Reading/Listening, Poker

Barebones post again, sorry.

Reading: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka. I'm almost done with The Metamorphosis and I love it. I think Kafka's writing is hilarious because of its deadpan, and I wish he would have finished more works during his life. I hope my opinion doesn't change after reading the other short stories in the book. I finished I Am America (And So Can You!) this week. All I can say is read it, because any attempt to describe it would make it less funny.

Listening: Suco de Tangerina by the Beastie Boys. It's off their newest CD The Mix-Up. The disc is all instrumental and it's fucking amazing. I've always loved the Beastie Boys, and their instrumentals have fascinated me. For a group of Jewish guys who started out playing some pretty hardcore punk music, they've turned into incredibly talented musicians. I've already made this following bold call, but now I'll zoom it across the Internet so I can pull it up in five years and be impressed with how smart I am: the Beastie Boys will be a badass jazz band in five years.

Poker has been going well. I'm back up to $150 even because I've been tearing up the $10 HU matches, so it's nice that I've almost completely erased my idiot move of a couple of weeks ago. What would be nicer? Not having been an idiot and having a bankroll of $250 right now. Oh well, I don't learn some things. I'm still struggling with the step SnGs, and I only have about a week now, so I need to get my shit together.

Update, Poker

Finished the Colbert book, it was awesome. Have been working a lot and spending some time with my parents, which is both nice and taxing. I'll have an actual post tomorrow (today, whatever).

I've been doing very well in HU matches to get my roll back up to around $130. In the step SnGs for the big tourneys I've been crushing step one and getting dominated in step two. Primary factor in crushedness: I'm racing like a quadriplegic right now.

Reading/Listening, Good Day, Death, Bad Poker

Reading: I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert. I thought I would be done with it by now, but I gave up some break time at work to take care of crap (401K, apartment maintenance calls), so I still have about eighty pages left. I will polish it off this week and start on something else. The book is hilarious though, and I will be sad to finish it. Stephen Colbert has such a random, creative mind that you're constantly caught off guard.

Listening: Badfish by Sublime. It was a tough pick this week as I listened to several songs on repeat. Honorable mentions go out to Rompe by Daddy Yankee and The Sound of Settling by Death Cab for Cutie. There were even more, but these were songs that spent at least an hour on repeat. As for Badfish, it's one of the songs that you can't listen to and be angry. It was a perfect song to send fall packing on this last glorious day before winter weather swoops in like a giant-winged condor dragging dark, low clouds behind it.

Today was a good day. For the foreseeable future, I will be working six days a week. This means that I will only get a half day off instead of a full day. Today was one of those half days. I got off of work around 1:30pm and stopped by to visit my sister at work. After that, I came home to change before heading off to wash my car and grab some food. I ate over at Michael's and we watched part of a movie called The Red Violin. It was pretty good, but I didn't get to finish it as I had to pay my apartment complex the $2 I forgot on my rent check as well as pick up my dry cleaning. At the dry cleaner, I discovered that if I purchased a $10 bag, I would save 20% off of every visit and an additional 30% one time. The 20% amounts to about $4 every week, making this a no-brainer. After the dry cleaners, I stopped by to pay my $2. While there, I asked about any garages closer than my current one. My garage is number 61. The garage right outside of our building door is 77. My new garage as of December 4th will be 75. Oh yes, it feels good. To ice the cake, my sister called shortly thereafter and asked if I wanted her to pick me up, buy me Chinese food, and then drop me off. I said "Hells yes." That, my friends, is a good motherfucking day.

I experienced what I imagine death will be like last week when I was getting my hair cut. I go to Sportsman's Haircut. I like to pamper myself, so I get the full treatment: haircut, wash with scalp massage, hot towel on face, the works. I also get the unibrow waxed because eyebrows are one place where "less is more" does not apply. During the wash, they put you in a massage chair. When she put the hot towel on my face (it's soaked in tea tree stuff), it was pitch black. I had peppermint shampoo on my head, so my scalp and face were tingling while the rest of my body was vibrating in the pitch black. And that's what I think death will be like; a humming, vibrating, black void. I hope my scalp and face tingle.

