(Updated 5 July 2026)
Here's a brief summary of what I'm up to:
I got a new job! I started at Leidos in April as a senior aerospace modeling and simulation engineer. The work is similar to what I was doing at the Navy but a little more engineering-focused, less pure software development, modeling a variety of flight systems rather than staying with one program.
The new job is in Charlottesville (VA) so we just moved. They were super flexible and let me start remote for the first few months until Anna's school year ended and we could move together. We don't know Charlottesville that well yet, but we went for it and bought a house! A first for both of us. We've been in it for three weeks now and are slowly getting settled. Anna is painting all the rooms, so some unpacking and organization is delayed while we freshen everything up.
Still planning our wedding for the fall and have attended five others since March, so life is pretty busy right now. I haven't been able to play much music recently, but my back pain is improving. I'll take what I can get :)
Goodreads is probably most up to date with my current reading, but here are some of my favorite books I've read (somewhat) recently:
I read Dr. Stuart McGill's Back Mechanic (and Ultimate Back Fitness) and followed his recommended daily regimen of walking and core exercise and more walking for about six months, with slow improvement, until I decided to take more action and found Dr. Clayton Skaggs and Dr. Jim George at CIHP in St. Louis. I went to see them in May 2025 and spent seven hours at the clinic over two days while they evaluated and educated me. They gave me a number of simple exercises to follow ("do these and nothing else") to help strengthen and gain awareness and control of my lower abs and a couple other areas. (My spinal structure is all good; their diagnosis is that I'm under using some muscles, which causes over using other muscles, which results in pain.)
Current Status
I've been very consistent with my exercises since August and my pain is significantly reducing. My team at CIHP gave me the green light to go out on my own in May, so I'm no longer meeting with them but am keeping up with my exercises. The daily ones are reducing to ~2x/week, and I'm doing my own programming for three gym days/week. Things are looking up... just need to not injure myself doing yard work now.