Wow, what an unbelievable year it's been. I left my job as a valet and decided to give poker a try. Good choice. I was considering putting up a long post recapping everything but I decided to be lazy. The short version is that I went to Europe 4 times this year, went to Japan and Hong Kong for my first ever trip to Asia and was lucky enough to win a decent amount playing poker. Unreal.
I'm really excited for 2006 and hopefully it will be the best year of my life. I really feel like each year has been better than the year before and I'd like that trend to continue. It'll be tough to top 2005 and probably won't happen financially but I'm thinking hard about other things that could make me a happier person, possibly rekindling an old relationship or setting out to find new ones. I have a lot on my mind and a lot of issues running through my head. I really feel ready to "grow up". My New Year's resolution will anger some people but I want to quit drinking hard alcohol. I'd really like to eventually eliminate all drinking from my life but I need to take it one step at a time. It won't be easy but I think I can do it.
The last few days have been a lot of fun. We found a Korean Karaoke place in Lynnwood that "didn't serve alcohol" as a rule but was very accomodating to our demands for booze. I went crazy and sang a ton of songs. The ones that worked were "Separate Ways" by Journey, "My Way" by Sinatra and "Forgot About Dre" by Dr. Dre and Eminem. The flops were "Stan" by Eminem and "Paradise City" by Guns and Roses. Stan is really hard to do because it's so off-beat and conversational AND it's depresing as hell. Paradise City was just too long. It looked great in Can't Hardly Wait but I guess William is a bit cooler than I am.
Last night I got really drunk and had a lot of fun at the bar. I can't divulge all the details so you know that means I had a good time. Tonight we're going to Davis' condo to prefunk then probably heading down to Pioneer Square. We're a pretty wishy-washy group though so we might just hang out in the condo. Either way, I'll be sad to see 2005 go but I'm very optimistic about 2006. I hope you all have fantastic years and I'll talk to you again soon.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Children
Today was a great day. Cliff, Mom and I went to see little Noah, the coolest one-and-a-half year old you'll ever meet. I took a buttload of pictures like every proud uncle should and here are some of my favorites.
Learning is Fun!
Just Chillin
Too Cool for School
Air Noah
This is how WE roll
He really is an incredible kid. He loves smiling, reading and sports. Sounds a lot like a big-headed Asian dude I know pretty well. The circumstances are pretty tough and I don't feel like explaining everything here but I realy have to applaud my brother for how he handles everything. I was thinking today about my Dad's message and just how much potential I see in Noah. I'm sure he saw that same potential in me and had visions of me changing the world. Well, I'm still 25, Pop, and I promise to try my best to make a positive influence on this earth. One step is spoiling the crap out of Noah!
Tomorrow we're going to the mall to take professional photos and then we're headed back to Seattle. A group of us want to go to a real Asian karaoke place but I can't find a place that serves alcohol. The only places that have karaoke and alcohol are just public bars and that isn't how true Asians roll. If anyone out there in blogland knows of an Asian karaoke bar with alcohol, I'd be very much obliged. I have no problem singing my heart out to "I Think We're Alone Now" and "My Way" (Old Blue Eyes, not Usher) but I think that others don't come out of their shells as easily.
My grandma bought me the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" and I hope it improves my punctuation. I have no clue how horrible I am at punctuation but I'm sure it isn't pretty.
Tonight's our last night at Amerisuites Pasco. *sob*
Learning is Fun!
Just Chillin
Too Cool for School
Air Noah
This is how WE roll
He really is an incredible kid. He loves smiling, reading and sports. Sounds a lot like a big-headed Asian dude I know pretty well. The circumstances are pretty tough and I don't feel like explaining everything here but I realy have to applaud my brother for how he handles everything. I was thinking today about my Dad's message and just how much potential I see in Noah. I'm sure he saw that same potential in me and had visions of me changing the world. Well, I'm still 25, Pop, and I promise to try my best to make a positive influence on this earth. One step is spoiling the crap out of Noah!
Tomorrow we're going to the mall to take professional photos and then we're headed back to Seattle. A group of us want to go to a real Asian karaoke place but I can't find a place that serves alcohol. The only places that have karaoke and alcohol are just public bars and that isn't how true Asians roll. If anyone out there in blogland knows of an Asian karaoke bar with alcohol, I'd be very much obliged. I have no problem singing my heart out to "I Think We're Alone Now" and "My Way" (Old Blue Eyes, not Usher) but I think that others don't come out of their shells as easily.
My grandma bought me the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" and I hope it improves my punctuation. I have no clue how horrible I am at punctuation but I'm sure it isn't pretty.
Tonight's our last night at Amerisuites Pasco. *sob*
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Pops and Pictures
I've been at my grandparents and haven't felt like dealing with their dial-up connection. Pops logged on and left a masterpiece. If you missed it, here's the link. Basically, what he's saying is that I, and all peoples, should focus all our efforts on trying to improve the world for future generations. I agree with him, children are the greatest thing in the world and there are many out there who need our help. I never wanted to post this publicly, but I'm donating $50K this year to different education programs in Africa. I completely agree with his point that none of us do enough and that we all should try to do more.
What I don't agree with is his hypocrisy. He admits that he was young once, made mistakes and wonders why he did things. What he doesn't say is how those events shaped who he is today and how he's become a better person through fucking up. We all need to live and learn at our own pace and just because he's reached a point of clarity in his life, he can be condescending toward those who haven't gotten there yet. I'm sorry that I'm still growing up and I'm sorry that you see what I am today as a waste of talent. Clifford told me that you wished you had never taken me out of private school. That you had made sure I stayed on track and didn't take 6 years to graduate with some bullshit degree. If I had 3 Graduate Degrees but couldn't hold a social conversation, you'd be really proud of me. To me, life is about being a well balanced person. Clearly, I've erred on the side of being too social but that's the side that's more important to me. Look at the geniuses of the world, Bobby Fischer, Mozart, etc. Most were severly crippled socially and really fucked up in the head. Jesus was indeed a genius and his philosophy was simple: be kind to your fellow man. That's all I try to do every day. He had some incredible social understanding and that's what made him great.
Some might read the above and think that I'm angry, but I'm not at all. I just think that it's important that we all focus on doing the best that we can and try hard not to judge others too harshly. Just because I value my friends and family over anything else doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about those less fortunate. I agree that the drinking I do hurts me and kills brain cells but I don't see how poor kids are victims because I go out for drinks. I'm seriously considering quitting drinking alcohol after New Year's but that's besides the point. The point is that it's foolish to assume through my blog of my day-to-day routine that I don't give a fuck about anything but my own enjoyment. Phil Gordon, a professional poker player, has the following mission statement: To improve the world while having as much fun as possible. It's not exact, but that's the gist and it pretty much sums up how I feel. I'm a guy who likes to have a good time but I also feel like I have a good grasp on what's important in the world and I'm still growing up. I look at who I was last year and I laugh. I'll probably look a who I am now, next year, and laugh again. The point of this entire rant is that we all need to try our best to acheive what we can every day without losing our minds. I think it's awesome that you, dad, are trying hard to impart your wisdom on me but there are some lessons that I need to learn myself. I love you and I miss you a lot. Thanks for being so great.
Here are some pictures that I took over the past week. We have witnessed the death of the jafro. Everyone, a moment of silence if you could.
Tina, the best trivia partner ever
Three Generations of Femininity
The Jafro's last stand
The sellout
Twins?
What I don't agree with is his hypocrisy. He admits that he was young once, made mistakes and wonders why he did things. What he doesn't say is how those events shaped who he is today and how he's become a better person through fucking up. We all need to live and learn at our own pace and just because he's reached a point of clarity in his life, he can be condescending toward those who haven't gotten there yet. I'm sorry that I'm still growing up and I'm sorry that you see what I am today as a waste of talent. Clifford told me that you wished you had never taken me out of private school. That you had made sure I stayed on track and didn't take 6 years to graduate with some bullshit degree. If I had 3 Graduate Degrees but couldn't hold a social conversation, you'd be really proud of me. To me, life is about being a well balanced person. Clearly, I've erred on the side of being too social but that's the side that's more important to me. Look at the geniuses of the world, Bobby Fischer, Mozart, etc. Most were severly crippled socially and really fucked up in the head. Jesus was indeed a genius and his philosophy was simple: be kind to your fellow man. That's all I try to do every day. He had some incredible social understanding and that's what made him great.
Some might read the above and think that I'm angry, but I'm not at all. I just think that it's important that we all focus on doing the best that we can and try hard not to judge others too harshly. Just because I value my friends and family over anything else doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about those less fortunate. I agree that the drinking I do hurts me and kills brain cells but I don't see how poor kids are victims because I go out for drinks. I'm seriously considering quitting drinking alcohol after New Year's but that's besides the point. The point is that it's foolish to assume through my blog of my day-to-day routine that I don't give a fuck about anything but my own enjoyment. Phil Gordon, a professional poker player, has the following mission statement: To improve the world while having as much fun as possible. It's not exact, but that's the gist and it pretty much sums up how I feel. I'm a guy who likes to have a good time but I also feel like I have a good grasp on what's important in the world and I'm still growing up. I look at who I was last year and I laugh. I'll probably look a who I am now, next year, and laugh again. The point of this entire rant is that we all need to try our best to acheive what we can every day without losing our minds. I think it's awesome that you, dad, are trying hard to impart your wisdom on me but there are some lessons that I need to learn myself. I love you and I miss you a lot. Thanks for being so great.
Here are some pictures that I took over the past week. We have witnessed the death of the jafro. Everyone, a moment of silence if you could.
Tina, the best trivia partner ever
Three Generations of Femininity
The Jafro's last stand
The sellout
Twins?
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Home Sweet Home
Again, I'm sorry for the infrequent blogging but I'm out having fun with my friends and that's probably more important anyway. I hope you're ready for a monster post because I have a lot to retell.
Dave and Tasha picked me up on Friday night and we headed straight to Marcus' apartment to get our drink on. Marcus has a sweet place in Queen Anne with a good view of the Space Needle and Puget Sound. The apartment is called Athena, a name that will always be dear to my heart. We drank a few Coors Lights and PBRs then moved on to the airplane bottles of booze. It's hard to take shots directly out of those things but I figured it out eventually. You have to hold it at a 45 degree angle to allow air to flow into the bottle and push out the liquor. If you have the bottle straight up and down, obviously it's harder to get the liquid out and if you hold it parallel to the ground, the booze comes out too slow and no one likes sipping on Cuervo. All of this may be old hat to some of you but I'm slower than most. Gonzalez showed up eventually as did Renee, Amanda and Steph a short time later. Steph hates the Jafro but Amanda thought it was really cool. I guess Steph just has no appreciation for true art. She went home after Marcus' place but the rest of us headed out to Tia Lou's. Tia Lou's is a club in Belltown that's pretty popular. It's not really my cup of tea since I prefer a more laid back atmosphere but there were so many close friends there that I couldn't help having a great time. Tye's shot exchange was in full effect and I bought double shots of tequila for Tye, Quang and myself. Quang is a short Vietnamese friend and he always makes the best faces after consuming tequila. At the end of the night, Tasha drove Dave and me back to their place in Auburn. Dave and I were planning on heading down to Vancouver, WA on Saturday morning but I was skeptical that we would actually wake up on time. I flt really bad for Tasha, driving our drunk asses 40 miles, so I tried my best to stay up and make idle chit-chat. Dave just passed out and only woke when we skidded though and icy intersection. He barked at Tasha, "Why are you driving so fast!" even though she was driving really carefully and the road was just really messy. Nice guy, Dave. After we regained control, we saw tires marks up onto the curb and tearing up part of someone's lawn. I think those people may have been the ones driving too fast. We got to bed around 3 AM and set our alarms for 9 AM.
