Reading/Listening, 3D Movie, Poker

No links, I'm exhausted and lazy.

Reading: True Story by Bill Maher. It's a book about the true life of comedians. It's disgustingly over-written. Not surprising considering the source: Bill Maher pre-success. He was a successful stand-up comedian at the time, but if my memory serves me he hadn't yet had a major breakthrough like he did a few short years after he published the book. I suppose I could do Internet research. Nope, I'll just assume I'm right like a dick. If he rewrote it now, it might be better, but my defective brain forces me to finish what I've started.

Listening: Not rap! Although it will likely return next week (foreboding violin music). Good People by Jack Johnson. Lazy description: I like it and I know most of the words and it's catchy and it's good so listen to it. My readers all likely already own the disc and love it, so no discovery here.

Still Digesting: White Noise by Don DeLillo. I STILL don't know how I feel about this book.

Still Angry At: Card Sharks by Liz Maverick. In hindsight, I wanted her to have the main character win the fucking tournament. Having her finish fourth was a slap in my face in the vein of "They think that I'll have her win so I'll be smart and make her finish fourth!" Wrong bitch! I FIGURED you would do that, so having her win would be the actual surprise ending. Besides, the rest of the book was so unbelievable that it wouldn't have ruined the credibility anyway. And your apparent target audience could give two shits about poker. If Liz Maverick were here right now I would probably try and have sex with her but I would NOT call her ever again.

I watched an awful zombie movie in 3D last night at a random house in north Omaha. Liquor was involved. I highly recommend things in 3D when you're altered, because no matter how terrible they are, they're still awesome.

I lost like $30ish playing poker a couple of days ago. Not sure if I blogged about it or not. I did have an amazing feeling though. An uber-tight player named MiaLauren and I were playing an HU match. We had just started when I had 44. I play her hardcore because of her tightness, so periodically she gets sick of it and comes over the top of me. Rarely, though. I do play her a bit soft because she used to be nice to me. Anyway, I pop it with 44. She reraises pot and I know she has AQ or better. I discount QQ, KK, and AA and decide to reraise just to find out. Typically, she folds AQ to the third raise and maybe AK. This time she shoved all in on like the fourth hand. I made the comment in the chat window "Getting tough with AK I see" and then folded not wanting to flip for it. She retorts "I did have AK and you're a shit talker so I'm blocking your chat." Coming from somebody so typically nice, I got pissed. The bad type of pissed for her in that I decided that I was going to decimate her in as many matches as she was willing to play. The number was three. Several times she got me down to as low as 3k, sometimes during huge blind levels like 500/1k, but she's too tight and I always came back to eventually win. I don't know that I've ever owned somebody like that before and it felt fucking AWESOME. I feel like 5% bad because she is so typically nice, but I'm never going to lose another match to her again ever. This part came off a lot meaner than I intended but in my present state I could care less because my mind isn't with my body at the computer, it's already in bed. Focker out.

Halloween, Things I Love, Poker

Jeff and I went dressed as Mormons for Halloween. Well, we celebrated this weekend because we work. Jeff was worried that people wouldn't get it. Our costumes were short sleeve white dress shirts, black ties, black dress pants, backpacks, and bicycle helmets. And bibles. We were a hit. We only got yelled at twice. I was pleased overall.

While we were eating at Valentino's yesterday, I started thinking about all of the different things I love. Some of these things are: sleeping in, not waking up to an alarm clock, fans, cold pillows, French cuff shirts, comfortable shoes, women in skirts, chicken tortilla soup, oatmeal raisin cookies, dogs with sad eyes, staring at clouds, aimlessly driving around, music, fast cars, hot showers, flirtatious smiles, the Internet, poker, Budweiser, the nude female form in silhouette, chairs with ottomans, a good book, waking up next to somebody, sitting down after working/exercising hard, Breyer's rocky road ice cream, Coca-Cola Classic, 68-72 degree days, gentle breezes, champagne, DVRs, wearing sandals, and flirtatious smiles. Like I said, these are just some things I love. I intentionally left people off.

