More Ridiculous Airport Stories

Amazingly something happened on the flight home Monday night that had never happened to me before. Renee drove me to the airport and I was there about an hour early. I guess most bad things happen when I give myself plenty of time to catch the flight. Things only go smoothly when I show up 15 minutes before takeoff. Anyway, I'm at my gate and right around the time we're supposed to board the plane, they announce that the rear toilet seat is cracked and they need to replace it so boarding will be delayed for 30 minutes. We all groan and go back to watching the football game. 30 minutes later they announce tha the crew is still dismantling the toilet and that we're going to be delayed another 30 minutes. However, they offer to give us a $6 voucher to use at the airport if we want. Huh? Do you know who I am? I wipe my rear end with $20 bills! So I take the voucher and try to buy a pack of gum and get them to give me the change but they won't go for it. I reluctantly get 2 bottles of water and a Snapple for $6.09 and hand over nine cents. They always manage to get you somehow. Anyway, I go back to the gate, drink my Snapple and finally, about an hour later, they announce that they were unable to replace the toilet seat and we'd have to fly with the rear toilet out of order. So we end up waiting an hour-and-a-half for absolutely nothing to get done. God bless Alaska Air. I get into San Diego around 1 AM instead of 11:30 at night and my roommate isn't the happiest camper in the world. My irresponsibility isn't my fault, it's a natural reaction to life screwing me over whenever I'm on time and trying to be responsible.


Expensive Parking 

That's proof that irresponsibility pays. A few years ago, Renee, Danny, Cliff and I planned a trip down to San Francisco for Memorial Day weekend. Of course Renee and I got to the airport early but Cliff and Danny were nowhere to be found. I called Cliff's phone about 10 times before he answered, clearly getting woken up by the phone call and clearly hungover like nobody's business. It was about 40 minutes before the plane was supposed to take off and I figured that there was no way they'd make it. Well, they ended up throwing some clothes in a bag and driving like maniacs to the airport, hitting an express check-in kiosk, and making it on the plane, about 30 minutes after waking up. They parked the car in overnight parking, knowing that it was $20/day and knowing that they didn't have enough money to pay the ticket. When we returned 4 days later, we ran the ticket through, just in case, and indeed the ticket was for $80. Instead of paying we piled in Danny's Audi and drove to the exit. Danny chose a lane where a Ford Explorer was paying for his parking and nosed up to his bumper. Danny was on this guy's rear the whole time through the gate and as soon as he saw daylight, Danny punched it around the guy and we were home free. Danny kept the ticket and liked to check how much he owed every time he went to the airport. The ticket doesn't register anymore but the above was one of the last times that it did. It's kinda hard to pick up but the Lenthg of Stay is 45 Weeks, 15 hours and 57 minutes. Good times.

This morning I woke up around 11:30 and played a Double Shootout for the trip to the Bahamas. I finished 76th out of 78 entrants so things could have gone a little better there. Around 2PM, Kele's daughter Kianna came down from Ontario, CA and she'll be here until Friday. She's 10 years old and has a ton of energy. We played some Halo 2 and rough-housed a bit until Kele got home from work. At around 6PM we went to the local pizza place, called That Pizza Place, for dinner and video games. After dinner we went to the mall and looked at puppies. Good lord, puppies are expensive. They have a French Bulldog there for 3 G's. THREE LARGE. Insanity. We had a lot of fun at the pet store with Kele and Danielle trying to persuade me to buy them a weiner dog for Christmas. That one was only $1400 but I don't think I'll be making that wish come true any time soon. Finally, we headed to the movie theater to see Harry Potter 4. I liked it a lot the second time and being with Kianna made me realize how scary some of the scenes are in that flick. It's a pretty long film and afterwards we came home and just wound down a bit. I found out that Carl won a few more satellites into big events and I felt like killing him again. I seriously need to qualify for this PokerStars Bahamas tournament. I've decided that I'm going to play in it regardless of qualifying but I'd like to be able to save 8K.

I've also decided to play the EPT Copenhagen and Deauville events regardless of my qualifying ability. Justin qualified for Copenhagen already and if that fish is going to be in the field, I need to be there to take advantage of the dead money. So basically my schedule coming up is as follows:
December 10-17: Bellagio for a WPT event
December 17-January 3: Seattle for the holidays
January 3-11: Bahamas for the PokerStars Carribean Adventure
January 11-18: San Diego
January 19-22: Copenhagen for an EPT event
January 23-February 7: San Diego
February 8-11: Deauville for the EPT French Open

I'm considering staying in Europe for those two weeks between Copenhagen and Deauville to check out London and Ireland. I heard they're beautiful in January and February. I'd also like to spend more time in Copenhagen with my cousin, Walden, who is going to school there right now. Meh, I guess you can scratch San Diego Jan 23-Feb 7 and write in Europe. I guess I could just edit it now before I publish this blog but I've already typed this paragraph so screw it!

I hope I get to play a few tournaments tomorrow but it's going to be tough with Kianna bouncing off the walls. Here are a few random pictures from my time in Seattle. Enjoy.


Adorable 



Pops 



Typical Davis 

Seattle: The Greatest City in the World

Man, every time I come up here to visit Seattle makes me fall in love with her all over again. The city is beautiful and the people are great. I really miss living up here and I'm leaning toward moving back up for school next year. Living in Barcelona would be great, too, and I'm not ruling that out yet but I always have so much fun up here and I don't know if I can stay away for 2 years.

On Friday night, Cliff and I watched the entire first season of Entourage. It's really good and I recommend it strongly to anyone who hasn't seen it. Sadly, there are only 8 half-hour episodes but they're extremely entertaining. I'm going to pick up Season 2 as soon as I can. This 4-hour Entourage marathon was easy as hell compared to the 24 marathons that I've attempted. One night I watched 13 straight hours of 24 at Dookie's house. This is still my record for consecutive hours watching a DVD boxed set. I'm sure there are many of you who can beat that and I'm that I'll eclipse my record soon.

Saturday morning we went to see Noah again. It's absolutely incredible how smart and active he is. I'm very impressed with his patience and overwhelming desire to learn. He loves reading and loves imitating adults. They love sports in that house and Julie's husband is a high school coach so let's hope Noah grows up to be a jock and a nerd at the same time. I can't wait to see him next month when I come up for Christmas.

After visiting Noah, we drove back across the mountains. I decided to take the route through Vantage since my dad and Cliff had never gone that way and I had my new GPS that I wanted to experiment with. The GPS worked fine but when we pulled into Vantage I tried using the "Points of Interest" feature where you ask for the closest gas station, restaurant, etc. and it tells you where the closest one is and how to get there. Well, there was a gas station 100 feet down the road but the closest one that the GPS found was up the hill, about 14 miles away, in George, WA. I don't know why the two gas stations in Vantage didn't register in the POI's but I wonder if they would be in the more expensive version of the GPS. I'm going to use it a bit more down in Cali this week and if it keeps missing stuff I'm probably going to have to upgrade. We'll see.

