Last week, Christine wrote in to Preston & Steve to “thank” them for ruining me.  And they read her email on the air!  Listen in!

Anyway, to celebrate the joy of my shoes, I decided to take out my road bike for her first ride since … sometime last summer?  Turns out that it was great.  Of course, I’m still quite out of shape and getting used to the altitude (my house is at 5560ft and I rode up to 6140ft today).  But I got in a solid 15 mile ride in just over an hour.  Nowhere near my former speed, but man it felt good to actually ride.  Unfortunately, my heart complained the whole way.  My average HR was 175 for the entire ride, but that really entailed about 185-190 on the first half (uphill) and 165ish coasting back home.  Anyway, now that have my shoes, hopefully I can do this more often.

GPX

So I’m still really, really out of shape.  And I haven’t yet gotten accustomed to living at 5600 ft.  But I got in 8 miles over about 45 minutes.  Slow, but I managed to climb 400 ft in about 3 miles.  On a fixie geared up for Minnesota, that’s not horrible.

Hopefully by next weekend I’ll find my shoes and take Suzie out for a spin.

Just got back from my first bike ride of NM.  Only about 30 minutes, but man I’m exhausted.  I need to work on this some more.  But on the bright side, it’s really beautiful riding here!

Life has been quite busy since my last (real) post exactly one month ago today.  After taking a slight recovery from my thesis defense, my schedule picked back up with the end of my semester of teaching and final edits to the thesis.  Oh, and moving out of my office.  Turns out that was a mess.

Had a nice Christmas vacation with the family.  I ended up spending a surprising amount of time working, spending one full day grading reports and two full days finishing my thesis.  Luckily, everything got finished and I had a few days to relax and enjoy the family.

Christmas photos –> http://picasaweb.google.com/saroberts/20091225ChristmasVacation#

I arrived back in Minnesota on Dec 28th, just one day before the movers came to pack up my stuff.  Turns out that I had a lot of work to do before the movers got there, while the movers were there, and much cleaning to do after the movers left.  But buy the end of the 30th, my apartment transformed from the messy-lived-in state to the crowded-with-boxes state to the dirtily-empty state and finally to the clean-and-checked-out state.  Christine was instrumental to helping me clean my apartment in time and thanks to her I’m getting my entire deposit back!

Pictures from the move to ABQ –> http://picasaweb.google.com/saroberts/20091230MovingToAlbuquerque#

Christine and I hopped in the car early on New Years’ Eve to start our drive to Albuquerque.  We were originally planning on driving through South Dakota and Colorado, but some snow forecasts changed our plans.  So we headed down through Iowa, stopping to see Donnie before spending the night with my parents in Arma.  New Years’ Day saw us driving through Oklahoma City headed towards Amarillo, TX.  We stopped in OKC to see the memorial for the federal building bombing and ended our day of driving with some tasty steak in TX.  For out last day of driving, we make an early morning stop at the Cadillac Ranch before arriving in Albuquerque to get our house.

Speaking of our house, it’s shaping up quite nicely.  Chris and I spent the first few days busily cleaning and painting on the walls in our dining area.  Unfortunately, my stuff didn’t arrive until the 7th, so we definitely had some time to scope out some parts of Albuquerque, too, such as a Nuclear Museum, Natural History Museum, and Avatar in 3D XD.  After my stuff got here, we got back to work, busily unpacking, washing, and putting stuff away.  And I’m not even 1/2 way done.  I still have an entire room full of boxes and a few nearly empty rooms, but I’m planning on hitting that hard this weekend.  And hopefully I’ll get a bike ride in, too : )

Remember, pictures here –> http://picasaweb.google.com/saroberts/20091230MovingToAlbuquerque#

This week, I started my postdoc at Sandia National Laboratories.  Monday, as I knew, was an all day training session with HR.  The morning was exactly what I expected (safety, benefits, and security presentations), but the afternoon was amazingly dull.  However, I survived. 

Tuesday was my first real day at work.  I had already picked up my badge and was able to get into my new office in time to meet with my manager.  After picking up some office supplies, I met with my two co-mentors and started to learn about a couple of the projects I’m going to be working on.  My time is going to be split in half between two concurrent projects, with one winding down after a month and another one picking up afterwards.  Got to eat lunch with my mentors and Kris, and the started in on my training regimen.

