the wrong Ben

I am such a fucking moron.

When I was talking to Shim at the Bozeman Icefest he was telling me about a climber dude I should meet named Ben. I thought I knew Ben, and decided to email him about possibly building a bouldering cave in my garage.

So I send Ben, a guy I knew from the east coast, an email saying I had talked to Shim, that Shim said hi, and could he give me some info about building a climbing wall. Then I put a bunch of chatty shit in the email figuring Shim must have emailed him that I would be emailing him. Blah blah blah I went on about a bunch of stupid shit. Ben responded back to my first email right away so I emailed him back, inviting him to Denver as per Shim's suggestion. Ben never responded back to that email.

Then on Thursday night Shim called to wish me a happy new year. I mentioned to him that I had contacted Ben, but used his first and last name. Shim paused for a moment and said "I don't know that guy." I was like but you said I should email Ben. Shim was like "Well, that's the wrong Ben".

SO embarrassed. Ben probably thinks I'm some kind of idiot, and I wonder why he didn't ask me why Shim was saying hi when he doesn't know Shim. Worse, he's friends with a bunch of people I knew at this gym where I have a high profile ex. And all the people at that gym gossip like they're still in high school. I'm going to send Ben (the wrong ben) an email trying to explain myself so he doesn't think I'm a total twit. Though Shim and Cat both said I shouldn't email explaining.

I always have to do things people tell me not to :D

new year's eve

 My sister Cat came to visit me for new year's. Kind of an epic visit because she was supposed to arrive at 10 am on Thursday morning, but she missed her flight so didn't get in until 11:30 pm Thursday night (her flight was delayed 1 1/2 hours).

The weather had been perfect here, but of course the day she flew in we had a snow storm and then the temps dropped to single digits. Friday morning we had decided to do a hike at Matt Winters, and I lent my sister a bunch of clothes because it was only 3 degrees F outside and she didn't have anything warm enough to hike in.

The hike was fun, then we went to Wahoo's and had fish tacos. Cat took a nap while I worked on the photos we took at Matt Winters. We saw a huge buck and a family of 8 deer while hiking. I took a movie of them for my sister's kids.

I woke Cat up around 630 and we started getting ready to go out. Above is a pic of me with my hair kind of fixed (well, I dried it with a hair dryer, and I consider that "fixing" my hair) and make up on. This pic is of me and Cat sitting on my bed with a portrait of us when we were 4 and 3 that my mom painted (I'm the one on the right in the painting). I took about 10 shots to get this one. Guess we should have thought about taking the pic BEFORE drinking some wine. Cat was upset at the way her hair turned out because I don't really have any hair products and her hair is a lot thicker and is straight so she always puts hair spray in.

Hair spray is one of those things, like deodorant, that I don't understand and will never own. Oh well. She survived.

We were planning to go to 16th Street mall but it was way too cold to walk down there. Also, Cat was wearing boots with heels and I was worried about ice on the sidewalk. We went to Larimer Lounge instead, which was tres boring. We got there around 830 and it was dead. We had to pay a $15 cover to see a band that started playing a few minutes before we left (I think we heard one song).

We were standing against a table set up by the band, talking and having a beer (no wine - sucked!!!!!). People started showing up. Soon there was a group of 3 geeky guys. They kept walking by us and giving us meaningful glances. I was like I am NOT going to talk to a guy who doesn't have the balls to talk to me first. Then two other guys showed up and were standing behind us and the table talking loudly about climbing. I had to laugh. Yeah, I'm SO impressed you climbed at the Monastery. Then a guy came in with his girlfriend and did a double take when he saw Cat. He almost fell over. His girlfriend grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the room where the band was playing.

No hot guys, so after 2 beers we left and got home right at 10. Then we ordered a pizza and watched some Ab Fab. I had to get up at 330 this morning to take Cat to the airport. Luckily both her flights were on time. She's supposed to come out to go skiing in March. Psyched! Also, we decided next new year's we are going somewhere warm.

versa climber!!!!!

I just ordered my very own versa climber!!!!! I've been saving up for it for the past two years!!!! Psyched!!!! They start building it today and I should have it mid-January. I even got the sales guy to make the shipping free.

I think I'm going to put it in my kitchen next to my cacti so they can watch me work out. And I've downloaded a bunch of workouts from the web site.

The versa climber has always been my favorite cardio machine in the gym (though I usually end up using the dreadmill because most gyms, for some stupid reason, don't have versa climbers). I am hating on push ups and pull ups so this will give me a nice exercise to keep my arms in shape. And it's a nice thing to do with running to keep my knee from blowing up (in theory anyway).

Because, this is the year for big trips. I'm going to do the grand with Joe in the summer, Little Bear (also maybe with Joe unless he hates me after the grand), and I plan on doing the rim-rim-rim in the grand canyon (likely that will be a solo endeavor as no one I've talked to seems interested in doing it with me). I'm going to train for a 5k, and then a 10k, and see how my knee does. I might try an easy marathon if the stupid thing holds up this year.

After wasting a year of my life with those fucks in the ME I am ready to have some serious fun this year.