Saturday night I went out to Fremont with Greenie and Davis to meet Dave, Tasha and a lot of his Federal Way crew. We started at Norm's, a really chill bar that sells Pabst 40s in brown paper bags. I like Norm's more than most places because it's not too pretentious. Greenie's girlfriend, Kitty came over with a few of her girlfriends who I knew from college days at UW and it was nice to catch up with them. One of the girls, Caroline, mentioned that she could take a double shot of 151 with no chaser and that she used to bet guys $20 who didn't believe that she could accomplish the feat. Well, I didn't believe her either so I whipped out $20 and said, "Let's see it!" She went to the bar to order the double shot and I almost vomited as they filled a lowball glass with the nasty stuff. I think it was closer to a triple shot than a double shot and I almost vomited again as Caroline calmly sipped it all down. 151 easily the harshest liquor in the world next to Everclear and she drank it like a cup of orange juice. I happily gave her the $20 and asked how much the shot cost because I wanted to pay for that too. When she leaned in and told me, "$10", I almost vomited for the third time as the 151 vapors escaped from her mouth and invaded my nostrils. Very impressive and well worth $20. Greenie and I had two 40s each and headed to the Ballroom with Kitty and her friends. I don't like the Ballroom very much because it is pretentious and everyone there seems to think that they're the coolest person in the bar. Greeine and I hit the dance floor after downing a few Jager Bombs and quickly showed everyone who the best dancers in the house were. Maybe not, but we had a lot of fun and it's always great to dance with hot girls. Some of the girls are married or engaged or very deep in a relationship but those girls are the mst fun to dance with since you aren't worried about trying to game them up or anything. I had one more gin and tonic and finished the night with a bottle of beer. We were all pretty good and drunk and I ended up crashing at Greenie's for the night.

In the morning, I felt like regurgitated dog crap. It's not a good idea to drink 40s followed by Jager bombs followed by gin and tonic followed my more Jager bombs followed by beer. It was Seahawks gameday so I had to get my shit together and I took Kitty and Greenie out to breakfast. We got to the place right when it opened, at 8 AM and were the only patrons of the restaurant at that early hour. I mentioned that I had to drop a deuce and Greenie said that he had to as well. I hit the bathroom first and unloaded a really nasty beer deuce. There was only one stall at the place so I left the toilet unflushed, washed my hands and told Greenie that he could go for it now. He went in the bathroom then came running out instantly, etremely pissed, ad yelled, "GET BACK IN THERE AND FLUSH THAT, NOW!" I was on the ground laughing and picked myself up in order to fluch the toilet for him. Poor Kitty, the rest of breakfast was kind of like that, me making vulgar jokes, Greenie laughing, and Kitty rolling her eyes.

I got home around 9 AM and talked to Sean, an original SuperFan, and he said he could come pick me up in 20 minutes. Renee said that she needed to get ready but she could drive me down in 30 minutes. I told Renee that there was no way she could get ready in 30 minutes and I told Sean to come pick me up. She was pissed but I couldnt risk getting to the tailgate party too late. I took a quick shower, put on my Seahawk's gear and took off for the game. We got down there later than usual, a little after 10 AM but found a good spot in Tailgater's Heaven and got the party started. Morgan, a friend of Cliff's from high school, always brings a keg and we love to mooch off of his beer. We bring the food and they get to eat some of what we barbeque. It's a symbiotic relationship that works well. Kenny and Curtis' brother, Boog, decided to go beer-for-beer and see who could act the least drunk. Well, by gametime they both lost as Ken could barely keep his eyes open and ended up passing out for a quarter or so. Renee finally showed up with Torrie at 11:45, absolutely disgraceful. They got about an hour of tailgating in before we had to head to our seats. Davis and I played a game of beerpong, or Beirut for you East Coasters, and lost by one cup. There were a number of factors that I believe led to our loss, the number one factor being the stiff wind in our face. I'm used to putting a nice arch on my balls but the wind kept knocking them down short of the cups. I had to switch to a line drive technique and I did it a little too late. We were behind for a while but once I got used to the line drive we came back and had about 15-20 shots at the final cup with a ton of shots rimming out. After we lost I went to look at the cup and there was about 1/3 of the beer in there that there should have been, a factor that may have led to some rim-outs. Not that I'm bitter or a bad loser or anything. Morgan and McDuff went on to crush three other opponents, by 5 or 6 cups each, using the wind at their back to their advantage. Weaksauce, if you ask me. We'll get 'em next time.

I can't believe I just wrote that much about a game of beerpong. I guess you can tell how much I love the game. The actual football game was as crazy as you'll ever see. The crowd was really into it and I think we helped influence the game a lot. The Giants had 16 penalties, 11 of which were false starts. That's absolutely insane. The Giants are a real good team and Eli Manning showed me a lot yesterday. He's going to be a legit superstar in this league. The Giant's defense is also really, really sick and I think they'll be tough in the playoffs. 99% of the time we lose this game but this is the 1% of the time where the kicker misses 3 game-winning field goals and the team that dominates, loses. I feel bad for the Giant's fans out there because I've been on the other side so many times but I have to say, winning feels good. We're 9-2 and have a pretty easy schedule left so I think there's a good chance we get home field thoughout and if the crowd is as good in the playoffs as they were on Sunday, I have a good feeling about where this team is going.

After the game Davis and I met Renee, Torrie and Torrie's sister, Evin, at Peso's in Queen Anne. I had the Habanero Enciladas and they were extremely spicy. I could only eat about 1.25 out of 2 and gave the rest to Davis. After dinner we headed home and I hit the hay, hard. It was another tiring weekend and I had a great time. I really do miss it up here. Luckily, I'll be back in a few weeks. The children can come out of hiding now, I'm headed back to Cali!

Good Times

I hope that y'all had a great Thanksgiving. I've had a lot of fun hanging out with my brother and pops the past few days. I really miss my mom during this time of year but she's doing what she loves and traveling like I could never dream.

We saw Noah for 2 hours this morning and it was absolutely incredible. I hadn't seen him for almost a year and he's really grown since then. He was running around and knows quite a few words and can recognize pictures of animals and imitate the noises that they make. He's only a year-and-a-half but he seems very smart and active for his age. Cliff saw him about 2 months ago and said that almost everythibg that Noah was doing was new. It's absolutely incredible how fast babies grow.

We went to Costco this afternoon and I picked up the Magellan 360. It was the only RoadMate GPS that they had and I decided to try it out. Costco's return policy is really great and I'll return it if I don't like it. So far it seems the same as the 760 that my friend Nat had. I'm going to try to get ahold of him tomorrow and see what the exact differences are. I guess I could do the research myself but laziness reigns supreme. I bought Cliff a handheld GPS to use with the Army so that's one Christmas present out of the way. Tomorrow we're hanging out with Noah for 2 more hours and then heading back over the mountains. Sunday the Seahawks end Eli Mannings season. Muahahahahaha.

This is officially the longest blog entry every written on a Treo. I apologize for any typos.

