No meaningful post as I'm really tired. We got some things unpacked today, took Dot for a long walk, and I fixed four of the seven thousand things that I need to fix in the house. Go me. I also set up my Flickr account so I'll upload pictures of the house and Dot tomorrow for all to see. I'm really excited about the house pictures because I'll keep adding more as we fix and renovate things so I'll have sort of a photo journal of the progress.
On that note, Caleb and Tisha are headed to Omaha on Friday for an MMA fight (Caleb's brother fights) and so Virginia has decided that we must unpack everything and get the guest bedroom painted before they get here. The chances of this happening are -12%, but I will wait until later this week to crush her hopes. Okay, more tomorrow.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Update
So we're in. We're not unpacked, but we've got all of our stuff in our new house. I think there's a coffee table and a lamp left at the old place, and a hefty amount of cleaning, but it's all tolerable after moving. We fought a couch that we were putting in our basement for over an hour today. The couch won with a final score of two holes in the wall but it came down to the wire because we shredded the top of it. That'll teach the bastard. Virginia and I have already decided that it will be coming out in two pieces courtesy of a saw whenever we decide to replace it.
The holes in the wall didn't phase me as my honey-do list is pretty extensive. The people who owned our house before us half-assed every single thing inside of it, so now I get to redo it. Some examples:
Our main bath is a claw foot tub that they installed a hand held shower head in. They also installed one of those nifty shower curtain rods that attaches to the ceiling and allows you to cover all around the tub. One side is anchored into the wall, the other into the ceiling. Except they only put one of the two screws into the stud, so the other one has pulled out of the drywall. I get to fix it.
The garage door safety sensors are aligned using a block of wood. This was obviously a better idea than just installing them correctly.
Rather than get a three inch piece of wood to mount the door catch onto for the porch door, they had a two inch piece of wood that they just screwed the top of the catch into. Except it doesn't align with the door lock.
I could go on for days about this but there's no point. It will be good for me to learn all of these man things that I've never known how to do. I've decided that I'm just going to write down between one and three things every week and just knock them out slowly. If I try to do it all at once, I won't be able to afford to do everything right and I'll just be furious all of the time.
One thing that will relieve my stress is Dot. Yep, I bought a dog. That's the little pooper at the top of the post. I've had her for roughly a month now, but I've been keeping her a secret. Today we went and picked her up and I drove straight to my sister's to get it over with. She actually wasn't mad at all. I thought she would be. I consulted her before I bought the dog and she told me it was a bad idea. I agreed with her. Then I went and bought her anyway. We have a ton of pictures of her already, but I don't have a Flikr account yet to post them all. In the meantime, you'll have to settle for the one above. She's a Boston Terrier, but she's all white with one black spot on her. Typically Bostons are mostly black with a white belly and some marbling, but the white ones are rare. Like redheads. You'll definitely hear about her more, but in the meantime, enjoy the photo.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Quick Update
So we got all of the paperwork squared away for the mortgage, but there's one last snag. The appraiser said that the outside door that leads into the basement and the top portion of the back of the garage need to be scraped and repainted before he will sign off on the house. He's afraid that Virginia and I are going to eat paint chips and produce five-legged offspring. We found this out Wednesday. About the painting, not five-legged offspring. It was supposed to get done yesterday (Thursday) morning, but alas, mother nature decided we finally needed some more rain and so they couldn't do it. So now the ridiculously close schedule is that the painting will be done by 1pm, which is the time that the inspector will drive by again. We're still on track for a 4pm close. I'm not sure how, but I'm going to make this happen. Okay, bedtime.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Mortgage Crunch, 200 Posts
So I got a call from my mortgage lady today and she needs more documents. Now. On friggin' Tuesday. When we close Friday. Oh, I forgot to mention that she wants documents that don't exist. Very long story short is that Virginia's federal student loans can only be deferred one year at a time according to federal law. The law that the underwriter hasn't read because she wants proof of 5 years of deferment. Tomorrow I get to figure out how to make her understand that I can't give her something that doesn't exist. I hope she doesn't read this blog.
This is my 200th post on this blog. It is pretty weak as it is late and I need to get to bed. Hooray blog! It has lasted longer than I thought it would, and at the ripe old age it managed to produce and offspring. I hope I can still breed when I'm 194. Bed.
This is my 200th post on this blog. It is pretty weak as it is late and I need to get to bed. Hooray blog! It has lasted longer than I thought it would, and at the ripe old age it managed to produce and offspring. I hope I can still breed when I'm 194. Bed.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Reading/Listening, Still Sick, Packing
Reading: I actually read another story in No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. I had actually read about half of it before, but it had been so long I had to go back and reread it. Again, a big epiphanic meatball over the plate and a swing and a miss. I don't mind resisting the epiphany, but what July does is the literary equivalent of missing so bad that she spins around and falls down. She TRIES for an epiphany and never finds one. This is more commonly known as trying too hard, as I've said before. She would be a better writer if she just let what was inside come out rather than try to be the best author alive. She would probably say different in person. She would probably say that she is just writing what she feels, but what she feels is that she wants to be the best writer alive. She wants to be a part of the modern literati. She probably is. I can picture people in drab color clothing massaging her ego after a reading like an illegal immigrant in a rub and tug joint. Hemmingway would put down his coffee and look her in the eye and say "You're trying too hard kid, just let it come."
