Hump Day

Happy Hump Day to all you working stiffs out there. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous in DC and Baltimore, continuing my lucky weather trend. It started in Oakland and San Francisco, where it had rained nonstop for over a week then suddenly stopped for the two days that I was in town for A's and Giants games, and has continued to the East Coast where it's been sunny and 70 every single day. I'm probably jinxing myself by writing this but I'm going to knock on wood and continueworshiping the weather gods before I go to sleep every night.

On Monday, I woke up at 8:30 and caught the Metro from Devo's house to the Smithsonian and the Mall. I actually got to the American History Museum at 9:30 AM and they didn't open until 10. It might have been the first time in my life that I've been up and about before a museum opened. The museum had an exhibit titled, "Amreica at War" or something like that and it showcased what life was like during all the major wars from the Revolutionary War until today. The ehibit was obviously done very well and I really enjoyed it. They also had the original "Star-Spangled Banner" and were working on cleaning it and mounting it for display. I went to the Natural History Museum next and enjoyed looking at dinosaur bones. I considered going to the Holocaust Museum but I didn't want to get depressed so I skipped it and wandered around the Mall for a while. I only took one picture all day:


Washington Monument 

At noon I caught the Metro back to Devo's place and drove up to Baltimore. I checked into the Days Inn in the ghetto and played poker all day. I'm competing with some people on 2+2 all month and trying to score the most tournament points on Poker Stars. I tried 8-tabling on my laptop and quickly found that it wasn't a good idea. I ended up down about $400 and decided to only play 4 at a time, max.

Tuesday morning, I checked out of the ghetto and went to the Sheraton Inner Harbor. The hotel is 2 blocks from Camden Yards and 2 blocks from the Inner Harbor. The Inner Harbor is the nicest, most happenin' spot in Baltimore and the Sheraton's location was perfect. Baltimore's hotels aren't cheap and the best deal I could find on Orbitz was the Holiday Inn for $159. The Holiday Inn is 1 block from Camden and about 5 blocks from the Inner Harbor. I checked out Hotwire.com and they had an unnamed 3-Star hotel for $110 so I decided to roll the dice and it ended up being the Sheraton. The Sheraton was $330 on Orbitz. I'm not sure what the deal is with Hotwire and why they don't tell you the name of your hotel beforehand but they usually have pretty good deals and they tell you the neighborhood that you'll be staying in. I'll definitely use them again.

Anyway, I played some poker until my friend, Derek, showed up at 4 PM. I hadn't eaten all day so we went to a little brewery by the stadium and had dinner. I had a crabcake sandwich and it was delicious. I'm not sure wha kind of crab they use(Blue?) but it was definitely the bomb. We had a few IPAs to wash down our dinner then headed to the stadium. I'd been to Camden before but I was still impressed by the stadium. It's beautiful in its own right but gets extra cool points for starting the new-retro stadium revolution. I really like the way that they incorporated the warehouse into the scenery and I like the view of downtown behind centerfield. Here are some pictures:


The Babe 


Nice Seats, Huh? 


The Right Field Warehouse 

I had a great time hanging out with Derek and I'm happy he made it to the game. He and his wife have a 7 month-old baby and I know he's busy as hell. Baseball is the perfect event to hang out with a friend and talk about everything under the sun. I love it so much. We saw a good pitching from Kris Benson (Anna's giving it up tonight!) and 3 Oriole home runs paved the way for a 9-2 victory for the home team. The scoreboard claimed that the attendance was 15,000 and change but it definitely felt like less than that. It was definitely the smallest crowd I've seen so far and quite a change from the 45,000-plus that were at each of the Mets-Braves games.

After the game I went back to the Sheraton and played some more tournaments. I ended up winning a $50 Stud Hi-Low tourney despite not really knowing how to play. I played very very tight until I got to the final table and picked up an (A2)3, picked up a 4 on 4th, 7 on 5th, then 2-2 for the smoothest of 7s and trip deuces. I then picked up (A4)A that held up for a scoop and then got rolled up deuces that held up for a scoop. It's an easy game when you pick up 3 monsters in 4 hands late in a tourney. Once I got a big stack it was pretty much over and I abused the small stacks into submission. The tourney was pretty small but the $840 for first place put me back in the black for the tournament challenge.

This morning I woke up at 10:30, called to front desk for a check-out extension, and went back to bed until 11:30. I checked out at noon and walked to the Ineer Harbor. It was another beautiful day and it was definitely an enjoyable atmosphere. I ate lunch at the ESPN Zone and then went to Barnes and Noble to buy The Complete Stories of Truman Capote. The book came highly recommended by my dad and I wanted some non-poker reading material. Here's a picture of the old power plant that houses the new businesses:


Power Plant 

Again, I really like how they incorporated an old historical building into something new and hip. The smokestack looking thing that a power plant has runs right through the Barnes and Noble and adds a lot to the aesthetic beauty. Around 2 PM, I drove back to DC and found RFK Stadium using my GPS. The stadium looks pretty ghetto and the neighborhood was kinda shady so I looked up Starbucks in my GPS and found one about 2 miles away. Now I'm at a coffee shop called Cosi, across the street from Starbucks. I bought a drink and now I'm stealing someone's wireless internet and updating my blog. Starbucks has a T-Mobile signal but there were 3 or 4 other unsecured connections for me to choose from for free. God bless America.

The Nationals game isn't until 7 PM so I'll probably be here for 2 more hours. I'm really excited for the upcoming games, in Philly and at Shea. Tomorrow I get to kick it with Nat, Al and Eva and on Friday there's a big crew going to the Mets game, including Matt, Ivy, Chris, Ezra, Emil and Nat. Nat's coming with me on my Philly-NYC-Boston-Cooperstown-NYC rectangle of baseball love. Al is planning on calling in sick for work on Friday so that should tell you what Thursday's going to be like. If Al's calling in sick, I might be calling in dead.

Apperently, starting June 7th, it's going to be a class C Felony to play online poker in the state of Washington. I haven't really read into the details but apparently the budget is $0 to enforce this law. However, the threat of a felony is enough to get me to stop playing. That's really going to suck. Carl was planning on buying a place and even put an offer on a condo the day before he heard about this law. Now he's withdrawn his offer and is seriously considering moving to Vegas. The damn Indian Casinos have a ton of pull I guess and I'm pretty sure they were the major factor behind this legislation. I'm not very happy.

OK, that's it. I'll try to get a blog up on Friday, as long as I don't drown in a pool of SoCo.