Breathe Again

Thank god UConn lost. I couldn't even bear to watch that game and I found it really difficult to follow any of the Elite 8 games. I just didn't care. Now that UConn is out I feel the excitement rushing back into my veins. I really hope that George Mason completes this run but I'm scared that they might suffer a letdown now that they've reached the Final Four. Luckilly my predictions have been unbelievably wrong this year so GMU will probably come out and kick butt. I'm intrigued by the LSU story and it would be really nice to see them knock off UCLA. I don't want to see Bill Walton chanting U-C....L-A ever again.

Something I really need to do before recapping the last few days is pimp some blogs. One of my favorite things that I do in the morning is logging onto bloglines and seeing what my favorite bloggers are up to. I never give anyone any credit and never post links so I'm going try to start doing a better job of that. This last weekend, a bunch of poker bloggers got invited to the Playboy Mansion to cover a celebrity poker tournament. Getting an invite to the Mansion is one of the main reasons why I'm playing in 17-20 WSOP events this year. I want make a TV tgable on ESPN and be cool enough to go to one of those parties. Anyway, about 8 bloggers lived the impossible dream, including two of my favorites, Dr. Pauly and Sir AlCantHang. They both have great write-ups already and have promised that their stories will be continued. They also have links to some of the other bloggers who got to go along. I haven't read those stories yet because the internet is excruciatingly slow here at my grandma's but I'll read them when I get home tomorrow. It's funny because I can read their blogs through bloglines but when I try to go to their real webpage, my Grandma's internet blocks them because they're listed as "pornography" sites. Awesome.

Two other great blogs are my friends Scott and Robert. Scott always has fantastic pictures from his life as a teacher in Japan and Robert always has fantastic stories about his life as a teacher in Africa. Scott's blog is more for the visual learners and Robert's is for the heavy readers. Check them out because they're both really really fanastic.

Like I said earlier, I'm going to try to do a better job of pimping the good blogs out there. There's a lot of really cool stuff that I read about every day and I'm going to try to make all your lives a little less productive. Hooray.

On Saturday, Renee's mom had a huge Korean feast for her birthday. About 8 of us went up to Lynnwood and ate until we were comatose. I'm at my Grandma's place right now but there are some good pictures of the spread that I'll try to post on Wednesday. We went back to Seattle and tried to go out but no one had any energy. It's really strange to know how crazy we are then watch us sitting on our asses, sipping beer, while our bodies tried to digest all the ribs and kimchi. A few people tried to go out but I just dropped them off and drove myself home because my entire body was sore from falling out of a tree on Friday night and landing directly on my tailbone so I couldn't handle being in a crowded space.

On Sunday I played in some huge poker tournaments and only cashed in one, making an $88 profit on Paradise. That didn't quite offset the $1K buy-in on Stars but that's life as a tourney player. I had a tough hand to go out in the 1K. It's in the middle stages of the tournament, blinds are 100/200 with a 25 ante and I have a pretty good stack of 8400. I raise in EP to 600 with JJ and only the BB calls. The BB has me covered. The flop is 643 with two hearts, he checks, I bet 800 and he shoves his entire 13,400 stack in. I don't think I can fold here so I don't but alas he has QQ and I'm gone. It always feels weird to commit 40 blinds with unimproved JJ but in these online tourneys you can't pass up on spots like this. Blinds rise too fast and his range is too wide. Oh well. $1K down the drain.

On Monday morning I caught the train down to Vancouver to help my grandma and mom move some heavy boxes and stuff. They needed help from a strong man but Cliff was busy so they had to settle for me. If you learn anything from this blog, learn this: DON'T LIVE YOUR LIFE AS A PACKRAT! THROW STUFF AWAY! DONATE STUFF TO GOODWILL! FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR GRANDCHILDREN! PLEASE!!!!!! It is absolutely unreal how many boxes I've hauled to Goodwill. 5 VCRs, 3 TVs, an ungodly amount of coax and phone wires. I love you Gramps and I miss you dearly but man my back is hating a right now. It doesn't help that my body's still sore from falling out of the tree on Friday. Yuck. Anyway, we've gotten rid of most of the stuff and my grandma's place is looking good. We're heading back to Seattle tomorrow to take the stuff that we want to keep back to my mom's house.

On the way up to Seattle I was supposed to pick up my Honda Odyssey but the deal fell through. I was trying to get the guy to give me the van for $6200 even though the BlueBook was $6400 because it looked like the tires might have to be replaced. He actually wanted $6500 because the van had custom rims. We were negotiating a bit when he got a call from someone else who offered $6700 for the van so he sold it to that guy. The ad on Craig's List was asking for $6995 so the guy probably thought he was getting a good deal by offering $6700. Bah. I was arguing over $200 frikking dollars and I lost out on a good van. I spent more than that drowning my sorrow on Friday night. I'm leaving for the trip in exactly on week so I better find something else soon. I'll definitely keep you posted.

Tomorrow is Renee's Birthday so i'm taking her to Cafe Campagne for dinner. There's a promotion called 25 for $25 that I'm going to take advantage of tomorrow. Basically there are 25 nice restaurants that offer a semi-fixed menu for $25 and you get an appetizer, entree and dessert. $25 seems a bit pricy to get all excited about but Campagne is a really nice French restaurant and you'd never be able to eat there for that cheap under normal circumstances. Cafe Campagne trip report coming soon. GO GEORGE MASON!