Thanksgiving Quickie

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! My dad and brother flew into Seattle last night and we're heading down to my grandma and grandpa's place today. It's really great to see my family and I hope everyone out there is as lucky as I am.

I have one funny story from last night. I was in the terminal, waiting for my dad to come down the escalator and there was a young, college-age girl, talking on her cell phone next to me. It seemed like she was coming home from college and I overheard her talking to her roommate back home. Her converstaion went like this:
"Yeah, it kinda sucks, my mom got arrested on the way to the airport. Yeah, she was driving under the influence and when I got off the plane I had a message on my cell phone from the police department saying that she was in jail. Now my cousin is coming to pick me up but I think he may have been drinking, too."

Ah, there's no time like the holidays. Happy Thanksgiving.

Back to Reality

The real world sucks. After the crazy weekend, Monday reminded me that most of my friends have these things called "jobs" and "responsibilities". It's increasingly difficult to hang out whenever and wherever and it's hard for me to take because I'm living in fantasy land.

Last night Dookie and I went to Kangaroo and Kiwi for $0.25 wings. They were delicious as usual and we ended up eating 50 of them total. We had a good time playing darts and watching Monday Night Football but it was just the two of us. Everyone else bailed and kept dropping words like "errands" and "working late". What the hell? BTW, I won both games of darts if you were wondering. After dinner, Dave dropped me off and headed home to see his wife. He's hung out a ton over the past week and I really appreciate the sacrifices he's made.

At 9, I met Greenie and Kitty at Finn MacCool's for trivia night. Again, I had a good time caching up with them but it felt weird that no one else could make it because they were "tired" or "downloading porn". I hate the real world. I love trivia but it's run by a gay drama guy who always has categories like "Seattle Theater" and "Broadway Showtunes". He's a funny guy but I really struggle with his trivia. Give me "Seahawk's Football" and "Jenna Jameson movies" all day long.

Tonight I'm planning on seeing a few more friends but I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up just being me and my cat. I almost forgot to thank the people who have posted comments on the blog. I've said this before but without comments, I'm just a crazy man babbling to myself. With comments, I'm a crazy man babbling to others. There's a big difference.

Rough Weekend

It's been a tough couple of days since I last posted. Friday night was Founder's Day and all the fratboys had a lot of fun. I used to work downtown at the Fairmont Hotel and they still let me valet park there for free when I hang out in that area. Founder's Day was held at a place called The College Club, about 2 blocks from the old hotel so it worked out perfectly. They brought up the big EPT wins at dinner and I got to stand up and smile for everyone. Dinner was alright but the meat was a little too fatty. After dinner we headed to the fraternity house and tiook a couple hits off the beer bong. Two of the younger kids persuaded me to head to the casino with them and we went up north for some drunken $3/6. The guys in my class were pissed that I left the house but I have a hard time turning down some good drunken low-limit poker. I raised every single hand and no one accused me of colluding because I was the only one doing it. I really enjoy hammering pots preflop and trying to play good poker postflop. I think it's a decent exercise and people rarely adjust optimally to my style. They think I'm betting the whole way with crap. Usually, when I bet the river, I can beat Q-high but they keep calling down hoping that I have nothing. There's no better feeling than value-betting 4th pair and just knowing it's good. I tipped like a maniac, probably over $100 all told and still pulled a $120 profit. I bought in for 6 racks and had a lot of fun splashing around. I think it's harder to play with Carl there 3-betting me every hand but I also think it's more fun that way. It's just too easy to take advantage of the mopes. We ended up taking a cab home from the casino around 2:30 AM and I got to bed, trying to recharge my body for the Apple Cup on Saturday.

Dave, Tasha, Jimmy and a girl that we all just met named Amanda, came to pick me up Saturday morning around 10 AM. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly bright-eyed or bushy-tailed. I threw some water on my face, put on my Husky jersey and tried in vain to control the Jafro(Japanese Afro). We needed three more tickets to the game and headed to the fraternity to see if anyone had any extras. We came up empty in our quest for free tickets but convinced three undergrads to go to the ticket office with us and get cheaper tickets since the game wasn't even sold out. Swass met us at the fraternity house and we split up into groups of three to find parking with our two cars. Swass, Amanda and I found a too-good-to-be-true spot a few blocks away from the stadium. It was 2-hour parking and we decided to just come back every 2 hours and move the car. The tailgate that we joined was off the hook. There was a full Thanksgiving Feast, with 8 deep fried turkeys, stuffing, mashed potatos, gravy, green beans and apple crisp. Throw in 3 coolers of beer and about 10 half-gallons of the hard stuff and you get 30-40 drunk and loud Huskies. Just before kickoff Swass and I walked back to the car to move it and he already had a ticket. We looked at the sign a little closer and it was two-hour parking EXCEPT for Saturday home football games. On those days it's NO PARKING. Swass looked at the $44 parking ticket and said, "well, there's no point in moving the car now!" I felt bad so I gave him $30 to help pay the ticket and we headed back to drink more before heading into the game.

The game was brutal. The Huskies suck and the Cougs aren't much better. We lost by 4 points and it was pretty dang depressing. I sobered up while Swass left at halftime and was in no shape to drive by the time we met him in the parking lot. I was now the DD and we headed to a bar on the Ave called Finn MacCool's. We know the bartender there and she sent pitchers our way in waves. She's one of the most harcore drinkers I've ever met and she expects nothing less from her friends. We tried to make her proud but eventually had to say no mas as she brought out the last 4 pitchers that we didn't order. Swass actually stopped drinking because he thought he had to go see his grandma but when she called to cancel, he drove us to Davis' house in Queen Anne. Guess what we did there.....if you said drink beer then you are smart. A lot of people showed up at Davis' place and we had a lot of fun. He lives in a pretty good location, a few blocks up Queen Anne hill but within walking distance of the many bars in lower Queen Anne. We went to a place called Ozzie's that I usually like. It was really busy, porbably because of the Apple Cup and I felt really claustrophobic. I went outside with Erica and Amanda for some fresh air and we decided to get some food at a Thai restaurant called Racha. We ordered a ton of food with the drunken munchies and ate way more than we should have. We had some Chicken Pad Kee Mow, Swimming Rama with Tofu, Spring Rolls, and 2 other dishes. I also drank about 97 glasses of water in an effort to rehydrate myself. We walked back to Ozzie's after the meal and had to stand in line to get back in. We were in line for about 0.5 seconds then asked ourselves, "why are we standing in line to get into a bar where we don't even want to hang out?" We did the smart thing and caught a cab home. I didn't have any keys(they were still at the Fairmont valet) so I slept on Erica's couch.

