Its Been A While!!

Yes, I know I know, its been a few weeks since I posted.  I lost the habit of daily posting when I went on a last minute vacation after that Wednesday of severe weather and tornadoes...so sue me.  Haha.  It was a fun break.  Take a look:

      So it was a good little break.  And then back to work and reality.  I have been working a lot on making graphics and updates and upgrades and everything!  I've also been doing some serious robot building.
      Red Stick Robotics has been doing a high school robotics class and a competition.  They also invited media to participate in the competition.  Though in Baton Rouge, no one...other than myself decided to participate.  I did robotics at my high school back in New York.  Team 529 in the F.I.R.S.T. organization.  Anyway, my strengths are in the engineering and problem solving aspect of the deal--not in the programming.   Like the guys in Apollo 13, give me a box of stuff and tell me what it has to do and I can think it out and design something to do it.  Ask me to program the robot to search its way around a room by itself and its going to take me a while.  So now I have a little over a week to program my robot to follow a white line and pick stuff up.  So much thinking.

      And on top of all of this I am still going to CrossFit every other day!  After about a month of going now, I finally have stopped being sore after every workout.  I am now getting into the habit of a better diet.  The biggest thing?  No carbohydrates in the evening!  Morning and lunch? Sure. But not at night.  Andrew (the owner and trainer of Red Stick CrossFit) said that carbs at night gets stored as fat.  But carbs during the day (morning and lunch) will burn off by night time!  Who would have thought?!
      I think that about does it.  I think I've gotten caught up.  More to follow tomorrow.  I need to relax now.  There was a serious core workout today.  :-D

So busy!!

I just got done watching the walking dead (such and awesome show AND an awesome season finale!) and now I figure is a good time to update the blog.  

Friday was a busy day.  I was up SO early and I promised that I was going to show what I look at on a daily basis to do the forecast.  I took some screen shots Friday morning...try not to be overwhelmed.  Haha

This is what I look at for severe weather

Lots of numerical data

cloud coverage and precipitation

mid-low level temperatures and vorticity(spin)

relative humidity and wind speed...for fog

dew points and wind speed for overnight lows

 So these are the screens I look at.  And put it all down in my forecast page and draw out a forecast from all the available information.  Friday morning was a slow start but the forecast came out pretty good.  AND it looks like even from then to now, the chance for severe weather still exists. 

Rather than go home and nap at the end of my Friday I went to the gym for the 3rd time.  I think this is the most I've frequented the gym in a long time.  But the traffic West bound on the interstate was NASTY!  I have no idea what it was.  Eastbound is usually the crappy traffic on a Friday.  Well anyway, I left at 4:50 to get to the gym by 5 or so and traffic took me to about 5:45 at the gym so I missed the 5pm group but turns out that was probably for the best.  Andrew, the coach was more like a personal trainer in the 6pm time slot because I was the only one there. 

It was a WORK-out.  Lots of work.  Hell, even the warm-up was a work out!  But it was a good one.  I was telling a friend of mine that Andrew is one of those personal trainer/coaches that are good to have.  Its not a bunch of yelling at you to demand to do something, they are encouraging words.  I would rest for a bit and he'd say "go," I wouldn't go right away and he'd shout, "c'mon Ryan!  Let's get to work!"  Reluctantly I push myself through the set of exercises and one of them would be good and he'd say, "good!  another one like that!  don't rest you can push through it!  Great work!"  Its not a bunch of discouraging words that make me think I'm not worth the time or as good as anyone else.  I mean I know that I am not a strong person, and I'm not afraid to share that.  For one, I am not good at push-ups.  I can only do a few before my arms give up.  I told him that and he said, "ok, well do as many as you can do and when you can't do anymore, you can do modified ones."    When I did as many as I could and then finished with doing mostly modified push-ups he told me that he "would rather see you do 5 standard push-ups and then modified than none at all."

  It was a good workout and tiring.  I felt so hot and was incredibly sweaty when it was over.  I drank a lot of water after it on the drive home.
 

 I slept well on Friday night, which is good, because I had to get up on Saturday morning for the Wearin' of the Green Parade.




The Wearin' of the Green Parade was awesome!  It was cool to see so many people out there and people who said hello!

At the end of the parade, we took the golf carts back to the top of the hill at Hundred Oaks where the parade started.  And the coolest part was, we got a Police escort!  One of the coolest moments in my life.






Pat Shingleton puts on a great parade and is incredibly generous with those in the parade before, during and after.  I'm grateful and thankful to have been able to be a part of it.


 And then of course I had to go to work and put the Saturday forecast together.  And it was a quiet day at the station.




After the news a few of us went out to our favorite haunt and had a couple drinks and finished celebrating St. Patrick's day with an Irish car bomb.  Which has now become a tradition for me since my college days. 


Today (SUNDAY) I enjoyed sleeping in, thank God!  I needed it.  My sleep had been all out of whack since 2une In on Thursday morning.  I enjoyed the afternoon outside with some frozen yogurt near Perkins Rowe.  I got death by chocolate and added raspberries, some graham crackers and crumbled Oreo cookie bits.  #BESTFLAVORCOMBOEVER 

And the forecast today still looks like severe weather might be an issue come Tuesday night and Wednesday.  I'll be at the station Monday-Wednesday this week to help Dave and Pat when the time comes.    

I'm so tired!!

I tell you what, going from a normal 9-5, going to the gym and going home to make dinner and get to bed at an appropriate hour to do a flip to the morning show shift is a killer.  I tossed and turned all night I woke up at least 3 times between 10pm and 3am (I'm wondering if I was just still too wound up from the gym).  But I got myself going!  