Miraculously, we woke up on time and got on the road at a decent hour. Jimmy was only in town for a few days and we really wanted to see him. I had to drive Dave's car because he thought that he was still drunk. We stopped off at McDonalds and I got an Egg McMuffin meal with orange juice. Dave didn't think that he could hold down any food so we just got him a to-go bag that we would use as a barf bag if needed. He fell asleep pretty quickly and I powered though to Vancouver. He has one of those Nissan Z things and it's a really nice ride. I hadn't driven a stick in a while and it was an adventure getting used to the power but I picked it up after nearly making Dave puke a few times with my jerky shifting. We got to Jimmy's house around 1 PM and decided to head to Portland to do some tax-free Christmas shopping. We walked through Target and saw some cool stuff but didn't end up buying anything. Dave, the sweetheart that he is, shopped for some jewelry for Tasha but they didn't ever come over to help him so he left disgustedly. I told him that it looked like he was casing the place for a robbery, not shopping for his wife. He was hungover as shit, had a dirty beard working, and smelled a little like alcohol...or a lot like alcohol. We tired of shopping pretty quickly and headed to BJ's pizza to watch the Giants-Chiefs game. The Giants are a damn good football team and I hope they get the #3 seed in the NFC so that they'll have to meet the Bears in Soldier Field in round 2. I think the Bears are beatable when they have to go on the road but they're pretty damn near invincible with that defense at home in January. The perfect scenario for the Hawks would be to clich home-field throughout and have the Bears and Giants beat up on each other in their 2nd round game while the Hawks hopefully take care of business agaist the Panthers/Bucs. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let's clinch homefield throught first. I can't wait for the game on Saturday. Go Seahawks! Where were we?....
At BJ's Pizza, Jimmy and I ordered the combo pizza and Dave got a calzone. The pizza was really good but Dave felt liek his calzone was a little small. We're all spoiled by the monster calzones from Varlamos. I used my Treo to look up directions to the nearest Costco and we headed out there to see if we could spend some money. It was windy as christ(but how windy is christ, really) and Dave's car kept getting blown all over the road. We walked in and they had a Karaoke machine going and a tall lanky white guy was singing "Hero" by Enrique. Enrique is one of my faves so I instantly started serenading Dave. "Am I in too deep? Have I lost my mind? I don’t care... You’re here, tonight. I can be your hero, baby. I can kiss away the pain. I will stand by you forever. You can take my breath away." I'm obviously a loud singer so when I turned around it was no surprise to see everyone in the store staring at me and lughing their asses off. I needed a new camera so I headed to the camera display, right next to the Karaoke machine, and they teased me a bit about my love for Enrique. I ended up buying a Kodak 5.0 megapixel camera because it came with an extra battery that I'll be able to use while traveling. It was $339 originally but had an instant $40 dollar rebate AND was tax-free. I like the camera a lot but I left it in someone's car and I'm not going to get it until tomorrow. I should have a lot of pictures to unload by next post. So here are my best purchases of the year:
1) Treo
2) Bose Quiet Comfort 2 Noise Canceling headphones
3) New desktop computer and 2nd LCD screen
3) Magellan Navigation System
4) Digital Camera
5) Usher live in Atlanta DVD
6) Hooker in Barcelona
The Treo is amazing and I love having the internet at my fingertips everywhere I go. If I ever get into using the planner/contacts features it will be even more amazing for me. The headphones were really expensive but they are so awesome to have on the airplane. I love them. The computer works really well and having the second screen really helps while multi-tasking. The Magellan Navigation hasn't been used too much but I've really liked it when I've used it and I think that its value will truly come out during the baseball roadtrip. I've had the digital camera for less than a week so the jury's still out but I like it so far. The Usher DVD has been watched 3 times in the last 2 weeks, a sick amount of use. I didn't really buy a hooker in Barcelona but you could imagine how great it would be if I had! The only bad purchase is my laptop. It's very powerful and very fast but I wish I had focused more on portablitlity. It's a little bigger and heavier than I want it to be and it only has 2 hours of battery life because of the more powerful processor. If I had to do it over again, I'd spend more money and get something smaller and better. Oh well.
After Costco, Dave and I drove back to his place in Auburn. This time I got to sleep while he drove. I always feel bad when I do that to people on road trips but I was really damn tired. The original plan was to drive me back to Seattle on Saturday night but we were both so beat that we decided to head up there Sunday morning. It was really great seeing Jimmy, even though we had to drive about 5 hours to see him for about 4 hours. I slept really well on Saturday night and ended up getting about 9 hours of solid rest.
We woke up Sunday morning at 8 AM and headed up to Seattle. I had to pick up my luggage from Marcus' apartment because I had changed there before going to the club and couldn't find him again Friday night before going down to Dave and Tasha's. If you're paying attention, I wore the same clothes for 3 straight days. Sue me. Davis had mentioned on Friday night that we should watch the Seahawks game at his place so we headed over there. Unfortunately, Davis had a rough night and passed out somewhere else so we didn't get to watch the game with him. Luckily, his roommate Gough was home so we watched the game with him. I love Gough even though he isn't quite as crazy as the rest of us. My brother, Cliff, came over and we got to see a good game. At one point, the Titans scored 24 unanswered points to take a 24-14 lead so I went to brush my teeth to change our karma(if you're keeping track, I didn't have my toothbrush all weekend, you do the math). With fresh breath, I was able to rally the Seahawks back and we got an important road win, 28-24. I kept saying "who brushed his teeth?" as I high fived Dave, Cliff and Gough. After the game, Cliff and I headed to his ex-girlfriend Alex's place and we ate a nice lunch at Jai Tai in Belltown. We had the swimming rama, garlic pork, tofu phad thai and fresh spring rolls. It was the bomb.com. After lunch, Alex drove us to our mom's house where I got to take my first shower in Seattle. It felt glorious and Cliff and I did a bit of Spring Cleaning downstairs. We ended up getting rid of 5 large garbage bags of clothes and freed up a lot of space for our poor mom.
Monday was pretty uneventful. I went to Costco to buy groceries and Bellvue Square for more shopping but again didn't buy anything. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. I always procrastinate like a mofo and can never decide what to get people until the night of the 24th. Oh well. Tuesday night I went out to trivia with Morgan, Cliff and Cliff's friend, Laurie. Laurie is really cool and we had a great time with her. She was kind enough to DD so Morgan, Cliff and I went a little bonkers. We had few pitchers of PBR, an insanely big double shot of jager and an Irish Car Bomb. What do you think they call those in Ireland? Surely not an Irish Car Bomb. Maybe they just call is "A shot of Jameson and Baileys, dropped into a glass of Guinness." That sounds about right. I ended up leaving my camera in Laurie's car at the end of the night so I have to wait until tomorrow to get it back. Boooo.
On Wednesday, Morgan woke up on our couch and we all had fairly wicked hangovers. Morgan caught a cab home then drove back here to take us to Yoshino's teriyaki. They have an incredible tofu teriyaki dish that is one of my favorite foods in the world. For some reason Cliff and Morgan got a pork/chicken combo and both immediately regreted it after they saw my tofu bombness. After lunch, Morgan ran some errands downtown while I napped in the back of his car. He dropped me off at home around 2 PM and I hung out for a while before Renee came by to pick me up for Happy Hour at Pesos. I had the chopped cobb salad with avocados and bacon and a delicious dressing. The plate that it was on was too big and the salad would look better if they used a smaller plate. I also had some really good calimari and shared Nachos with Tori and Renee. Laura, Noelle and Vik showed up a little later and it was good to see the girls since one lives in Japan and the other in Boston. I started off slow with a few Gin and Tonics and had no idea where the night was about to go. Davis showed up a little late and whenever we're together, it spells trouble. Noelle and Vik had to leave around 7:30 so we decided to kill the first check of the night. I had a $50 bill that I had gotten as change somewhere and I wanted to get rid of it because they're bad luck for gamblers. I told everyone that I wanted to put down the $50 bill and didn't want any change back because it would be a remnant of the $50 bill. Somehow Tori convinced me to take $10 back but we still ended up tipping the waitress $39 dollars on a $96 tab. She even came back, asking if we accidentally left too much money, I love taking care of service people, they're usually so appreciative. Duane, EJ, and a bunch of others showed up and that's when things got out of hand. Iwon't go into details but there was a lot of jager and Patron Silver involved and when the smoke cleared I had spent more money that I've ever spent at a bar before. And that's saying something. I won't give the exact amount because my mom reads the blog and I don't want her to have a heart attack but let's just say it was money well spent. I had a blast and I've really missed nights like this. There weren't even any incredible stories or defining moments, well maybe the huge double shot of Jager we had, but it was just a great overall experince. Afterward, Eric drove me and John do Goldies for some $3/6. Eric's sober ass cleaned up and he hit quad Aces for $1100. Not a bad little jackpot. I lost about $200 but I'm pretty sure at least $100 of that went to the dealers. I'm not really sure what time we got home but I hit the hay real hard.
This "morning" I woke up at 1:30 and made my way to the computer. Poor Davis wrote a group email at 7 AM saying, "I can tell work is going to suck". I really don't know how they can have nights like last night and still make it to work. I haven't done a damn thing all day and I'm going to have to shower soon for Sabrina's party. It's a rough life.
I guess that's catches me up to today. I really would rather update daily but someimes life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. I love Ferris.
I've been trying to work on my travel schedule and I'm probably going to head to South America with my mom in February. Right now it looks something like this:
January 3-11: Bahamas for PokerStars tournament.
January 11-15: San Diego
January 15-23: Seattle for (hopefully) 2 playoff games.
January 24-February 1: San Diego
February 1.....hopefully Detroit for the SB, if not, I'll head to Ecuador to see my mom and Will, my friend who came with me to Barcelona. I'll probably be in South America until March 7th.
March 12-19: Party Poker Million Cruise V
March 19-April 1: San Diego
April 1: Move Back to Seattle
April 3-June 4: Baseball Road Trip
June 12-24: Germany for the World Cup. I'll be around for all of the Pool play.
June 27-August 10: Vegas for the World Series of Poker.
August 10: Moving back to Seattle for reals.
September: Back to school at UW I hope.
Looks pretty good, huh? Merry Christmas, y'all. I'll try to update more frequently and have more pictures next time. Next stop on the tour: Party with High School friends tonight. Should be fun.
