Wednesday started out pretty much exactly the way I expected it to--with my phone ringing around 4:00 am, and the voice on the other end telling me to get down to the poker room ASAP. I swear, until that damn bad beat jackpot hits, I should just get a room at the hotel. So I got less sleep than I wanted to, but on the flip side, I knew I'd have a game or two to deal when I got to work instead of sitting on my ass for the first two hours, followed by half-on/half-off downs with a bunch of cheapass old fogas until 11.
But I was pretty damn busy all day long, and we were shorthanded for most of my shift. I *almost* had to stick around and work overtime, but at the last minute I got cut loose. And it was another lucrative day for me, and it'll get even better because I left before the tournament ended, so I have two downs worth of my tourney toke share waiting for me in an envelope the next time I go back to work.
I was good and ready to come home when I finally got out of the casino, but I had a whole bunch of household projects to do once I got home. I spent a little too much time sweating my ass off down in the garage, digging through boxes and searching for stuff I packed a month and a half ago. But I found pretty much everything I was searching for--all of my DVDs, CDs, the box that had all of my nicer hardbound books in it, my pirate flag (I'm going to use it as a black-out curtain on the south-facing window in my bedroom--I'm getting sick of waking up with a bright hot stripe creeping across my face in the morning from the gap in the blinds), and some pictures.
When I got back upstairs, I organized some shelves, framed a bunch of pictures, reconditioned the wood on the inside of my humidor and soaked the humidifier in distilled water, answered some emails, and made a few phone calls. First of all, I talked to Scottie, and we made plans to meet up for dinner and cigars later tonight. That should be fun. I also spoke to the folks at The Mirage--a group of us are having dinner at Stack next weekend, and I had to make sure the reservations were straight. After those calls were made, I called the spa down at the local Country Club and made a reservation for my manicure with
Once I got off the phone, the big project for the night was fixing my iPod.
Basically, the thing has been a big shiny paperweight for the past year. One day last summer I was driving along listening to it (my truck came with an iPod input in the CD player, but no electric windows. I don't get it either), and suddenly every song would stop after like thirty seconds, and the damn thing would freeze up. This particular gremlin affected most of my playlists, it was annoying as hell. Luckily, not all playlists were corrupted, so I could still listen to most of my Rat Pack stuff, along with most of my Jimmy Buffet, but everything else was completely farked up.
Short of sending it back to the factory and paying out the ass for shipping, diagnostics, insurance, and repair, my research led me to believe that I had some bad sectors on my hard drive and I could cure it with a simple reformat. Uh yeah, but if I did that, I'd lose everything I had on there. So I was sort of reluctant to save the patient by killing it. Finally, I realized that most every song on there was already on the hard drive on my computer, or on one of my hundreds of CDs. There was one big bummer that kept me from doing it though.
That iPod was a gift from Sticky back when we were an item. And instead of just sending me a shiny new iPod, she had cracked it open and loaded up my 100 favorite songs (from a blog post I made a couple years back), and also made a playlist of slower and more romantic type songs that meant a lot to her, and we would play it at night when we got back to the hotel whenever she was here in town. So it was much more than just a nice electronic gadget gift--it has a lot of sentimental value too.
Anyhow, I didn't have any copies of the songs on that playlist, and for obvious reasons I never needed to make copies, and after we broke up, I didn't think too much about it, but I would listen to it every now and again and think of the good times we used to have.
But those memories are just that--memories. I had to bury the past a long time ago, and this one playlist was the one legitimate connection I still had to that chapter of life. Reformatting the iPod would wipe that out and put the final nail in the coffin of that whole experience.
So with little in the way of fanfare or ceremony, I got out the hammer and said goodbye for the last time--It took about an hour to wipe out everything.
Once that little chore was done, it was like having a brand spankin' new iPod, ready for me to load whatever I wanted on there. The first thing I did was buy some software that works with both the iPod and Windows Vista without having to kiss the ring of iTunes. None of that stupid 'syncing' nonsense, and now I can move files both to and from my ipod and computer. (iTunes won't allow you to move songs from the iPod to computer, so you don't really own the music you buy).
Anyhow, this new software works flawlessly, and I loaded a huge playlist, entitled Suite Madam Angy, in less than ten minutes. (It was all the party music we had playing during the Friday night gathering at March Madness, right up to the point where Hotel Security busted up the festivities). This new software also lets me load pictures and video pretty easily, something I was unable to do before, so I got a bunch of my favorite photos loaded too. Next time I have some free time, all my favorite YouTube videos are getting loaded on there too.
As I'm typing this, I've got my earbuds in and I'm listening to a bunch of my favorite tunes without any skipping, freeze-outs, or any other type of errors. It's like having a brand-new toy. Now I just have to find me some cool sunglasses and a backwards hat, and my poker game will be complete.
And speaking of poker, I didn't play any yesterday--there are still connectivity issues with PokerStars, and well, I had a lot of other things going on anyways. As far as live tournaments go, I've got nothing on the horizon--working all the time really eats into my free time! I won't be doing one today, I'm on call and and I'm going out to dinner later anyways. When I was leaving work yesterday, my boss said See ya tomorrow! and I said Probably not, I'm on-call. And she immediately grinned and repeated See ya tomorrow! So I then requested not to be called before 7 am and she said that she could arrange that. So hopefully, if I have to work today, it'll be more favorable hours. I'm working Friday and Saturday too, I think, so who knows when I'll be off again. I think Monday is my next scheduled day off without being on-call.
I can't complain too much about the money, but damn, I sure am tired when I get home every afternoon.
And I guess if that phone is gonna ring again, I better get some sleep...
Mikey
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