have fallen behind. I have several things to discuss, so I am going to try and get several potss in a day to catch up (there is a 12 hour delay between posts enforced by the Holidailies site).

We had an interesting time getting ourselves to Louisiana on Saturday. We were going to stop in Port Arthur to attend a family Christmas party, but we realized when we were in Bastrop that Carrie had forgotten her driver's license. Had she not been flying back to Austin next week, it would have been not as big of a concern, but since she is flying, we had to go back and get it.

Luckily, we weren't that far away, so we headed back towards Austin. When we were almost home I realized that I had actually forgotten all of my dress shirts in the closet, so it turned out we both forgot something. We picked up the forgotten items, said bye to Pierre one more time, and got back on the road.

We made it to the Christmas party right as it was ending. We got back on the road ourselves and headed towards New Orleans. We were able to listen to the first quarter of the game on the radio and got to Greg and Maureen's in the second half. The game did not end like I had hoped, but hopefully the Saints will use this to refocus and burn through the playoffs.

The Beard is Done

2009-12-19T08:36:00.000-06:00

So after thinking yesterday afternoon that the beard was staying, the itching started last night. I couldn't take it anymore, and I shaved before I went to sleep. I could see how irritated my skin was underneath my beard. I apparently have sensitive skin, and it had just had enough of being poked by my beard.

While I was curious to see what I looked like with a full beard, my face feels so much better this morning now that I've shaved. And the itching has stopped. Ugh, the itching.

Well, I need to run and do some final things so we can be on our way. The next post will be from Louisiana.

Getting ready to head out

2009-12-18T16:23:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow morning we head to Baton Rouge for Christmas. I will actually be staying in Louisiana for two weeks with Carrie coming back to Austin for some time between Christmas and New Years. It will be fun to be home. South Louisiana is a special place.

We should be able to knock out the remainder of our book on "tape" tomorrow. We have the last few hours of the Bourne Identity left. I actually have the second one as well on my iPhone, so maybe we'll start it too.

Leaving for an extended time always makes me miss Pierre. He's a very social cat, and it always makes me sad to leave him by himself. If he wasn't a fugitive from the law we would have gotten another cat by now, but oh well. A few days of extra rubs and he seems to be back to normal.

Tonight we are heading to Jasper's for supper. I am excited, it looks good!

Brine

2009-12-17T08:35:00.000-06:00

Last night I roasted a chicken for supper. I decided to do something different and try and soak the chicken in a brine before the roast.

While I definitely think it had some effect, it was not huge. Now, I do not blame the concept of brining for this, I just didn't do it right. In the future I plan on making two changes:

Increase the soak time dramatically. It was just in there for about 6 hours, it probably needs more like 12-24 to really take.
Increase the salt content of the solution.

I think these two changes will go a long way to really making the brine fulfill all of its promises. I of course cooked the chicken using the probe thermometer, and it came out nice and juicy. Cooking meat by temperature alone is really the biggest thing anybody can do when it comes to producing tender and juicy meats. Especially for longer methods like roasting or braising. Time is worthless; you should only be using a thermometer.

Beard

2009-12-16T01:21:00.000-06:00

So today I shaved, but just a little. Inspired by several people over the weekend I'm going to let my holiday beard come to be. The itchiness is always what makes me shave it all off. But I shaved a little bit higher up my neck than I had in the past, and there is really no itchiness to speak of right now. I am hoping I may have turned a corner on the beard front. I'm thinking I'll leave it going through the epiphany, a true Christmas beard. We'll see. It may start to drive me absolutely nuts and it may all come off. Who knows?

If it actually stays around long enough to look legit I'll post a picture.

Elf

2009-12-15T02:14:00.000-06:00

Tonight Carrie and I watched Elf with Will Ferrel. We are both big fans of this movie. It's silly and absurd, but I find it very endearing and it makes both of us smile.

We both had some white wine this weekend that we really liked. It is a vouvrais, a white from France. When we were grocery shopping this evening we saw a bottle of vouvrais and decided to pick it up to see if it was the same. We unfortunately did not write down the name of the specific wine we had. It tasted similar, not sure if it was exact though. But definitely still tasty.

So all in all it was a good night. A glass of tasty wine and watching Elf with Carrie. Things are good here.

Christmas Pop Singalong at the Alamo

2009-12-13T23:23:00.001-06:00

Tonight we hit up the Alamo Ritz downtown for their Christmas Pop Singalong. It was a great time. We went through all kinds of songs from the Muppets to Mariah with all kinds of craziness thrown in for good measure.