Dave and Tasha picked me up on Friday night and we headed straight to Marcus' apartment to get our drink on. Marcus has a sweet place in Queen Anne with a good view of the Space Needle and Puget Sound. The apartment is called Athena, a name that will always be dear to my heart. We drank a few Coors Lights and PBRs then moved on to the airplane bottles of booze. It's hard to take shots directly out of those things but I figured it out eventually. You have to hold it at a 45 degree angle to allow air to flow into the bottle and push out the liquor. If you have the bottle straight up and down, obviously it's harder to get the liquid out and if you hold it parallel to the ground, the booze comes out too slow and no one likes sipping on Cuervo. All of this may be old hat to some of you but I'm slower than most. Gonzalez showed up eventually as did Renee, Amanda and Steph a short time later. Steph hates the Jafro but Amanda thought it was really cool. I guess Steph just has no appreciation for true art. She went home after Marcus' place but the rest of us headed out to Tia Lou's. Tia Lou's is a club in Belltown that's pretty popular. It's not really my cup of tea since I prefer a more laid back atmosphere but there were so many close friends there that I couldn't help having a great time. Tye's shot exchange was in full effect and I bought double shots of tequila for Tye, Quang and myself. Quang is a short Vietnamese friend and he always makes the best faces after consuming tequila. At the end of the night, Tasha drove Dave and me back to their place in Auburn. Dave and I were planning on heading down to Vancouver, WA on Saturday morning but I was skeptical that we would actually wake up on time. I flt really bad for Tasha, driving our drunk asses 40 miles, so I tried my best to stay up and make idle chit-chat. Dave just passed out and only woke when we skidded though and icy intersection. He barked at Tasha, "Why are you driving so fast!" even though she was driving really carefully and the road was just really messy. Nice guy, Dave. After we regained control, we saw tires marks up onto the curb and tearing up part of someone's lawn. I think those people may have been the ones driving too fast. We got to bed around 3 AM and set our alarms for 9 AM.
Miraculously, we woke up on time and got on the road at a decent hour. Jimmy was only in town for a few days and we really wanted to see him. I had to drive Dave's car because he thought that he was still drunk. We stopped off at McDonalds and I got an Egg McMuffin meal with orange juice. Dave didn't think that he could hold down any food so we just got him a to-go bag that we would use as a barf bag if needed. He fell asleep pretty quickly and I powered though to Vancouver. He has one of those Nissan Z things and it's a really nice ride. I hadn't driven a stick in a while and it was an adventure getting used to the power but I picked it up after nearly making Dave puke a few times with my jerky shifting. We got to Jimmy's house around 1 PM and decided to head to Portland to do some tax-free Christmas shopping. We walked through Target and saw some cool stuff but didn't end up buying anything. Dave, the sweetheart that he is, shopped for some jewelry for Tasha but they didn't ever come over to help him so he left disgustedly. I told him that it looked like he was casing the place for a robbery, not shopping for his wife. He was hungover as shit, had a dirty beard working, and smelled a little like alcohol...or a lot like alcohol. We tired of shopping pretty quickly and headed to BJ's pizza to watch the Giants-Chiefs game. The Giants are a damn good football team and I hope they get the #3 seed in the NFC so that they'll have to meet the Bears in Soldier Field in round 2. I think the Bears are beatable when they have to go on the road but they're pretty damn near invincible with that defense at home in January. The perfect scenario for the Hawks would be to clich home-field throughout and have the Bears and Giants beat up on each other in their 2nd round game while the Hawks hopefully take care of business agaist the Panthers/Bucs. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let's clinch homefield throught first. I can't wait for the game on Saturday. Go Seahawks! Where were we?....
At BJ's Pizza, Jimmy and I ordered the combo pizza and Dave got a calzone. The pizza was really good but Dave felt liek his calzone was a little small. We're all spoiled by the monster calzones from Varlamos. I used my Treo to look up directions to the nearest Costco and we headed out there to see if we could spend some money. It was windy as christ(but how windy is christ, really) and Dave's car kept getting blown all over the road. We walked in and they had a Karaoke machine going and a tall lanky white guy was singing "Hero" by Enrique. Enrique is one of my faves so I instantly started serenading Dave. "Am I in too deep? Have I lost my mind? I don’t care... You’re here, tonight. I can be your hero, baby. I can kiss away the pain. I will stand by you forever. You can take my breath away." I'm obviously a loud singer so when I turned around it was no surprise to see everyone in the store staring at me and lughing their asses off. I needed a new camera so I headed to the camera display, right next to the Karaoke machine, and they teased me a bit about my love for Enrique. I ended up buying a Kodak 5.0 megapixel camera because it came with an extra battery that I'll be able to use while traveling. It was $339 originally but had an instant $40 dollar rebate AND was tax-free. I like the camera a lot but I left it in someone's car and I'm not going to get it until tomorrow. I should have a lot of pictures to unload by next post. So here are my best purchases of the year:
1) Treo
2) Bose Quiet Comfort 2 Noise Canceling headphones
3) New desktop computer and 2nd LCD screen
3) Magellan Navigation System
4) Digital Camera
5) Usher live in Atlanta DVD
6) Hooker in Barcelona
The Treo is amazing and I love having the internet at my fingertips everywhere I go. If I ever get into using the planner/contacts features it will be even more amazing for me. The headphones were really expensive but they are so awesome to have on the airplane. I love them. The computer works really well and having the second screen really helps while multi-tasking. The Magellan Navigation hasn't been used too much but I've really liked it when I've used it and I think that its value will truly come out during the baseball roadtrip. I've had the digital camera for less than a week so the jury's still out but I like it so far. The Usher DVD has been watched 3 times in the last 2 weeks, a sick amount of use. I didn't really buy a hooker in Barcelona but you could imagine how great it would be if I had! The only bad purchase is my laptop. It's very powerful and very fast but I wish I had focused more on portablitlity. It's a little bigger and heavier than I want it to be and it only has 2 hours of battery life because of the more powerful processor. If I had to do it over again, I'd spend more money and get something smaller and better. Oh well.
After Costco, Dave and I drove back to his place in Auburn. This time I got to sleep while he drove. I always feel bad when I do that to people on road trips but I was really damn tired. The original plan was to drive me back to Seattle on Saturday night but we were both so beat that we decided to head up there Sunday morning. It was really great seeing Jimmy, even though we had to drive about 5 hours to see him for about 4 hours. I slept really well on Saturday night and ended up getting about 9 hours of solid rest.
We woke up Sunday morning at 8 AM and headed up to Seattle. I had to pick up my luggage from Marcus' apartment because I had changed there before going to the club and couldn't find him again Friday night before going down to Dave and Tasha's. If you're paying attention, I wore the same clothes for 3 straight days. Sue me. Davis had mentioned on Friday night that we should watch the Seahawks game at his place so we headed over there. Unfortunately, Davis had a rough night and passed out somewhere else so we didn't get to watch the game with him. Luckily, his roommate Gough was home so we watched the game with him. I love Gough even though he isn't quite as crazy as the rest of us. My brother, Cliff, came over and we got to see a good game. At one point, the Titans scored 24 unanswered points to take a 24-14 lead so I went to brush my teeth to change our karma(if you're keeping track, I didn't have my toothbrush all weekend, you do the math). With fresh breath, I was able to rally the Seahawks back and we got an important road win, 28-24. I kept saying "who brushed his teeth?" as I high fived Dave, Cliff and Gough. After the game, Cliff and I headed to his ex-girlfriend Alex's place and we ate a nice lunch at Jai Tai in Belltown. We had the swimming rama, garlic pork, tofu phad thai and fresh spring rolls. It was the bomb.com. After lunch, Alex drove us to our mom's house where I got to take my first shower in Seattle. It felt glorious and Cliff and I did a bit of Spring Cleaning downstairs. We ended up getting rid of 5 large garbage bags of clothes and freed up a lot of space for our poor mom.
Monday was pretty uneventful. I went to Costco to buy groceries and Bellvue Square for more shopping but again didn't buy anything. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. I always procrastinate like a mofo and can never decide what to get people until the night of the 24th. Oh well. Tuesday night I went out to trivia with Morgan, Cliff and Cliff's friend, Laurie. Laurie is really cool and we had a great time with her. She was kind enough to DD so Morgan, Cliff and I went a little bonkers. We had few pitchers of PBR, an insanely big double shot of jager and an Irish Car Bomb. What do you think they call those in Ireland? Surely not an Irish Car Bomb. Maybe they just call is "A shot of Jameson and Baileys, dropped into a glass of Guinness." That sounds about right. I ended up leaving my camera in Laurie's car at the end of the night so I have to wait until tomorrow to get it back. Boooo.
On Wednesday, Morgan woke up on our couch and we all had fairly wicked hangovers. Morgan caught a cab home then drove back here to take us to Yoshino's teriyaki. They have an incredible tofu teriyaki dish that is one of my favorite foods in the world. For some reason Cliff and Morgan got a pork/chicken combo and both immediately regreted it after they saw my tofu bombness. After lunch, Morgan ran some errands downtown while I napped in the back of his car. He dropped me off at home around 2 PM and I hung out for a while before Renee came by to pick me up for Happy Hour at Pesos. I had the chopped cobb salad with avocados and bacon and a delicious dressing. The plate that it was on was too big and the salad would look better if they used a smaller plate. I also had some really good calimari and shared Nachos with Tori and Renee. Laura, Noelle and Vik showed up a little later and it was good to see the girls since one lives in Japan and the other in Boston. I started off slow with a few Gin and Tonics and had no idea where the night was about to go. Davis showed up a little late and whenever we're together, it spells trouble. Noelle and Vik had to leave around 7:30 so we decided to kill the first check of the night. I had a $50 bill that I had gotten as change somewhere and I wanted to get rid of it because they're bad luck for gamblers. I told everyone that I wanted to put down the $50 bill and didn't want any change back because it would be a remnant of the $50 bill. Somehow Tori convinced me to take $10 back but we still ended up tipping the waitress $39 dollars on a $96 tab. She even came back, asking if we accidentally left too much money, I love taking care of service people, they're usually so appreciative. Duane, EJ, and a bunch of others showed up and that's when things got out of hand. Iwon't go into details but there was a lot of jager and Patron Silver involved and when the smoke cleared I had spent more money that I've ever spent at a bar before. And that's saying something. I won't give the exact amount because my mom reads the blog and I don't want her to have a heart attack but let's just say it was money well spent. I had a blast and I've really missed nights like this. There weren't even any incredible stories or defining moments, well maybe the huge double shot of Jager we had, but it was just a great overall experince. Afterward, Eric drove me and John do Goldies for some $3/6. Eric's sober ass cleaned up and he hit quad Aces for $1100. Not a bad little jackpot. I lost about $200 but I'm pretty sure at least $100 of that went to the dealers. I'm not really sure what time we got home but I hit the hay real hard.
This "morning" I woke up at 1:30 and made my way to the computer. Poor Davis wrote a group email at 7 AM saying, "I can tell work is going to suck". I really don't know how they can have nights like last night and still make it to work. I haven't done a damn thing all day and I'm going to have to shower soon for Sabrina's party. It's a rough life.
I guess that's catches me up to today. I really would rather update daily but someimes life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. I love Ferris.
I've been trying to work on my travel schedule and I'm probably going to head to South America with my mom in February. Right now it looks something like this:
January 3-11: Bahamas for PokerStars tournament.
January 11-15: San Diego
January 15-23: Seattle for (hopefully) 2 playoff games.
January 24-February 1: San Diego
February 1.....hopefully Detroit for the SB, if not, I'll head to Ecuador to see my mom and Will, my friend who came with me to Barcelona. I'll probably be in South America until March 7th.
March 12-19: Party Poker Million Cruise V
March 19-April 1: San Diego
April 1: Move Back to Seattle
April 3-June 4: Baseball Road Trip
June 12-24: Germany for the World Cup. I'll be around for all of the Pool play.
June 27-August 10: Vegas for the World Series of Poker.
August 10: Moving back to Seattle for reals.
September: Back to school at UW I hope.
