First Blog Post/Juneathon

Hello people of Internet Land.

Let this be known as the first blog post of wxbeck!

I guess I will start off with a little about me and the intent of this blog.

I am 23 years old. I grew up in Northern Colorado and that is where I consider home. I currently live in Wichita, Kansas and am really enjoying it here (minus the lack of mountains). I graduated with a BS in Meteorology from the University of Northern Colorado in May of 2011. I worked for a small weather company in Cheyenne, WY for a little over 2 years before I was hired at AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, Inc. here in Wichita. I am so grateful for this opportunity to learn a TON more about the weather and become more experienced. The weather isn't half bad either, minus the tornadoes hitting my apartment complex. ;)

Probably the number one thing to know about me  is that I am crazy about the weather. Everyone always asks: "How did you become interested in the weather? Did you have a crazy experience?"  The answer is no. I am 99% sure I was born with my passion for the weather. I can remember being in elementary school and always going to the highest point on the playground to look west to see if there were dark clouds. Because at that point, all I knew was that storms usually came from the west. I also remember staying up very late at night to watch the lightning. I would sit on the floor in front of my window for hours and hours watching the lightning, just so utterly and completely fascinated by it. Our dog Emma was scared of the thunder, so she and I would sit and I would comfort her while I watched the lightning. Favorite childhood memory :)  I do enjoy storm chasing; there is almost no feeling in the world like the one you get when you are standing and staring at a massive supercell, feeling the outflow on your face. One definite perk to living in Kansas.. there's a lot of storms! So, all that being said, I feel very fortunate and lucky to have a job in the career field that I always wanted to be in, doing something I absolutely love, in the middle of where the craziest storms happen (scary as they may be sometimes...). 

 How cool does that thing look?? It's called a low-level mesocyclone. Now you know a big word! If you didn't already. :)

I have several other passions in life, and it's hard to rate them in a specific order, so I'll just talk about them randomly.

I love the outdoors. If it were feasible to spend 90% of my time outdoors and still have a job, I would do it. The mountains are and always will be where my happy place is. The place where I can sit and think and every single worry I have just fades away as I gaze at the stunning beauty around me. (Deep, I know.)  No, but really. There is just something so incredibly moving about the mountains to me, they have always had that kind of religious feel to me, as anti-religion as I am. I am still hoping to summit my first 14er this summer. Wish me luck! I also love hiking in general (Horsetooth Rock is one of my all-time favorites), fishing (I'm not half bad actually), and camping. Camping is so much fun. I mean, who wouldn't like to go for days without showering, sit around a campfire battling mosquitos and eat burgers, hot dogs and s'mores non-stop? Seriously though, I love it and I am so glad my parents started started us camping at an early age! This amazing picture below is of Longs Peak and was taken by the incredibly talented and very amazing Nick King.  :)

Next up, music!! I got started with music at a fairly early age, taking piano lessons in the third grade. Those continued through most of high school. I also attempted to play the flute for a year (epic disaster) and sang in choir in middle school and 3 years in high school. But I don't really do any of that anymore, except play random pianos I find.  I love and appreciate music now because of the way it can change my mood and portray a feeling almost better than just saying it.  The combination of lyrics and music can be an incredibly moving thing. I know there are several songs that have gotten me through hard times, been my go-to lift me up song, my motivating song, my screw the world song,  my I just want to rock song, my rock with the windows down song... etc. Maybe at some point in a later blog post I'll go into detail about what those songs are. I think there was one of those posts on Facebook a while ago about various songs you would pick for things. That was cool. Someday, I will own a piano this beautiful and play it all the time! Wishful thinking... :)

Last but not least, the other thing in life that I am pretty crazy about is penguins. Yep, those silly birds that can't fly and waddle around all cute like!  Seriously, look at this guy! How can you not think that is adorable? I once applied for a job in Antarctica. True story. I hope someday in this life time, I am able to see penguins in their natural habitat!

I said last but not least about the penguins, but I forgot to mention the other reason for starting this blog. My good friend Char told me about this challenge called Juneathon, and since I really enjoy exercising and being active, I decided to take the challenge.  Here is the link to the site:  http://www.juneathon.com/  Basically, it is a month long challenge to run or exercise in some way, every day for the month of June. I guess I started a day early, since I had a pretty good workout on the 31st, but I'll just list my work out that I did earlier today... er... yesterday, since it is now the 2nd.

June 1st: (These are estimated values, since I didn't write down my work out... :/)

Type: Elliptical
Duration: 30 minutes
Distance: 2 miles
Calories: 250

Type: Weight lifting
Duration: 20 minutes
Calories: ??

Type: Cardio/Running
Duration: 8 minutes
Distance: 1 mile
Calories: ??

I hope I am able to complete this challenge, it will be just that, between working and vacationy summer stuff! But, I think I will have plenty of encouragement from the others doing it with me (Char, Chris.) :)


I guess that wraps up my first blog post, if you made it all the way through, props and thank you! 

Happy weekend to you those of you who have normal weekends, happy working weekend to those of us who work on Saturdays and Sundays! :)

P.S. (Is it weird to say P.S. on a blog post?) Anyway, I neglected to mention another passion I have, so I'll just have to dedicate a whole other post to it at some point. I really really really LOVE to travel!