dj whitebread

A short ode to collegiate cycling

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:46:25 -0600

This post will be quick.

I think collegiate cycling is one of the greatest things you can do in college (or in my case, grad school). It’s the most team-focused cycling I think somebody can participate in without being a professional.

I wish I would have been cognizant of the sport when I was in college. I mean, I knew of cycling as a sport. My cousin had raced bikes for years, but there was nothing at Tulane like a cycling team.

Being part of the UT cycling team was fantastic. The one bad thing about graduating from graduate school was that I could no longer participate.

Now, both Tulane and LSU have cycling teams. In fact, Tulane is hosting a race in New Orleans and LSU is hosting the conference championships this year. That is fantastic.

So hook’em to my UT Cycling friends, geaux tigers, and roll green wave!

BeBe Casserole

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:34:16 -0600

There exist several food items that I associate with my grandmother’s cooking. Ground beef with carrots (when I asked her why, she said, “You gotta add some flavor.”), always smooth and thick brown gravy with roast, shredded green beans with onions and bacon smothered beyond belief. I could actually go on for a while.

However, there is one item that sticks out above all the rest: BeBe casserole. This casserole takes many forms, eggplant and ground beef, patty pan and ground beef, but the formula is the same. Cook the fleshy vegetable down with onions, bell pepper, green onion, celery, and then add in the ground beef (and salt and seasoning, of course). Put in a casserole dish, cover with buttered bread crumbs and bake it so that it comes together. Voila.

It’s mushy… but it’s delicious. Just a forkful of pure awesome flavor without things like crunch getting in the way. I loved this so much as a kid, I wasn’t really a fan of crunchy things.

Tonight I am making another variety, mirliton and shrimp. Same formula as above. The mirliton take a little more cooking than the eggplant, but it comes out well. It is very easy to get mirliton here as they are sold with a different name: chayote squash. My big group at work is having our Thanksgiving potluck tomorrow, so I decided to bring this. I think this is probably one of those things that everybody’s Cajun grandmother makes in some variety. But to me it is always BeBe Casserole.

Switching Gears

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:32:16 -0600

So I started NaNoWriMo this year. I truly do think that this is a great thing to do, and I encourage everybody to complete it at least once. Unfortunately, I will not finish.

I just never got truly excited about it this year. However, I still like the idea of using your downtime to do something productive. Not in the sense of checking things off of your todo list, but in the sense of producing something.

One of the nice things about NaNoWriMo is the notion of the deadline. The big 50,000 goal and the 30 days force you to put aside your inner editor and just write. “30 days and nights of literary abandon.” I think that is a great slogan, and it is at the heart of the endeavor. You just have to go for it, to dive head first, and at the end there is a novel. It may be terrible, but you finished it, and that is awesome.

So why I am stopping?

The conceptual core of NaNoWriMo is what really excites me, but I was not able to get excited about the particular vehicle this year. So I decided to get a new vehicle.

I am just not sure what I will be driving.

Some may read this post as a cop out, and that is fair. But I am hoping that I can look back at the end of the month and see that I have produced something. Whether it be taking some pictures, writing posts on here about things I find interesting, or building something, who knows? (Okay, probably not that last one…)

Post-Cleaning House Pictures, a set on Flickr.They did the...

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:12:13 -0500

Post-Cleaning House Pictures, a set on Flickr.

They did the industrial clean on Saturday morning. We stopped by and got our first look at the house now that it doesn’t look like a construction zone. There are still a bunch of little things to be done, but for the first time it felt like a house and not a work area.

Shot 28 on Flickr.Appliances (pseudo) installed! Wohoo!

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:27:06 -0500

Shot 28 on Flickr.

Appliances (pseudo) installed! Wohoo!

House Update

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:14:05 -0500

The house continues to move along. We unfortunately had to push the closing back by 5 days, but in the grand scheme of things that’s not really anything to worry about. I have updated the set of pictures on Flickr as well.

The extended stay hotel where we are staying is interesting, to put it mildly. A bizarre collection of people are the extended stay, some of them I believe make their home there. For example, several boats take up spots in the parking lot, and it truly seems that these boats have not moved in many a moon.

So on August 24th we will be moving into the new place. Carrie will be monitoring the movers while I have to come in to work. We are also getting our cable/internet hooked up that following Saturday. It will be nice to have real internet at home again; the internet at the hotel is terrible.

All-in-all, the building process has been pretty straight-forward and not too stressful. We enjoyed picking all of the finishes as now we know it’s the house we want.

What is going to be fun is really making the house ours over the next few years. From our gardening plans to furniture to whatever else, it won’t happen overnight, but little by little we will settle in to our new home. And I am very much looking forward to that.

Last Upload, a set on Flickr.This was my last upload or the last...

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:07:32 -0500

Last Upload, a set on Flickr.

This was my last upload or the last few days of JiBW3. I definitely ended this one on a much higher note than the ones before. Now, unfortunately I started my new job right towards the end, so the last few days were a little slim. However, I really enjoyed the experience and hope to do it again.

Shot 13 on Flickr.Cabinets are going up. Getting closer…

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:42:25 -0500

Shot 13 on Flickr.