My butthole is saggy and loose after the raping I took today. I lose four straight to CUBUFFS. If you've read previous poker posts, you'll know that he is bad. Well, calling station plus hitting everything equals Bret loses a lot. In three of the four matches, he hit a gutshot on the turn which also made me two pair. The other one I got stubborn and shoved second pair into his top pair. Oh well, I played well, I just kept getting the hammer which is going to happen. The bad decision came when I decided to play him in a $50 match with the logic "he can't keep hitting." Oh yes, he can. My bankroll is down around $90 again now, but I'm really not worried. My previous success in HU matches has changed my confidence level so that I don't have to worry about going broke anymore, unless I pull a Londer.

Texting!, Slept, No Poker

Brandon finally got text messaging! Hooray! I would like to thank his wife Amanda for forcing him to do it. Despite his surly attitude toward it, he will soon find out the joy and convienence of being textually active.

I slept like a lameass tonight. Michael and I went out last night and got inebriated, which sucked when I had to work at 8:45am this morning. Work went fairly quickly though, and I had only two errands to run before I could nap; go to Wells Fargo to deposit money and drop shirts off at the dry cleaners. This turned into more as I decided that I needed a new CD while driving to Wells Fargo. I took care of the two errands that I HAD to run and headed to the shitty, terrible Best Buy on 72nd and Dodge. Never go there because it sucks. On the way there, Michael called to see if I wanted to get food, so I picked him up and we headed to Papillion to pick up my CD that the shitty Best Buy didn't have. Papillion Best Buy > Dodge Best Buy. I also broke down and bought a new CD case because I desperately needed to eliminate the homeless CD problem that has been plaguing me. I got my stuff, we ate Popeye's and I took Michael back home. When all was said and done, I started my nap at 6pm. I should've known. I woke up around 8ish when I got a phone call, but rolled back over until 10pm. I was supposed to go meet a friend from high school for a few drinks, but I couldn't get ahold of him. Oh well, I need some good rest. In fact...

No Date, Cliff, No Poker

Unsurprisingly, women met in bars are not reliable. AKA I got no call on Wednesday. I was also let down today as well, which I will now dive into...

There is a cute girl that has helped us out at our branch that I was looking forward to seeing today when she would again help out. But then she called to say that someone at her branch called in sick and she would not be showing. Booooooooooooooo! Bad omen, but the day started well as I got several compliments from customers. Despite my exhaustion from lack of sleep, I was having a good day. Then I fell off the cliff. With a scant ten minutes to go before my lunch break, I got mystery shopped. I did awful. She was the one person that I gave a halfass transaction that morning, and she was the only one that counted on paper. Fucking sweet. I went to lunch a little sapped because getting my ego bubble busted let in the exhaustion that I'd been fighting. Five minutes into my lunch, my manager pops her head in and informs me that the Regional Customer Service Manager had stopped in to look over the employee evaluations that my own CSM and myself had not been doing. Awesome. A little more exhaustion crept in. When I finished my lunch break, I went back to my teller window and was greeted by the lady from ENOA. ENOA is the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging. They make weekly deposits of money they collect from providing low cost meals to the elderly. By low cost I mean like two dollars and some quarters. Which is very sweet of them. Which also blows because they have like five separate deposits of sixty dollars each; fifty ones and ten in quarters. At this point, all brain power that had previously been fighting sleepiness was diverted to hating people, so I just get delirious. The positive side is that the rest of the day went quickly because I had no idea what was going on. Sleepy time.

All Day, Reading, No Poker

I thought I opened this morning, which meant that I had to be to work at 7:15am. I wasn't actually supposed to open. However, at around 6:45am one of my managers called to see if I would go in for her because she had to take her boyfriend to the hospital. She didn't make it in at all, which meant that I had to work from 7:15am-6:15pm. That makes for a long day. Her boyfriend is fine. He thought he was having a heart attack, but it wasn't that or a stroke. They're keeping him overnight for observation and likely releasing him tomorrow.

I don't know if I've said this before, but we don't have cable in our break room at work. The other guys I work with brought all of the Entourage seasons (minus season three part two), but I've now watched all of those. This means that I read. This is good and bad. The good is that I will finish probably two books a week. This is also the bad. Theoretically, I could motor through every book I own and haven't read in about six months. This would murder my bank account. Stay tuned...

Short post, bedtime.