I've been playing some poker over the past couple of days. I'm back to my bread and butter HU matches and they're going well. I've still got some lingering awful luck. For instance, I couldn't beat any hand with a 9 in it yesterday. I dropped AK to A9, KQ to K9, JJ to 99, and QJ to Q9. Aside from that, I still managed to finish +1 out of like five matches. I won my first HU match today. The dude flopped a boat the first hand and a straight the second hand. On the second hand, I had A5 and the flop came A35. We raised each other and by the time I knew he had a straight, I only had 2k in chips left. I called it off knowing I was behind but getting the right odds at nearly 10:1. The turn was a glorious 5 that sealed it for me and crippled him. I rode out his last 1.5k and digested my new yummy $15. Right now I'm locked in a marathon with an R-tard that keeps hitting spiffy turn cards. I should beat him as long as the blinds don't get high enough that he starts pushing and making me make iffy calls. I also watched Matt get brutalized in the 10k Guaranteed today. He limped UTG with KK with a stack of like 18k and blinds of 2/400; 50. There were a few other limpers and a small raise, and Matt repopped it to 8k. He got two callers and saw an ugly Ad 6h 7h flop. He check folded and the other two got in with A9hh and AQo. He wants those preflop calls, he just wants them to miss their two outer. He busted when his AA got cracked by A3 calling all in on a gutshot with one card to come. Sick. Speaking of sick, I just dropped KQo to KQo. 2.17% chance of that happening. Awesome.

Reading/Listening, Car, No Poker

Reading: Still White Noise. I've got a shade under a hundred pages left. I'll knock out fifty pages one day, and then I won't touch the book for the rest of the week. I'm still undecided. DeLillo has some amazing lines, and his dialogue is awesome, but I guess that I had certain expectations for the book that aren't being met. I think that it will take me a week or so after I finish it to truly decide if I like it or not. Hopefully I polish it off this week, but I'm not sure because I had a long day today, I have another long one tomorrow, and then I'm off Friday. Reading is low on the priority list.

Listening: Definition by Black Star. Black Star was a side project by Mos Def and Talib Kweli, and it was amazing. I've never owned it because I had a friend in high school that had it, and I always just listened to it with him. I had forgotten about it until Jeff played Definition (no link, sorry, iTunes it). This was one of those songs that I replayed dozens of times in a row. I'm still craving to hear it, but I had to stop because I just should. Check it out.

So I locked my car keys in the vault at the bank yesterday. I mean like really locked them in. We set the time lock, closed everything up, set the alarm and I reached in my pocket and had a "Fuck!" moment. I just laughed. I laugh when I'm utterly and totally fucked. When we were locked on the roof of our ridiculously tall hotel in downtown Mexico City, I laughed hysterically. At certain times, we are totally helpless. The previous two situations are examples of this. A lot of people get angry. Some get embarrassed. I laugh. Why not? Everybody else is going to laugh at it. I know I'm going to laugh at it later, and it really is the funniest in the moment, so I laugh. My keys were released from the clutches of the time lock this morning when I opened, but now I have to deal with getting the car I borrowed back to its rightful owner. Oh well.

Entropy, No Poker

My Internet connection will be spotty at best for the next day or two as I'm trying to install my new wireless card. I say trying because it theoretically should be working now. I followed all of the instructions to the "T". Install the software. Install the card. Restart computer. Use setup wizard. Except the setup wizard won't run. And the computer doesn't recognize the driver. I used to be good at these things. I built this computer from scratch with my own bare hands. I used to write programs for computers. Now I touch an electronic device and it turns to shit. And like a typical old fogey I will contend that it's not my fault. Advances have been made to make it easier for Average Joe to do this stuff. The problem is that the advances in easiness have made it harder on me for some reason. I'm anti-DIY for computer fixes for the average person. I consider myself borderline, and anybody who knows less than me has no reason to pop the case off of their computer. As a society we consider it bad if we don't know the answer. We will fake it. We will lie. We will do anything to avoid admitting "I don't know." The problem is that admitting you don't know something leads to actual learning. I do a lot of things that I shouldn't. I will eventually finish rebuilding my motorcycle even though I know nothing about engines. I will eventually fix this wireless adapter even though I'm totally lost at the moment. I'll have kids even though I can't always take care of myself all of the time. And I'll accomplish these things because I'm not afraid to ask questions from people who know more than I do. In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if people wouldn't try to cater to my ignorance by adding features to disguise how much I don't know. Let me fuck up because I'm willing to. Let others avoid trying because they're afraid of fucking up.