Listening: I made Jessica a hip-hop compilation. Jessica is a girl I work with at the bank. She's a big music buff and has very good taste, but she's less experienced in the realm of hip-hop. She was very interested when I one day mentioned the song Latyrx by the group of the same name. Latyrx is Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truth Speaker, both from the Quannum label. In this specific song, DJ Shadow (a Quannum turn-tablist) laid down a simple beat for the two to rap over individually. Then, he overlaid the two freestyles to make a song where the rappers are rapping different things at the same time. It's pretty cool, and Jessica wanted to hear it. I threw a bunch of other stuff on there that I figured she may not have heard of. The album includes songs from Mos Def (Umi Says, Hip Hop), The Roots (Quills), Lateef & The Chief (Ambush, Matter of Time), A Tribe Called Quest (Check the Rhime, Oh My God), The Pharcyde (Passing Me By, Runnin'), Gift of Gab (The Writz), Outkast (Ghetto Musick), Kelis (Millionaire), DJ Honda (Trouble in the Water, Travellin' Man), Big Boi (The Train), Andre 3000 (She Lives in my Lap), Slick Rick (Memories), and Jemini (Knuckle Sandwich). It's so good I don't really want to give it to her, so it's in my car until I finish listening to it. I should put it on iTunes.
I've still got the plague. Right now I'm coughing like a ninety year old chain smoker. I hate being sick. I really need to get unsick before I have to move this weekend, but I can imagine that I'll be fairly sleep-deprived this week as I work at 7:15am every morning. Bleh.
Virginia had one of her eight weekends off this past week and we spent the time doing fun couples stuff; packing. The only things left are our bed, big furniture, electronics, bathroom stuff, and clothes. Our apartment is without adornment. We have no kitchen items. No plates. No spoons. My bookshelf looks like an old cowboy, empty and dusty. I'm starting to get excited to move. Not to actually move, but to be in our new house. I got really pumped at the idea of sitting out on my patio and playing poker on my laptop. Virginia says I need to get outside more. Hopefully I'll keep up with posting this week in preparation for the move, but it may be tough as we have a lot to do.
Listening: I made Jessica a hip-hop compilation. Jessica is a girl I work with at the bank. She's a big music buff and has very good taste, but she's less experienced in the realm of hip-hop. She was very interested when I one day mentioned the song Latyrx by the group of the same name. Latyrx is Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truth Speaker, both from the Quannum label. In this specific song, DJ Shadow (a Quannum turn-tablist) laid down a simple beat for the two to rap over individually. Then, he overlaid the two freestyles to make a song where the rappers are rapping different things at the same time. It's pretty cool, and Jessica wanted to hear it. I threw a bunch of other stuff on there that I figured she may not have heard of. The album includes songs from Mos Def (Umi Says, Hip Hop), The Roots (Quills), Lateef & The Chief (Ambush, Matter of Time), A Tribe Called Quest (Check the Rhime, Oh My God), The Pharcyde (Passing Me By, Runnin'), Gift of Gab (The Writz), Outkast (Ghetto Musick), Kelis (Millionaire), DJ Honda (Trouble in the Water, Travellin' Man), Big Boi (The Train), Andre 3000 (She Lives in my Lap), Slick Rick (Memories), and Jemini (Knuckle Sandwich). It's so good I don't really want to give it to her, so it's in my car until I finish listening to it. I should put it on iTunes.
I've still got the plague. Right now I'm coughing like a ninety year old chain smoker. I hate being sick. I really need to get unsick before I have to move this weekend, but I can imagine that I'll be fairly sleep-deprived this week as I work at 7:15am every morning. Bleh.
Virginia had one of her eight weekends off this past week and we spent the time doing fun couples stuff; packing. The only things left are our bed, big furniture, electronics, bathroom stuff, and clothes. Our apartment is without adornment. We have no kitchen items. No plates. No spoons. My bookshelf looks like an old cowboy, empty and dusty. I'm starting to get excited to move. Not to actually move, but to be in our new house. I got really pumped at the idea of sitting out on my patio and playing poker on my laptop. Virginia says I need to get outside more. Hopefully I'll keep up with posting this week in preparation for the move, but it may be tough as we have a lot to do.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Sick, House
I'm sick again. I'm bad at being sick. I have two modes; pissy and angry because I'm only sick enough to be irritated or a total baby because I'm horribly sick. I'm borderline the second at the moment which makes it bad because I'm at my most irritable. Adding fuel to the fire are some minor annoyances that normally wouldn't bother me too much, but currently just irritate the bejesus out of me. One of them is the house.
