Reading/Listening, Stuff, Poker

Reading: No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. It's not bad. I've been reading it off and on for a month or so now. A lot of the stories seem very bland. Not bland in the sense of boring, because her subject matter is very interesting, but most of the stories just seem to miss the greatness they could achieve. The story "Swim Team" is brilliant. The narrator spends a summer in a pool-less small town and teaches three very elderly citizens how to swim on the floor of her apartment. But the story isn't that great because it's framed by the narrator telling her ex-boyfriend about it. The muddiness created by the pointless and dull dialog with the ex-boyfriend doesn't need to be there. Another story I just finished, "The Boy from Lam Kien" was more of the same. It started out like the last shot of a fireworks finale. The shell streaming into the air, building anticipation in the crowd as it trails a glorious tail on its ascent. And then nothing. July has this quirky lady that is intensely interesting and she creates a scene with tons of potential and then she has the lady go to sleep. It's as if she's trying too hard to subvert the expectation, which makes sense. If you click on her name above, you'll find out that not only is she an author, she's also a singer, a songwriter, and a movie maker. She tries to wring art out of everything, and this urgent desire comes through in her writing. The problem is that she's wringing her stories dry. If she didn't try so hard to have an epiphanic moment in each story, the book would be a lot better. Maybe it will be. I'm on page 119 of 201. Let's hope it improves.

Listening: Viva La Vida by Coldplay. It's awesome. I think it's about war. I haven't read anything about it (other than the lyrics to the title track), but just listening to it makes me think it's about war. I think it's because it is epic in effort. If you plan on catching them on tour for this album, expect to see a full orchestra performing along with them. Every track is richly layered and most have split personalities, ie the first half of the song is different from the last half. This is probably related to the Rocky and Bullwinkle nature of the CD title (Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends). I don't have the case with me now and I'm too lazy to go back to my desktop computer and look at track names, but there are several songs that I can't stop listening to. Go buy this CD because it's important. It's about war for God's sake. I think. I swear it's about war.

So mortgages are stressing me out. I don't like the fact that I have to run around to get fifty different pieces of information just so I can owe somebody a large chunk of money. It seems like they should have to do this. Things are going more smoothly with the house now. Our walk-through is tomorrow afternoon, so the inspector will let us know if everything is kosher. Virginia and I had a half-assed fight about the whole thing this evening though. My primary concern right now is getting the mortgage squared away because I'm tired of dealing with it. She has moved past the mortgage thoughts and has moved onto the various projects that we'll be doing once we move in. We were on the phone. I was asking her about copies of her contract. She was asking me about fence posts. Then I got snippy. Then she needled me. This is our way. When I get upset or frustrated, I just need a minute or two of peace and calm to tangle with things inside my head and wrestle them back into their cages. When Virginia senses that I'm upset or frustrated, she tries to act goofy to cheer me up. She does so by annoying the ever loving shit out of me. Misunderstanding things that I say, talking in funny voices, etc. I love her for trying to make me smile. I'd love her more if she'd just let me be surly for a few minutes. Anyway, we sorted out both the mortgage AND the fence once I got my moment of respite, so my day off today is going to be pretty busy. This whole process of buying a house really needs some improvement. It should be fun and exciting. If you drop over one hundred thousand dollars on something, you should have a perma-grin on your face for awhile. I've just got extra frown wrinkles so far.

Poker was pretty good tonight. I had a ridiculously frustrating experience in HU matches tonight against a guy named M. deSad. We played 7 matches and I ended up at 4-3. Things did not go my way. Three matches ended in coinflips. Guess who came out on top in all 3? His playing style is very easy to beat but very irritating. He raises and bets everything. Except there's no variety. Only 1 time in nearly 3 hours did I actually have to wonder what he had. When done right, this technique is incredibly difficult to combat. This was not one of those times. What was so irritating was my frigidly cold deck. I had another ridiculous string of unpaired flops. I stopped counting at 18. So I just waited. Periodically I would throw in a strong reraise to steal a pot to keep me afloat while I was waiting for a made hand. It was very boring and very frustrating. While this was going on, I played 2 other MTTs. I entered a $3 with 25 people for a guaranteed $100 pool. First payed $50, second $30, and third $20. I was doing quite well. I doubled on the first hand with 66 vs ?? on a J62 flop. The turn was another J and the river a 4, so I would imagine the guy had some sort of J but I don't know. I won another big pot about 5 minutes later with KK vs ?? on a final board of 99833. A high? I don't know why he would've called off all of his chips, but I've stopped trying to understand most players because I'll never see them again. I was then put to a test for nearly all of my chips and I intentionally chose wrong because of my other tourney. I called off all but 300 of my 38k stack with Q high to a set of 5's because I was also in a freeroll at Full Tilt. I know this doesn't make sense because first in the freeroll was only $15 and the MTT at Bugsy's paid $50, but I really need to get some money to Full Tilt without depleting either my Bugsy's bankroll or my checkbook. The Tilt tourney was hilarious. I THOUGHT it was an Omaha Hi/Lo tourney for the first 1.5 hours, but it was in fact an Omaha HI only tourney. Despite my misunderstanding, I still managed to somehow stay in the top 50 in chips for the duration of the tournament. 2400 people were there at the start, and I finished 6th for $5. I think it took over 4 hours, but oh well. It was fun. My Bugsy's bankroll is at $343.94 and my Full Tilt roll is at $5. I don't know why I'm still blogging as it is very, very late, so if you want details (Brandon) just call me tomorrow evening. Peace.