After the show we headed outside and paraded around 6th street doing what Henri called "rogue carolling." I captured a little bit of it on my iPhone and was able to get it up on youtube for people to enjoy. Henri and the Alamo do a fantastic job on all of the quote and singalongs. If you are in Austin you should really make a point to go if you have never done it. I apologize in advance for my horrible allergy-stricken singing being so prominent in the video. In closing, here's the video:

Organ Music

2009-12-13T14:00:00.000-06:00

Last night Carrie and I went see an organ recital at UT in the Bates recital hall. The organ at UT is really amazing, and the two professors who played last night did a great job. The hall is fantastic and the sound really hangs around. It was a fun and different holiday music experience.

This morning we took a walk around the lake downtown with Lynn and Johann. The weather was nice and as always there were tons of dogs running about all along the trail (with their people, obviously).

Tonight we are going to the Holiday Pops sing-a-long at the Alamo downtown. Should be entertaining, the guys at the Alamo know how to have a good time. I will report on it when we get home.

Increase in Frequency

2009-12-12T00:46:00.000-06:00

My loyal readers (all 10 of you) may have noticed that I have been posting all this week. I once again have signed up for Holidailies. The basic challenge is that you post every day to your blog from December 7th to January 6th. I did it last year and it was a lot of fun. I know I have drastically ignored my blog in recent months, probably since my photography experiment in June. This is a good kick start.

Carrie and I just finished NaNoWriMo last month (along with several other friends and family), so I kind of got in the habit of doing something of this sort on a daily basis. I will have a post dedicated to NaNoWriMo sometime this month, as it really was an interesting experience.

One of the core reasons I did that and I am doing Holidailies is to help cure my fear of blank pages. I have found that one of the things that has always hindered me in my work is the fear of writing something terrible. So much so that I do not write at all. I have already noticed that the creative writing exercises of NaNoWriMo and now Holidailies has helped me get past that. I have now been able to get something down, and then spend time editing. I mean, nothing you write is good the first time anyway. You might as well get that out of the way and then spend time on the editing and tweaking. That's where the real good stuff comes from.

My allergy attack seems to be coming to a close. Unfortunately that involves a nagging cough. I need one of those "It's not swine flu it's my allergies" t-shirts. I get funny looks every time I cough in public. Though, maybe I am just imagining that. Who knows?

I hope people have a good weekend.

Cheaha starts today

2009-12-10T20:20:00.000-06:00

Today I went ride my bike for the first time in a very long time. It seems my personal fitness is very much a yo-yo. I get in shape, I lose weight, and then something happens and I slowly start exercising a little bit less and eating a little bit worse. Next thing i know I've gained 20 pounds.

I have had a hard time lately just getting myself out the door. I told Carrie that for some reason I just was not feeling motivated. She asked me what motivated me in the past, and I think a lot of it was being part of the UT cycling team. I have talked about how much I love collegiate cycling in the past here, so I won't get into it again. But the real focus on teamwork was a very good motivator for me.

But I started thinking today that there had to be something else from which I could derive motivation, right? Several people have thrown around doing the Cheaha Challenge this year, and I thought back how awesome it felt the two times I finished that thing. It is a hard ride, and being fit enough to get through that is a great feeling.

You know what's also a great feeling? Having my jeans fit better.

So today I braved the cold and headed out. Of course, it felt like I hadn't ridden my bike in months. My neck started to get tired, my legs felt completely absent of power, and I had a pretty slow average speed. But, I must say, as always it was great to be out on my bike.

So here's to the Cheaha Challenge. Now who's with me?

The Pictures

2009-12-09T23:42:00.001-06:00

I wanted to post a few of the pictures from the weekend.

We hit the Golden Gate bridge right at sunset on Saturday, so it looked particularly pretty.

As you can see Carrie isn't too sure about this whole bridges in places with earthquakes thing.

If Harry, Meg, and Harry had a pop rock band this would be the back of their album. We were on the ferry out to Alcatraz.

Finally, a shot from inside the cell house. I just felt that black and white was appropriate for the inside pictures. The whole set is over on flickr.

Bay Area, Day 2

2009-12-09T01:17:00.000-06:00

The beginning of day 2 started well with some hearty breakfast at a diner near Meg and Harry's apartment. We then bought our tickets for Alcatraz online and headed into the city.

We got parking quickly, so quickly in fact that we were able to catch an earlier boat than the one we had originally scheduled for.

Alcatraz was amazing. I hope to get the pictures uploaded tomorrow. The audio tour they have is really well done. It has several guards from the prison as well as several former inmates telling various stories around the prison. It was very moving at times. I had no idea about the Native American occupation of Alcatraz. What a fascinating bit of history.

