fogodeguy

Since Jay was in town we decided to do a little 'get spiffed up and have a nice dinner and stay downtown' double date with him and Mary. We decided on Murray's steak house and hotel ivy.

Dinner was cruising along smoothly when towards the end of our entre portion the waitress was trying to clean up the table and projectile spilled my entire glass of red wine all over me. I was wearing a blue shirt and black dress pants...luckily I had taken off my coat. The whole table burst out laughing and I'm not a very angry person so I just had to play it down, as the waitress felt worse than I've like ever seen somebody feel. I also didn't want to be a crabaple on a good night, but deep down it was a little frustrating.

They boss gave me 15 cash and a card to call if dry cleaning cant get it out and they'll buy me a new shirt. I highly doubt they'll be able to. We'll see. I'm not to worried it wasn't like one of my favorite shirts or anything.

Hotel Ivy was fine. Given there are plenty of other options I would probably try a few others before/if i went back. I wouldn't say it was bad by any means, we just weren't that pleased. The small ammount of service we got was pretty good though, and I heard it's known for it's spa which we didn't use.

I ventured back to canterbury for the first time since october with all the boys for a nice fun long session on sunday. It definitely brought back some nostalgia and it was also nice to see a number of people I haven't seen in awhile.

Tonight we had a quadruple date where we (me, michelle, jay, mary, pickett, lindsey, dave p, and reily) went to fogodechau. I enjoy that place...and more as an experience than out of this world food. It's good food, for darn sure, and it's nice to get so many different types of meet, but it doesn't quite compare to a top steak house steak. All the girls were in for going to RA after for a little fun game poker but 3 of 4 of them have to get up b4 7 so we decided a little bowling and games across the street at gameworks would be a better idea. It was for sure.

The place was a ghost town and felt like they've kinda given up on trying. I can't really blame them as the block E area just feels really ghetto and I've been a part of some sketchy bullshit as well as heard of plenty so it's not exactly where most people want to go.

Tomorrow should be another sweet day as we're having a little boys night where 8 of us are going to an early dinner and then the wild game. Like pretty much all of the remaining games it's a must win game so there will be some good energy there and it'll be much fun.

I know I missed talking about something I wanted to talk about but the fact I wrote a blog at all given how tired I am after a great longish session is satisfying enough for now. I'm going to bed.

cider house rules

Michelle and I walked to a coffee house by her house tonight to get a hot cider because it felt winterish and after buying it the woman there said they were on a break from the concert thingy that some lady was putting on and if we wanted to stay we had to pay the 14 dollar cover. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but some rinky dink lady playin guitar at a rinky dink coffee house charging 14 bucks made me kinda chuckle. It must not have seemed overly weird to the 20-25 people who turned out (and maybe I'm the one out of touch, i'm not fully sure) but I thought most of the time coffee house music was like hey I like playing music I'll have my case open and you can put tips/donations in and I'm sellin my cd if you like my(our) music and want to support us.

We went back and played some gin with the basketball games on in the background and she had no trouble beating me pretty handily. I somehow have missouri going to the final 4 so that upset tonight was very awesome tonight, as was nova beating duke. I'm on top of my pool and leading schneider and hopp in our sidebets so I'm feeling good, but there is so much left and so much can happen.

I'm probably just a little whiner here, but I find having to take my car into the dealership to get the standard oil change/tuneup crap tedious and time wasting. It rarely is done as fast as they say and I find my self in major limbo running around trying to find other things to do.

April is going to the month of appointments. I already have a dermatologist apt, I also have to see the dentist, my financial planner, my tax accountant, and find a personal trainer to whip my butt into shape. I thought poker meant I didn't have to have a lot of crap on your schedule, lol. I think Shneider may have found a new PA to help me keep my life in order. I'm really hoping it works out well.