I just found out today that the sellers can't manage to get out of the house before 6pm on the day that we close. Keep in mind that they've owned another house for nearly two months and have had our accepted offer for a month and a half now. Virginia works at least eighty hours a week and I put in another forty or fifty and somehow we've managed to find time for all of these things, but apparently this couple hasn't figured it out. My real estate agent was trying to assuage my anger by telling me the trials and tribulations of their remodel but I cut him off because the bottom line is they said they would be out on the 22nd. If they couldn't do that, they shouldn't have said so. So I guess we're rounding down from the 22nd and 3/4ths back down to 22. Whatever. At this point, I'm just taking these lumps as lessons. I really feel bad for the next people that we buy a house from because I'm not going to get jerked around again. Okay, I'm apparently in super-angry mode so I'm just going to quit for the night.
I just found out today that the sellers can't manage to get out of the house before 6pm on the day that we close. Keep in mind that they've owned another house for nearly two months and have had our accepted offer for a month and a half now. Virginia works at least eighty hours a week and I put in another forty or fifty and somehow we've managed to find time for all of these things, but apparently this couple hasn't figured it out. My real estate agent was trying to assuage my anger by telling me the trials and tribulations of their remodel but I cut him off because the bottom line is they said they would be out on the 22nd. If they couldn't do that, they shouldn't have said so. So I guess we're rounding down from the 22nd and 3/4ths back down to 22. Whatever. At this point, I'm just taking these lumps as lessons. I really feel bad for the next people that we buy a house from because I'm not going to get jerked around again. Okay, I'm apparently in super-angry mode so I'm just going to quit for the night.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
New Blog
In case you didn't notice, the posts here no longer have a Poker section. That's because I have created The Poker Plecostomus, a dedicated blog for my sinful escapades into the world of gambling. Even if you don't like reading about my poker, I'd appreciate you all popping over so my StatCounter isn't at zero anymore. Hopefully, with the separation of the blogs, I'll be able to expand both of them to be better than they were before. I've changed the links off to the side and will hopefully be adding some new ones. I have a blog that I want to link but it seems like the owner fell off the planet at the end of last month so I'm waiting for him to post again before I link it. Okay, bedtime.
Reading/Listening, Blabber Mouth, Long Days
Reading: Magazines. Miranda July is apparently on hold, and these things are apparently not my decision. I want to read more of her stories so I can finish the collection and move on to things that I would rather read, but instead I've plugged through an entire Car and Driver and am quite a few pages into my new Popular Science. The new Popular Science has given me an idea for a great company that somebody has probably already started and is making millions off of. I'm good at thinking of things after everybody else does. I'm not stealing ideas, I'm just legitimately ignorant to the world outside of my little sphere of influence. Knowing is half the battle.
Listening: I just popped Offspring's Greatest Hits into my CD player today. I've been anti-iPod lately for some reason. Well, I know the reason. I have an armband on my iPod, and when I listen to it in my car, I slide the armband over the gear selector so the iPod doesn't fly around when I'm driving. Lately, I've been taking bottles of water with me everywhere I go, and my cup holders pop out of a spot just behind the gear selector, occupying the space where the iPod normally resides. This problem has a simple solution in that I just the iPod ahead of the gear selector, but I'm lazy so I've just stopped using it. So I'm listening to Offspring. I honestly feel that time will prove that Offspring was one of the better bands of my generation. They have a distinct sound that has always set them apart from other pop bands and their songs have always been either entertaining or quite intelligent. Songs like Come Out and Play and Original Prankster are radio classics, and I think the average person would be amazed at how many hit songs the band actually has had in their long career (it has been damn near 20 years since their first CD debuted). Go to iTunes and depress yourself by counting the number of Offspring songs that you know and love. Go ahead, nobody's watching. You can cry, it's okay. It's the first step towards recovery.
I said something at work today without thinking. The words had apparently been waiting to rush out but just hadn't been given the chance until today. It's no secret that I've become disgruntled in my employment. Disgruntled is the wrong word. Frustrated. I'm bursting at the seams but nobody has offered me a bigger ball to reside in (promotion). So today Joy (my direct manager) asked me if I would mind working six days next week since two of our tellers have to have minor surgeries that will have them out at the same time next week. I told her no because I close on my house on Friday and need that and Saturday to move. She had forgotten that I had the time off and was fine with it, but then I offered to work open to close from Monday to Thursday if it would help. "You'd do that? How could you stand that?" "Well, all I do when I go home is change into shorts and hope I die before I have to go to work the next day anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a change." Whoops. Brad (my coworker) thought it was hilarious. He didn't stop laughing for a good five minutes. I don't know how Joy responded because I started laughing too. It wasn't true, but it was a very good summation of my current attitude toward my job. Monday was a good example. Joy went home sick first thing in the morning. Michelle (my boss) had to leave early to pick up her kids. It was slow because we were busier than hell on Friday, and nobody generally gave a shit about work. I didn't want to be there, but yet I still got a teller observation done, made several phone calls to people who needed to come in and sign things, worked two different account reports, copied and filed about twenty new signature cards, resolved an issue for the back office, completed three days worth of minor account maintenance requests, and I think that's about it. So I polished off 1.5 peoples tasks for the week in about four hours while still getting in a healthy dose of screwing around. Like I said, my statement wasn't true, but it was what needed to be said right then. I have today (Wednesday) off, so I'll be my usual chipper self again on Thursday when I have to go back.