After Alcatraz we drove into China Town and tracked down some very tasty noodles for lunch. Next it was off to the beach to a place called, Cliff House, I believe? They made a good Manhattan, however. I found it so crazy that the beach was just right there. We then headed into Cole Valley for supper at a nice little French bistro place.

While we were walking around waiting for a table I happened to catch the last play of the UT vs. Nebraska game. Oh man... it really shouldn't have come down to that.

After a lovely dinner (though, I unfortunately was not as hungry as I would have liked because of my allergies) we met up with Aamir for some coffee, and then headed home.

Sunday morning we all had a nice walk around the neighborhood, and after some Trader Joe's take home salads we headed to the airport. Other than me leaving my wallet on board the plane (I luckily was able to go retrieve it) we had an uneventful trip home. Just the way I like it.

Again, thanks to Harry and Meg for letting us crash at their place and driving us around. Thanks to Aamir for meeting us on Saturday night. It's always great to see friends, especially when you can do it in cool places like San Francisco!

The Bay Area

2009-12-08T00:11:00.000-06:00

That is what people always call it out there. I used to refer to the whole thing as San Francisco, but I have also converted to this Bay Area thing. Regardless, that is where Carrie and I spent our weekend and we had a lovely time.

Thursday night we did not do much of anything as we got in around 11 PM, 1 AM our time, so we went to sleep as soon as we got back to Harry and Meg's. Friday we had some lovely breakfast in Menlo Park with Meg (Harry had to go slave away for the man) and then Carrie and I took the CalTrain into the city for a day of sightseeing. We both really like trains.

We walked up to Union Square and went in a few shops. Then we took the cable care down to the water. Our cable car operators were pretty hilarious. At one point they stopped the car so that we could sing happy birthday to one of the riders. Nice. When we got down to the bottom we hit up the Ghiradelli square for some free samples and then walked along the water to the ferry building.

Along the water we stopped to get some sour dough, we saw the few sea lions that were still at Pier 39, and when we got to the ferry building we decided to have a little wine while we waited to meet up with Harry and Meg for supper.

It was a nice little snack, and we headed out ready to catch a cab and head over to Universal Cafe for supper. Little did we know that catching cabs in San Francisco is apparently terrible.

So terrible in fact that we spent almost an hour doing it... and never got a cab. They would come by on the other side of the street. They would come by on our side of the street and have people. Or they would drive right past us, empty, but not stop. Needless to say I was getting just a little bit frustrated.

We were standing in front of a nice apartment building, and we noticed a Town Car sitting outside. The driver got my attention and asked where we were going. He said he could take us there for a flat fee, and we gladly accepted. A few minutes later we were finally at the restaurant. The town car was nice and clean, the driver drove safely, and he was very friendly. It all worked out.

Supper was good and the ice cream place we found afterwards was tasty as well (my chocolate and red chile ice cream was quite delicious). We all headed back down the peninsula to Menlo Park and went to sleep. We were all heading back into the city on Saturday to visit Alcatraz. More on that tomorrow...

Pictures from the Benelux

2009-10-29T10:27:00.000-05:00

So I finally got our pictures up from our trip to Europe. Enjoy!

Preparing for the Tri

2009-09-06T10:37:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow I do my first triathlon in over a year. In downtown Austin. I am sort of nervous, but not overly so. I know I can do all the components. The question is going to be how quickly can I do the bike and the run. I haven't put a lot of time on the bike lately, so who knows? Also, yesterday I didn't finish my AustinFit run because of shin splints.

On the brighter side of things, I had a good swim this week and I'm confident I will get that portion done, not quickly per se, but consistently (and this time with my actual wave).

This triathlon does a bike check-in the day before along with packet pickup. We'll head down there at some point this afternoon and get my packet and get the Giant all checked-in. The bike is prepped, aero-barred, and ready to go.

Also, let us not forget that yesterday was the first day of college football! Woohoo! There were some surprisingly good games on yesterday. While I hate to see Sam Bradford get hurt, I always enjoy seeing OU lose. The Horns got it done, as did LSU. I was really hoping Navy would upset Ohio St., but that was not meant to be.

We had a delicious Indian food dinner last night. We got the meal for two, and had plenty of food to take home. But it was all very tasty. As I say with most ethnic foods... I cannot comment on authenticity, I can just comment on whether I think it is tasty or not.

Two weeks from now we'll be in the Netherlands, woohoo!