Hung Over, Poker

I am decidedly hung over today. My sister called me at a quarter to eleven and asked if I wanted to go jet-skiing. I didn't even realize that I was alive at first. The problem I have when I go out with Jeff is that I don't know any of the people that he does. They start talking themselves into a proverbial friend corner and I'm left in the middle of the room. So I drink. I remember everything from the bar. Home is hazy. I can picture chicken McNuggets with buffalo sauce and Demolition Man. Apparently I called Virginia. I did not call the President. I'm trying to motivate myself to do things, but it's difficult because my head weighs three hundred pounds right now. It doesn't hurt, it just feels heavier than my neck can handle. I want to job hunt, clean up the bedroom, do some laundry, go lay by the pool, and maybe work out. But here I sit too lazy to put a shirt on. I am listening to the new Coldplay album which is quite good. I imagine that my hunter-gatherer instinct will kick in here soon because my stomach is eating itself.

I had a nice score last night. I played a $2 MTT and came out tops of the 65 entrants for a $45 win. I absolutely steam-rolled the thing. I started off really slowly, but with about 40 people left I started to build it up. I was 4th in chips with 20 left. I started the FT at 3rd and in 3 hands I had the lead. I floored it and just raised every hand and quickly amassed a massive stack. With 8 left I had 250k of the 650k in play. With 5 left I had 450k. When I got it to HU I had a 600k to 50k advantage which I almost coughed up somehow by doubling him in 3 of the first 4 hands of HU. Everything just went my way and my calls were rewarded. Overall, I was happy with the ROI and it boosted my bankroll up to somewhere around $322. I don't know exactly because this morning has started out decidedly poor. I dropped my first $10 HU match when my JJ ran into QT on a J98 flop. It was sad because the dude I was playing was very ungood. He was overraising and overbetting everything, so I was waiting to pick him off, it just so happened that he hit gold when I woke up with a hand. Of course he didn't play me again. I dropped another $10 HU when a guy either kept getting tough or had the sickest run of cards ever. I was colder than a penguin's ballsack so I got chunked off bit by bit until I took and stand and got chopped off at the knees. It was like having a small cut on an artery but also being anemic. It sucked. I also whiffed in a $1 rebuy HORSE tourney. I think I was in for $4. After the first round through I was the overall chipleader but the big limit hold'em took 75% of my chips and I fizzled in Omaha 8B. So yeah, not so hot today. I'm going to take a break to get some food and then I'll probably hit it again later, hopefully with better results.

Delirium, Problems, The Infamous Poker

There's a delirium that comes with old age that I'm just not ready to handle. I won't ever be. I it at the bank every day. Subtle things sneak in like a master thief, and then slip back out again, unnoticed. Calling twice to check a balance on a checking account. Not remembering stopping in the previous day. Things that aren't necessarily out of the ordinary for most people, but for the elderly they're as damning as bloody gloves. Right now I forget things because I never really committed them to memory in the first place. Or because I'm fending off three other things that threaten to drive me into the ground like an emotional railroad spike. Or because I drank a lot for a long time. But if I see seventy-five, I'll forget things because everything is falling apart in my head. A jigsaw puzzle in a rat infested house; pieces missing pieces, pieces missing entirely. I'm not ready for that. I already find myself laying awake at night because falling asleep feels like dying. I can't imagine having to close my eyes at night wondering if the reaper is hiding inside my eyelids. I don't believe in an afterlife because I can't. I always prepare for the worst. I've always wanted a bomb shelter. Just in case.