Virginia might utter the same thing I did at work tomorrow if her brain allows her mouth to function. She worked from about 5am until 11:30pm on Tuesday, and she's received two pages since she passed out at 11:40pm. I don't know how she's still going. I'm wired to run without sleep. She is not. Very definitely not. It makes me wonder why the very profession that tells us how awful fatigue is for our bodies and how poorly we perform when fatigued willingly subjects its professionals (and the people in charge of OUR well-being) to mandatory fatigue. It seems to me that doctors should be REQUIRED to only work a certain number of hours per week and not a minute more. They should be chased out of the hospital when they start nodding off at inappropriate times. This month has been really hard on her and it scares me that it's not quite half over yet. I'm naturally negative. I like bitching about things and bagging on things. Because I'm good at it and you should do what you're good at. Virginia asked me not to speak negatively about her long hours and such because she has to stay positive or she'll crack and I've been faithful to that, but she scared me tonight. In a very serious tone she started talking about how maybe she had made the wrong career choice because she didn't feel like she was cut out for it. Then she laid on the bed and passed out. I hope the last nineteen days of this month don't crush her spirit and enthusiasm. Reason #4,628 that I couldn't be a doctor...
Listening: I just popped Offspring's Greatest Hits into my CD player today. I've been anti-iPod lately for some reason. Well, I know the reason. I have an armband on my iPod, and when I listen to it in my car, I slide the armband over the gear selector so the iPod doesn't fly around when I'm driving. Lately, I've been taking bottles of water with me everywhere I go, and my cup holders pop out of a spot just behind the gear selector, occupying the space where the iPod normally resides. This problem has a simple solution in that I just the iPod ahead of the gear selector, but I'm lazy so I've just stopped using it. So I'm listening to Offspring. I honestly feel that time will prove that Offspring was one of the better bands of my generation. They have a distinct sound that has always set them apart from other pop bands and their songs have always been either entertaining or quite intelligent. Songs like Come Out and Play and Original Prankster are radio classics, and I think the average person would be amazed at how many hit songs the band actually has had in their long career (it has been damn near 20 years since their first CD debuted). Go to iTunes and depress yourself by counting the number of Offspring songs that you know and love. Go ahead, nobody's watching. You can cry, it's okay. It's the first step towards recovery.
I said something at work today without thinking. The words had apparently been waiting to rush out but just hadn't been given the chance until today. It's no secret that I've become disgruntled in my employment. Disgruntled is the wrong word. Frustrated. I'm bursting at the seams but nobody has offered me a bigger ball to reside in (promotion). So today Joy (my direct manager) asked me if I would mind working six days next week since two of our tellers have to have minor surgeries that will have them out at the same time next week. I told her no because I close on my house on Friday and need that and Saturday to move. She had forgotten that I had the time off and was fine with it, but then I offered to work open to close from Monday to Thursday if it would help. "You'd do that? How could you stand that?" "Well, all I do when I go home is change into shorts and hope I die before I have to go to work the next day anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a change." Whoops. Brad (my coworker) thought it was hilarious. He didn't stop laughing for a good five minutes. I don't know how Joy responded because I started laughing too. It wasn't true, but it was a very good summation of my current attitude toward my job. Monday was a good example. Joy went home sick first thing in the morning. Michelle (my boss) had to leave early to pick up her kids. It was slow because we were busier than hell on Friday, and nobody generally gave a shit about work. I didn't want to be there, but yet I still got a teller observation done, made several phone calls to people who needed to come in and sign things, worked two different account reports, copied and filed about twenty new signature cards, resolved an issue for the back office, completed three days worth of minor account maintenance requests, and I think that's about it. So I polished off 1.5 peoples tasks for the week in about four hours while still getting in a healthy dose of screwing around. Like I said, my statement wasn't true, but it was what needed to be said right then. I have today (Wednesday) off, so I'll be my usual chipper self again on Thursday when I have to go back.