Reading/Listening, Wichita, Poker

Reading: Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm already around one hundred pages into it, so I should be done by next week. As of right now, it's one of my least favorite Vonnegut books. It is very slow developing in an annoying way. In the first few pages, I'm told where the story is. I'm also told where the story ends. For the next ninety pages, I was told some back story which I'm assuming is relevant because it is being told to me, but seemingly has no relevance. I'm also getting bits and pieces of the future, which I don't know where to arrange. I feel as if a puzzle were placed in front of me with some large chunks put together, some random pieces that don't look like they belong, and no box to use for help. I'm sure it will come around. I just bought I Am America and So Can You by Stephen Colbert today, so I will likely read that next. I'm still digesting White Noise, although I think I'm landing towards didn't get it/didn't like it. I will post a reaction next week.

Listening: Big cop out: Here's where I talk about how neat iPod's are instead of a specific song. As you know, I went to Wichita this weekend, and I took my entire music collection along via iPod. My original purpose for buying an iPod was the protection of my music collection. I'm creeping up on four hundred CDs now, and they take up a fair amount of space. Additionally, it would be a huge pain in the ass to replace all of them if they were stolen (and impossible in some cases, such as the Surge sampler that is actually pretty good). I had access to everything that I was in the mood for, which is incredibly nice. Ok, enough corporate fellating.

My departure from Omaha turned into a big debacle. I already had an apartment get-together that I was going to make an appearance at, but while I was at work I received a text about a going away party for my friend Adam who is moving (moved now) to DC. I originally thought he left Monday morning, leaving me Sunday night to hang out with him, but he left Saturday morning. After I got off work, went to the apartment mixer, and to Adam's going away party, it was 10:30pm. Mapquest said that it was going to take me five hours, one minute to get to Wichita. I figured I could make it in four. The universe decided to split the difference putting me there in four hours, thirty-two minutes (my car has a timer for some reason). I've driven on interstate in an ice storm. I've driven through torrential downpours. I've driven through fog so thick that you couldn't see past the hood. This was the most dangerous driving experience of my life. I was tired when I left, after only getting five or so hours of sleep the night before. Add a couple of beers (spread out over the several hours I was in Omaha, I was totally legal) to the mix, and I was ready for bed just past Council Bluffs. Things started to get treacherous around Topeka. Good thing it's only another two and a half hours from there. For the last hour I must've looked like an epileptic. I kept shaking my head to reopen my eyes because I had turned into one of the dolls with weighted eyelids. The only thing going for me was that I was the only guy on the road. I only passed two or three cars after 1am, each time pre-apologizing to them out loud for the impending collision. By the time I arrived at 3am, my throat was raw screaming along with my music, all while shaking my head and swerving all over the road. I wish I could've seen myself. While we didn't do much the next day, I had fun. We woke up around 11am, had breakfast and then started watching the Husker game. According to Caleb, no Husker game can be watched without beer, so we cracked the first one at 11:30am. At halftime we went to a bar to watch the second half of the best Husker game of the season. More beer was consumed. Then Tisha dropped us off at the most expensive bowling alley on the planet ($60.26 for two hours of bowling for two people, I suspect our garish Husker attire had something to do with it) where more beer was consumed. I proceeded to narrowly avoid losing an additional $100 gambling loss by mounting a ridiculous comeback during our last game. Tisha picked us up, we ordered pizza, and drank more beer. At 9:40pm it was determined that a nap was in order before we met some of Caleb's coworkers at a bar. The plan was a twenty minute nap. It proved to be terminal. Tisha tried to wake both of us up for an hour, but all she got was a red-eyed tirade from Caleb about the piles of babies that were trying to kill him. I woke up at exactly 1:15am, woke Caleb up, we watched TV for an hour and then went to bed. They treated me to lunch again the next day and then I headed home. Not too exciting but I still had a great time.

That went on way too long so this will be short. As I'm typing this I just busted out of my first $26 satellite into Bugsy's $150,000 guaranteed tournament. Bugsy's is hosting a series of five MTT with huge guarantees. The top two finishers in each get flown to Turks and Caicos for an SnG worth $200k. The only way to get into these tourneys are through satellites, and I'm making it my mission to get into each one. I'm currently waffling through the lower satellites as I don't have the scratch to keep shelling out $26 for the top satellite, but I'm playing really well and hope to qualify for the first event this week. I have until December 8th to qualify for the first one, so I should be fine. Aside from that, I won $30 last night playing $.25/$.50 NLHE and got coolered in a $15 HU earlier today with 66 vs 99 on a 457 flop. I'm currently playing a lady in a $15 HU who wavers between bad and awful. However, she keeps choosing awful when I have a marginal hand, so I keep folding some big pots to her to keep her alive. I'll get her eventually. Until tomorrow.