2 Weeks of Guests

So the last couple weeks have been chock full of fun and adventure.  I've had a ton of visitors, had some positive and potentially promising news at work, started seeing a wonderfully fun girl, and in general, I've just been having an awesome time with life.  The 50 states thing is kind of back burnered for now because the remaining states are mostly all super boring.  I am going to try to get to Alaska and Hawaii before March which will bring me down to 6 remaining states.  As for the rest of them, I'll get there when I get there. Or maybe never. I'm fine with that too. :)

So visitors...

Many of my ultimate friends from CT/NY came to Denver for the Colorado Cup (a big tournament that is important for rankings for the club series).  The tournament was all well and good to watch, but the better part was getting to hang out with people I haven't seen since New Years.  A few of us went on an awesome hike at Brainard lake which is literally in the middle of no where. We were supposed to meet up with some other friends, but when we got to the base, we realized there was absolutely no cell reception.  So the four of us hiked along for a couple hours and took a ton of great shots.  Like this one:

CO is such a beautiful place. :)

Royal Gorge - Arkansas River, CO

View from Mount Evans

When frisbee people left, I had less than 24 hours to reset the apartment for my college roommates who came out for our annual white water rafting trip.  This trip was a very different than a lot of the trips we've been on thus far, but ultimately, a blast. The river was a lot more narrow than typical which makes for a much more technical run.  It's a lot of jutting between rocks and through white water and less sweeping from bank to bank across the river and through the rapids.   Other than that, we went to breweries and up
Mount Evans (peak elevation ~14,200').  We didn't make it up to the top because of a hail storm that we got caught in, but the views along the way were still pretty epic as you can see.

The last two things on this post will be quick...hang in there - almost done!

Work has been good because I was recently called into a meeting in which my boss said to me (and a few other people) that we have been noticed by HER BOSS for our exceptional work and he wants to meet us in order to get a sense of who we are.  So I have a presentation on why I'm so awesome in about 20 minutes.  I'm good at those... :)

Kristine is amazing and silly and a child trapped in an adult's life, just like me. She's a science nerd (works as a pathologist in a hospital detecting cancer on biopsy samples) and loves all the prerequisite things for my affections (e.g old school video games, performing arts (she danced ballet), games, superheroes, etc). She came with us to Mt Evans.  Here's a pic.

I am happy

~j

p.s more pics HERE