Looks pretty good, huh? Merry Christmas, y'all. I'll try to update more frequently and have more pictures next time. Next stop on the tour: Party with High School friends tonight. Should be fun.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Sea-Town Bound
In 24 hours I'll be at Tia Lou's with a ton of close friends. Dave and Ravi are both celebrating their birthdays there and Tye is having some event that he calls "The Holiday Shot Exchange". I don't know what the hell that means but I do enjoy the holidays and shots. I have a feeling that there will be no blog entry tomorrow night and that Saturday's blog will be great.
Today, I did a lot of laundry and drank a lot of water. It's nice to be home for...36 hours. Literally, I arrived from Vegas at 1:30 AM this morning and I'm heading to the train station at 1:30 PM tomorrow. I'm not going to be back here until January 11th so I guess I really am paying rent just to store my crap. Oh well, it's good to be ballin' out of control. I bought in to the tournament in the Bahamas today so it looks like everything is set up. I really hope that my poker game will be redivivus by then and the cards are auspicious. I watched Carl win another tournament on Ultimate Bet today, his game is truly hale and he's a paladin of pot odds.
I have to apologize for my logorrhea but I recently subscribed to Dictionary.com's word of the day through bloglines.com. I highly recommend signing up if you try to keep track of a lot of blogs. Even if you're not as assiduous to the Internet as me, you can still get a bunch of good stuff. Just hop onto bloglines and it will tell you which blogs are updated so that you don't need to look through them all to find the one friend that's kept up his blogging. I'm subsrcibed to 24 feeds, including the BBC World News, the New York Times, Sir AlCantHang, Minh Ba, MTV News, Robert in Tanzania, Boyd in Japan, Steal the Blinds, Pauly, Pauly, Derek, and a bevy of others. It may look like a lot of work but I promise, it's really easy. Just go to bloglines and sign up.
I've seen five DVDs over the past few days and I have to rate them in this order:
5) Euro Trip
4) The 40-Year-Old Virgin
3) Usher live in Atlanta
2) March of the Penguins
1) Cinderella Man
It's unfair to both Euro Trip and the 40-year-old Virgin that I've watched such great DVDs lately because they're both really funny and good in their own right. It's just hard to compete with the other three.
Danielle made muddy buddies while I was away. I'm taking them to the airport with me for a snack.
Can anyone tell that I'm really tired? This is possibly the worst blog entry of all time. See you Saturday night.
Today, I did a lot of laundry and drank a lot of water. It's nice to be home for...36 hours. Literally, I arrived from Vegas at 1:30 AM this morning and I'm heading to the train station at 1:30 PM tomorrow. I'm not going to be back here until January 11th so I guess I really am paying rent just to store my crap. Oh well, it's good to be ballin' out of control. I bought in to the tournament in the Bahamas today so it looks like everything is set up. I really hope that my poker game will be redivivus by then and the cards are auspicious. I watched Carl win another tournament on Ultimate Bet today, his game is truly hale and he's a paladin of pot odds.
I have to apologize for my logorrhea but I recently subscribed to Dictionary.com's word of the day through bloglines.com. I highly recommend signing up if you try to keep track of a lot of blogs. Even if you're not as assiduous to the Internet as me, you can still get a bunch of good stuff. Just hop onto bloglines and it will tell you which blogs are updated so that you don't need to look through them all to find the one friend that's kept up his blogging. I'm subsrcibed to 24 feeds, including the BBC World News, the New York Times, Sir AlCantHang, Minh Ba, MTV News, Robert in Tanzania, Boyd in Japan, Steal the Blinds, Pauly, Pauly, Derek, and a bevy of others. It may look like a lot of work but I promise, it's really easy. Just go to bloglines and sign up.
I've seen five DVDs over the past few days and I have to rate them in this order:
5) Euro Trip
4) The 40-Year-Old Virgin
3) Usher live in Atlanta
2) March of the Penguins
1) Cinderella Man
It's unfair to both Euro Trip and the 40-year-old Virgin that I've watched such great DVDs lately because they're both really funny and good in their own right. It's just hard to compete with the other three.
Danielle made muddy buddies while I was away. I'm taking them to the airport with me for a snack.
Can anyone tell that I'm really tired? This is possibly the worst blog entry of all time. See you Saturday night.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
I'm Outtie
Well, Carl busted out of the tournament early yesterday so I'm going to be driving back to Carlsbad tonight. I've had a lot of fun during this trip to Vegas and I only lost a little bit of money. My poker game needs a ton of work and I'll be practicing a lot over the next couple of weeks.
I forgot to give an important shoutout last time. The Grossmont Griffins, my roommate's brother Matt's team, won the California State Title and were named JuCo National Champs. Matt's ordering a t-shirt for me and he's really excited about winning the championship. I think it's pretty damn cool.
On Monday, I got a late start but got to the Bellagio in time to watch Carl play in the main event for a while. They ended play at 9 PM so Carl, John and I went to the Bellagio Cafe for some dinner. The food was really good but the service was atrocious. If you ever eat at the Bellagio Cafe and get server by a gay 50 year-old, ask for a table change. It was really, really bad and we left a really small tip. I'm a huge tipper 99% of the time but I feel like a tip should mean something and I refuse to leae a big tip for poor service. I'm a 20-25% type guy for average-good service and a <10% guy if I get totally ignored during my meal. Oh well, the New York Strip was good, as were the green beans and mashed potatoes. Afterwards, we went to the Bellagio Sports Bar and had a few drinks, talking about poker and sports and poker. It was good to chill with Carl because I never seem to be able to meet up with him when I travel to Seattle. I think it's because I secretly hate him for his poker success but don't tell him that. After Carl left I played a little $30/60 but left around 1:30 AM, calling it an early night.
The next day I got a voicemail from Carl at 12:45, saying that he was out of the tournament. That's always bad news but I was able to chill at Christy's mom's house for a longer time and did't really get rolling until 5 PM when I went to the airport to pick up Steve and Sarah. I dropped them off at the Mandalay Bay and headed to the Bellagio to check out the tournament action. I ran into Noah who was sweating his friend, Patrik Antonius. He had one of the sickest piles of chips I've ever seen and was in total control. He's won millions of dollars over the last few years playing $200/400 heads up no-limit and has exploded onto the tournament scene this year, winning an EPT event in Austria, winning the Scandanavian Poker Championships, and finishing 3rd in another EPT event in Barcelona. He also models in Scandanavia in his free time. Yeah, it's good to be Patrik Antonius. He's still in the top 5 in chips and I'd like to see a Doyle Brunson-Patrik Antonius head-up match with deep stacks.
Steve and Sarah called me around 9 PM and we headed to the same Soprts Bar that I was at the night before. We hung out with Jen Leo and Steve Caldwell for a while before Jen hit the wall of drunkenness and had to call it a night. Steve, Sarah and I headed to the Casino Royale for some $2 craps with Pauly and ended up going on a good run. Steve was the hottest shooter and ended up getting everyone unstuck. He was betting more than the rest of us so he ended up winning $500 while I won $275. Not too shabby, especially when I consider playing craps flushing $100 down the drain in the name of degeneracy. THe Casino Royale is ridiculously ghetto and the drinks were awful. Steve ordered a Corona and was told that they only had Bud Light and Killians and when they brought his Killians, it was in a 10 ounce cocktail class. GHETTO! It was fun seeing Pauly and Derek and their friend, Spaceman, I don't even know his real name but he seemed to know a lot about Craps. He bet on the Don't Pass line twice, after people threw the dice over the rail, and was right both times. We quit around 1:30 AM and headed out to the stip to look for a decent meal. We found a cafe open at the Flamingo and it looked ok. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving and the food was absolutely horrendous. If you're ever in the area late at night, please take the time to cross the street and head to the Bellagio Cafe. It's not much more expensive and the food is waaaaay better. Just make sure you don't get served by a gay 50 year-old man.
Seve and Sarah went to bed after our dinner/breakfast but I headed to the Wynn to play $10/20 mixed with Carl and our friend from 2+2, Bugstud. I ran well and played like a donkey and ended up winning $630 for the night. Including the craps, I was up $900 for the night, always a fun result. Carl and I ended up leaving at 5:30 in the morning and I didn't get back to Christy's mom's until 6. At noon, I was supposed to go check out the house that we're staying at during the World Series but I oviously slept through that one. Steve called me later and said that it was pretty cool but a little outdated. It should be fun living in an 80's mansion for a month and I can't wait. There are 6 rooms in the house and Carl, Steve and a bunch of other really good poker players will be staying there during the World Series. It should be a good environment for us to be in and will definitely be +EV. It will be awesome to hae good players to talk things over with and discuss strategies. I'm really looking forward to it.
I guess that catches you up to what I'm doing now, sitting in the living room in my boxers typing on my laptop. I'm going to get out of here soon and see if Carl wants to have dinner before I drive back home. I'm flying up to Seattle in 2 days and I can't wait. Friday night it's PAAAAAARTAY TIME. You'll probably want to hide the children again.
I forgot to give an important shoutout last time. The Grossmont Griffins, my roommate's brother Matt's team, won the California State Title and were named JuCo National Champs. Matt's ordering a t-shirt for me and he's really excited about winning the championship. I think it's pretty damn cool.
On Monday, I got a late start but got to the Bellagio in time to watch Carl play in the main event for a while. They ended play at 9 PM so Carl, John and I went to the Bellagio Cafe for some dinner. The food was really good but the service was atrocious. If you ever eat at the Bellagio Cafe and get server by a gay 50 year-old, ask for a table change. It was really, really bad and we left a really small tip. I'm a huge tipper 99% of the time but I feel like a tip should mean something and I refuse to leae a big tip for poor service. I'm a 20-25% type guy for average-good service and a <10% guy if I get totally ignored during my meal. Oh well, the New York Strip was good, as were the green beans and mashed potatoes. Afterwards, we went to the Bellagio Sports Bar and had a few drinks, talking about poker and sports and poker. It was good to chill with Carl because I never seem to be able to meet up with him when I travel to Seattle. I think it's because I secretly hate him for his poker success but don't tell him that. After Carl left I played a little $30/60 but left around 1:30 AM, calling it an early night.
The next day I got a voicemail from Carl at 12:45, saying that he was out of the tournament. That's always bad news but I was able to chill at Christy's mom's house for a longer time and did't really get rolling until 5 PM when I went to the airport to pick up Steve and Sarah. I dropped them off at the Mandalay Bay and headed to the Bellagio to check out the tournament action. I ran into Noah who was sweating his friend, Patrik Antonius. He had one of the sickest piles of chips I've ever seen and was in total control. He's won millions of dollars over the last few years playing $200/400 heads up no-limit and has exploded onto the tournament scene this year, winning an EPT event in Austria, winning the Scandanavian Poker Championships, and finishing 3rd in another EPT event in Barcelona. He also models in Scandanavia in his free time. Yeah, it's good to be Patrik Antonius. He's still in the top 5 in chips and I'd like to see a Doyle Brunson-Patrik Antonius head-up match with deep stacks.