This morning I felt grrrrrrreat again. Erica drove me to the Fairmont so that I could finally pick up my car. They were like, "WTF? How dare you leave your car her for 2 days?" I told them that it was the first time I had been sober since dropping the car off and that there was nothing I could do about it. I drove home and slept for 3 hours before pulling myself out of bed to go to Edmonds. I was supposed to see Harry Potter 4 with Renee on Thursday but I cancelled to hang out in Auburn with Dave and the crew. To make it up to her I promised to come up to Lynnwood and take her family out to see the movie on Sunday. I got up there around 2 and we watched part of the Seahawks game. They went up by a few scores and since we were playing the hapless 49ers I figured that the game was over and we headed to the movie. HP4 was pretty good but I think I like HP3 better. They're my two favortie books in the series and both made pretty good movies. When we got out of the movie I found out that the final score was 27-25 and we had to dodge a 49er 2-point conversion at the end to win. Yikes. Some people will criticize the Hawks for struggling against one of the worst teams in football but a win is a frikkin win and the Hawks are racking 'em up. Next week we have a pretty big game against the New York FOOTBALL Giants. Luckily it's at home AND luckily I'll be there to give the Hawks my added mojo. I think we'll take it down and solidify our position as THE team to beat in the NFC.

After the movie we went back to Renee's mom's house and she made a really big dinner. We had chicken breasts, corn, asparagus, mashed potatos, salad and sparkling cran-apple juice. It was really delicous and I pulled a nice eat-and-run because my friend John was celebrating his 25th birthday at a Go-Kart place in Redmond. I showed up late and didn't get to race at all but I had a beer with John and gave him Johnny Cash's autobiography. We ended up leaving a little after 9 and I declined an invitation to a local bar. I was definitely not in the mood for any more drinking.

I just got done playing about an hour of $10/20 Omaha/8. There are some really bad players and I ran good, netting about $350. I usually give my bankroll updates on Sunday but I've played very little poker over the past week and the official bankroll manager is on my home computer, not my laptop. The roll is definitely down because I lost a bit on money at Foxwoods but I probably won't give an official update for another 2 weeks. I'm up here in Seattle for another week and I probably won't play much. I hope everyone is having as much fun as I am wherever you are.

I Miss My Homies

I've had a fun couple of days back in the Pacific Northwest. My plane arrived around 10 PM on Wednesday night and the three of us(Jimmy, Dave and I) went back to Dave's place to watch TV and shoot the shit. On Thursday, Dave's wife Tasha made us a great breakfast consisting of bacon pancakes, bacon, and hashbrowns. She had the day off and Dave worked from home so we got to spend a lot of time chillin out maxin and relaxin all cool. We watched 6 episodes of Nip/Tuck then went to Nordstrom Rack because I needed a shirt for tonight's fraternity function. After shopping the four of us went to Happy Hour and started drinking. Marcus, Perry and Renee came down around 7 PM and we continued drinking at Dave's house. Around 9:30 we went to a piano bar called the Longhorn Tavern. It was pretty cool but we had to pay a $7 cover. Any amount of cover in Auburn, WA is ridiculous but I guess it was worth it. Tasha was very drunk and dranced on stage a few times. They had last call at 11:40(utterly ridiculous) and we went back to Daves and called it a night. I'm in Seattle right now, getting ready for tonight's festivities. Founder's Day is our yearly fraternity alumni event. The active chapter introduces the pledges to the alumni and the alumni get drunk. It's one of my favorite nights of the year and I'm really looking forward to it. Afterwards, everyone goes to the fraternity and hits on 18 year-old girls. Is there anything better?

Tomorrow is the Apple Cup and we're planning on tailgating then going to the game if we can still walk. Tomorrow's entry should be full of drunken debauchery and cradle-robbing. Stay tuned.

I'm on a Plane

10 cool points to the reader who can tell me what band wrote "On a Plain". Hint: They were from Seattle.

I left Justin's apartment this morning at 10:30, giving myself plenty of time to get to the airport for my 1:20 flight. The public transit system in Boston rules and I got to the airpot around 11:30, unheard of for a Schaefer. Then I learn that my flight was canceled due to bad weather in Chicago. I was put on a later flight, scheduled to leave Boston at 3:19. I'd get in to Seattle around 10 PM and there was nothing else to do about it but wait in the airport for almost 4 hours. We finally boarded the plane around 3:30 and as soon as everyone was seated they told us that we'd be delayed for an hour on the eunway because of inclement weather in Chicago. I wish they had just rerouted me through another city but now there's nothing I can do about it. They just announced that our new ETD is 5:18. My flight from Chicago to Seattle is scheduled for 7:33 so it might be close. My original scheduled times were 1:20 and 3:50 so the gaps are similar. I do remember that my layover was going to be pretty short already and now it's 15 minutes shorter. Hopefully I'll get to run down the tunnel again and sneak on just as the plane leaves. I'm a veteran of that move now so I'm not too worried.

The delays are annoying but obviously it's better to err on the side of caution. If you saw the 49ers-Bears highlights this weekend, you wouldn't want your plane to look like one of those missed field goals while trying to land. I'll see y'all sooner or later.

Seattle Bound

Last night was a lot of fun. Carl got knocked out of the tournament shortly after I posted and we felt like drinking and playing like maniacs so we all got seated in a $2/4 game. Two hands from the tourney: Blinds are 100/200 and Carl opens to 600ish in middle position with AA and gets 2 callers, including the BB. The flop is 8s5s4h and Carl bets about 2000. The late position callers fold but the BB check-raises all-in for about 11K more. Carl mentioned that the guy almost folded to the preflop raise but reluctantly called so he was afraid that the guy might have 2-pair with 85, 45 or something. There's no way he had a set because any smallish pair would be an auto-call from the BB. Ultimately he decided that it was too likely that the BB had some kind of draw and was semi-bluffing. People love shoving in all their chips with flush draws. He makes the call and the BB had 6c3c for an open-ended straight draw and a 7 on the turn sends the 32K chip pot to the BB. Carl still has 8K but 40K at this point would be huge. A few orbits later, Carl has about 15K in chips when he makes a good play but picks the wrong guy to do it against. With 150/300 blinds, the villain in the above hand raises to 1000 in middle position. He has raised a lot of pots and has raised every single time that Carl has had the Big Blind. Carl has picked up a little tell on him and can tell that he isn't very strong here. The small blind calls the raise and with about 2500 in the pot Carl tries a squeeze play with 9c5c, re-raising to 4500 total, thinking that the original raiser and SB will fold. Well, the SB calls the extra 3500 pretty quickly and the SB folds. The flop comes down QJ4 with 2 clubs and Carl pushes all in, with 10K chips amounting to about a pot sized bet. The villain calls instantly with JTo and Carl can't hit his flush. Booooooooo.

