Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Manley, Back Pain, Carver, Poker

Yesterday, Matt wanted to go driving because it was such a nice day. He has his mom's Mustang convertible down here, so we picked up Corey and just started driving east on Van Dorn. After about an hour, we were hungry. We intended to stop in Louisville for food, but we weren't sure where we were. We stopped in a city called Manley (village, whatever) and ate at the bar. I don't remember the name of it, and I'm not sure I even saw the name. Matt thinks it was called the Pit Stop. The food was delicious and cheap, a double bonus. Matt asked if they took debit cards, and the lady replied "Come on now, we're in Manley." Manley has 191 souls and no ATMs.

My back is trying to kill me again. I don't have the shooting arse pain like before, but my right leg feels incredibly weak. I really hope that I don't have back surgery in my not-too-distant future because I hate hospitals, but I really don't know how much longer I can stand this garbage. It's not that the pain is unbearable, it's that I feel like I'm 90. I couldn't run if I wanted to right now (not that I do), but I'm tired of being immobile once a week. Science needs to hurry up and find some sort of ridiculous technology that will just heal anything instantly.

I started reading the Raymond Carver anthology that we were supposed to have read for my Advanced Fiction class last semester. I read a decent chunk of the 500+ pages, but I don't remember where I stopped or what I read so I'm just starting over. I will comment more when I have read more than 20 pages.

Poker was awful today. The reason I was crushing people in the $10 matches yesterday was the same reason I got hammered today. I played several different people, but they all played the same. Overraise nearly every pot preflop and bet pot at the flop. This forced me to screw down my game and get squeaky tight, but I still couldn't dodge garbage. Every match ended similar to this: they would have a slight lead, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12k/8k, and I would find a hand like AQ. They would overraise and I would reraise. The flop would come Q-high with some sort of straight or flush draw, they would bet pot, I would move in over top, and they would insta-call. Then, they would hit their draw. A couple of times I was able to control the all-ins, but 3 different people figured out what I was doing and started moving in every hand. All I could do at that point was wait for a good hand like an AK or a pocket pair and move in, but I kept coming up empty. Oh well. After all was said and done, I was down $25. I want to play more tonight, but I won't play well because my back hurts too bad, so I'm going to watch some TV, read, and call it an early night. Tomorrow will go better.

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