I feel almost as if I’ve lost a lover. 

KXMC and I will have our relationship flash by in slow motion in this edition of “Piper’s emotionally charged blog posts”. 

As a crown-wielding queen of the Norsks, I walked up to Jim Olson, CBS news director, in my sash and heels and coyly asked for a job. Much to my surprise, weeks later, his son called and offered me a position. Much to his surprise, I was a talentless gamble with a video camera.

I learned computer graphics on a stone age monster of a machine, and was taught to set the studio shots by one Tim Olson, who had boldly wrapped his arms around mine the cliché pool player in every romantic comedy. 

Mike Elm, sports anchor extraordinaire, was dismayed at my shocking inability to do anything. My video was blue and shaky, I’d neglected to zoom in on any victorious player, and I had more shots of the crowd than of the actual game. His grumpy protégé, Eric ManLove, eventually took me into the edit bay and we had a glorious tutorial on how to accurately shoot sports. It took a while, but I got there.

I took several stabs at news packages, but my jump cuts, hot mics, awkward writing, and poor editing had me disheartened to the max. 

Fortunately for me, no matter what you or anyone does, KX will never fire you. (This would later prove extremely frustrating, as other employees were even less competent than I was, if you can believe it!)

In June of 2011, after the overdue exit of Sarah Jorde, Captain Awkward-On-Air, I slipped into the weekend weather anchor position. 

I may have been useless in ever other area, but boy could I make people smile while watching the weather. My lack of scientific knowledge forced a conversationally relevant chat on the weather, rather than a graphs-and-lines speech. I was bubbly and comfortable on camera. I went through phases of displeasure with my pay when I was getting up at 3am and barely making above minimum wage, but after implementing the “do the bare minimum” mentality, my paychecks suddenly seemed outlandishly reasonable. 

The Piper Jones fanclub held a substantial presence in the community, I was happy at work, and I felt appreciated. 

In December of 2012, I said my goodbyes on air and am now exiting the community to pursue relaxation and wellness. 

And I’m sad about it. 

Here I am, in my first weeks of weather anchoring. I tried to scowl less toward the end.