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.