Work, Warning, Birthday, Poker

I called in sick on my last day at Best Buy. I didn't want to, but I put myself in a pickle. I knew that Brandon's wife was throwing a surprise birthday party on Saturday, but I figured that since I would go several weeks without being scheduled that they definitely wouldn't give me shifts after I put in my 2 week notice. Of course they scheduled me to close on Saturday, and I simply couldn't find anybody to work for me. I really felt bad about it, but in the end, it was something nice that I could do for a friend versus something nice that I could do for an organization that I don't want to be a part of anymore.

The birthday party was fun. James got pulled over on the way there. A State Patrol officer was waiting on the overpass for us at the South Locust exit for Grand Island. We turned off there and headed for Doniphan and he followed us. He pulled us over in Doniphan. We were totally baffled. He came up to my window and said that he stopped us because somebody had called us in from Interstate and said that we were obviously, visibly drunk. Ok. Since we weren't, we gave each other a dumb look. I laughed. Then he asked for both of our licenses and told James to come back to his cruiser with him for his warning. He gave James a warning for going 38 in a 35 when we hit Doniphan. He didn't ask him where we had been. He didn't give him a breathalyzer or sobriety tests. He did ask where we were going and told us to have fun. Very odd, yet quite funny.

After that little break in the action, we made it to Brandon's in-laws for his party. It was fun. There was grill food and beer and all sorts of games. We talked quite a bit. Afterward, most of us went down to Vincent Michael's, a sort of trendy, upscale bar in Hastings. After that, we went to Brandon's house and tried to finish off the keg. The keg won. Handily. In a rare twist of fate, the wives and girlfriends decided to get sloppy drunk and needed attending. It was the first time in a long time that I was glad that I was single. We crashed at Brandon's and went to Nick's Gyros for lunch today. Nick's is a delicious Greek place from Kearney. Apparently the owner, Nick, sold his business in Kearney and moved to Hastings to open up a new one. James was impressed. I highly recommend lovers of gyros to stop by Nick's if they're ever in Kearney or Hastings.

I've been playing quite a bit the past couple of days, and I've been raking it in. I've started playing some small cash games around the $.10/$.25 limits so that I don't lose more than $20 in a sitting. I'm trying to earn more rebuys into the Loyalty tournament that I talked about a couple of days ago. At the pace I'm going, I might actually get 3-4 rebuys, which should give me a decent shot at winning the thing. In my heads-up matches, I've cooled off quite a bit, but I'm still crushing. I'm probably around 65-70% conservatively, and I haven't lost 2 in a row yet (that I can remember). I've actually had 2 people tell me that they don't want to play me anymore because they can't beat me, which causes the ego to swell a bit. It takes quite awhile to get people to play, but if I put in 8 hours I can get 6-12 matches. I hope those same people will play the $100 matches that I will be into within the next 2 days. Right now I'm sitting at $1,090, and if I can manage to not lose this hand that I'm playing at NLHE right now, I'll be over $1,100. I'm really happy with what I've been able to do so far, and I hope I can keep it going. It would be sweet if I can get to at least $5,000 this time around. Is $10,000 out of the question? I'll try not to think about it. Too much.