And to be serious for a little bit..many of our readers encouraged us and inspired us over the past year (and by many, I mean the five regular readers who drop by here…many is anything over 3). . Now that the book is out there, its a little frighting to think that we’ve bared our artistic souls for the world to see. This is a step we likely would not have taken without the encouragement, inspiration, and love from our family and friends. Thank you.

And here’s to hoping that next year’s book kicks this book’s ass.

Costume Cross

Welcome to the new blog…

I got frustrated with the old blog and all of its annoyances, so here’s the new blog. Its still a work in progress, but the basics are here and I’ll try to keep the incredibly fascinating life of TeamWelliver documented here. The link lists will grow and the gallery will improve in the next few weeks…in between soccer games, ‘cross races, and thesis writing.

Quick weekend update: we played soccer today in the local league. Terry scored an unbelievable volley from 20-yards out into the upper-90 along with another goal, I actually got an assist…and most importantly, Terry survived and didn’t injure himself!

Beth: Hey cutie, read the e-mail from the ladies about the thing.

Terry: Oh yeah, what did they say?

Beth: Just read it. Its in my e-mail.

Terry: Well can’t you just tell me what it say?

Beth: Dude, its right there in my inbox, just read it.

Terry (sheepishly): But I’m watching MacGyver.

That’s right. Terry was watching the MacGyver pilot on YouTube. And Richard Dean Anderson is still cute.

So I went in at outside midfield (i.e. winger, i.e. the position who runs the most), and being the only girl on the field, I’m about 10 years past my prime of playing outside midfield against boys. One guy got the ball and is about to beat me, so I did the one thing I’ve instinctively learned to do very well in 18 years of soccer playing…I pulled his jersey.

Now you would think that in 18 years of my uber-competitiveness on the soccer field and therefore freeeequent jersey pulling, yes, you would think that I should know what I am doing. I thought I was a pro jersey puller. But apparently not. Instead, my poor little pinky finger looks like what you see in the picture above.

I’ll get it checked out tomorrow. Its just a pinky so no big deal. But seriously, I think we do need to start looking for a padded room to live in.

Oh, and we won the game.

Yesterday I was discussing with a Pub outing with a friend and was thinking that instead of beer I should drink wine in order to avoid all those calories and help out with ‘cross fitness. His response:

If you weigh more by drinking more beer the bike will seem lighter comparatively and you will be more “padded” for the bruisings encountered during a ‘cross race.

That’s brilliant! Almost has if he knew that I beat the crap out of myself during a ‘cross race. That extra padding wil help!

So thank you Bryan for yesterday’s Big Idea of the Day.

I have a job. I’ll likely be able to keep that job for another 14 years if I want and retire comfortably. I forecast the weather. I’ve wanted to be a meteorologist since I was in 3rd grade. I like weather. I like it a lot. But its not my passion. And I don’t mind my job, but I certainly don’t love my job. Its not my passion either.

Soccer was of course my first passion. I lived it, breathed it. I loved it. I was pretty good at it, too. But then it started to live me. It controlled me. It was pulling me to places that I shouldn’t go. And then it got to be not fun. I had to step away. The passion consumed me and ruined it for me for awhile. Now its fun to go play every once in awhile again, but not seriously.

Then came my love of photography. I love, love, LOVE it. I’m okay at it, but not great. But I’m still learning. I’m growing. My passion is evolving. I wish it could be my job. I have a lot of passion for it. And I can do it with Terry because he shares a similar passion for it.

Then there’s cycling. I love riding, I love training like a little weirdo, I love mountain biking, I love ‘cross, I LOVE racing on the track. They are all fun. I can’t get enough. Its my other passion in my life these days besides photography. I’d love to be great but I’m happy just to be able to do it.

So how do I keep my new passions from consuming my life and tarnishing this shiny passion I have? Is the only reason I don’t mind my job is because its something I like but that I’m not passionate about? If it were up to me, my days would be equally divided between Terry, my camera, and my bike(s). But that seems like a recipe for disaster. How do I keep the balance?

In my mind I know what I want to do with my life. But I am a legend in my own day dreams. Reality is not so dreamy.

The good thing in all this pondering is that Terry and I feel the same way…and the coolest thing in the world is that we share one true passion together – each other.

So now I have 2.5 pounds of cherries. This is where the grocery store tricks you because they put the cherries in those nice pre-loaded bags with a sign that says $2.99 in big letters and “per pound” in dinky little print beneath. So, yeah, I paid more than $2.99 for my cherries. I guess I’m a sucker for fruit sales.

I’m headed out of town on Wednesday afternoon for the weekend and the cherries miiiight not make it through the weekend, so, hmm, I guess I’m forced to eat all of them before I leave. Hopefully I don’t get a tummy ache! I’ll have to pace myself.

As I was sitting here enjoying a few with lunch, I was thinking about all the cherry trees in Japan. They have a gazillion cherry trees in that country that beautifully blossom every spring. Yet I don’t think a single cherry ever grows on those trees. The plum trees bloom around the same time and you can get lots of plums and plum-flavored wines and liquors and candies and nasty pickled plum stuff and other plum crap…but I don’t remember any cherry goodies. Cherries in the Japanese markets weren’t very common, and when they did show up they were something like $6 or $8 for a little tiny bag of them, so we never bought any. So what’s the deal with all those cherry trees throwing their petals around every spring with no fruit? Have they bred the usefulness out of the trees to make them aesthetically-pleasing? That’s sort of sad.

Programming Note: Posts might be on the low side for the next few weeks…working on a new site.

The past days’ events have led me to eat a lot of my Trader Joe’s Belgian chocolate. That’s right. Its over a pound. Or a “pound plus”…though I think I’m gaining more of the “plus” than just the pound as I eat it.

My thesis research is all about figuring out the height of the bottom of a cloud from space. At this point in my research, that means comparing data from a satellite called Cloudsat to a few lidar ground sites scattered around the world to validate that the satellite is telling us the proper altitude of the bottom of the cloud. (if you want to know more of the geeky science stuff, put your nerd glasses on and e-mail me).

I spent the whole day yesterday downloading data raw satellite data. I spent most of today decoding it so I can play with it and organizing it into nice folders and was quite proud of myself. I even made a spreadsheet that told me exactly what time the satellites flew over my ground sites for an entire two-year period.

Then this afternoon I was looking a bit more closely at my pretty pictures where the satellite flew each day. And realized that the days when the satellite was supposed to fly over the Oklahoma site it was flying over central China. And when it was supposed to fly over the Alaska site it was flying over Siberia.

I forgot a negative sign. So instead of searching for longitude values in the western hemisphere (where Oklahoma and Alaska are), I was looking in the eastern hemisphere (hence China and Siberia).

Darn negative sign!

Hopefully I can get it all downloaded and organized again tomorrow. There is single track to ride this weekend!