CD Case, Date?, Poker

I'm not the type of person who gets outraged at the price of things, but I was today. I'm in desperate need of a new CD case as I've filled my old one and have probably ten-fifteen homeless CDs. $50. Fifty fucking dollars for a 336 capacity CD case. It's plastic and cotton and a zipper. I would wager that it would cost around $3 to make if you factor in overhead costs. Ridiculous. I will now scavenge eBay and garage sales just to find one cheaper because there's not a chance in hell that I'm shelling out $50 for a CD case.

I asked a girl on a date before I knew her name on Saturday. There is a bar in an apartment complex a few blocks from where Jeff and I live, and she tends bar there. She didn't say no. As a test (I think) she told me to come back to the bar a week from today (Sunday) and she would considerate it. I bet she's planning on never seeing me again. She underestimates me. I'll keep you posted.

I've played a little poker lately. I'm +1 on $10 and $15 HU matches over the past few days. The new betting hasn't made much of a difference, but I'm sticking with it. I've also played a couple of Step SnGs for a million dollar promotion that Bugsy's has going on. I'd like to win it. Basically, there are several six-figure tourneys that Bugsy's is having and the only way to get in are through these Step SnGs (as I understand it, I'm probably wrong). After the online tourneys, the top ten finishers get flown to an undisclosed location for a live final SnG for another six figures. It would be awesome. Way past my bed time.

Elaboration, Life Tilt, No Poker

My small comment concerning time yesterday: So far I have been late four times. Two significant, two by a couple of minutes. The problem is that I've been busted on all four, and in big ways. My very first opening shift I was four minutes late. Because God hates me, my direct manager's calls to my cell phone went straight to my voice mail. So she called our branch manager. Weak. Time two was actually quite comical. I thought I worked at ten, so I woke up around 7:30 and took my sweet time getting ready. I jumped in the shower around 9ish and when I got out, I had missed a call. Yep, I was supposed to be at work at 9. My branch manager laughed but said don't make it a habit. Time three I was again four minutes late, but yet again my branch manager decided she needed to get some work done before her conference call, so I was busted again. Time four I was seven minutes late. On the day that we were getting audited. By a regional manager. Awesome. I was ten minutes early today because I got reamed by it, but I have a sense of bitterness. An explanation is to follow.