One of the things that I do to start those mornings off right when I do the morning show is I have an egg sandwich and orange juice.  Just a good start to the day good carbs and protein and some vitamin C to kick start the day.  Cause at 3am you either need a good breakfast or a swift kick in the ass and those are hard to come by at 3 in the morning!

Then I crank up the music and rock out in the weather center as I put the forecast together.  I'll sing to get my voice to warm up so it doesn't sound like I just woke up.  And I may even do some dance-like movements, but those are few and far between.  

The morning shift isn't terrible, its fast paced up until 7am and then after that it gets a little slower to 9am and then it stops until noon.  Its a super fast forecast period before 2uneIn and then there's the radio forecasts and the WBRZ weather channel updates and all of that has to happen before the show begins at 5am.  4am to 5am is frantic!  (sometimes its so fast that I adjust the forecast as the morning goes on...shhhh.)

Though today it didn't change much from what I originally wrote down. 

Its usually a jumble of numbers and pictures.  The whole morning.  Tomorrow I'll try and remember to take some more pictures of what it looks like when I am forecasting.

Now to see what else I can do before I have to start winding my evening down.

I got rocked today

I forgot to take a picture of the workout today.  That may have been due to the fact that I was exhausted.  Today's workout...for me, took a total of 17:36.  It was a good workout.

This is what I remember from today's workout:

                                Warm up:    jump rope for 3 minutes

                                                     hip stretches (i had no idea my flexibility was so poor)

                                                     and MAX wall ball.  (that was the nicest one to do)

                               The workout:  Do it as fast as you can...
                                                        (do them 3 times)

                                                        Run to the stop sign

                                                        50 squats

                                                        30 sit-ups with a 15 pound weight

I did the workout in 17:36 and boy was I tired!  It was a good ab, shoulder and thigh work out.  I was sweating as much water as I could drink!  Which is terrible when you are trying to get home to shower and you get stuck in this:

Ugh!  Traffic in Baton Rouge is terrible!  You either have to go to work at 5am or 10am to avoid it and leave at 4pm or 7pm to get out of the rush home!  

Walking up the stairs felt like someone encased my legs in concrete!  My legs were worked pretty good today after a total of 150 squats.  I though that might be it and then I tried to get some stuff off the top shelf of the cabinet and my arms failed to rise above my shoulders!  Hopefully tomorrow on 2une In I am not completely useless.  Ok, time for bed...I need rest.

Day 2: Hurts so good.

Without a doubt, 24 hours after my first workout, I feel like I am doing something good for myself.  I went to get up off the couch this evening and my body went, "oh wow, that's what physical activity is again!"   


I feel it all through my shoulders, arms and thighs.  If the soreness is any indication of where this is going to be doing the most good, I'm going to be in good shape come summer time!


I went out walking this afternoon walking with some friends near the capitol grounds and we came across A LOT of people running around the capitol.  I am a runner...there's no doubt about that, a runner and a swimmer.  Have been since I could swim and run around 6 years old. But even I thought as the people ran by, "yeah, not happening today."  HA!

Well anyway...


Resting up tonight!  Day 2 of working out tomorrow.  I suspect that there will be some good stretching involved!  I'll have details tomorrow night!  As always, post any questions you have and I'll answer them.

Day One.

My first blog post.

I've decided that at some point I should have a blog.  I don't know why I need another place to write, but I figure this might be a better outlet for longer posts than facebook.  And its hopefully going to serve me a purpose.  See for lent this year, I decided to give up fast food, (not that I eat it frequently, I usually have it about once a month or so when it is absolutely necessary) eating a lot of crap and work out more often.  I want to be able to get myself in a workout routine and keep myself on a healthy lifestyle track.  Why not start with lent??  

So I stopped getting fast food...though my one exception are hero-like sandwiches...yes they are fast, but generally sliced ham, cheese and bread are the same from my kitchen to the sub shop.  And lastly I finally got membership to a gym!  A CrossFit Gym!  A bunch of my friends from home told me about it a while ago and I tried to go often, but I just couldn't get the motivation and the drive to go regularly. BUT!  A friend of mine told me I should head back to the gym I started at and get back into it.  So I did.  Red Stick CrossFit is a nice place.  Its kind of deceiving because it is off the beaten path.  Its just off Government Street just behind The Radio Bar.  

I dropped in on Monday to start my new routine.  For now I am going to go 3 times a week.  The coach/personal trainer there, Andrew told me that's where I am going to start and then when I get acclimated and up to speed I will go for 4 times per week.  (I'm totally ok with starting slow, nothing like hurting yourself to throw a wrench in the works.)

So here's what I am going to do and those of you, which is no one right now, but those of you that follow will get to see my progress in this endeavor.  I plan on posting my weight each Monday and showing my progress in each WOD (CrossFit acronym for Workout Of the Day).  So there you have it!  And here we go!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Height 6'1" (yes, i know this won't change...just giving an idea of BMI)

Weight 201.6lbs

Waist 40"

 Today's WOD was a killer...for my thighs.  The squats, the wall ball, the kettle bell and the jump rope was enough to make them burn.  But that good burn.  Not that "MY LEG IS GOING TO FALL OFF!!" kind but the kind that you know that your legs are going, OH, thanks for deciding to use me a little bit more.  


Well that's going to do it for me...I should be tired right now, but for some reason I'm not.  Feel free to post questions, comments, etc.  I'll be happy to answer whatever I can!