The State of the Whitebread

I am going to break this up into sections. Overall, I would say that I live a blessed life and I am very thankful for all of the great things, people, and places that I have seen/experienced/known/etc. Now to specifics:

Marriage

Sunday marks our seventh wedding anniversary, and I am thankful for every day. I love Carrie so much, and I feel that we continue to become better friends as the years go by. We have shared many adventures together, been there for each other through bad things, good things, and many things in between, and in general had a wonderful seven years. 

Carrie was the main person who inspired me to get healthy last year. She inspires me every day to be nicer, calmer, and more accepting. She was there through all of my graduate school and job search trials and troubles. I am so thankful to have her, and I look forward to many, many, many more years of being together and sharing our love.

Career

I have always said that I wanted to go into academia and be a tenure-track professor somewhere. Well, for many reasons that turns out is not my path in life. However, I am very excited about the job opportunity that I do have, and that is I will be starting work at National Instruments in June. 

National Instruments is a great company (as the illustrious redhead to which I am married works there), and I am excited to be joining the LabVIEW FPGA team. The work they do is amazingly close to my current research. I was actually surprised how much affinity there is between what I currently work on at UT and what I will be working on at NI.

I hope to still publish in the research community, but I know a lot of people always say that. I have found that when I actually do really stick to something, stuff gets done, so I’m hoping that I will keep the pressure on myself to try to get some publications out as time goes by. It will sort of be an extracurricular activity, so the onus will be on me to make it happen.

All-in-all, I am very excited to start my new career, as this finally allows Carrie and I to be permanent. It has been a long time since I have felt any feeling of permanence.

Cycling

While last year was the best cycling year I have ever had, I’m hoping to eclipse that this year. So many of our road races here in Texas are very early in the year, and I unfortunately didn’t keep up any intensity over the holidays. That being said, the first few races I have done have been a mixed bag. However, intervals have now reentered my training, and our weekday criterium series starts next Thursday.

With time shift as well I believe there is a lot more bike time in my future.

I still love riding, and I still love racing. Riding my bike helps to keep my stress down, and it keeps me much calmer and focused. 

I have signed up for the Fayetteville Stage Race next weekend. That will be interesting. In the past when I’ve done stage races it was with the UT Cycling team. So you had all of your teammates around, you shared hotel rooms, etc. This race is going to be just me. I might try to score a hotel room for myself on Saturday night just to give myself a homebase closer to Fayetteville, because that drive home to Austin on Saturday after the time trial may be pretty painful. 

Regardless, it should be an interesting race and another chance for me to get some race experience. Did I mention the Driveway crits start next week? Yes, I am very excited.

Photography

I admit, I have not shot that many pictures since we went to Norway. I am not sure why. I have just felt uninspired or something. Carrie gave me a Holga for my birthday, and it has been somewhat fascinating to shoot with … film. My second roll of B&W is being developed right now, and I have a roll of color and another roll of B&W waiting to be shot. It is fun and different.

However, I really hoping to try to get myself shooting more again. Not that I was ever shooting a ton, and not that I consider myself that good, but it is one of the few artistic outlets that I have. And it’s fun.

That being said, I finally uploaded some of the pictures I took when I was home at Christmas and during the Janus Ball.

Conclusion

So that’s the highlights. We are looking buy a house in the next half a year, and I am very excited to be truly making a home in Austin, TX. Hey, maybe I’ll even start updating my blog more. ;)