Sunday, July 1, 2007

Tired, Picnic, Book, Poker

As predicted, I got no sleep last night because of my nap. I ended up getting around 5 hours, and am again exhausted. Tonight shall be an early night.

We had our work picnic tonight. It was somewhat lame. Ok, it was really lame. My first impression of Best Buy back in late 2004 was this: I hadn't worked there for very long but was invited to the Christmas party along with the rest of the store. The party was at Champion's. We bowled. We golfed. We go-karted. Afterward, we all met in the bowling alley for a drawing. The prizes? $50 gift cards. X-Boxes. Playstation 2s. A computer. A 42" TV. Tonight I won a magnetic dartboard. A magnetic dartboard that Best Buy sent for us to give away at a meeting but we kept it to give it away now instead. The best prize: a 4GB flash drive. Retail price: $68. I say retail price because we, of course, get a discount. They chose the one with the biggest discount. The really sad part to me is that we won a contest to give us $1000 for a party, and we already have money budgeted for the picnic. I would estimate the total cost of the party, including food and prizes, would be in the ballpark of $500. There's a reason that I don't bust my ass at work like I used to. There's a reason I can't wait to get the hell out of there.

Speaking of things I can't wait to finish, Chuck Palahniuk writes boring essays. I know they are essays, but John D'Agata writes essays, and I don't hate them. Palahniuk is actually writing about interesting things; combine demolition derbies, a Montana testicle festival, and walking around Seattle dressed in a dog suit. However, the way he has written about them makes me lose all interest. I'm cruising through it fast, but it's simply to be finished. Hopefully it will get better.

I'm not going to go into much detail about specific poker hands today, because I really don't want to have to put my fist through my monitor. I did put my money in bad in all of the heads-up tourneys I played today. I would flop two pair, bet it on the flop and turn, and somebody would hit a gutshot on the turn or river and put me all in. It happened in 4 of the 5 matches I played. In the 5th match, I was shortstacked because of a boat vs nut flush situation. I was down to 2k in chips (from a starting stack of 10k), battled back to 8k, got back down to 4k and had JJ. I raised pot preflop with blinds of 150/300, 25 ante, putting about a quarter of my chips in the pot. The flop came K72 rainbow, and my opponent checked. He is only around 30% to pair the flop at all, and slim to pair the top card, so there is roughly an 85% chance that I'm ahead in the hand. Having virtually no chips left, I moved in. He called me after some short thought with 77 for a flopped set, and I blanked out. Again, I put my money in bad every single time, but running into these scenarios heads-up this many times in a day is ridiculous. I'd peg it at around 600:1 for those things to happen in consecutive matches, which means it better not happen again for about 2 years. Well, I'm going to lose a bit more money tonight and then go to bed.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, speaking of being tired, a company picnic, reading a book and playing poker; What night works good for you, James and Matt to go up to Omaha. I know that D'Leons is the best Mexican food, but El Bee's is Dec. I am going to try to get in town late Tuesday.

Company Picnic is often times an oxymoron. Saying something is a picnic is insinuating it is easy, where as any company sponsered function is not. I used to work for HyVee and we used to have the lamest Christmas party where there was always a drawing of stuff that some of the vendors would give the store (ie. Budwiser Golf Bag). There were sometimes "Big" ticket items. One year there was a 65" big screen and a washer/dryer set. The point was there should have been enough gifts to give almost everyone a gift. Three years of working there and came up bone dry all three. I would almost loose it as a girl who now has her own local "Lincoln" porn website, who just started, got a digital camera. Man I really hated her.

As always good to read your posts. See you soon.

bretlonder said...

Well, I don't work during the week, and James and Matt don't work at all, so I'm guessing any time. However, before I can go Matt needs to give me the $200 he owes me, because that is all that is left of my actual bankroll.

Anonymous said...

Ouch, dinner will be on me.

bretlonder said...

Can't argue with that logic.

Anonymous said...

you do realise that dinner at a good Mexican restaurant is never more than $7 per person. Big spendin' baller in the house. I'll make it rain there with a roll of nickels.