'twas a good weekend. friday night i went and did a tiny bit of climbing at tcw, and then went to hang out with the slf, who has been fighting a bit of a cold. saturday morning we went to go get my carb load on at the original pancake house, and then went over to the mall to look for climbing shoes for the slf at ems, which was one of my xmas presents to her. saturday night was the comp, and it was a lot of fun. i was climbing well, much better than i expected considering how fat and lazy i've been over the last few weeks. once again, my strategy was horrible... i did some really hard stuff, but then was working on some other hard stuff that i didn't do, and didn't bother to fill out my scorecard with more moderate climbs in between tries on harder stuff, so i was running around like a loon in the last 15 minutes trying to squeeze some stuff in, which of course didn't work. so, my final score probably doesn't reflect the fact that i climbed really well. jen took a nice picture of me climbing... thanks jen!

yesterday was a really mellow day. slf stayed at her parents' house because she still was feeling like poo, so i bummed around and did some laundry, played bf1942, and watched the steelers pull out a squeaker against cleveland. it's a horrible thing for me to say after living in the 'burgh for 4 1/2 years, but i really dislike the steelers. perhaps it's not that i dislike the team, as much as i dislike the fans. i understand civic pride and all of that, but the undeserved optimism and enthusiasm gets a little old after awhile. every year, the local rags talk about what a great team they are, and how they're going to win the super bowl this year "for sure". the problem, as i see it (being really out of football since the joe morris-era giants), is that they play in a fairly weak conference, and usually play poorly against the worst teams in that conference, so when they play other teams, they get socked because their game just isn't at the level that it should be. they were lucky to win against cleveland yesterday (as much as cleveland was lucky to be so close to winning themselves), but, as pat put it, "unless jesus comes back to play cornerback, they're going to get crushed next week."

after the game, the slf finally made it back to her place, and i stopped at whole paycheck for some soup for her and some umi sushi for me, and went to go keep her company.

couple of notes about the weekend: --i live on a really dangerous corner. there were two auto accidents there, one saturday and one sunday. the problem is that people come flying down the main street, and other people trying to come from the t-intersection and make a left on to the aforementioned speedway get socked. i only heard the one sunday morning... heard something come down the street at a pretty good clip (probably a big dumb suv), and then i heard the horn honk, a quick slide (it was pretty slushy out, and 4-wheel drive doesn't help you with that, jerk), and a crunch. i didn't hear any sirens like there were at the accident saturday, so i went back to sleep. --i've already made progress on a few of my resolutions

--i cut up 3 of my credit cards so i won't be tempted to use them in a pinch. --at the comp one of the problems i did was V6/7. --also at the comp, i was working on a harder problem with two other guys, when one of the staff came over after i had just fallen off at the crux move and asked us (but directed at me) if i had done the climb. unable to stop myself, i opened my mouth and said "if we had, i don't think we would be working on it still". it was one of those moments where you're sort of across the room, watching yourself do or say something. anyway, i immediately apologized profusely to the kid for being a big fat dick.