So, a bit of good and bad news.  The good news is that my DOE security clearance came in, so I’ll be able to get in to the Limited Area soon, which is where my group is located.  The bad news is that I missed my clearance briefing (which I need before I can get my cleared badge) because I didn’t get the email in time, so I have to wait two more weeks before I can pick that up.  So for now, I’m in a temporary office outside of the Limited Area, but it’s looking as if I will get to move in with my group soon after I get my badge, which will help out my work a lot!

Wednesday actually felt like a day of work to me.  I got in at my scheduled time (7:30AM) and started doing more training courses (6 hours in total).  I got to meet with Rekha for a while to learn a bit more about one of my projects, and then headed back to work for training.  The first week of any job is full of this kind of stuff, unfortunately, but things seem to be coming around.  I now have a dedicated linux workstation (8 cores!) that is a blade in a server room, and my client computer should be arriving soon.  My laptop is all set up and tomorrow I’m going to try to figure out how to run some of the codes that I’ll be using.  Hopefully I’ll get a sweet monitor and the rest of my computer stuff in soon to make life a bit easier. 

So far, work is great.  I really like the people who I’m going to be working with, and I’m more and more impressed ever day at the capabilities and resources that will be available to me.  I’m excited to finish up all of the training, get my badge, and then get to work for real!  Albuquerque is great, too.  I’m enjoying my house and the neighborhood and am excited to keep exploring.

I’m hoping to post more regularly here, if nothing else than to keep in touch with everybody that I’ve left in Minnesota and elsewhere.  I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to talk about my work, but I’ll try to keep everybody posted about my explorations of New Mexico.  Until then …

Speaking of tomorrow, it’s my first day of work.  All day orientation Monday, then meetings with my manager and project leaders on Tuesday.  Wish me luck.

This time, I think I’ve had a good excuse.  You know, becoming a doctor and all.  Last week (Dec 4), I successfully defended my PhD thesis in front of my committee and many great friends and family who came to watch.  The month beforehand had been nearly 100% dedicated to writing my thesis, which I finished just before Thanksgiving, with many thanks to Chris, who forced me to actually work on the weekends and evenings (and week days), rather than procrastinating.  I’m still working on the final touches to my thesis, but I plan to have the final copy turned in to the Graduate School by this Friday.

Thesis pictures:  http://picasaweb.google.com/saroberts/20091204ThesisDefense#

The day after my defense, Christine and I flew to Albuquerque for our “thesis honeymoon”, a trip to check out the city and look for a place for me to live.  After visiting upwards of 15 houses, we found one we were both happy with, a nice 3-bedroom house in the north east part of town. It’s an older house, but should suit both of us quite well for the upcoming year.  We also had some time to catch dinner with Kristianto, eat at Kurtis and Jenny’s favorite restaurant, and check out some of the major sites in the area.

http://picasaweb.google.com/saroberts/20091206AlbuquerqueHouseHunting#

Since we’ve been back, it’s been hard to get back moving on work.  However, with only a week remaining at work, I’ve got to kick it into gear.  I’m really hoping to be completely done with everything before I go back to Kansas for Christmas break, but I may have to grade some final reports at home.  However, there will be no research!  After Christmas, it’s on to Albuquerque!

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5578986n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

Right now, the overarching item on my mind is graduating.  For the past month, I’ve been working very hard to start tying up all of my loose ends and finish my last major project.  With that, I’ve been working on my thesis, which is currently at 148 pages and is due one week from today.  I’m finishing a section for my last primary chapter, then all I have remaining is the introduction and a few appendices.  Still a lot of work to go, but I think I can get it done in a week … hopefully.

There is also the 2009 APS DFD meeting in Minneapolis in a week.  This weekend, I have to prepare my talk (only 10 minutes) so I can practice on Monday and give it a week from this Sunday.  Luckily, the conference starts after my thesis is due, so at least I won’t have that to worry about.

And then there’s my thesis defense, which has been confirmed for Friday, December 4 at 10:30 AM.  For those of you who are in Minneapolis and want to kill your late morning, stop by!

Besides work, I’m also preparing for my upcoming move to Albuquerque.  I’ve made some travel arrangements and am meeting with the moving company next week.  Christine is going to drive down with me around the first of the year and help me get set up before I start work on January 11. 

So yeah, things are moving along.  But for now, I’m feeling like I should get back to writing …