After pulling the ripcord yesterday, I drove down south to my buddy Gaines' house. He's trying to get a friendly Wednesday night poker tournament going on a semi-regular basis, and I haven't played much (except for that little side trip to Vegas) in the past couple of years, so I figured it would be an inexpensive way to work on my game.
He's got tournament software and all the things one needs to host a good poker night, so it was an enjoyable evening. I think we had eight people there, and since the blind levels were only 20 minutes each, I volunteered to do all of the dealing, just to speed up the game.
We had a good mix of players, with only one complete novice, but certainly a couple of guys who could hold their own. I think we kicked off around 7 pm or so, and aside from a brief break when the pizzas got delivered, we played straight through until around 10:15.
I didn't take any bad beats, and my big hands--AA, KK, and 88 all held up. The only dent in my chip stack came when I flopped four to a straight flush and never got any help.
The bottom line, was that yeah, I was one of the three in the money--only three places paid, and at the end it was just down to Gaines and I going head-to-head, and although he had a bigger stack than me, I had just beat him two in a row and was about to get the hat trick when he offered to chop. It was getting late for most people, and I was agreeable since most of his guests were leaving anyways, so we just split first and second place money. Had it been anyone else I would've played it out, but I too wanted to get home (he lives about 50-something miles away from me, so I had a long drive ahead of me), and well, it was still a friendly game. Not like a cut-thought tournament in a casino with a bunch of annoying assholes.
But at some point in the tournament, as you can see from the photo above, a reptile got loose on the table and went exploring in the middle of the game. I can honestly say I've never dealt a game with live critters motoring around on the felt, but Slurp is pretty mellow, and certainly the most curious lizard I've ever seen--he wasn't too much of a distraction.
Luckily it's almost all freeway between his house and mine, and that late at night, I didn't have any traffic to contend with. Since I didn't have to get up early this morning, I stayed up till around 1:00 this morning clearing some sitcoms off of my DVR.
I didn't wake up until 8:30 this morning, which was absolutely awesome. Lately I've been waking up much too early on my days off, and it's been messing with my system, making me tired when I go back to work the next day. But today, while I planned on being motivated, it just didn't happen. I got the pot of coffee going, but the keyboard time just wasn't happening, although now that I've been at it for a bit, I'll probably get some more writing done. It's been a beautiful day, and I thought about going on a hike, but the biggest obstacle is that I don't want to drive anywhere to go hiking. I swear I spend half my life in the car, and the closest 'trail' is still about six miles away (the greenway down in White House). Walking around here is out of the question--it's narrow country roads with ditches on each side, and no place to bail when farmers and dump trucks inevitably come motoring by (yeah, I've already had a couple of close calls before, so no, I don't really walk around my neighborhood too much).
So my motivation needle is hanging out below 'E' today, and I'm ok with that. It's nice to have a day every once in awhile where nothing gets accomplished.
The only other thing I've done today is make a big batch of my almost-famous pineapple-cashew chicken salad. I decided a few weeks ago to stop buying bread and eating sandwiches, and now I just use the smallest flour tortillas I can find. They're a perfect substitute for bread, and they don't fill me up nearly as much. Besides, I've been taking them hiking and using them for lunch, and a tortilla with sliced pepperoni, a piece of cheese, and a packet of Gulden's brown mustard I swiped from Panera Bread is a favorite meal both on the trail and at the office.
I already eaten two of them since I made it this morning, and it's oh-so-good, so I'm guessing I'll probably have it for dinner, too. (The recipe: canned chicken [although I used my last leftover grilled chicken breast I had in the fridge to supplement it], Miracle Whip, horseradish, chopped cashews, pineapple tidbits, white pepper, black pepper, and a touch of brown mustard). It's easily my favorite chicken salad recipe out there, and I've tried all the variations--apples, walnuts, grapes, celery, etc.
And since it's a beautiful sunny 80-degree day here, I don't really feel like cooking, so it's a perfect meal for a sunny day.
I don't have anything else on the agenda for the afternoon, so I'll probably just do some reading, and maybe some 'homework' (yeah, working on the book, practicing the bass, and watching my Great Courses lectures).
Back to the grind tomorrow.
Mikey
3 comments:
Like the new look...where was the header picture taken?
That's Mt. Katahdin in Maine, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. I hope to be standing on that little pointy area right under the 'g' and the 'h' in 'right' on or around September 11, 2014.
I believe the pic was taken from Dacy Pond, at the tail-end of the Hundred Mile Wilderness.
Daicy. Damn, can't spell.
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