Steve and Sarah called me around 9 PM and we headed to the same Soprts Bar that I was at the night before. We hung out with Jen Leo and Steve Caldwell for a while before Jen hit the wall of drunkenness and had to call it a night. Steve, Sarah and I headed to the Casino Royale for some $2 craps with Pauly and ended up going on a good run. Steve was the hottest shooter and ended up getting everyone unstuck. He was betting more than the rest of us so he ended up winning $500 while I won $275. Not too shabby, especially when I consider playing craps flushing $100 down the drain in the name of degeneracy. THe Casino Royale is ridiculously ghetto and the drinks were awful. Steve ordered a Corona and was told that they only had Bud Light and Killians and when they brought his Killians, it was in a 10 ounce cocktail class. GHETTO! It was fun seeing Pauly and Derek and their friend, Spaceman, I don't even know his real name but he seemed to know a lot about Craps. He bet on the Don't Pass line twice, after people threw the dice over the rail, and was right both times. We quit around 1:30 AM and headed out to the stip to look for a decent meal. We found a cafe open at the Flamingo and it looked ok. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving and the food was absolutely horrendous. If you're ever in the area late at night, please take the time to cross the street and head to the Bellagio Cafe. It's not much more expensive and the food is waaaaay better. Just make sure you don't get served by a gay 50 year-old man.
Seve and Sarah went to bed after our dinner/breakfast but I headed to the Wynn to play $10/20 mixed with Carl and our friend from 2+2, Bugstud. I ran well and played like a donkey and ended up winning $630 for the night. Including the craps, I was up $900 for the night, always a fun result. Carl and I ended up leaving at 5:30 in the morning and I didn't get back to Christy's mom's until 6. At noon, I was supposed to go check out the house that we're staying at during the World Series but I oviously slept through that one. Steve called me later and said that it was pretty cool but a little outdated. It should be fun living in an 80's mansion for a month and I can't wait. There are 6 rooms in the house and Carl, Steve and a bunch of other really good poker players will be staying there during the World Series. It should be a good environment for us to be in and will definitely be +EV. It will be awesome to hae good players to talk things over with and discuss strategies. I'm really looking forward to it.
I guess that catches you up to what I'm doing now, sitting in the living room in my boxers typing on my laptop. I'm going to get out of here soon and see if Carl wants to have dinner before I drive back home. I'm flying up to Seattle in 2 days and I can't wait. Friday night it's PAAAAAARTAY TIME. You'll probably want to hide the children again.
Monday, December 12, 2005
SEAHAWKS, SEAHAWKS, SEAHAWKS
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I LOVE THIS TEAM! I love Matty finally taking advantage of teams stacking the line like woah. Holmgren must have gone into the lab and studied the Giants game or something because our offense looks faaantastic. I realize that we just played the 49ers but man, they look like they're clicking on all cylinders. Joey J is the the second coming of Steve Largent and Tutupu is the second coming of Junior Seau. He seems to be getting better by the game and I like him. A lot. Like, enough to mother his children if that were possible. Again, we need to take care of business next week and set up the possible SB preview at 12-2 vs 14-0. I think the Colts will still play hard and I'd like to see if we can hang with those boys. My heart says yes and my mind is keeping its mouth shut.
On Friday, I decided to relax and played some $30/60 at the Bellagio. Pauly called and told me that there were 30-40 poker bloggers at the MGM so I cashed out and headed over there. They had 3 tables of 2/4 HORSE going so I got on the list and chatted for a while with Brad and Pauly. It took along time to get seated but I finally got seated at a table with Pauly, his brother Derek, Al, Daddy and Jaxia. They were all really cool and I thoroughly enjoyed donating my money to them. Pauly is in love with Jaxia even though she's attracted to women. Al drinks a lot of shots and I got really, really twisted. After a few hours, Duane showed up and the HORSE game broke so I went to sit with Duane in his 2/4 Hold 'Em game. I donked away about $100 in that game and kept pulling out my tourney money(about 6-7K worth of $100 bills in a WaMu envelope) and throwing it across the table at Duane, telling him to rebuy. I kept throwing it perfectly so that the money slid out a bit and all the players at the table could see the money but it never came all the way out or went flying all over the place. I don't know why I did this but I was as hammered as I've been in a long time(sorry, Mom). We finally quit around 5 AM and I drove Duane back to the Bellagio........JUST KIDDING!!!!.......we caught a cab back to the Bellagio where Duane tried to get me to come up to his room but I shut him down and told the cabbie how to get to Christy's mom's house. I ended up apssing out in the back of the cab and he had to wake me up when he got lost. I guess my directions were less than perfect but I managed to get us there and I gave him $30 for a $20 tab.
On Saturday there was a super satellite the the 15K main event at 1 PM and I decided to play in it...until I woke up at 3 PM at Christy's mom's house with no car. I showered and called John, who was going to bed but said he would pick me up around 7PM to get some dinner and take me to the MGM to pick up my car. We went to a really good Mexican place called Viva Mercado that I found on citysearch.com. The portions were huge and the food was really, really good. They have a great Vegetarian menu, too so if my loving mother or father ever come to Vegas with me I have a good place to take them. The restaurant is in a strip mall and has a horribly ghetto neon pink and blue sign but the food is excellent. If I was driving by there is no chance I'd ever stop at the place but it was packed inside. After dinner, John dropped me off at the MGM and I waited there for Duane and his mom and grandma to get out of Ka, the Cirqur du Soleil show at the MGM. I drove them all to the Bellagio and Duane and I went to the poker room to find John while mom and grandma went to the room to rest. We talked to John and got on the 4/8 list but it was really long and we decided to go check out the Mandalay Bay since they spread a 2/4. Well we never got in the same game because Duane got seated in a 4/8 first and started wining so he didn't want to switch tot eh 2/4 I was at. I ended up hitting a straight flush and winning $500, $150 of which I tipped to the dealer. He was speechless and I was very happy. The hand was pretty crazy. I straddle with 6h3h and get 5 callers. The flop is 6x4h2x. I bet and everyone calls, still 6 players to the turn. The turn is the 2h and I bet again. This time, everyone folds to the button and I need him to call or I don't get to see the river. I'm really pissed at myself for betting but I thought everyone was going to call again. Finally, he throws in 4 chips and I get to see the beautiful 5h on the river. I bet and he raises! I 3-bet and he just calls, tabling T5o for a rivered pair of 5s. A straight flush beats a pair of 5s so I got the pot AND $500. I should have tipped the guy something but I didn't think about it until later. I drove Duane back to the Bellagio around 3 AM and went back to Christy's mom's for a good night's sleep before the 1 PM super satellite.
This time I actually made it to the satellite but ended up wishing that I missed it. about 20 hands in I run QQ into AA and I'm out in 10 minutes. $1500 for 15 minutes of poker. I probably could have gotten rid of the QQ but basically, I suck at poker and I want to jump off the Stratoshpere without a bungee cord. I'm playing really porrly and not running very good and it's really pissing me off. The running bad I'm used to but I've been playing so bad and that really upsets me. I'm pretty sure that it's rustiness from all the travel and I'm going to make a real effort to play a lot of tourneys online over the next few weeks before heading to the Bahamas. I've played so frikkin bad this trip and at the same time run into a lot of crappy spots and sometimes you just want to fold you cards forever. I probably will stick it out until the end of the World Series of Poker next year but I can tell that I'm not going to be into this forever. I guess that's a good thing.
Enough negativity. Christy's mom has Sunday and Monday off so I called her once I busted to see if she wanted to go out to dinner, as a way for me to repay her for letting me live at her house. She ended up making reservations for a really nice Japanese restaurant at the Wynn called Okada. so I needed to get some clothes. I made Duane go with me to Robinson & May and he picked out some pants, shoes and a belt for me to buy. I needed brown shoes and a brown belt anyway, so really the only semi-unnecessary purchase was a pair of pants. They are pretty sick and have the auto-adjust waist so they're perfect for my fat ass. We couldn't find a good shirt so we went to Nordstroms where I bought a sick Ben Sherman shirt. It's far sicker than any of the going-out shirts that I currently own and I really like it. For dinner we had the Okada roll, avacado and asparagus in a roll topped with lobster and wasabi sauce. It was so unbelievably great I can't even describe it. I've never had lobster on sushi before but it worked well and makes my mouth salivate just writing about it. After that we had some Kobe Beef and marinated short ribs. The beef was unbelievably tender and melted in my mouth. I had some sweet potato sho-chu to wash it all down and finished with a pumpkin creme broule. The whole meal was insanely bomb and the bill ended up as $175. I left $220 and decided that was cheap for 10 nights lodging. Afterward, Christy's mom and I went to the Orleans casino to play so low limit hold 'em then went to the Gold Coast to play Bingo. That's right, B-I-N-G-O. I was the youngest person there and Christy's mom, at 50 years-old, was the second youngest. I had fun and had to laugh at everything that was going on. There were two regular lines to buy bingo tickets and one handicapped line. Sadly, the handicapped line was longer than the regular lines and kinda defeated the purpose. We didn't have any luck and ended up losing $40. Oh well, I had fun with Terry and I really appreciate her letting me live here. It's really nice to be able to get away from the chaos of the strip for a while and have a living room to hang out in instead of a hotel room. I think it's definitely a better environment to keep my poker focus, I just need to relearn how to play.
Since I didn't qualify for the tournament, I'll probably head back to San Diego on Wednesday night and fly up to Seattle on Friday afternoon. I've been gone from Seattle for 2 weeks and already miss it like crazy.
Oh, man, they're showing the Seahawks highlights on SportsCenter. Joey J is a MAN. See y'all soon.
On Friday, I decided to relax and played some $30/60 at the Bellagio. Pauly called and told me that there were 30-40 poker bloggers at the MGM so I cashed out and headed over there. They had 3 tables of 2/4 HORSE going so I got on the list and chatted for a while with Brad and Pauly. It took along time to get seated but I finally got seated at a table with Pauly, his brother Derek, Al, Daddy and Jaxia. They were all really cool and I thoroughly enjoyed donating my money to them. Pauly is in love with Jaxia even though she's attracted to women. Al drinks a lot of shots and I got really, really twisted. After a few hours, Duane showed up and the HORSE game broke so I went to sit with Duane in his 2/4 Hold 'Em game. I donked away about $100 in that game and kept pulling out my tourney money(about 6-7K worth of $100 bills in a WaMu envelope) and throwing it across the table at Duane, telling him to rebuy. I kept throwing it perfectly so that the money slid out a bit and all the players at the table could see the money but it never came all the way out or went flying all over the place. I don't know why I did this but I was as hammered as I've been in a long time(sorry, Mom). We finally quit around 5 AM and I drove Duane back to the Bellagio........JUST KIDDING!!!!.......we caught a cab back to the Bellagio where Duane tried to get me to come up to his room but I shut him down and told the cabbie how to get to Christy's mom's house. I ended up apssing out in the back of the cab and he had to wake me up when he got lost. I guess my directions were less than perfect but I managed to get us there and I gave him $30 for a $20 tab.