Tilt is a poker term. It refers to anger forcing bad decisions. In poker, when somebody even when they have a high percentage chance to win, they sometimes go on tilt. Tilt is a downward spiral. Anger causes a bad decision, which causes more anger, which causes more and worse decisions. I went on life tilt today. I was ten minutes early, as I mentioned above, and the morning went well. I was supposed to clock at noon, take my forty-five minute lunch, and then head to a training across town. My direct manager had forgotten that I had a training, so she only scheduled myself and one other teller. Not a big deal. Another guy came in at 12:15 and she should be back before noon. She was, and we were slow. At 11:50, I started counting my drawer so I could leave. Then four people came in. Then two in the drive-thru. We should've peeled these off quick, except my manager didn't want to pull her drawer because she wanted to be where I was. Long, angry rant later, it was 12:35 as I huffed my way out the door. My branch manager apologized that I would have to eat in my car. I told her that wouldn't happen because the drive takes twenty minutes and I wouldn't want to be late. I did pretty well at hiding the snideness in my voice. My problem with punctual people: they're only half punctual. Of all the people I've met that hammer on punctuality in the workplace, not one of them has given a shit when I clock off. I'm expected to be at work on time because that is when I'm scheduled, however, I also have a definite end time. This one they're willing to be flexible with. This is where my internal angry steam whistle goes off. I prefer allowing people to be a couple of minutes late, because then I have no qualms about asking them to stay a few extra minutes. If you're going to hammer on me for being seven minutes late, you should throw a shit fit that I had to stay an additional thirty-five minutes, causing me to miss a lunch. But what do I know. Obviously, I was in a foul mood as I headed to the training site. To say that there were driving mishaps is an understatement. Initially, poor planning forced me to get off of I-80W and take I-680N. Semis do not buckle to lane crowding. Minor detour, still lunch potential. I took Pacific west and managed to hit EVERY red light on the street. Not exaggerating, literally every one. I almost made one. I was behind two people playing "let's go ten under the speed limit side by side," but when I finally got around them it was yellow city and I had to stop. Trying to avoid lights, I took 139th street. This seemed logical as I should've pooped out two blocks from where I needed to go at 137th. By its designation, 139th should've been a through street. It is not. After my house tour, I finally made it back to major streets and reached my training center with three minutes to spare. Awesome. I went home and my roommate and I went to grab food. Everything else went fairly smoothly except for driving. We also had an incident in Best Buy which turned out to be quite humorous. Warning: insensitive content to follow. We were looking for movies for Jeff to buy (he has a movie fetish and I abuse it for my own personal benefit). I came upon American History X, which I love. Jeff said he can't watch it because of the curb-stomp scene (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about). A mentally challenged lady near us started spouting off questions. She couldn't grasp the idea of the curb-stomp. "He flipped him upside down and hit his head on the curb?" "Who hits their head on the curb?" "Does that guy hit his head on the curb?" "Why would he bite the curb?" I could tell that we were locked in something similar to the "Why?" game that four year olds play. There was no end in sight, and drastic measures had to be taken. I made a last ditch effort to free us from our short bus bondage by laying out an explanation in clear, simple language. As I explained the premise of the movie while staring at her mustache (to avoid the mysterious, unscabbed hole in the side of her face), I knew that the porch light was never going to flick on, and that I was in a new danger because I had used several long sentences, showing my willingness to talk. At the end of my explanation, Jeff added his two cents. She turned her face and shoulders towards Jeff to ask him to clarify and I took the opportunity to walk determinedly down the aisle. I did not look back. I know that I am a heartless asshole. If I didn't, I would have figured it out because Jeff reminded me several times when he freed himself nearly ten minutes later. He kept reminding me until a few minutes ago when he went to bed. After the day I had, stranding Jeff with the mustachioed, inquisitive retarded lady was something I owed myself. I'm sure it will come back to me because I believe in karma, but sometimes it's worth it. Good night.

Food, Work, Poker

I'm tired of eating the same food all the time. Since I lack culinary talent, my diet is limited to Foremanized (trademark) frozen chicken breasts and ninety second wild rice smothered in Worcestershire sauce. I also eat a lot of sandwiches. The meat and bread variety. Occasionally cheese or mayonnaise, usually just meat and bread. I know how to make a few things (eg: enchiladas) but I have zero energy during the week because of the following cycle: have to open so I only get roughly four hours of sleep, work ten hours, come home, try not to fall asleep on the couch by occupying myself with some activity (usually video games, occasionally exercise), activity wakes me up, then I only get four hours of sleep again. All of this drainedness (trademark) breeds negativity which makes me feel like a catapulted myself out of one rut and landed in another. I know that probably just a schedule shift is in order, wherein I must pretend like I'm ninety-seven and go to bed at 9pm and wake up at 5am, but I really don't want to be that person. I think cocaine is a much better sounding solution. Mountains of blow. My apartment will look like a sugar factory except my workers will be skinnier and more productive. Hollow eyes will abound. For entertainment I will occasionally partake in a cymbal crash using one of the many pairs of cymbals that I have hidden around my coke complex. The junkies will wet themselves in their over-amped state.

These are the things I think about while I try not to fall asleep at work.

A quick work note: My boss is a self-proclaimed punctuality freak. I am habitually late. This ends poorly.