It's not just the fear of death that scares me. The fading of life scares me more. Everything is so rich and wonderful as it is, I can't look forward to a life that's like watermelon in December. Tasteless. Crumbling. Save it for prisoners in Gauntanamo. Tell them that their best years are behind them. That they've become a nuisance to the ones they've loved and their sole remaining activity is awaiting a dirt nap. They'll beg for the waterboard and draw a map to Osama.

I'm kind of a downer to be around right now. My roommate wanted to go grab a beer. I advised him of the terribleness of that idea. For his sake. I'm nice sometimes.

Some of the cloud cover is caused by the perpetual problem that has become my house. The mortgage guy called today. "PS, you don't qualify for the lower rate mortgage. You're still approved, it's just going to cost an extra $600 up front and an extra $8,000 over the course of the loan. Love ya bye." My budgeting is going to have to be exquisite and my job searching will be vast and determined. Call me if you have a hook-up, even if it is your friend's cousin's dog-walker's neighbor. Bretty need new jobby. if(NewPay = (2(CurrentPay) || 1.5(CurrentPay))) then NewJob = 1. If you understood that last part, you're a huge nerd. And probably one of my friends. Or a computer science major. Or a mathematician.

I may have been doing this before, but I'm trying to build a $10,000 bankroll from $20. A professional poker player named Chris "Jesus" Ferguson (he looks like most people picture Jesus Christ, he really does) did this, except he started at $0 and had $10,000 after eighteen months. I started at $20 probably six months ago and I'm currently at $239.89. It took Jesus nine months to get from $0 to $100 and then another nine months to get from $100 to $10,000. Don't hold your breath. I'm really going to do my best not to be me this time and actually keep building this, but if history is any indicator, I'll get to around $2,000, get a bright idea, and be back at $0. For the time being, I'm playing $5 and $10 HU matches, $.02/$.05 NLHE and O8B, and the occassional small SnG or MTT. I'll keep you updated. That's enough for tonight.

Ressurection

Wow. Over two months since I've blogged last. My how time flies when you can't tell the days apart. Actually, that's not true in the slightest. In the past two months, I have (in no particular order):

Bought a house
Had Virginia move in with me
Been denied a promotion
Regained the ability to walk
Bought a new cell phone
Been through several tornadoes and ridiculous storms

Actually, that's about it. For the last month I've been working fifty hour weeks at the bank. We had a part-timer get fired so that means Bret works six days each week. I even had a thirteen consecutive day stint because I'm a retard and agreed to work a Sunday at another branch. It's been pretty brutal. Virginia and I both get home around 6pm, make dinner, do one chore, and then we're both exhausted and it's time for her to go to bed. The bad part about having her here is that I don't get to bitch about my hours. For those of you who don't know her, she's a first-year general surgery resident at UNMC, which means she works eighty hours a week. The fundamental difference is that her work is intellectually stimulating. Her reward for killing herself all day every day is that she gets to spend several hours rearranging peoples' squishy bits. My reward for my work is having survived another day without jamming a paper clip into the outlet after the third time Mr. Vecchio has come in without his hearing aid that day. For instance, we were decently staffed on Friday, so I decided to spend some time away from my drawer and take care of things. By the end of my 8.25 hour shift, I had finished a week's worth of work for two people. Sadly, I'm not kidding. I hadn't done anything myself all week, and my customer service manager is out on vacation. So I did all of the things that she would have done that week, and all of the things that I should've done that week, and I did them all in one day. This speaks to the mental gymnastics that I'm subjected to every day. It's harder than you think to not drool on yourself.

The house. Virginia and I bought a house. Yard and all. Garage and everything. My real estate agent said that I'm a hard-nosed negotiator. The reality is more that he must be terrible and I'm slightly less terrible when it comes to house negotiations. We close on August 22nd. A house-warming party will ensue. The peasants will rejoice.

I have more to say on these subjects, but I'm struggling to write this morning. As I age, I wake up earlier and earlier after I drink. I went out with Jeff last night because Virginia is afraid that she's sucking the life out of me. We went to a bar and felt old. To pass the time, we counted people wearing Affliction t-shirts and performed an informal survey of how many people know who Jackson Pollock was. Let's just say that the future of the country doesn't look too bright. ZZ Top can take off his shades. I'll write more later when the brain clouds clear up.