At the $2/4, I lock up the leftmost seat so that I have position on Carl but he somehow maneuvers to my left when I go to get chips. Justin gets a seat directly to our left and Pauly takes a break from his crazy schedule to join us for a little while. We were raising any and all hands and ramming and jamming all flops. One old guy accused us of colluding and was clearly pissed off. I don't understand why people get so mad when we try to hand them our money. If we were going to collude, do you think we'd do it at a $2/4 game or do it so blatantly? And would we be ordering cocktails every 4 minutes and pounding them like our lives depended on it? I really wish everyone understood what was going on and could just enjoy taking our money. The only problem is that they are so bad we still always win money while playing like absolute morons. Pauly had some bad beats, like when his 27o rivered trip 2s only to lose to Justin's QQ which made a full house. I'm not sure why Justin was playing those premium cards but we all booed him for his efforts. After Pauly left we terrorized the table for a while before noticing an insanely hot girl sitting at the table next to us. I get up sneakily and ask for a table change to her table. Finally a seat opens up directly on her left and I move my mountain of chips over to her table. I post the big blind under-the-gun and raise blind with what turns out to be 64o. The flop is 667 and a 4 on the turn completes my full house. I cap it on every street but the river with the hot girl and she can only produce T7o at the final showdown. Brandon +$32, Hot chick -$32. The very next hand, I have 23o in the BB and the flop is A45 giving me the nuts, I bet out and announce, "I have the nuts, everyone should fold". No one believes me and after the enormous pot gets shipped my way, the girl turns and says, "you don't have to be so cocky". She spends te next 30 minutes mad at me about one thing or the other and my nickname is now "Lucifer". She mentions that she's a good cook and makes good Portugese food. I ask is she uses SPAM and she flips out. It's apparently a huge insult to imply that someone might use SPAM in their dishes. All I know is that when I grew up in Hawaii, there were a lot of Portugese people there and they liked to eat SPAM. She's still fuming about the comment and I say, "I'm sorry, I love traveling and I'm thinking about moving to Barcelona. I'll try to go to Portugal to get some good food." Now she flips and says, "I'M NOT FROM SPAIN" with fire in her eyes. Woah. I reply with "I know, but Spain is right next to Portugal," to which the guy on her right responds with, "No, Portugal is in Central America". And he was deadly serious. I decide to drop it and the guy on her right follows up with, "you're really hot, do you think I'd have a chance with you?" She turns her head in his direction and doesn't say anything but all of a sudden he says, "No, huh, well I had to try." I have to give the guy props because he has to have enormous balls to do something like that. The girl settles down after a while but gets bored of poker and leaves to play blackjack. I get called Lucifer a few more times but other than that I think I made a great impression. Carl, Justin and I get up to cash out and I see Greg Raymer in the cashout line and we talk for a while. The hot chick comes back into the room and freaks out when she sees Greg and comes over to get an autograph and a kiss on the cheek. I gotta win the World Series. She looks shocked that I'm talking to Greg and tells him to stay away from me. He thanks her for the warning then bends my ear for about 20 minutes about how much the Poker Superstars tournament sucked. Justin and I get back to the hotel around 3:30 and crash hard.

This morning Justin and I went to the bus terminal to get a schedule since I'm flying out of Boston tomorrow. The earliest bus leaves at 9:20 AM(yuck) and gets to Boston's South Station at 11:45. My plane is scheduled to leave at 1 PM and I silently wonder if I'm going to have another airport debacle on my hands. Justin sits in a big No Limit game and I go downstairs to see what's going on in the tournament. I run into Carl and two guys who are big in the online poker world: Nat, who runs a huge PokerStars database and an 18 year-old kid named Oz who tears up online games under the name of BigSlick789. They mention that they're headed to Boston tonight and I ask if I can tag along. I talk to Justin and he gives me the keys to his apartment and Nat, Oz and I leave around 5PM.

Nat has a GPS system in his car and it was really sick. You can type in an address and it gives you all the directions to your destination and talks to you when you need to turn or exit. It tells you what side of the freeway that exits are on and what lanes you should be in. The Magellan 760 costs about $800 but I think it's worth it, especially since I'm planning on driving 12,000 miles next Spring. The Magellan 760 comes with maps of North America AND Europe so maybe I'll head to Europe for a roadtrip someday. I think I'm going to wait until the day after Thanksgiving and head to Portland to buy the GPS system. Should be fun.

Anyway, I took them out to dinner for driving me up here and I'm writing from Justin's apartment. I'm very excited about heading to Seattle tomorrow and I'm going to try to make it to the airport with more than 15 minutes to spare. Dookie is picking me up and Jimmy is coming in 40 minutes after I arrive so we're going to Dookie's to hang out for a few days. I haven't seen Jimmy in a while and we'll have a great time. I'm going to steal a quote from Will, not the first time I've stolen one of his quotes and definitely not the last: "HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN!!! OR MAYBE JUST THE CHILDREN!!! I'M COMING HOME!!!"

Live from Foxwoods

Carl's in good shape with around 20K in chips. He's had a number of intersting hands and has been playing well. Andy Bloch is sitting 2 to his right. Let's hope he gets lucky and ends the day around 50K. I'm in full groupie mode today, taking breaks from sweating Carl to go upstairs to sweat Justin in his $10/25 NL game. He's also playing well and is up a few thousand today. I haven't played a single hand of poker today but I'm having a lot of fun. I hung out with Pauly from Tao of Poker for a little while and we BSed about football, women, and of course, poker. We might go play some drunken $2/4 later if the mood strikes us.

I don't know why I decided to enter this in my blog. I guess watching poker for hours and hours made me want to do something time-consuming. Pauly told me that he's been reading my blog so I'm going to have to start making better posts and less meaningless drivel. This is the last one, I promise. Or not.

Go Seahawks!!

I'm sitting in a bar at Foxwoods watching the Seahawks play the Rams. The Hawks lead 10-3 at the half and it looks like this will be a close one. Most of the people in the bar are degenerate sports bettors and their only affiliation is to whichever team they bet on this week. Just about everyone took the Rams at -6.5 so they won't mind if the Hawks win by 6. I'd personally like to see a second half blowout.

There was a $50/100 game going today so I sat down for a while. I lost about $1500 but finally got to play in a game that mattered. I'm going to give it another shot after the Hawk's game so wish me luck.

We're just about ready to kick off the second half. Let's take care of business, boys.

Boston and Foxwoods

I'm writing this in a motel with Carl and Justin about 2 miles from Foxwoods. We played a bit tonight and all won a little money, $300 for Carl and me, and about $2K for Justin. He was playing in a big no-limit game that I just can't handle. I'm too big of a wuss and I'm not very good at NL cash games so I stuck with the $20/40 limit. The players are so bad and I play on such auto-pilot that it's beginning to bother me. I'm not becoming a better poker player and not really challenging myself as much as I could be. I think I want to either start learning other games like Omaha or 7-card stud or get into bigger hold 'em games that force me to think once in a while.

The lat two days in Boston were great. Friday night Justin's ex-boss, Bob, held a home tournament, $20 with rebuys. There were only 19 people in the tournament but I ended up spending $100 and the total prize pool was about $1100, not too shabby. The top 4 places paid money and I came in 4th for $114, a whopping $14 profit! Justin got down to heads up and decided to chop ther remaining money, taking home about $470. Most of the players there were horrific and I really thought we would get heads up. I got stuck in a difficult spot, 4th in chips with a very shortstacked 5th place who I had to wait out. My stack was whittled down while waiting for his elimination and I got to experience being a short stack on the bubble. I much prefer having a large stack but sometimes things don't work out. It was a good tournament and I drank quite a lot of Schlitz. Bob is very rich but still drinks extremely cheap beer so he's OK in my book.