In work news, we submitted our paper on Friday to ICSE. I think it is a good paper, we'll see if it gets in... though we have to wait until December.

I hope everybody has a great Labor Day. Enjoy the day off!

All official

2009-08-24T09:18:00.002-05:00

I officially moved out of my cube last Friday. Turned in my desk key and everything. So now I am the official resident of office ACES 5.246. Woot.

We had a good weekend. Got a lot of work done. Also got two long nights of sleep in. Carrie did tons of exercise... I was pretty lazy. But I did lots of work, so that counts for something right?

I hope to hit the quarry lake this evening at the gym and get 1000m in.

The weather channel claims that the 100s are breaking this coming weekend. I'll believe it when I don't melt.

I really want another fountain pen. I bought myself one as a graduation gift last september, but it broke last fall/early spring. It was a very sad day. I mentioned on twitter that I haven't found a disposable that I like. I don't mean that as in the store, but just around my desk. I just don't have any decent pens right now. I am sure that there are some decent disposable pens out there. But I must say, there is definitely something nice about the way a fountain pen writes. I definitely miss it.

Oh well, back to work. Have a good week.

Wait, it's Friday?

2009-08-21T08:53:00.003-05:00

Seriously, how did this happen? This week went by so quickly.

My back seized up on me on Wednesday, but has felt much better yesterday and today. On Wednesday I was concerned I wouldn't be able to do any exercise for a while, but after the back felt better I decided to go for a swim yesterday at the gym.

I did the 700m loop of the lake at the gym. I made it around, but had to take breaststroke breaks at each of the big buoys. The triathlon I'm doing in a few weeks has a 700m swim... so I need to be able to swim that lap no breaks. We'll see if I make it. If I get to 0 breaks I'll be ecstatic, but I think 1 break at 350 meters may be the thing to shoot for. I like practicing in the lake more so than the pool. I really feel like I am accomplishing something when I swim around a lake. The pool is like being on my trainer... I just hate the feeling of not going anywhere.

We booked our hotel in Brugges, that was exciting. The only thing left is to get our train tickets, and with that there is no hurry. I am really excited for this trip. Belgium and the Netherlands all really dig on cycling, so it will be curious to be somewhere like that.

I hope everybody has a good weekend. The rumor is the 100s are going to finally break next week... we'll see.

It has been too long...

2009-08-11T21:57:00.004-05:00

I can't believe I've gone over a month without posting. I still blame Twitter.

I promised people a graduation post. So let's go back in time a few months...

Graduation weekend was bizarre for me. Mainly because I had already graduated. Technically, at least. I had the diploma. I even had a big party. I was officially a Dr. But here I was having a weekend of festivities to commemorate the fact. All very strange.

My parents came in town, which is always nice. We had a nice supper on Friday night after the departmental hooding ceremony. About that... very nice job by the department. Really classy and intimate event. It was nice to see my advisor Harrick. He came into the country and the timing all worked out.

Back to the meal. We went to Zoot, which has moved out onto Bee Caves out west. The food was still exceptional. My parents seemed to enjoy it as well, so it was a good pick.

Late that night my cousin David and son Ryan made it to Austin. After a little bit of chatting, we all headed to sleep. Saturday was the big Doctoral convocation for the entire Graduate School. It is amazing how many people get some type of doctoral degree in a year here at UT. It was impressive in its grandeur. Nathalie, Harry, and I all sat together so we had a good time. Afterwards, we had some people over for a pool party, but a random rain storm cut that short. (Note this is one of the few times it has rained all summer.)

Saturday night we enjoyed some Rudy's and good times. Always consistently delicious. Sunday David and Ryan headed back to Baton Rouge, and my parents followed suit early Monday morning.

The weekend was a lot of fun, and it was nice to have that last little bit of finality to my graduate career. I am always excited to get to pull out the regalia. :)

Since then we've had an active summer. June was my photography experiment. July just flew by. The heat has been brutal. We've had almost 50 days of 100+ temperatures. I cannot wait until this heat breaks. As I mentioned earlier, we've had practically no rain (which following an extremely dry spring is a very bad thing). The claim is we're supposed to have a wet Fall, so we'll see.

On the exercise front, I've been decently consistent. Not a high volume, but consistently getting on the bike like once a week and throwing in some running, yoga, and swimming for good measure. Running has unfortunately been causing me some unpleasant pains, so I am sure there is a visit to the PT in my future.

More has been going on than I can write in this one post. I am going to leave it here, with the hopes of being more consistent. I'll close it off with some pictures of my two beautiful goddaughters: