Graduation and Other Oddities

The last few months have been filled with excitement and new adventures.  I sincerely apologize for the lack of posts.  I promise more statistical/scientific posts will follow very soon. For now, let me try to share a few highlights from the last few months.

In March, we welcomed a new addition to our household: a 2013 Scion FR-S (color 'hot lava')!  We are still working on naming it, but currently the top two contenders are the 'Atomic Carrot' and the 'CarrotMonster'.  Here is a picture of Chris grinning ear to ear in the car lot the day we drove it home:

After a few months of getting to know the car and taking 'an extreme driving course', Chris put the car to the test at the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) autocross. Here a group of cars getting lined up to race: 

Later in March Rice University was host to the Conference of Texas Statisticians (COTS). Keith Baggerly gave a beautiful keynote talk discussing his famous talk When is Reproducibility an Ethical Issue? Genomics, personalized medicine, and human error.  See his appearance on 60 Minutes for further details related to the story about Potti at Duke University. 

April was a very exciting month around here!  I ran in the Digital Run 5K Houston with a wonderful group of friends.  It was advertised as a 'nocturnal wonderland' filled with lots of LED lights, fun music and an after party!  Amazingly it was quite cold the night we ran, so here we are all bundled up with our cool glasses: 

Finally, the main reason the frequency of posts have come to a halt was the successful completion of my Ph.D. defense on April 12th!  The Hooding ceremony was held on May 10th in which my research advisor Marek Kimmel (pictured below) was able to hood me: 

Rice University's 100th Commencement ceremony was held May 11th and we were fortunate enough to have Neil deGrasse Tyson as our commencement speaker! :)  Here are a few pictures of my amazing family: 

To close, I leave you with a fun Pi Day fact to ponder (courtesy of my Dad) :)