Earlier today I met Noelle for lunch on Newberry Street. Noelle is currentl working on getting her masters in medical Sciences from Boston University. She just finished midterms and could relax for the first time all quarter. We ate at a really good Tapas place that came highly recommended by Erica. Erica knows her food and we had garlic shrimp, pumpkin canneloni, lobster ravioli and some pork dish. Afterward we went to the Prudential Tower, one of 2 big skyscrapers in the city, and had Martinis at a restaurant called "Top of the Hub". It was a clear day and we had a great view of the city and its suburban areas. Boston is a really pretty city in the fall and I love going to the top of the hub. Justin took Renee and I there when we visited 2 years ago and I want to make it my Boston tradition. I had a martini called "Purple Rain". It sounds fruity and it is fruity but I like it.

We picked up Carl around 5 PM and headed down to Foxwoods. It's only 100 miles from Boston and it took less than 2 hours to get here. Tomorrow we're planning on playing a bit longer and possibly drinking a bit harder. I hope we all end up winners again tomorrow. Carl starts playing the tournament on Monday and I'm flying to Seattle on Wednesday. Joy to the world.

Hectic

Well, I'm in Boston and I'm having a great time. Getting here was quite the adventure and I think the best way of explaining it is by posting a tilmeline of yesterday's events. Keep in mind that my flight was scheduled to leave at 8 AM. Here ya go:

6:33 AM: Kele, Danielle and I leave our apartment. It's about 30 minutes to the airport from here but we need to drop Danielle off at work first so I figure we'll make it around 7:15.

6:57 AM: We drop Danielle off at work. Usually this would take 5-10 minutes but traffic is horrible. I start to worry.

7:13 AM: We get off of I-5 because it's not moving and take the Coast highway for about 10 miles. There are stop signs and lights on the Coast highway but at least it's moving.

7:30 AM: The Coast highway ends and we get back on I-5. We're far enough south that the traffic has slowed and we drive faster.

7:38 AM: We take the airport exit off of I-5.

7:44 AM: Kele drops me off at the American Airlines departures terminal.

7:46 AM: I get to the express check-in Kiosk. The machine tells me that I need to talk to an agent because I can't check in less than 30 minutes before the flight. The agent informs me that she'll have to re-route me and ignores all my pleas. She puts me on standby to Dallas and after a layover I'll get to Boston aroung 8:30 PM. My original flight had me getting to Boston at 4:15. I'm not happy. She gives me a coupon that I need to show to the agent at the actual gate and they'll try to get me a boarding pass once I'm there.

7:50 AM: I get to the security check-point and am delighted to see how short the line is.

7:52 AM: I get through security in record time. I look at the gate listing and find that my original non-stop flight to Boston isn't too far away. I run to the gate.

7:55 AM: I get to Gate 29 and there's no one there. No one at the desk, no one in the waiting area. I see the plane sitting there and decide to head down the tunnel.

7:56 AM: I reach the end of the tunnel and there's an American Airlines agent there. He says, "I boarded everyone, what are you doing?" I say, " I just got here, I was re-routed, can I get on?" I'm not lying but I'm implying that I was re-routed to this flight. He says, "hurry up, give me your boarding pass". I hand him my weird standby coupon and he turns to the blonde lady who is in the process of closing the door and says, "wait a sec, let this guy on". She whines about how they're trying to get off the ground on time and I hop on the plane. They tell me to find any empty seat and I get on the first avaiable middle seat, between two nice old ladies.

8:00 AM: The plane starts its taxi. The whole time I'm worried that the guy will look at my weird standby coupon for Dallas and call the pilot and have him turn the plane around.

8:04 AM: We start to accelerate down the main runway and I know I'm home free. I showed up to the airport 14 minutes AFTER my plane STARTED boarding but somehow made it on the plane. God bless America.

I made a ton of sloppy mistakes this time around. I forgot to charge my iPod, forgot to check the weather(or forgot to use common sense) and only brought one pair of jeans and one sweater but 3 pairs of shorts and a ton of t-shirts. I'm not used to makeing dumb rookie travel errors but I guess I don't get all riled up for domestic travel anymore. Oh well. I'll survive the 35 degree weather in my sandals.

Hopefully everything will be less hectic for the rest of my stay. Yesterday we went out to some bars and caught up on things. Justin is engaged to be married next summer and I hadn't seen his fiance since the engagement. We're headed to all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch today. Tomorrow night, Carl arrives and we're driving down to Foxwoods. That's when the real fun begins. Thanks for reading.

Banks vs Casinos

I went to the bank today because I wanted $5,000 to bring to Boston/Foxwoods. I always forget this but if you're getting a large sum of money you need to call ahead and order it. At first they said they probably couldn't do it but after I yelled, "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!!!" and "I COULD BUY THIS BANK!!!" a few times they gave in. The only problem was that they could only give me $3,000 in $100 dollar bills and I had to get the rest in $20s. They gave me 100 $20 dollar bills and I don't need that much toilet paper!

So, being the resourceful chap that I am, I went to the Casino to launder the money. I bought into the $20/40 game for $1000 and bought $500 more chips a few hours in, then $500 more a little later. All of my $20 bills were converted into chip form and when I left, about 30 minutes ago, they were able to give me Benjis in return. The moral of this story is that banks suck and casinos rule. THe $20/40 game was unbelievably great and 7 out of 9 players had overs buttons with no clue how to adapt. I hit two big flushes and ended the session up $1100. Now I have $6100 to bring to Boston and it's straight $100s, homie.

Test

Test baby, test baby, 1234, Test baby, test baby 123....It's called the rumpshaker.

I'm trying to post a blog entry from my Treo and, provided this goes through, it's not horribly laborious. Now I'll be able to post and surf the net anywhere and anytime. Aren't you excited?

Ok, I just tried to post and got an error message. Let's try again.

Spending Money

Today I spent a buttload of money. Spending money happens to be one of my least favorite activities but sometimes you gotta do it. I went to Costco to get a watch because I've needed one for about a year now but was always too lazy to actually get one. At Costco they had a Sprint booth set up and I went to lok at new phones because mine is pretty old. I really liked the Treo and decided to pick it up. It has bluetooth technology, which is basically wireless networking and came with one free month of Vision which lets me access the internet anywhere. The phone can also work as a router for my laptop so I can connect to the internet on my laptop anywyhere I go. I can be driving(or preferably RIDING) in a car across the desert and play poker on my laptop using my phone as a wireless router. I'm going to experiment with the compatibility for a while and see if I want to keep the Vision service. It's $15/month and includes free picture and video messaging. O'll let you know how it goes. I played around with it for a bit, transferring my phone book and whatnot but I think I'm going to have to wait until I see Clifford to really understand what features are cool. He's always been the technology guru in the family. He had a cell phone before me and my first phone was his hand-me-down and that number is still alive as Mike's phone. Ah, the cirle of life.