Virginia might utter the same thing I did at work tomorrow if her brain allows her mouth to function. She worked from about 5am until 11:30pm on Tuesday, and she's received two pages since she passed out at 11:40pm. I don't know how she's still going. I'm wired to run without sleep. She is not. Very definitely not. It makes me wonder why the very profession that tells us how awful fatigue is for our bodies and how poorly we perform when fatigued willingly subjects its professionals (and the people in charge of OUR well-being) to mandatory fatigue. It seems to me that doctors should be REQUIRED to only work a certain number of hours per week and not a minute more. They should be chased out of the hospital when they start nodding off at inappropriate times. This month has been really hard on her and it scares me that it's not quite half over yet. I'm naturally negative. I like bitching about things and bagging on things. Because I'm good at it and you should do what you're good at. Virginia asked me not to speak negatively about her long hours and such because she has to stay positive or she'll crack and I've been faithful to that, but she scared me tonight. In a very serious tone she started talking about how maybe she had made the wrong career choice because she didn't feel like she was cut out for it. Then she laid on the bed and passed out. I hope the last nineteen days of this month don't crush her spirit and enthusiasm. Reason #4,628 that I couldn't be a doctor...
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Cars, Virginia, Poker
I've been thinking about what car I want to get after Monique passes on. For some reason, I'm really digging badass looking cars. Cars with presence. The two cars that I've already got my eye on are the Mercury Marauder and the Infiniti M45. In addition to the blunt styling of both cars, I also like that they have bigass V-8s under the hood. I'm still two years away from a new car as Monique and I don't even have a year under our belt, but as is typical of me, I've already got my eyes open.
Virginia has been working disgusting hours on her pediatrics rotation this month. I think she logged about 98 hours this week (I wish I were exaggerating), and I'm pretty sure she was close to that last week as well. She goes get all of next weekend off, meaning she doesn't have to set foot inside the hospital at all. I imagine she will get drunk. I know I would. She was talking with one of her attendings and he told her that he remembered his pediatric surgery rotation very vividly. Driving to work one morning at some ungodly early hour, he had the thought that if he just wrecked his car he wouldn't have to go in that day. Virginia was like "I've had that thought twice now." They didn't laugh because it wasn't a joke. I didn't laugh when I heard the story because I've had that thought going to work before. I think nearly every job I've had since age eighteen, there's been one day where I thought that if I just jerked the wheel a little, I'd get a day off. So sad.
Poker has been going fairly even keel. On the one hand, I've been murdering Bugsy's Club. My bankroll there is at a nice fatty $461.29. I had a second place in a $2 MTT for $30. It was the same story as the first place I had a couple weeks ago. When we got to the final table I was about average. I was the chipleader with 13 left but I dropped a huge pot trying to bust a guy and was back to average when we hit 10. As blinds went up, so did the use of my raise button. I kept taking down the blinds which were big pots for our chip stacks and got myself back on top. I then busted a guy with Q4hh vs his A3 offsuit AIPF. He was pretty pissed, but I had open-raised from middle position and his all-in laid me 3:1 on what I figured was a 60/40 call, which turned out to be correct. I ran it from there and entered HU with a 10:1 chip lead which I promptly coughed up. I'm not that mad about it because in HU the other guy got killed by the deck. He had, in order, AT, AK, TT, 99, QQ, and AJ. I doubled him up on the first 3, pitched the next 3, and he was in the lead. The 7th hand brought my KQ vs his A8dd and I blanked it on out to give him the $45 first place prize money. Go him. Another big chunk o' cash found its way to my account when I decided to sit at a $.10/$.25 full ring NLHE table. I sat on the lists for a $15 and $20 HU match for about an hour and decided to just take $15 to the ring game and call it good. In 30 minutes I had racked up over $54 in profit so I called it quits. I kept getting paid off on good hands. The only lucky one was my AK vs T6 vs ?? on an AT6 flop. The dude who I don't know what he had had gone AIPF for like $4 more than my $3 raise, so I called as did the dude with T6. I led out at the flop for the pot which was around $21 and set the other guy all in. He called and the next two cards were 5's giving me aces up to beat his tens up. While things at Bugsy's are going so well, things at FTP are just crushing my soul. I had run my $5 freeroll winnings all the way to something like $18.30 before I went on a sickening losing streak. I started playing one guy who was just god awful, which is of course why I ended up something like -5 matches against him. In every match, I would be on the crush to start, driving him down to 900ish chips, then he would get in bad, hit, putting me on the short stack, and then get in bad and hit again. One particular match summed it up. I had about 2k in chips, leaving him with 1k. I was then dealt 44. The flop was AJ4. I bet, he shoved in, I called. He had J8. The turn was a J, the river an A. Go him. The next hand, I'm dealt KQ. Flop KQ6. I bet he calls. Turn 9. He checks, I bet, he calls again. River T. He checks and I check. He shows J2o and wins. Next hand, I'm down to about 500. I get AA. I raise, he calls. Flop A46 rainbow. I shove in. He calls with KQ. Turn J, river T. Much berating. I goad him into playing me again. I finally outlast his luck and peel off 3 in a row, so of course he quits. I hovered around $4 forever, losing one and winning one before I finally put a couple together to claw back up to $7. I then took my $7 to the $.02/$.05 table and ran it up to its current $11.05. I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed. I like the fact that the $2 HU matches are so small and give me a cushion against failure, but the garbage players and the big luck factor with the 1500 starting stack pushes me towards the ring games. I guess I'll play what I feel like. I might end up sending some of my Bugsy's cash over to FTP anyway since I can't get any of the decent sized HU matches going. Off to bed.