Cabinets are going up. Getting closer…

JiBW3, Day 22, a set on Flickr.I made my way to a place that I...

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:37:25 -0500

JiBW3, Day 22, a set on Flickr.

I made my way to a place that I have gone many times on bike, but never on foot. The far west pedestrian bridge dog park and storm water facility.

Catching up with JiBW3

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 11:04:34 -0500

I have posted all of the photos so far over on my flickr stream. Please feel free to leave comments.

I have enjoyed it more this year, and have not been getting the burnt out feeling that has cropped up the past two times. I am hoping the cloud cover will persist today so that I can get some softer light this afternoon. We’ll see.

JiBW3 is Ongoing

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:51:50 -0500

Don’t fret!

Unfortunately as I had to turn in my laptop back to the state of Texas, all my pictures are stuck on my camera. However, I’ll have plenty of time to process them once I return to Austin next week.

JiBW3, Day 1, a set on Flickr.Day 1, down and in the books.

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:23:42 -0500

JiBW3, Day 1, a set on Flickr.

Day 1, down and in the books.

McDonald’s Drive-Thru fail on Flickr.Saw this today while...

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:10:55 -0500

McDonald’s Drive-Thru fail on Flickr.

Saw this today while I was out running errands. Ouch.

JiBW3, Day 0, a set on Flickr.I decided to start JiBW3 a bit...

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:15:41 -0500

JiBW3, Day 0, a set on Flickr.

I decided to start JiBW3 a bit early, as May 31st was my last day at UT and I decided that was worth taking some pictures.

Shot 11 on Flickr.The outside details are up, and the house is...

Sat, 28 May 2011 10:49:31 -0500

Shot 11 on Flickr.

The outside details are up, and the house is now waterproofed.

Shot 10 on Flickr. The roof planks are up, the exterior walls...

Tue, 24 May 2011 14:41:00 -0500

Shot 10 on Flickr.

The roof planks are up, the exterior walls are wrapped, and the siding is going up (not seen in this picture, though you can see the tarpaper for the roof and the HardiePlank siding sitting in front). Oh yeah, the windows are all installed as well.

Announcing JiBW3

Mon, 23 May 2011 19:00:06 -0500

Yes, yes, I am going to do it again.

You may ask, “But Taylor, the last two years have beat you down by the end where you almost didn’t ever want to take a picture again. Why would you make yourself do it again?”

That is a valid question. But the answer I think makes sense.

For almost all of this June I will be unemployed. I am very excited about this. I am not sure when the next time that I will get a block of time off like this will ever be, so I really want to take advantage of it. How better to take advantage than to make myself get out and take pictures of things and people in this city (and in the few other cities we will visit here and there).

I don’t just want to spend the entire month sitting on my butt in front of the TV or the computer. I do that enough. I want to take this opportunity to see Austin. To ride my bike during the day. To have a beer in the middle of the day and spend the afternoon going for a swim. I don’t know what else, but I want to take advantage of it.

I think making myself take pictures again will help force this along. One of the things that made it difficult last year was that I spent a lot of time on campus at work. So I was forced to take all of my pictures after I got home from work and got my bike ride in, etc. But now, I’ll have time. I can do it right. And I intend to. So look to here and my flickr stream.

My last week at UT

Mon, 23 May 2011 12:34:59 -0500

It is very strange to me that this is my last full week of employment at the University of Texas at Austin. My last day is technically next Tuesday, but since Monday is a University holiday, in my opinion one day does not a week make. So here I am … my last week.

I started graduate school in September of 2001. I am leaving UT in May of 2011. Almost 10 years as a UT employee. When I was filling out my time card today I saw on the bottom: “Months of State Service: 117.” Woah.

Now, I know lots of people have worked many places a lot longer than 10 years. But I mean, I’m only 33. Almost a third of my life has been spent being paid by the state of Texas and going to campus. It is just a weird feeling now that that time is coming to an end.

This also is the twilight of my academic and true research career. For somebody who spent the last 10 years talking about how they really wanted to go into academia, I feel sort of weird prepared to leave it. But in all honesty, it wasn’t really just my choice. Academia had the much larger say in the matter.

There is a large part of me that is very excited about leaving research and going to go build stuff. Focus on getting stuff done, getting projects finished, and getting products shipped. But I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t going to miss doing stuff, “just because.” Spending time on a project because nobody knows an answer, and that is the main reason.

Change is at times uncomfortable, many people spend their entire lives fighting change at every possible point. But often change is good, and I honestly believe that this change will be good. There is a lot of change occurring. We are getting a house built, I am starting a new job, and I’m looking forward with an open mind.

This next 8 days will be be nostalgic, sad, exciting, and a relief. But I am an optimist, and June 1st I start the next part of my life… and I am looking forward to it!

Shot 9 on Flickr.The framing has begun. We were actually able to...

Wed, 18 May 2011 11:49:24 -0500

Shot 9 on Flickr.

The framing has begun. We were actually able to walk around the different rooms and really get a feel for where everything is. Crazy!

Shot 8 on Flickr.Slabtastic!

Sun, 15 May 2011 11:40:35 -0500

Shot 8 on Flickr.

Slabtastic!