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.