On Saturday there was a super satellite the the 15K main event at 1 PM and I decided to play in it...until I woke up at 3 PM at Christy's mom's house with no car. I showered and called John, who was going to bed but said he would pick me up around 7PM to get some dinner and take me to the MGM to pick up my car. We went to a really good Mexican place called Viva Mercado that I found on citysearch.com. The portions were huge and the food was really, really good. They have a great Vegetarian menu, too so if my loving mother or father ever come to Vegas with me I have a good place to take them. The restaurant is in a strip mall and has a horribly ghetto neon pink and blue sign but the food is excellent. If I was driving by there is no chance I'd ever stop at the place but it was packed inside. After dinner, John dropped me off at the MGM and I waited there for Duane and his mom and grandma to get out of Ka, the Cirqur du Soleil show at the MGM. I drove them all to the Bellagio and Duane and I went to the poker room to find John while mom and grandma went to the room to rest. We talked to John and got on the 4/8 list but it was really long and we decided to go check out the Mandalay Bay since they spread a 2/4. Well we never got in the same game because Duane got seated in a 4/8 first and started wining so he didn't want to switch tot eh 2/4 I was at. I ended up hitting a straight flush and winning $500, $150 of which I tipped to the dealer. He was speechless and I was very happy. The hand was pretty crazy. I straddle with 6h3h and get 5 callers. The flop is 6x4h2x. I bet and everyone calls, still 6 players to the turn. The turn is the 2h and I bet again. This time, everyone folds to the button and I need him to call or I don't get to see the river. I'm really pissed at myself for betting but I thought everyone was going to call again. Finally, he throws in 4 chips and I get to see the beautiful 5h on the river. I bet and he raises! I 3-bet and he just calls, tabling T5o for a rivered pair of 5s. A straight flush beats a pair of 5s so I got the pot AND $500. I should have tipped the guy something but I didn't think about it until later. I drove Duane back to the Bellagio around 3 AM and went back to Christy's mom's for a good night's sleep before the 1 PM super satellite.
This time I actually made it to the satellite but ended up wishing that I missed it. about 20 hands in I run QQ into AA and I'm out in 10 minutes. $1500 for 15 minutes of poker. I probably could have gotten rid of the QQ but basically, I suck at poker and I want to jump off the Stratoshpere without a bungee cord. I'm playing really porrly and not running very good and it's really pissing me off. The running bad I'm used to but I've been playing so bad and that really upsets me. I'm pretty sure that it's rustiness from all the travel and I'm going to make a real effort to play a lot of tourneys online over the next few weeks before heading to the Bahamas. I've played so frikkin bad this trip and at the same time run into a lot of crappy spots and sometimes you just want to fold you cards forever. I probably will stick it out until the end of the World Series of Poker next year but I can tell that I'm not going to be into this forever. I guess that's a good thing.
Enough negativity. Christy's mom has Sunday and Monday off so I called her once I busted to see if she wanted to go out to dinner, as a way for me to repay her for letting me live at her house. She ended up making reservations for a really nice Japanese restaurant at the Wynn called Okada. so I needed to get some clothes. I made Duane go with me to Robinson & May and he picked out some pants, shoes and a belt for me to buy. I needed brown shoes and a brown belt anyway, so really the only semi-unnecessary purchase was a pair of pants. They are pretty sick and have the auto-adjust waist so they're perfect for my fat ass. We couldn't find a good shirt so we went to Nordstroms where I bought a sick Ben Sherman shirt. It's far sicker than any of the going-out shirts that I currently own and I really like it. For dinner we had the Okada roll, avacado and asparagus in a roll topped with lobster and wasabi sauce. It was so unbelievably great I can't even describe it. I've never had lobster on sushi before but it worked well and makes my mouth salivate just writing about it. After that we had some Kobe Beef and marinated short ribs. The beef was unbelievably tender and melted in my mouth. I had some sweet potato sho-chu to wash it all down and finished with a pumpkin creme broule. The whole meal was insanely bomb and the bill ended up as $175. I left $220 and decided that was cheap for 10 nights lodging. Afterward, Christy's mom and I went to the Orleans casino to play so low limit hold 'em then went to the Gold Coast to play Bingo. That's right, B-I-N-G-O. I was the youngest person there and Christy's mom, at 50 years-old, was the second youngest. I had fun and had to laugh at everything that was going on. There were two regular lines to buy bingo tickets and one handicapped line. Sadly, the handicapped line was longer than the regular lines and kinda defeated the purpose. We didn't have any luck and ended up losing $40. Oh well, I had fun with Terry and I really appreciate her letting me live here. It's really nice to be able to get away from the chaos of the strip for a while and have a living room to hang out in instead of a hotel room. I think it's definitely a better environment to keep my poker focus, I just need to relearn how to play.
Since I didn't qualify for the tournament, I'll probably head back to San Diego on Wednesday night and fly up to Seattle on Friday afternoon. I've been gone from Seattle for 2 weeks and already miss it like crazy.
Oh, man, they're showing the Seahawks highlights on SportsCenter. Joey J is a MAN. See y'all soon.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Been Too Long
Sorry.
I got to Vegas around 6:30 PM on Tuesday. I just typed "Bellagio" in my Magellan GPS and it took me right to the valet lot. Navigation rules. I went straight to the cardroom and played in 2 $335 satellites for the $3100 tourney on Wednesday. The first one was uneventful as I went out 6th but in the second one there was a fun hand. 3-handed, I'm in the SB with 12K chips, the BB has 3K chips and the Button has 15K. Blinds are 200/400 and the button raises to 900. I look down at black AA and reraise to 2200. I'd been playing pretty aggressive and I want it to look like a resteal. BB fold and the button goes into the tank. He takes his protector off his cards and looks likes he's about to fold. I take the chip off my cards and act like I'm happy to take the pot when he re-caps his cards and re-raises to 5K total. He does a good job convincing me that he's weak so I count my chips and just call. The flop comes K62 rainbow, I check, he insta-pushes and I insta-call. He flips over KK and I'm out in 3rd. 8 people put down $200 extra to increase the stakes so the pot was essentially worth the $3100 entry fee plus $1800 cash. Whoever wins that hand wins the table a huge majority of the time. Oh well. Down $870, I head to the side games and sit in a pretty good $30/60 game. I run good and cash out around 1 AM up $1120. +$250 overall but I still had to buy myself into the $3100 event.
The next day I woke up pretty early and was very excited to play in the tournament. I hadn't played in a while and I was itching to go. Long story short, I played like ass early and folded the best hand in a big pot when I could have almost tripled up. Once the blinds went up to 200/400 I never had more than 15 blinds and played pretty good situational short-stacked poker. I worked my way up to 10K chips at the 300/600 50 ante level when my bustout hand happened. The floor comes over to break our table so everyone is packing up their chips during the hand. I'm in the CO-1 with Tc3c and raise to 1600. The BB calls and we see a flop of 8h6h2s. The BB checks but I smell a check-raise so I check behind. With a bigger stack I may bet but it's so easy for him to check-raise me with crap on that flop and I don't want to bet another 2K chips and have to fold. The turn is the Th and my opponent quickly bets 2200. I have about 8300 left and push pretty quickly. I put him on an 8 because everything so far feels like a missed check-raise. He starts muttering to himself, "you must have flopped a set, I can't believe you slowplayed your set, I don't see how I can fold". Now I'm a little worried because he's putting me on a big hand but feels committed to the pot. He's getting 2.36-1 which isn't a great price if he puts me on a big hand and he only has me covered by about 4K. Eventually he talks himself into calling with AhJs. In the actual hand he was getting the correct pot odds but if he puts me on a range of hands and is THAT positive that I have a monster, it's a bad call. He's absolutely shocked that I only have one pair and tap dances on my nuts when he hits his flush on the river. I'd rather have him fold and have 14K chips without risking a draw-out but I don't really mind the call as I had a good chance to get up to 20K in chips with 30 minutes left in the 300/600 level. I end up finishing about 72nd out of 250. I felt like I played really poorly all day and drive back to Christy's mom's house to marinate for a while. After about 30 minutes I want to play again so I head back to the Bellagio and enter a $540 satellite to the $5K tourney the next day. I play arguably the worst poker of my life and finish the tourney in 8th place. I'm disgusted so I go to sit with my friends John and Mike in a 4/8 game and raise every hand while drinking double Jack and Gingers. I like doing this while running/playing bad because it seems to shake up my game a bit. I refuse to do it while running good for the same reason. We finished around 2 AM, headed to the Bellagio Cafe and ate a late dinner. I had a great roasted turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potaoes and green beans and sobered up. I decided not to play poker at all today and just clear my mind. I brought money to buy directly into todays $5K event but I really didn't fell like I was playing my best poker so figured it would be best to chill for a minute. Tomorrow is another off day so I'll probably play online a bit and hit up the $30/60 a bit.
I mentioned that I'm staying at Christy's mom's house. She has a 3-bedroom townhouse a few miles off the strip and it's really nice to be able to come here and relax instead of being relegated to a hotel room. She doesn't have much food here because she works 80 hours a week and always eats at work so I had to go to the grocery store for Boca chicken pattys and Boca smoked sausages. It's always fun standing in line at the grocery store with 2 strippers. It's pretty easy to pick them out, bleached blond hair pulled back in a pony tail, gigantic fake breasts, and a ton of make-up. Someday I'll get tired of seeing strippers in the wild but today is not that day. Today I went to Best Buy and bought Cinderella Man, Dazed and Confused, Euro Trip and The Usher Truth Tour live in Atlanta. I went with John to get Cinderella Man because he had never seen it and I wanted to buy it. I ended up seeing Dazed and Confused in the bargain bin and couldn't pass that up. Then we saw Euro Trip and John claimed it was the funniest movie ever so I bought it even though I've never seen it. Then I picked up the Usher DVD and John made fun of me and said, "let's just go, you aren't going to buy that". Huh? "How do you know? I love Usher!". He replied with, "Stop screwing around, i know you're not going to buy that crap". Oh man, he definitely got my blood boiling so furiously that I almost bought 5 copies. Never tell a Schaefer that he won't/can't do something. Say I won't....SAY I WON'T!
The more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to skip the EPT in Copenhagen. The plan was to check out all the Northern European countries that I've never been to but January/February isn't the best time to go there and I think I'll take a rain check, no pun intended. I think the schedule looks something like this:
December 17 - January 3: Seattle for Holidays
January 3 - January 11: Bahamas for poker
January 11 - February 7: San Diego. A whole month at home!
February 8 - February 11: Deauville to defend my title. I thnk I have to go to this one, no?
After that, I'm not sure. I have almost 2 months in there before the baseball roadtrip so I'll have to think of something cool to fill it with. There's a tournament on a cruise ship in mid-March that I'd really like to qualify for.
It's a good day to be Kal mother-effing Penn. Harold and Kumar will obviously be amazing but I don't know if the Taj Mahal story will work without Van. Only time will tell but one thing is certain: I will see both of these in the theater.
I guess that's it in the Life of me. Sorry it isn't more interesting. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to see more strippers in the wild and get some action photos. At the very least I'll have a good story of how a stripper slapped me at Rite-Aid.
I got to Vegas around 6:30 PM on Tuesday. I just typed "Bellagio" in my Magellan GPS and it took me right to the valet lot. Navigation rules. I went straight to the cardroom and played in 2 $335 satellites for the $3100 tourney on Wednesday. The first one was uneventful as I went out 6th but in the second one there was a fun hand. 3-handed, I'm in the SB with 12K chips, the BB has 3K chips and the Button has 15K. Blinds are 200/400 and the button raises to 900. I look down at black AA and reraise to 2200. I'd been playing pretty aggressive and I want it to look like a resteal. BB fold and the button goes into the tank. He takes his protector off his cards and looks likes he's about to fold. I take the chip off my cards and act like I'm happy to take the pot when he re-caps his cards and re-raises to 5K total. He does a good job convincing me that he's weak so I count my chips and just call. The flop comes K62 rainbow, I check, he insta-pushes and I insta-call. He flips over KK and I'm out in 3rd. 8 people put down $200 extra to increase the stakes so the pot was essentially worth the $3100 entry fee plus $1800 cash. Whoever wins that hand wins the table a huge majority of the time. Oh well. Down $870, I head to the side games and sit in a pretty good $30/60 game. I run good and cash out around 1 AM up $1120. +$250 overall but I still had to buy myself into the $3100 event.