Virginia has been working disgusting hours on her pediatrics rotation this month. I think she logged about 98 hours this week (I wish I were exaggerating), and I'm pretty sure she was close to that last week as well. She goes get all of next weekend off, meaning she doesn't have to set foot inside the hospital at all. I imagine she will get drunk. I know I would. She was talking with one of her attendings and he told her that he remembered his pediatric surgery rotation very vividly. Driving to work one morning at some ungodly early hour, he had the thought that if he just wrecked his car he wouldn't have to go in that day. Virginia was like "I've had that thought twice now." They didn't laugh because it wasn't a joke. I didn't laugh when I heard the story because I've had that thought going to work before. I think nearly every job I've had since age eighteen, there's been one day where I thought that if I just jerked the wheel a little, I'd get a day off. So sad.
Poker has been going fairly even keel. On the one hand, I've been murdering Bugsy's Club. My bankroll there is at a nice fatty $461.29. I had a second place in a $2 MTT for $30. It was the same story as the first place I had a couple weeks ago. When we got to the final table I was about average. I was the chipleader with 13 left but I dropped a huge pot trying to bust a guy and was back to average when we hit 10. As blinds went up, so did the use of my raise button. I kept taking down the blinds which were big pots for our chip stacks and got myself back on top. I then busted a guy with Q4hh vs his A3 offsuit AIPF. He was pretty pissed, but I had open-raised from middle position and his all-in laid me 3:1 on what I figured was a 60/40 call, which turned out to be correct. I ran it from there and entered HU with a 10:1 chip lead which I promptly coughed up. I'm not that mad about it because in HU the other guy got killed by the deck. He had, in order, AT, AK, TT, 99, QQ, and AJ. I doubled him up on the first 3, pitched the next 3, and he was in the lead. The 7th hand brought my KQ vs his A8dd and I blanked it on out to give him the $45 first place prize money. Go him. Another big chunk o' cash found its way to my account when I decided to sit at a $.10/$.25 full ring NLHE table. I sat on the lists for a $15 and $20 HU match for about an hour and decided to just take $15 to the ring game and call it good. In 30 minutes I had racked up over $54 in profit so I called it quits. I kept getting paid off on good hands. The only lucky one was my AK vs T6 vs ?? on an AT6 flop. The dude who I don't know what he had had gone AIPF for like $4 more than my $3 raise, so I called as did the dude with T6. I led out at the flop for the pot which was around $21 and set the other guy all in. He called and the next two cards were 5's giving me aces up to beat his tens up. While things at Bugsy's are going so well, things at FTP are just crushing my soul. I had run my $5 freeroll winnings all the way to something like $18.30 before I went on a sickening losing streak. I started playing one guy who was just god awful, which is of course why I ended up something like -5 matches against him. In every match, I would be on the crush to start, driving him down to 900ish chips, then he would get in bad, hit, putting me on the short stack, and then get in bad and hit again. One particular match summed it up. I had about 2k in chips, leaving him with 1k. I was then dealt 44. The flop was AJ4. I bet, he shoved in, I called. He had J8. The turn was a J, the river an A. Go him. The next hand, I'm dealt KQ. Flop KQ6. I bet he calls. Turn 9. He checks, I bet, he calls again. River T. He checks and I check. He shows J2o and wins. Next hand, I'm down to about 500. I get AA. I raise, he calls. Flop A46 rainbow. I shove in. He calls with KQ. Turn J, river T. Much berating. I goad him into playing me again. I finally outlast his luck and peel off 3 in a row, so of course he quits. I hovered around $4 forever, losing one and winning one before I finally put a couple together to claw back up to $7. I then took my $7 to the $.02/$.05 table and ran it up to its current $11.05. I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed. I like the fact that the $2 HU matches are so small and give me a cushion against failure, but the garbage players and the big luck factor with the 1500 starting stack pushes me towards the ring games. I guess I'll play what I feel like. I might end up sending some of my Bugsy's cash over to FTP anyway since I can't get any of the decent sized HU matches going. Off to bed.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Reading/Listening, Crash, VBDay, Poker
This will be quick. I'm still reading Miranda July and I haven't gotten a page further, and I'm also still listening to the new Coldplay CD. My tape adapter for my iPod needs cleaned but the recent oven-like temperatures in my car have caused the little bottle of cleaning solution for the tape adapter to cake shut in the little hole in the dispenser, so I need to get something stabby to open it back up.
