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.