The next day I woke up pretty early and was very excited to play in the tournament. I hadn't played in a while and I was itching to go. Long story short, I played like ass early and folded the best hand in a big pot when I could have almost tripled up. Once the blinds went up to 200/400 I never had more than 15 blinds and played pretty good situational short-stacked poker. I worked my way up to 10K chips at the 300/600 50 ante level when my bustout hand happened. The floor comes over to break our table so everyone is packing up their chips during the hand. I'm in the CO-1 with Tc3c and raise to 1600. The BB calls and we see a flop of 8h6h2s. The BB checks but I smell a check-raise so I check behind. With a bigger stack I may bet but it's so easy for him to check-raise me with crap on that flop and I don't want to bet another 2K chips and have to fold. The turn is the Th and my opponent quickly bets 2200. I have about 8300 left and push pretty quickly. I put him on an 8 because everything so far feels like a missed check-raise. He starts muttering to himself, "you must have flopped a set, I can't believe you slowplayed your set, I don't see how I can fold". Now I'm a little worried because he's putting me on a big hand but feels committed to the pot. He's getting 2.36-1 which isn't a great price if he puts me on a big hand and he only has me covered by about 4K. Eventually he talks himself into calling with AhJs. In the actual hand he was getting the correct pot odds but if he puts me on a range of hands and is THAT positive that I have a monster, it's a bad call. He's absolutely shocked that I only have one pair and tap dances on my nuts when he hits his flush on the river. I'd rather have him fold and have 14K chips without risking a draw-out but I don't really mind the call as I had a good chance to get up to 20K in chips with 30 minutes left in the 300/600 level. I end up finishing about 72nd out of 250. I felt like I played really poorly all day and drive back to Christy's mom's house to marinate for a while. After about 30 minutes I want to play again so I head back to the Bellagio and enter a $540 satellite to the $5K tourney the next day. I play arguably the worst poker of my life and finish the tourney in 8th place. I'm disgusted so I go to sit with my friends John and Mike in a 4/8 game and raise every hand while drinking double Jack and Gingers. I like doing this while running/playing bad because it seems to shake up my game a bit. I refuse to do it while running good for the same reason. We finished around 2 AM, headed to the Bellagio Cafe and ate a late dinner. I had a great roasted turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potaoes and green beans and sobered up. I decided not to play poker at all today and just clear my mind. I brought money to buy directly into todays $5K event but I really didn't fell like I was playing my best poker so figured it would be best to chill for a minute. Tomorrow is another off day so I'll probably play online a bit and hit up the $30/60 a bit.
I mentioned that I'm staying at Christy's mom's house. She has a 3-bedroom townhouse a few miles off the strip and it's really nice to be able to come here and relax instead of being relegated to a hotel room. She doesn't have much food here because she works 80 hours a week and always eats at work so I had to go to the grocery store for Boca chicken pattys and Boca smoked sausages. It's always fun standing in line at the grocery store with 2 strippers. It's pretty easy to pick them out, bleached blond hair pulled back in a pony tail, gigantic fake breasts, and a ton of make-up. Someday I'll get tired of seeing strippers in the wild but today is not that day. Today I went to Best Buy and bought Cinderella Man, Dazed and Confused, Euro Trip and The Usher Truth Tour live in Atlanta. I went with John to get Cinderella Man because he had never seen it and I wanted to buy it. I ended up seeing Dazed and Confused in the bargain bin and couldn't pass that up. Then we saw Euro Trip and John claimed it was the funniest movie ever so I bought it even though I've never seen it. Then I picked up the Usher DVD and John made fun of me and said, "let's just go, you aren't going to buy that". Huh? "How do you know? I love Usher!". He replied with, "Stop screwing around, i know you're not going to buy that crap". Oh man, he definitely got my blood boiling so furiously that I almost bought 5 copies. Never tell a Schaefer that he won't/can't do something. Say I won't....SAY I WON'T!
The more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to skip the EPT in Copenhagen. The plan was to check out all the Northern European countries that I've never been to but January/February isn't the best time to go there and I think I'll take a rain check, no pun intended. I think the schedule looks something like this:
December 17 - January 3: Seattle for Holidays
January 3 - January 11: Bahamas for poker
January 11 - February 7: San Diego. A whole month at home!
February 8 - February 11: Deauville to defend my title. I thnk I have to go to this one, no?
After that, I'm not sure. I have almost 2 months in there before the baseball roadtrip so I'll have to think of something cool to fill it with. There's a tournament on a cruise ship in mid-March that I'd really like to qualify for.
It's a good day to be Kal mother-effing Penn. Harold and Kumar will obviously be amazing but I don't know if the Taj Mahal story will work without Van. Only time will tell but one thing is certain: I will see both of these in the theater.
I guess that's it in the Life of me. Sorry it isn't more interesting. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to see more strippers in the wild and get some action photos. At the very least I'll have a good story of how a stripper slapped me at Rite-Aid.
Monday, December 05, 2005
How 'bout them Seahawks!?!
That was a fun first half to watch. I love being able to bench your starters at halftime. I know people are going to wnder if the Eagles just suck, and they do, but before the game, everyone felt that the Eagles were going to come out fighting and it was going to be a close game. Well, they came out fighting but Dyson and Tatupu landed two solid uppercuts and the Eagle's glass jaw shattered. Mike Ditka predicted that the Hawks would be shown "how to play physical" by the Eagles and that the Eagles were going to pull the upset. Did you see the wood that the Hawks were laying in the first quarter? You think Iron Mike's comments were a little swayed by his Bear's allegiance? I found a cool blog, written by a Bears fan who knows his stuff. Check it out if you want a better look at the 2005 Bears. Man, it just felt good all the way around to get an easy win tonight. We've got San Fran and Tennessee in our next two games so all signs are pointing to a 12-2 record going into the game against the Colts on Christmas Eve. I shall be there and I can't wait. I found a decent story on ESPN about the Seahawks mediocrity in the past. It's not great but I found it a little entertaining.
I'm not going to make it out to Vegas until tomorrow night. I was considering leaving tonight but Kele's sister and boyfriend wanted to cook us a spaghetti dinner for letting them stay with us and I couldn't turn them down. They cooked it with a homemade sauce from real(not canned) tomatoes, eggplant sandwiches(eggplant as the "bread" with ricotta and mint and the filling) and bomb ass garlic bread. For desert we had mochi icecream and my belly is very happy at the moment. I'm probably going to head to Vegas around noon tomorrow to avoid the traffic here in So Cal. On Wednesday there's a 3K tourney and on Thursday there's a 5K event. I'm buying myself into these ones so my bankroll might take a bit of a hit. I'm also bringing enough money to play in two $1500 satellites for the 15K main event that starts next week. Who knows, maybe I'll be broke by the time I get home for Christmas. I guess I better buy Christmas presents before the trip!
I guess that's all for now. Although I said this last time, the NEXT post will definitely be from Vegas.
I'm not going to make it out to Vegas until tomorrow night. I was considering leaving tonight but Kele's sister and boyfriend wanted to cook us a spaghetti dinner for letting them stay with us and I couldn't turn them down. They cooked it with a homemade sauce from real(not canned) tomatoes, eggplant sandwiches(eggplant as the "bread" with ricotta and mint and the filling) and bomb ass garlic bread. For desert we had mochi icecream and my belly is very happy at the moment. I'm probably going to head to Vegas around noon tomorrow to avoid the traffic here in So Cal. On Wednesday there's a 3K tourney and on Thursday there's a 5K event. I'm buying myself into these ones so my bankroll might take a bit of a hit. I'm also bringing enough money to play in two $1500 satellites for the 15K main event that starts next week. Who knows, maybe I'll be broke by the time I get home for Christmas. I guess I better buy Christmas presents before the trip!
I guess that's all for now. Although I said this last time, the NEXT post will definitely be from Vegas.
A Great Day
Today was a great day on many levels. It wasn't a great day for me pokerwise as I blew a number of tournies but it was great for Seattle sports and for Carl Olson. I'll get back to that after this interlude:
"While 'Separate Ways' is a superb effort by Journey, and can safely claim the title of greatest music video ever made, it doesn't rock even half as hard as 'Don't Stop Believing'. It shocks me that you would even consider writing such blasphemy. I think today will be my last day reading your blog."
Geez. I wish someone other than Justin had posted that because I could dispute their claim but Justin is the biggest Journey fan in the history of the world and I can't brush him off as a "Don't Stop Believin'" bandwagoner. I guess I just got tired of everyone and their mom hyping that song without knowing any other Journey song at all. And when they start up with "Someday, Love will find you...." my hair stands on end and I can't sit still. My fists start punching the air and I lose control. I guess I've just been desensitized to the rockingness of "Don't stop Believin'" and I fail to see the forest through the trees. I'd still rather hear "Separate Ways" right now but again, that's probably just because I hear "Don't Stop Believin'" all the time these days. I'm sorry for the insult Justin, but did you have to go there with the last sentence? Why not "I want to stab you in the heart with a rusty spoon" or "I hope you get in a car wreck and slowly bleed to death". Both would hurt me far less than losing a reader of the blog. Oh well, maybe he'll never read this apology.
Back to what a great day it was. The Seahawks clinched the NFC West when the Rams lost to the Redskins. That's one goal down, the next is a first-round bye and home field throughout. They need a win tomorrow because Carolina and the Bears are lurking. I think a Bears-Hawks NFC Championship at Seahawks Stadium would be awesome. We need to take care of business and although the Eagles are reeling, it's tough to win on the road when you travel across the country and weird things happen somtimes on Monday Night. Shawn Alexander also kills fools under the primetime lights so look for him to put up 200 yards and 3-4 TDs in a Seahawks rout. I love this team.
In basketball, the Sonics won their third game in a row and now sit at 8-8. They're improving and hopefully are done getting blown out by 40. Also, the Huskies broke their losing streak to the Zags and now are 7-0 on the season. Lorenzo Romar is god, that's really all there is to it. One final b-ball note, check out this sick Shawn Kemp montage. The Reign Man sure was special before he gained 150 lbs and cranked out 30 kids.
Finally, Carl won 103K today at the Bellagio, finishing 3rd in the $5,000 event. He probably would have won more if he didn't take a nasty beat to go out: AJ vs AT all-in preflop with his opponent spiking a Ten on the river to knock Carl out. Carl obviously played really well and I wish I could have been there to cheer him on. If nothing else, I could have shouted to the dealer, "NO TEN!!!!" and maybe had him flip over a different river card. Tourneys are such a pain in the ass because the money jumps so much at the end. Carl won 103K for 3rd but 2nd got 207K and the winner got 375K. Basically, no one is really happy except for the winner. Everyone else feels like they could have done more or won more. I'm really happy for Carl and I can look at the 103K from afar and pat him on the back. However, I know Carl isn't satisfied and really had his sights set on the 375K first prize. That desire is what makes poker players great competitiors and that competitive fire is what will make you better in the long run. Congrats, Carl, YOU DA MAN!!!