I crashed a wedding this weekend. It wasn't like the movie. One of my best friends from high school got married in Omaha and I wasn't invited. I felt like I should be invited, and two of our other good friends from high school were invited, so I went. I took a date. The date was another friend of ours that I thought should be invited. Virginia was nervous at the idea so she met us after. It was very awkward. Not the crashing, that didn't bother me at all, and despite a stammering "H-H-H-H-Hey man!" from the groom, it didn't bother him too much either. What was awkward was knowing why I wasn't invited. Back in high school, we had a group of friends. Five of us to be exact. Within our group of friends, we all had our roles. I was sort of the outsider. I came late to the group, and I wasn't a guaranteed addition to any group activity. I had other friends. Not that they didn't, but I was a degree shadier and thus disappeared from time to time to engage in shadiness that they didn't want a part of. That was my role. Caleb was the jock. Ryan was the smartass. Kip was the whiner (dubbed "Bitch"), and Greg was the fat one. Not because he was actually fat, but because he was fatter than anybody else in the group. We called him Gurg, a sort of shortened version of Gargantuan. Both Greg and Kip (real name Zach) absolutely fell off the map in college. Greg and I talked and hung out a couple of times our freshman year and never again after that unless by happenstance. I saw Kip once in college and tried to hang out with him and his friends but it was so terrible that I seriously considered stealing a car to get away from awfulness. What I gathered from these experiences in college was that they took our joking to heart. They really felt like second class friends rather than an integral part of our group. Caleb, Ryan, and I remain good friends because we took it for what it was for; high school insecurities playing themselves out verbally. Make fun of the trait that you wish you had that you see in others to devalue it. So it hurts less. In college, I grew to embrace my own perceptions of my shortcomings. I realized that to be the person that I thought I wanted to be, I had to sacrifice things that I really like and I didn't want to do that. I matured. These two guys didn't. Or they did in a different way. I hope they realize that they really were good and dear friends back then and not just a way for me to feel better about myself. They will both be invited to my wedding someday. Greg will get two or three invitations in the mail so he gets the point, but he will still be invited. Of course, by the end of the night, I fell into old habits; I was the drunkest one there. They cut off the bar pretty early so I was forced to sniper drinks that people set on tables to dance. The nature of this activity is that you have to drink very quickly so as not to get busted. Mission accomplished. Virginia made the executive decision that I in fact did not need to meet up with Caleb, Ryan, and Dave after we closed down the wedding and the bar next door and took me home and put me in bed. It was a good decision.
Speaking of my lovely girlfriend (no, I'm not kissing ass, she doesn't read my blog; doesn't even know the address), it was her birthday yesterday. I took her to see her secret present (which I will divulge at a later date) and then we went to Blue where I had the most delicious fare that I've had in a long time. I had JUMBO shrimp that was fried with glass noodles and drizzled with sweet chili sauce that was stunningly good, and Virginia ordered a Vegas roll, a Hawaii roll, and salmon sashimi. Both rolls were amazing, and she said the salmon sashimi was the best that she's ever had. Keep in mind that she spent two years in Vegas, a place known for its world class cuisine. She was so thoroughly impressed with the food that she instantly discredited the chance that the owners were Nebraskan. The only way that her birthday could have gone better would have been if she hadn't gotten off early so I could've taken her flowers to her at the hospital, but as it stood I got to spend more time with her. I'll take that tradeoff.
Poker has been going very well. Sunday sucked, but still not badly. I've been running perfectly with odds lately which has been a big positive for my bankroll. I've been hitting the $10 and $15 HU matches at Bugsy's and the $2 HU matches at FTP. Sunday I played a few matches at Bugsy's and got dealt with. I only ended the night -1 on matches, but it was a struggle to get there. I kept getting in with the best hand and the other person on a draw and it just kept hitting. Flushes, straights, etc, wham wham wham. To end the night, I sat at a 3-handed $.25/$.50 NLHE table and won back the -$15 or so I was down. This was too high for my bankroll, but I decided to buy in for $15, ditch the match if I lost just as I would an HU match, and also to bail on the table if it filled up. It was never more than 4 handed, and that only lasted for a couple of hands, so I'm pretty happy with the self control. At FTP, I've worked my $5 freeroll winnings up to something north of $11. I went on a little run to start, which was nice because I'm very shallow there right now. I was as high as $13+, but I caught a bad one to end my night. I don't like that the rake is $.15 per tourney this low because it means that I have to come up +3 on every 20 matches just to break even. I can still accomplish this, but it's nice to have as big of a cushion as possible seeing as how I don't have the bankroll for 20 matches right now. I've made FTP my focus right now, because that is where I stand to make big money. You simply can't get big dollar games going at Bugsy's. As it stands, I have to wait about ten minutes on average to get a $15 game and it's only going to get worse as I go up. Further, FTP has much higher dollar tourneys for me to cash in on. I'm not ready to just transfer all my cash yet as I need to adjust my game to the lower starting chips at FTP, but I've been doing pretty well so far. Hopefully I can keep this going and avoid a bad patch until I have the cash to weather it. Bugsy's roll is at $363.69, FTP is around $11.25 (approx., can't connect now for some reason).