I played three HU matches tonight. I went 1-2, but I played well. On the very first hand of the first match I flopped a Q high straight flush with Q8cc on a JT9ccc board. I thought this was a sign. It was not. The guy I was playing was a pretty easy read, but he ran magma hot. At one point, he made straights in four of six hands. In three of those I had two pair. He also flopped three boats, one with 46o vs my QQ. He would hammer me down to 2-3k, I would grind back up to 8kish and then my two pair would go down to a straight again. I did play well though and even ran over his luck in the third one, but my brain is too tired for more poker. Also, I biffed and missed a lot of the tourneys in the Bugsy's Championship as it started this week and not next week. I'm still going to try to play an event or two, likely only the 10k Guaranteed Main Event unless I can rock out some HUs in the next two days. Ok bed time. Yep, it's 9:47pm.

Reading/Listening, McDonald's, Work, Poker

Reading: White Noise by Don DeLillo. Actual links this time. I'm about one hundred pages in, and the shit hits the fan very shortly from what I understand, so I'm curious to see where things go. DeLillo has some brilliant lines in the first part of the book, none of which I'm going to look up and put here now because I have to be to work in about seven hours. I'll likely post them tomorrow.

Listening: Still Going Back to Cali by Notorious BIG. I'm not sure why this song has such power over me, but it does. Hopefully I will break from its clutches this week.

As Jeff and I were driving by a McDonald's on Monday night, I had the strange urge to yell "McDonald's makes their burgers from children!" at the line of cars in the drive-thru. I was barely able to restrain myself to the point that Jeff asked what was wrong with me. I told him. We laughed heartily.

I thought this work week was going to be easy. I was wrong. While I did have today (Tuesday) off, I work 7:15-5:30 tomorrow and 7:15-5:00 on Thursday. I close Friday and then work 8:45-1:15 on Saturday. I do have a training class from 1-4:30 on Thursday that should break things up, but I think it will suck because I'll spend the entire time trying to stay awake. I'm starting to hate the phrase "Banker's Hours" because only the boss has good hours. My "Banker's Hours" are pretty much open to close for four weekdays and then Saturday mornings. I'm willing to trade for another occupation's hours.

I haven't played any poker yet, but I'm starting to digest some things from my recent losses. Also, as lame as it sounds and as much as I hate to say it, I'm learning a lot from Poker After Dark. I'm not really going to go into too much detail, but I need to improve my betting. I used to bet pot, pot, pot for the most part, whether I was bluffing or I had it. I still like the idea because it makes it hard to determine what I had. However, I'm missing a lot of value by doing that because the bets get too big and drive hands out of the pot that would call for less. Further, if I have a bit more variation in my bet sizes, it will add one more element to my game that will confuse opponents. I want to play some matches this week and try to rebuild a roll to play the Bugsy's Tourneys with, but if I can only play one or two events next week, so be it.

Monique, Beaver Crossing, Huskers, No Poker

My parents did awesome. My new car, Monique, is a 2002 Oldsmobile Aurora. It's a pearl color and it's way too nice for me. I'm getting her a garage when I get paid to shelter her from all the nasty things outside. She has many wonderful toys for me to play with like memory seats with butt heaters and buttons galore. She also has a sunroof which I have done without since around 2002ish, so I will be running sunroof open and heater on until the first snowflake hits the ground. I think that my problem with my truck was that I didn't name her. My cars have been Bertha (1982 Chevy Malibu Classic), Berly (1984 Chevy Camaro Berlinetta), Vanessa (1994 Ford Ranger), and Veronica (2000 Mercury Cougar). In case you haven't noticed, I'm of the opinion that a man's car should have a female name (I'm not sure if there has ever been a woman named Berly, but deal with it). Women's cars should have men's names. It's just how it works. And they should be foreign sounding and intriguing.

As I was driving back to Omaha, I passed Beaver Crossing and laughed as usual. When I was 6ish, I was going to either Lincoln or Omaha with my dad and my sister. We were in the front seat of a truck and I was in the middle. My dad and my sister were chanting off the names of the various counties denoted by numbers on license plates because my dad had lied to my sister and told her that she couldn't get her license unless she memorized them all. I interrupted their game by loudly yelling at my dad to slow down. He dutifully did so and asked why in a scared tone. "Because there's a beaver crossing in one mile, the sign just said so!" I was so worried for the defenseless beavers trying to make their way across interstate while avoiding the hulking two ton death machines hurtling at them at ungodly speed. Poor beavers.