I think I'm going to drive out to Vegas tomorrow night after the Monday Night Football game. I'm going to head down to the Qualcomm area and watch the game with one of Tomsie's friends from Oak Harbor, Leon. He used to work at the Times and turned Jack Broom onto our story. I've never really kicked it with him for a long period of time but he's a real chill cat. I want to play in the Bellagio on Tuesday so I'll just have to make the drive late tomorrow night. Pauly's grandmother passed away and he's back in New York for a while for the funeral. It's sad everytime something like this happens but she was sick and it seems like dying was a way to ease her pain. It's not really a tragedy like an 18 year-old passing but it still sucks nonetheless. My deepest sympathys go out to Pauly and I hope everything goes well for him back home and we can hang out when he gets a chance to return to Vegas.
Seriosuly, check out these brilliant lyrics. Can I call it "the second best Journey song ever" without alienating any readers? Here's a quick sample of the brilliance:
Someday love will find you
Break those chains that bind you
One night will remind you
How we touched
And went our separate ways
If he ever hurts you
True love won’t desert you
You know I still love you
Though we touched
And went our separate ways
I've never seen the music video but I'm going to hit up Limewire stat and check that bad boy out. My next entry will probably be from Sin City. Until then, may your cards be live and your pots be monsters.
"While 'Separate Ways' is a superb effort by Journey, and can safely claim the title of greatest music video ever made, it doesn't rock even half as hard as 'Don't Stop Believing'. It shocks me that you would even consider writing such blasphemy. I think today will be my last day reading your blog."
Geez. I wish someone other than Justin had posted that because I could dispute their claim but Justin is the biggest Journey fan in the history of the world and I can't brush him off as a "Don't Stop Believin'" bandwagoner. I guess I just got tired of everyone and their mom hyping that song without knowing any other Journey song at all. And when they start up with "Someday, Love will find you...." my hair stands on end and I can't sit still. My fists start punching the air and I lose control. I guess I've just been desensitized to the rockingness of "Don't stop Believin'" and I fail to see the forest through the trees. I'd still rather hear "Separate Ways" right now but again, that's probably just because I hear "Don't Stop Believin'" all the time these days. I'm sorry for the insult Justin, but did you have to go there with the last sentence? Why not "I want to stab you in the heart with a rusty spoon" or "I hope you get in a car wreck and slowly bleed to death". Both would hurt me far less than losing a reader of the blog. Oh well, maybe he'll never read this apology.
Back to what a great day it was. The Seahawks clinched the NFC West when the Rams lost to the Redskins. That's one goal down, the next is a first-round bye and home field throughout. They need a win tomorrow because Carolina and the Bears are lurking. I think a Bears-Hawks NFC Championship at Seahawks Stadium would be awesome. We need to take care of business and although the Eagles are reeling, it's tough to win on the road when you travel across the country and weird things happen somtimes on Monday Night. Shawn Alexander also kills fools under the primetime lights so look for him to put up 200 yards and 3-4 TDs in a Seahawks rout. I love this team.
In basketball, the Sonics won their third game in a row and now sit at 8-8. They're improving and hopefully are done getting blown out by 40. Also, the Huskies broke their losing streak to the Zags and now are 7-0 on the season. Lorenzo Romar is god, that's really all there is to it. One final b-ball note, check out this sick Shawn Kemp montage. The Reign Man sure was special before he gained 150 lbs and cranked out 30 kids.
Finally, Carl won 103K today at the Bellagio, finishing 3rd in the $5,000 event. He probably would have won more if he didn't take a nasty beat to go out: AJ vs AT all-in preflop with his opponent spiking a Ten on the river to knock Carl out. Carl obviously played really well and I wish I could have been there to cheer him on. If nothing else, I could have shouted to the dealer, "NO TEN!!!!" and maybe had him flip over a different river card. Tourneys are such a pain in the ass because the money jumps so much at the end. Carl won 103K for 3rd but 2nd got 207K and the winner got 375K. Basically, no one is really happy except for the winner. Everyone else feels like they could have done more or won more. I'm really happy for Carl and I can look at the 103K from afar and pat him on the back. However, I know Carl isn't satisfied and really had his sights set on the 375K first prize. That desire is what makes poker players great competitiors and that competitive fire is what will make you better in the long run. Congrats, Carl, YOU DA MAN!!!
I think I'm going to drive out to Vegas tomorrow night after the Monday Night Football game. I'm going to head down to the Qualcomm area and watch the game with one of Tomsie's friends from Oak Harbor, Leon. He used to work at the Times and turned Jack Broom onto our story. I've never really kicked it with him for a long period of time but he's a real chill cat. I want to play in the Bellagio on Tuesday so I'll just have to make the drive late tomorrow night. Pauly's grandmother passed away and he's back in New York for a while for the funeral. It's sad everytime something like this happens but she was sick and it seems like dying was a way to ease her pain. It's not really a tragedy like an 18 year-old passing but it still sucks nonetheless. My deepest sympathys go out to Pauly and I hope everything goes well for him back home and we can hang out when he gets a chance to return to Vegas.
Seriosuly, check out these brilliant lyrics. Can I call it "the second best Journey song ever" without alienating any readers? Here's a quick sample of the brilliance:
Someday love will find you
Break those chains that bind you
One night will remind you
How we touched
And went our separate ways
If he ever hurts you
True love won’t desert you
You know I still love you
Though we touched
And went our separate ways
I've never seen the music video but I'm going to hit up Limewire stat and check that bad boy out. My next entry will probably be from Sin City. Until then, may your cards be live and your pots be monsters.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
I Love Football
The Champ is Here! The Champ is Here!
That's Kele's brother, Matt, all-conference Center and great guy. He might come on the baseball road trip with me if he doesn't get a scholarship offer for next year. Tonight we drove up to College of the Canyons and watched his team, the Grossmont Griffins, win the Southern California Community College championship over the Canyon Cougars, the defending state champs and owners of a 26-game winning streak heading into the game and now proud owners of a one-game losing streak. The O-Line looked awesome and I think Matt will definitely get his share of offers for next year. He's one of the team captains and you can see his leadership on the sideline, it makes me really wish I had played football. The play for the State Championship, against the Northern California champs, CCSF, next week in Fresno. I'll probably be in Vegas but everyone root for the Griffins and Mr. Gaughen. It was great to watch a game where the fans actually made it feel like a high school game but the quality of play was definitely on a college level. Here's one more picture of Matty and me. God, that is some beautiful hair.
I told you I knew him!
Tomorrow is a big day for me, pokerwise. I'm entering 5 different $200 tournaments across 5 different sites and competing with some of the best online players for $1K each. The $1K bet is on top of our tournament buy-ins and there's a formula to calculate who has the best showing across the tourneys. I'm probably a bit of a dog against these guys but the competition will be fun and hopefully it will force me to concentrate a bit more. If you want more details on the bet, check out this page.
I'm probably going to head to Vegas on Tuesday to play in some of the Bellagio tournaments and hang out with Pauly. Apparently there's a blogger convention out there and I might get to meet some of the legends of poker blogging. I know, I'm a nerd, but at least I can admit it. Nothing pisses me off like those closet nerds who try really hard to be cool but can't admit to themselves that they're really big nerds....like this guy:
One of those days
I'm just kidding, Cliff knows he's a nerd and fully embraces it. One of his Army buddies sent me that picture and I was trying to find a way to get it into a post. Never get this drunk around Army sickos because they'll not only put a mustache and goatee on your face, they'll go as far as putting on eye-shadow and mascara. God, isn't he pretty? Anyway, Ms. Clifford found out this week that he is going to fly fixed-wing aircrafts for the Army. I was unaware that the Army had any fixed-wing pilots, I thought they were all Air Force and the Army pilots flew helicopters, but apparently about 1% of Army pilots get chosen to fly fixed-wings. Usually they're grizzled veterans with 10,000 flight hours but for some reason the #1 graduate of Cliff's class got to train with fixed-wings and as you already know, he dominated. He and his whopping 130 flight hours start training in early January. He's going to be flying VIPs around and basically has one of the softest jobs in the entire Army. Way to go, Cliff, no dodging missles for you! The coolest part is that he has a great chance of being stationed at Fort Lewis so we're going to look at condos when we're up in Seattle for Christmas. He'll live with me somewhere downtown and crash with some of his friends down at Fort Lewis when he has early days/late nights. It should be really good for me to live with him and I hope I don't drag him into the gutter. Let's hope I get all cut up and acquire the ridiculous amounts of game that he has. Congrats, Cliff and I'm looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks.
Enough of the lovefest, I need to get to bed so that I'll be well rested for the big tournies tomorrow. Hopefully I'l have something good to report. If you're bored in the afternoon, hop online and watch me play for a bit. Hit me up on MSN: bkschaefer@htmail.com, or AOL: BrandonKoga, if you want to know what sites I'm on and what my usernames are. Or, you could read through that link up above about the $1K bet.
P.S. This is really random but you know how everyone loves "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey? Well, I'm here to tell you that the best Journey song is "Separate Ways" and it isn't even close. Download that bad boy and crank up the volume as soon as you can. It's a spiritual experience.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Lazy Days
Kianna
Kianna went home today and it was a lot of fun having her around. You can tell from this picture how much she loves me. Isn't that a cute middle finger? Kele and Danielle both have been working during the day so Kianna and I got to spend a lot of quality time together. I took her to see Yours, Mine and Ours and she thought it was really good. I'm sure none of you were planning on seeing this ridiculous crap but in case you were: DON'T! We were the only ones in the theater so we could laugh and talk as loud as we wanted so that was cool. I also bought her a Bratz Doll named Sasha. Bratz dolls are one of the most ridiculous things that I'm ever seen but I guess they're really popular. I bought her the "Step Out" version of Sasha and on the back it says, "My name's Sasha, but my friends call be Bugga Boo because I'm down with the hip-hop thang." I couldn't make that up. Kele's sister, Sara, and her boyfriend, Ryan, flew in last night and they'll be hanging out with us for a few days. Kele's brother Matt drove them up here last night so we had a nice little Gaughen family reunion of sorts in our little apartment. Tomorrow we're all going up north to see Matt play in the Southern California football championship and if they win that one they play for the state championship next week. Gooooo Matt's JuCo(I don't know the name). Matt plays center and he's definitely a beast. He's thinking about coming on the roadtrip with me if he doesn't get a scholarship to somewhere that he likes. He only has one scholarship offer so far and it's to some small I-AA school in Arkansas and he doesn't think that he wants to go there. Anyway, here's a nice picture of Kele before I talk about my schedule:
Kele
Morgan, aka Gorilla, called me today and asked if I wanted him to buy me playoff tickets for the Seahawks. I totally forgot about it but it looks like I'll have to miss the trip to Copenhagen if the Seahawks make it to the NFC Championship game. Copenhagen ends on the 22nd, the exact date of the game. Even if it isn't at home I think I want to try to go to that bad boy. And of course the Super Bowl is on February 6th so I want to keep that date open just in case. I don't want to jinx the Hawks by planning around those dates but man, I want to figure some stuff out. I guess I'll just wait to buy airfare until after everything has been sorted out. I may have to pay a little more but at least I won't risk missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I haven't been playing too much poker since Kianna's been here and whatnot so I might just head to Vegas on Monday, or Sunday after the big online poker tournies. I was planning on going a week later but I'd like to hang with Carl and play in some of the earlier events at the Bellagio. We'll see if I'm fired up after the Sunday tournies or if I never want to play poker again. Later, alligators.
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