I crashed a wedding this weekend. It wasn't like the movie. One of my best friends from high school got married in Omaha and I wasn't invited. I felt like I should be invited, and two of our other good friends from high school were invited, so I went. I took a date. The date was another friend of ours that I thought should be invited. Virginia was nervous at the idea so she met us after. It was very awkward. Not the crashing, that didn't bother me at all, and despite a stammering "H-H-H-H-Hey man!" from the groom, it didn't bother him too much either. What was awkward was knowing why I wasn't invited. Back in high school, we had a group of friends. Five of us to be exact. Within our group of friends, we all had our roles. I was sort of the outsider. I came late to the group, and I wasn't a guaranteed addition to any group activity. I had other friends. Not that they didn't, but I was a degree shadier and thus disappeared from time to time to engage in shadiness that they didn't want a part of. That was my role. Caleb was the jock. Ryan was the smartass. Kip was the whiner (dubbed "Bitch"), and Greg was the fat one. Not because he was actually fat, but because he was fatter than anybody else in the group. We called him Gurg, a sort of shortened version of Gargantuan. Both Greg and Kip (real name Zach) absolutely fell off the map in college. Greg and I talked and hung out a couple of times our freshman year and never again after that unless by happenstance. I saw Kip once in college and tried to hang out with him and his friends but it was so terrible that I seriously considered stealing a car to get away from awfulness. What I gathered from these experiences in college was that they took our joking to heart. They really felt like second class friends rather than an integral part of our group. Caleb, Ryan, and I remain good friends because we took it for what it was for; high school insecurities playing themselves out verbally. Make fun of the trait that you wish you had that you see in others to devalue it. So it hurts less. In college, I grew to embrace my own perceptions of my shortcomings. I realized that to be the person that I thought I wanted to be, I had to sacrifice things that I really like and I didn't want to do that. I matured. These two guys didn't. Or they did in a different way. I hope they realize that they really were good and dear friends back then and not just a way for me to feel better about myself. They will both be invited to my wedding someday. Greg will get two or three invitations in the mail so he gets the point, but he will still be invited. Of course, by the end of the night, I fell into old habits; I was the drunkest one there. They cut off the bar pretty early so I was forced to sniper drinks that people set on tables to dance. The nature of this activity is that you have to drink very quickly so as not to get busted. Mission accomplished. Virginia made the executive decision that I in fact did not need to meet up with Caleb, Ryan, and Dave after we closed down the wedding and the bar next door and took me home and put me in bed. It was a good decision.
Speaking of my lovely girlfriend (no, I'm not kissing ass, she doesn't read my blog; doesn't even know the address), it was her birthday yesterday. I took her to see her secret present (which I will divulge at a later date) and then we went to Blue where I had the most delicious fare that I've had in a long time. I had JUMBO shrimp that was fried with glass noodles and drizzled with sweet chili sauce that was stunningly good, and Virginia ordered a Vegas roll, a Hawaii roll, and salmon sashimi. Both rolls were amazing, and she said the salmon sashimi was the best that she's ever had. Keep in mind that she spent two years in Vegas, a place known for its world class cuisine. She was so thoroughly impressed with the food that she instantly discredited the chance that the owners were Nebraskan. The only way that her birthday could have gone better would have been if she hadn't gotten off early so I could've taken her flowers to her at the hospital, but as it stood I got to spend more time with her. I'll take that tradeoff.
Poker has been going very well. Sunday sucked, but still not badly. I've been running perfectly with odds lately which has been a big positive for my bankroll. I've been hitting the $10 and $15 HU matches at Bugsy's and the $2 HU matches at FTP. Sunday I played a few matches at Bugsy's and got dealt with. I only ended the night -1 on matches, but it was a struggle to get there. I kept getting in with the best hand and the other person on a draw and it just kept hitting. Flushes, straights, etc, wham wham wham. To end the night, I sat at a 3-handed $.25/$.50 NLHE table and won back the -$15 or so I was down. This was too high for my bankroll, but I decided to buy in for $15, ditch the match if I lost just as I would an HU match, and also to bail on the table if it filled up. It was never more than 4 handed, and that only lasted for a couple of hands, so I'm pretty happy with the self control. At FTP, I've worked my $5 freeroll winnings up to something north of $11. I went on a little run to start, which was nice because I'm very shallow there right now. I was as high as $13+, but I caught a bad one to end my night. I don't like that the rake is $.15 per tourney this low because it means that I have to come up +3 on every 20 matches just to break even. I can still accomplish this, but it's nice to have as big of a cushion as possible seeing as how I don't have the bankroll for 20 matches right now. I've made FTP my focus right now, because that is where I stand to make big money. You simply can't get big dollar games going at Bugsy's. As it stands, I have to wait about ten minutes on average to get a $15 game and it's only going to get worse as I go up. Further, FTP has much higher dollar tourneys for me to cash in on. I'm not ready to just transfer all my cash yet as I need to adjust my game to the lower starting chips at FTP, but I've been doing pretty well so far. Hopefully I can keep this going and avoid a bad patch until I have the cash to weather it. Bugsy's roll is at $363.69, FTP is around $11.25 (approx., can't connect now for some reason).
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