This pains me to say because I'm such a ridiculous Husker fan: we need to get embarrassed in the rest of our games (except Colorado). This is the only way that change will come about. If we win out or improve, there will be excuses to keep Cosgrove as defensive coordinator or Steve Pedersen as AD (I'm not after Callahan's head quite yet). However, if we become the laughingstock of college football, shit will go down. It's the only thing I can hope for now because we suck shit and it's not going to get any better with the aforementioned making influential decisions.

Reading/Listening, Work, Card Sharks, Poker

Reading: White Noise by Don DeLillo. No link. This is a quick and dirty long blog. I'm only twentyish pages into it right now, but it's not drawing me in. I hope it picks up as I hear it does in the second half. I'm guessing that I will need something light to read after I finish this, so I'm eyeing Galapagos by Vonnegut next, but who knows. My wants and desires typically change on a whim, so I'll just as likely to read Rousseau when I'm done with White Noise.

Listening: Going back to Cali by Notorious BIG. It's awesome.

Work is going well. My job is fairly simple and I'm becoming comfortable with more things every day. The worst part are the hours. Since I have to work most Saturdays and Saturdays are only four hours, I "get" to work two ten hour shifts a week to make up the hours. Add in my forty-five minute lunch and I'm there for half the day. Which brings me to my gripes: waking up early and having no day. I have to be up in five hours because I work 7:15am-5:00pm tomorrow. And when I get home, run a few quick errands, and eat, it will be 8pm or later. I pretty much have no week. My exercise is falling off, and if I didn't stay up late, I would feel like I had zero life. However, I only have to put up with this for one year. Deep breaths...

Card Sharks sucked. It was totally chick lit, but bad chick lit. Any given line of dialogue felt like the author was forgetting "Oh my god" at the beginning of it and it was absolutely unbelievable. Here's a summary of the entire book: nerdy tax accountant girl (NTA) and soon-to-be-poor trust fund girl (TFG) can't meet men despite NTA's super-hotness and charisma and TFG's super-hotness and flashiness. NTA's ex-that-is-still-around says that all single men are playing poker every night, so NTA and TFG go to play poker with EX and HNG (hot neighbor guy). The women play poker like ten times and then NTA wins a seat into the World Series of Poker (value $10,000). NTA is obsessed with poker by this time but TFG is still on the man hunt in Vegas. HNG is always there for her but not rich and she is a gold digger, EX is still supportive and defensive for NTA despite his failure to commit. NTA marries HNG pissing off EX and TFG, but then NTA gets fourth in the WSOP Championship, everybody makes up, EX and NTA tell each other that they want to get married and HNG tells TFG that he loves her and is going to be rich. Then BRET pukes.

I pulled a Londer and lost around $600 in two days. I had done a great job of staying away from poker and then I read that stupid book, got mad at how unrealistic the poker was in it and apparently decided to prove the author wrong by showing how easy it is to lose. I started out playing bad, started playing better but had a couple of bad beats laid on me, then the wheels fell off. I wasn't playing awful at the start, but I was laying down too many hands all the way and had shit for a table image. I then got aggressive and made most of it back when hands like my JJ vs Jx 3h on a J 9h 2h flop comes, we get all the money in, and the board comes heart heart. This led to more bad play, which led to me quitting before I was bust. I still have like $160ish left, so I have something to rebuild with, but I would rather have my $600 back. I guess I don't learn some lessons, I just increase the amount of times between Londers.

Big Liar

Through a combination of back pain and general insomnia, I only got two hours of sleep last night before my 10.5 hour shift. Then I had a bunch of errands to run and things to do at home. Bottom line: no in-depth post tonight. Easy day tomorrow so definitive post. Sorry for being a fibber.