It's also my birthday on the 9th and the end of the wild/postseason as well as twins starting up. I gotta get out swinging the golfclubs, too, and still try to fit one more ski trip in. We're talking tahoe as we've always talked about wanting to go there and apparently it's like the best spring skiing anywhere and our vail pass works at heavenly, too.

And I was supposed to have a big poker goal of playing another 40-50k hands (I'm at about 45k hands with a few days left in march) And I gotta do my taxes, too. Probably about 8 hours worth of work I won't be able to spend playing poker. Looks like in reality I'll get in like 10 hands all month, haha. But I'll be having a great time. I'm ready for spring and summer. Lemme skip the spring allergies though.

I have a rule

For some reason I'm not finding this easy to explain as it just feels wordy any way I type it, so I think I just have to roll with it. When I'm playing a guy heads up and decide that he plays good enough and I don't want to play him again, I tell him I don't want to play him anymore and good game and good luck. If he sits with me again, I'll play both my button and give him his button and say please dont sit with me again, I don't want to play with you. If he sits a third time, I play my button and quit. Most people get the hint as they know how advantageous it is to be the guy on the button and they aren't getting the reciprication of being able to play their button. Over the last year on the button I make .08 of a bet per hand wheras in the big blind I lose .02 of a bet.

Yesterday I was playing and decided I didn't want to play a guy. I went through the motions and on the third time I grimmed his ass (the term in the poker world for playing your button and quitting). I left the table and sat at a new one. He joined and I did it again. And again. And again. On the 11th time he said man you're hard to play, always switching tables. lol. Finally after the 12th time he left never to be seen again.

I'm not like all super proud about all of this as it's a little bit douchey but it's one way you can stand up for yourself when somebody else is being an ass and it was making me laugh. I just thought it was funny he came back 12 times. Previously I've never had more than like 2 or 3 times.

I played raquetball today and very dumbly wore ankle socks that are lower than my basketball shoes so mid-first-game I had to go put my brutal street shoes on to play more as my other shoes were rubbing the shit out of my ankle.

I really enjoyed the nicer weather and it looks like the rain and semi-cold is here to stay for a bit. Kinda tough to have a nice little taste of spring/summer and then get it swiped away. Although the rain wasn't cold today and kinda made me feel like it was summer.

I've only put in 2 hours of poker today and I haven't really decided if I'm going to mash out another 3-6 hours after this blog. I'll probably look at the games and if they're good, play and see how I feel. I feel like I might have shorter patience than a lot of times so it might not last. The AP jackpot is up to 733k so I may just open up 10 tables of low no limit and try to win me a piece if I'm not feelin it.

sunday sunday sunday

The Wild are really under the gun with their season so when edmonton came to town today it was about as close to a must win game as you can get without 100% being so. Finally the crowd seemed to realize and appreciate this as the enviroment finally had a buzzed feel to it. The last bunch of games have felt pretty tame and has been kinda shocking because it was a super cool atmosphere last year downt he stretch.

Schneider and pickett were talking and realized the 4 ticket holders have been to 1 or 2 games together as a complete group. One or more of us has pretty much always been travelling...and lol pickett was gone for 6 weeks...but it's worked out great. One of our cupholders broke on the 2nd or 3rd game of the year and finally 2 games ago we told them about it. It wasn't fixed today. So this is how are seats are...

seat 1 is not a bad seat, it generally has somebody on your left but it's normal spacing. Seat 2 is a middle seat so definitely more desireable but it doesn't have a cup holder so beer drinking/not spilling is always an additional concern. Seat 3 is the best seat...it's in the middle and has all of the proper amenities. Seat 4 is by far the worst. While it has a place to put your beer to get warm (cough bizot) the seat is not parallel with the seat to it's right as we are in the corner. It's especially brutal when there is a full size male sitting in the adjacent seat as there is negative leg room.

Speaking of seats, some season ticket holder since 1961 cancelled their twins season tickets in the first row behind the screen behind home plate so the twins decided to offer 8 game packages to the first 10 current season ticket holders to respond and we were able to snag them. I don't know which games we have them for yet, but I'm pumped either way.