I also bought a Kenneth Cole watch that looks kinda different but I like, an 80 Gig portable Hard Drive, a good surge protector, a case of gummi bears, a case of sunflower seeds, 100 stamps, a hand towel for my bathroom and two DVDs, Rudy and Training Day. All told it was: more money than I wanted to spend. What can I say, I'm a compulsive son of a bitch.

That's about it. I played a little poker today but didn't do anything special. The Treo is really pissing me off because the book claims that it I can put music on it but the actualy device manager on my computer won't let me drag my MP3s into the little update box. Technology, the bane of my existance.

All Hooked Up

I went to UPS this morning and finally received the computer. It didn't come with a wireless network card so I had to buy one from the place down the street and of course the first one I got was defective. I tried to install it for about an hour and wasn't sure if the problem was just my computer illiteracy. Finally I took it back and they tested it to confirm that it was broken and then gave me a new one that I installed in a few minutes. I swear, computer stuff never goes smoothly, and crap like this is the norm.

Everything's hooked up now and the system is really great. The new monitor is still 20" but it's a little shorter and wider than the one that I had before and I won't be able to fit 4 tables on it but I'll probably only play a max of 6 at a time and use the extra space to surf the Internet and watch TV.

The TV feature is really awesome. They asked for my Zip Code then got my TV schedule from the Internet and I can search for programs and stuff just like digital cable. I can also pause live TV if I want to and then fast forward through the stuff I don't want to see, like commercials, to catch up with the live broadcast again. I thin kit's pretty damn slick. AND, I can find programs and schedule for them to be recorded while I'm away so I can watch the WSOP whenever I want to. AND, when you ask it to record a show it gives you the option of recording the entire series, so that it remembers each week so I won't ever need to remember to program it. AND, once the shows are recorded I can burn them onto DVDs. Very exciting, and I'm leaving it on Thursday. Cry.

Weekly Poker Report

Bankroll: $76,029.52

I decided to skip the 6PM and 7PM tournaments because playing for 7 hours is enough. I started today at 11AM and don't feel like playing anymore. I didn't have any huge cashes but I took second in a Limit Hold 'em tourney and that paid $1,620 so I netted about $700 for the day. Sometimes I'll lose 2K on Sundays but sometimes I'll win a big chunk.

Obviously this was a good week but I spent about $1,000 on satellites for the Bahamas and paid my friend Noah $720 that I owed him from Barcelona so that's why the jump in Bankroll is less than the $63K tournament win. If you remember last week's post I want to build the BR to 100K by the beginning of July AND pay for all of my travel/rent/food expenses so the number will probably have to be around $120-125K. Clearly, I still have a lot of work to do.

The way to build a bankroll is through cash games. They're steadier than tournaments and if you're a winning player you can count on winning over the long run. Tournaments are a bit of a different animal. You still should win over the long run but there is soooooo much short term luck in tournaments that it's a dangerous way to build a bankroll. You can go on a cold streak and burn through tens of thousands of dollars without blinking. The only problem is that I enjoy tournaments so much more than cash games and I need to really force myself to play cash games. I don't know, part of me wants to just play tournaments. I don't think it's productive for a poker player to force himself to play any one form of the game. I guess what I'll do is play tourneys until I start getting too pissed at the beats then focus on cash games more. My friend Steve, a professional player for 5 years now, has told me many times that variety is key to maintaining focus so I guess there's nothing wrong with going on a tourney binge for a while.

I don't know if any of that was interesting to anyone but guess what: IT'S MY BLOG! DEAL WITH IT!

Nice win for the Hawks today. Any road win in the division is nice, even though Kurt Warner sucks. I can't believe Shaun took that 88-yarder to the house. It looked like he was going to get caught and then he hit "triangle" and hurdled over the diving tackle attempt. It's beginning to look like the game against the Giants will be an important NFC battle. And we have them at home. And I will be there. And Eli better SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN! GRIPPING HIS PILLOW TIGHT! I can't wait, baby! I'm not a player so I'm allowed to look ahead but I really hope we take care of business and rock the Rams next week. That will be another big step toward exorcising the demons.

GOOOOO!!!!! SEAHAWKS!!!!! GOOOOO!!!!! SEAHAWKS!!!!!

Tomorrow I'm going to the UPS depot at 8 AM to pick up my computer. Thursday I'm flying to Boston. Next Wednesday I'm flying to Seattle. Yee-Haw!

Ok, I was just kidding

Poker Gods! Just kidding! I didn't really want to go out in 778th place out of 814 entrants in the BoDog 100K guaranteed! I got all my money in with AsAd vs KdTd and KcJc on a 3c7sTc flop. I had 48.4% equity and a chance to triple up early but alas, the genius with KT and 12% equity spiked a third ten on the river. I swear, I'm the unluckiest guy in poker :)

I'm going to stop the rapid fire blogging. You'll hear from me tonight, after all the big tournies.

Nice Win

Nice Win 

It took me this long to figure out how to put that up on my site. First the picture was too big then I couldn't upload it because it was a .bmp instead of a .jpg. Anyway, it's now immortalized forever.

I downloaded an excel spreadsheet on Friday that keeps track of tournament statistics. It tracks your ROI, how much money you make, what sites you do best on, and a bunch of other great things. Sadly, all the data is now ruined because of the big win in my 3rd tournament entry. Now it say that I average over $20K per tournament and my ROI is 10341.2%. For some readon I don't think that's sustainable over the long run.

I'd be stupid if I didn't admit how lucky I was in this tournament. I think I'll post some key hands later but I cracked Aces twice when we were all in preflop, once with J6o and once with J8o. What a silly game. Today is Sunday and that means most of the major tournaments. I might give back half the money today and make the spreadsheet more believable. GO SEAHAWKS!

Yuck

Well I finished 11th in the Bahamas satellite and they were awarding 9 seats. I had a bit of bad luck with the draw I got and had to go for it. Here's a copy of an email I sent my poker friends:

UGH, despite Ramsey sweating me I finished 11th in the PCA satellite. One guy on my table started open-pushing every hand with 11 left and I was in 8th so had to keep folding. Then DavidRoss calls from the BB with A6 and beats the maniac's K7 and the other shorty on my table finds KK to beat maniac's 57. Meanwhile, on the other table 2 of the 5 players are sitting out and the shorty gets a walk in his BB and pushes a few and suddenly I'm 11th. The maniac was 2 to my left so the only times I got to even think about pushing were the CO and button when he was in the blinds. So I finally get TT on the button and open push and he has.....QQ. So disgusting. So I bubble the PCA. So I forget even winning any tournament 30 minutes ago. BLEH.

Seriously, I'm really pissed. I really want this damn trip and it may become my white whale if I don't pop that bubble soon. The bubble in poker is the worst feeling in the world. Damn it all. I guess I'll go look at the 63K in my account and smile for a minute.

OH BABY!

I just won a tournament on Paradise Poker, netting $63,518. Good god it feels good.