Absence, Poker

I was very busy with work this past week and also had a few non-work things going on, so I really wasn't motivated to spend the fifteen minutes or so that it takes me to write a blog. The blog will, however, return to its regularly scheduled postings tomorrow.

I only played one day of poker since my last post, and it was a BAD day. I will elaborate tomorrow.

Carlin, Camus, No Poker

These may or may not be quick.

The Carlin book was fun, but it was primarily stuff that he has done in stand-up. I would say that I recognized 85-90% of the stuff in the book, and I'm guessing that everything in there appears on a comedy DVD or CD somewhere. It's still nice to get Carlin's refreshing point of view on most things because our society gets bogged down in bullshit quite often. George is a guy who cuts right through all of it, and it makes you look at how you lead your life, which we all should do regularly.

I hated The Stranger by Camus. I read the introduction which discussed all of the philosophy behind the book, but when I read the story, I was let down. Maybe something was lost in translation, but what I thought the book lacked was a human element for the main character. Meursault (sp?) just wasn't a real person to me. I understand the point that Camus was trying to make (according to the preface); that we don't all have to buy into social norms and that they can be oppressive, but he went beyond social norms and past basic animal instincts like the right to survive or logical thought. I feel that the main character is mentally disabled and we simply weren't told that, because I don't buy into the notion that self-preservation is a social norm. Interesting idea, terrible execution.

Reading/Listening, Work, Books, The Feeding, Poker

Reading: Card Sharks by Liz Maverick. I was lured in by poker, but I think I landed squarely in the realm of Chick Lit. Oh yes, my obsession with poker doesn't stop at merely playing, I love reading about it too. Some very good reads are The Man With $100,000 Breasts, Poker Nation, and Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People. They're all books that tell of the crazy exploits that surround professional gamblers. I'm not quite a third of the way into Card Sharks yet, and the plot is just starting to pick up, so hopefully it pans out in a way that I won't despise. Here's hoping.

Listening: Gasoline Dreams by Outkast on the Stankonia album. It woke me up this morning as I crawled through rush hour traffic to work and I kept going back to it on the way home and while I was running errands. It has angry lyrics and a catchy beat that work for me. I'm sort of tired right now and not quite as eloquent as usual, so just listen to it, even if you don't like rap and hip-hopanonamus.

My first day of work went well. I didn't do much. Our branch is very slow. There are only nine employees right now, and there will only be ten once we replace somebody that was just "let go." I got fingerprinted because it's required by law, but the fingerprint place used paraffin wax instead of ink. The paraffin wax smelled like apple cinnamon bread, so I snuck sniffs of my delicious smelling fingers all day hoping not to look like a spook. I got caught once and had to say the ever classic "smell my fingers" line at work. Mary agreed that they smelled like apple cinnamon bread. She still looked at me funny. I didn't do a lot of other things. I watched a lot of transactions. I used the change counter. I got to see the guts of an ATM and how little money $10,000 actually looks like. I also watched the video about what to do in a robbery. I was amazed at how stoic the people were when shotguns were put in their faces. I think one lady was smiling. I didn't see one person shit their pants, which is my personal plan for dealing with a robbery. Poop and urine in copious amounts.

I finished two books this week. I polished off the Carlin book and I also started and finished The Stranger by Albert Camus. I will discuss them tomorrow because I'm growing ridiculously tired as I type this post.

Jeff bought a Venus Fly Trap at Wal-Mart two days ago. We spent yesterday poking the little mouths with toothpicks and being awed when they shut. Tonight I went outside and caught a roly-poly and dropped it into one of the mouths. The roly-poly was in a ball when it hit, then it unrolled and made a run for it. It didn't make it as the mouth snapped shut as it approached the eyelash lookin' thingies. It was a pretty exciting. The Fly Trap still reminds me of Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors, and the first time I catch it at my doorway in the middle of the night saying "Feed me" it's getting a healthy dose of Clorox.

No poker today. I'm probably going to take another multi-week break. The exceptions might be some $10 or under MTTs to get me ready for the end of the month when I will play in the Bugsy's series or whatever the hell they're calling it. Ok, I'm officially spent. Sleepy time.