Watchmen last night was fine. It was entertaining I guess. I dont really have any strong oppinions about it, except that the imax had the sound a couple notches too high so a few of the scenes bugged me just because it was piercingly loud for no reason.

I was planning on getting in some work after the movie but a game of risk broke out. I used to play it a reasonable amount as a kid, but in the last 15 years I've played it less than 5 times for sure. The last time I played a couple months ago I rolled super bad early and lost real quickly and there was another guy there (dan) who constantly wins so a little pitty for me last time and a couple people spending their time attacking dan allowed me to build up my armies quietly and eventually run the board. It was obviously fun to win, but really now I think it's not a very good social/fun weekend night game. It should be reserved for cabins and stuff like that. Otherwise a good game of taboo or cranium or something is probably more fun for a group.

I was wide awake when the game finished around 1, so I checked out the games and they were ridiculously good so I played until like 5. They were still decent enough then but I didn't want to stay up toooooooooo late so I called it. I started falling asleep at about 545 while watching tv but when I went to turn it off i somehow woke up major. I tossed and turned for a half hour b4 turning the tv back on and finally falling asleep around 730. Doh. I shoulda just worked longer.

I'm suprised I'm not more tired now. I was only able to get 5 hours of sleep cause of the wild and afterwords got in a good 9.5 hour work session that was broken up by going for a run with jon.

I really hope the games don't change too much from what they are right now. Man, if I could put them in a bottle and hold onto them for the rest of my life I sure would. It's not that easy to get great heads up action anymore but being able to find a couple good 15/30-50/100 6max games is almost always easy. Sometimes are obviously better than others, but only a few times in the past few weeks have I decided not to play cause the games weren't good.

Heh, I just was gonna write out a quick one cause I said I'd blog more and it turned into a novel. I cracked a beer at the end of my session and sipping on that and typing this up has been ridiculously relaxing. Probably find something to watch on tv to additionally unwind my brain and get to sleep before it gets too late again.

Finally an update...and more to come soon.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Going forward I'm going to try to make a good point to update a lot more often.

The Utah ski trip was probably my favorite ski trip of all time. At least top 2 or 3 for sure. We got tons of snow, got to ski tons of sick runs with tons of snow, and a lot of really awesome guys were there. Most trips have 2-4 people, this one had 7 and enjoying the best skiing with 6 sweet guys is a really fun time. Only thing that coulda really made it better is if bizot and Jay coulda made it, but it wasn't in the cards.

Past that, I've been working a ton and otherwise spending a good amount of time with michelle. So far this year I've averaged 43 hours per week of playing poker. By far the most I've ever played. Since I got myself in that hole in LA, I've just been motivated to grind grind grind...

I'm also looking for a house to buy and have gone to look at like 12 or so and none of them have quite been what I've been looking for. I'm pretty particular so I'm not going to settle cause I just don't think I'll be happy down the road if I do.

For poker I've been playing 10/20 to 50/100 LHE, a mix of 6max and heads up. On feb 19 I decided to give up the high stakes stuff for a bit as it was stressing me out a lot and making me not as fun to be around, at least for me. I didn't like feeling crabby. Since cutting it out, I've been a lot more balanced and have recently added working out back into the routine. It helps that it's been getting nicer out. I've also been destroying the mid-stakes games and that keeps motivation high.

I'm not much of a super hero person, but michelle's friends invited us to go see watchmen at the imax theater, so I'm off to that now. At least the graphical effects could be really cool.

I'm not doing that hot on my bracket so far, but it's still early. I got a little side bet with schneider and maybe hoppman. I forget....whoops. I also have been slacking on work this past week...on at like 24 hours or something. I think I'll put in a couple hours later tonight which will help, but I'm not too worried about it. I've definitely earned the right to enjoy life a little more for a week.

I typed this up quick and have plenty more to talk about but I'll save it for future blogs as we have to run now!

Ta ta!