I'm also 10th in chips with 18 players remaining in a satellite for the Bahamas. The top 9 all get seats so I might have more good news soon.

All you need to do is kiss Carl Olson's ass. Easy game.

Hoops

NBA Basketball, it’s Faaaaaaaaantastic.

You know, despite everything the NBA has done to turn me off, I just can’t stay away. Basketball is such a great, exciting game and I really enjoy it. Tonight the Sonics were on National TV and I got to watch the game on our stolen cable. I have to say, I liked what they did last year and I like what they’re doing this year. I love the Sonics because they’re good for the same reasons I was good at Rav-Eckcommunity center. They have a good fundamental understanding of the way that basketball should be played and they hustle their asses off. They may not be the most talented team in the league but they do the little things very well. They also play really well together as a team. Luke Ridnour understands what his role is, he distributes the ball and manages the clock. Jesus Shuttlesworth knows his role on the team: He takes big shots, scores our points and is the go-to-guy when we need a bucket. Nick Collison, Danny Fortson, Reggie Evans….they know they’re never going to score 25 points per game or be the stars. They just grind out the rebounds and beat people’s heads in.

Ray Allen is underrated, IMO. It’s hard to say that a perennial all-star is underrated but you really don’t hear his name as often nationally as you hear other, less deserving names. I think he’s as good as anyone in the league and even though he’s older I’d take him before almost anyone. There are 10 names I could throw out who get more pub than Jesus and I wouldn’t trade him for. Is it because he doesn’t have tattoos all over his body, because he holds charity events instead of smoke-outs? Because he’s never had to buy his wife a $10 million dollar ring after cheating on her for the 485th time? I love Ray Ray and I still believe in him as a legit, top five, NBA superstar.

People say that were not going to be as good as last year because we lost Antonio Daniels. Now I love A.D., but I think he was a little too similar to Ray Allen and not enough of a point guard. I like having Mateen off the bench as a TRUE backup pointguard, someone who’s going to come in and distribute the ball like Luke and take the occasional ball to the rack like Luke. I love Mateen’s basketball IQ. He may never develop a great jumper but he knows what he needs to do to be effective and I like seeing him out on the floor. Nick Collison is another one of our guys with a great sense of what’s going on. A coach’s son, he makes great passes, comes up with big rebounds and can also shoot free throws.

That’s the other thing I love about this team: the free throws. Winning teams make free throws, period. The Sonics make free throws, period.

The one downer is how unbelievably good the Spurs are. I feel like no matter what happens we’re not going to beat those guys. I want to enjoy the regular season as much as I can but that thought is going to linger in my head all year. Also, I don’t know what I think about seeing Bob Weiss with the reins. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way. Oh well, go Supes! Everyone pray for Duncan’s legs to fall off.

Fantastic

Well, the UPS guy finally came at 3:45 PM with....2 of the 3 boxes. The monitor was there, as were the speakers, but the mother-effing Central Processing Unit was nowhere to be found. He said he didn't know what was up and suggested that I call UPS. After 3o minutes of talking to an automated message I got in touch with the local UPS distributor who told me that my computer was still in L.A. Apparently it was separated from the rest of the shipment and I'm going to get it on Monday. MONDAY! That's glorious. Hopefully they come at 6:45 in the morning, knock lightly then leave and tell me that no one was home. Now I have speakers that I don't need and a second monitor that my laptop can't handle.

I apologize for the pessimism surrounding the last few blogs. I'll try my best to come up with something wonderful for the next one.

Computer oh Computer

Where art thou, Computer? I've been up since 8 AM, a painful experience, and UPS hadn't shown up yet. The online tracking system said that they came here at 9:40 AM yesterday so maybe they're trying a different time of day.

I got kinda close to the Bahamas yesterday. I won the first table of a double shootout but finished 4th at the final table. Double shootouts are 81-person tournaments. There are 9 tables of 9 players and the winners of each table advance to the final. The winner of this 9-person table gets the trip. I had a very difficult first table but got some good cards and was able to take it down. My second table was filled with really bad players but I got a little unlucky, holding K9 on a flop of KK4 while my maniac opponent held KT. This guy was unbelievably crazy, playing 90% of pots and calling all bets. K9 felt like the nuts there but instead knocked me out in 4th place. I feel good about these Double Shootouts and I hope to have some good news soon.

Doh

According to UPS tracker they came to my apartment at 9:20 AM and no one answered the door. I just woke up (11:40) and I can neither confirm nor deny their claim of coming by this morning. I guess I just need to wake up early tomorrow and sit by the front door in my rocking chair. It's reather disappointing to have to wait another day but I guess I can suck it up.

Axe body spray has a contest online for the dirtiest fraternity shower. Guess who's one of the 10 finalists....Psi U! I guess that's not really something to be proud of but if we win Axe will spend $15,000 to "Pimp Our Shower". If you have the time, go to this page: http://axe.eprize.net/pimpmyfraternityshower/
and vote for Psi Upsilon, Washington. You can vote once per day so vote early and vote often.

I was planning on spending all day having fun with my new computer but I guess I'll do that tomorrow. TOday I'll try to recover from yesterday's poker debacle. Wish me luck.

Jeez

Man, I woke up this morning psyched to play my best poker. I was planning on concentrating and playing my best to fulfill my quest to win a seat in the PokerStars Carribean Adventure. That's why it hurt so bad today to get as unlucky as I did. I seriously tried to play really well and kept getting bitch-slapped by the deck. I won't go into details but the poker gods really had fun with me today. They kept giving me great tables with the worst players ever and giving me good hands that just couldn't win. I only lost about $400 but it felt really, really bad. I think it's because I talked shit about Carl. He's done some deal with the gods and hardly ever runs bad. So my new official statement is that I love Carl and I wish him the best. Now I hope I'll get off the Poker Gods' shit list. God, I love poker. I really, really do.

I Hate Carl

Carl won a trip to the Bahamas today and will be joining Justin there in January. Normally I'm happy for my friends but I really hate Carl with a passion that burns deep inside my soul. I'm just kidding but now I want to win this trip sooooo bad. I'm afraid that my desperation will prove harmful for my game. We'll see. If I win one tomorrow it will be fine but with every day that passes it gets tougher and tougher. I got deep in a tourney that gave out a seat today but suffered some bad luck and went out in 7th. Man, I want this trip. I'm devoting the rest of the week to earning the trip. Hopefully I don't spend 12K in my quest. Wish me luck.

Costco finally installed my new tires today. I don't have to be donut boy anymore. My new computer gets in on Thursday according to UPS. We found out that we get free cable so I don't need to order it for the time being. I wonder if they're going to shut it off at some point. I've decided that I don't want to order it, even if they do shut it off. I'm still going to be traveling a lot and I'll probably be gone too much to make it worth paying all by myself. Kele really is adamant about not wanting cable so we're SOL if they cut it off. I just want it for a little while once I get my computer so I can use the TIVOish feature and burn a DVD of PrimeTime or something.

Did I mention that I hate Carl?