Mailbag!

Ok, I'd love to do a Simmon's-style mailbag as a recurring feature on this site, but unfortunately, I just don't get nearly enough funny and/or interesting comments or questions. What I'm sayin' is... I don't have much material to work with, so get after it, people!

Anyhow, to answer the questions from the comment section buffoons and random emailers--

Who do I like in the Bills/Rams and Cardinals/Jets games this weekend?

First of all, the Cardinals are NOT one of my favorite teams. Just because I had season tickets for a few years, it doesn't mean I'm a fan. But hey, I was at the game where Steve Young got knocked out of the league...

Anyhow, my poor pitiful Rams have lost each game so far by at least 20+ points. They didn't even get into the red zone for the first time until the third week of the season. The bottom line is that they suck more than Paris Hilton did in that green-tinted video. So I'll take the Bills and lay the nine points. I'm also trying to find the current over/under on exactly what point in the game Trent Green is carried off on a stretcher.

As far as the Cardinals/Jets game goes, everyone likes the Cardinals and Kurt Warners sudden rejuvination. And the fact that they stayed on the east coast all week, chillin'. I dunno. The Cards haven't beaten anybody yet, and the Jets are somewhat frisky. I could never bet on the Cardinals anyways--thats every bit as dumb a move as wandering off into the woods by yourself in a teen slasher movie. But the Jets, good lord. They're still the Jets. I'm not touching that game, but if I were forced to, I'd take the Jets and lay the three points.

What steak house are you talking about?

Lars and I love go grub on good food around Vegas, and he told me about a joint out in East Bumfuck Henderson, over on Horizon Drive on the way out to Boulder City, called, oddly enough, Steak. It sounds really good, and I'm looking forward to it, but after visits to Stack and CraftSteak this past year, it'll really have to knock my socks off.

What the hell do they serve in the TDR on graveyard shift?

Basically, crap on a stick. It's awful. No more breakfast, no more made-to-order grill specials. They bring in the crap from the buffet. Seriously--steam table pans of random crap. Twice this week I went in to the dining room at 8:30 in the morning and there was dried up meatloaf, corn on the cob, chili, mashed potatoes, and a huge tub of alfredo sauce. But no pasta. WTF? And the salad bar hadn't been put out yet, either. There is no more yogurt, donuts, that god-awful 'pizza', or breakfast of any kind. There is a do-it-yourself sandie counter, and they have chicken breast and hamburger patties also, but everything is always dried out and nasty. And they have these stupid propaganda posters all over the back hallway with pictures of the Executive Chef saying "Our commitment to you is to serve you the finest food, just like our buffet customers". What the fuck ever, dude. He should be forced to eat that shit every day. Everyone has started brown-baggin' it now, or grabbing stuff from Sbarro, China Panda, or Fatburger.

What the hell clogs your drain? I'm guessing it ain't your hair.

I have no idea. I've only been here three months, but my roommate told me he used to wash the dogs in that tub before anyone else lived here. So I'm guessing it's a bunch of Golden Retriever hair clogging the pipes. But the Drano did the trick.

Dude, what's the deal with you and cocktail waitresses?

The deal is, I work in a poker room, so cocktail waitresses are damn near all the female interaction I get at work anymore. Besides, they're nice to look at, and hot girls need love too. The smart money says that within ten years I'll have an ex-wife who was a cocktail waitress at some point.

Does anybody ever really win at 4/8 Holdem?

Nope. Only the guys with their names on the building, because the house breaks one player an hour. Otherwise, it's just a pleasant diversion and a fun way to spend an afternoon. Anyone that tells you they're making consistent money at low-limit poker is full of shiat. (Unless, of course, they're playing a weekly game at the Nashville City Club against the worst players on the planet...)

Is Georgia going to beat Alabama this weekend?

Probably. But they won't cover.

Ok, now that you've been dealing poker for awhile and seem to be comfortable at it, do you mind if I ask about how much you make in tips? Is it better than being in the pit?

Ok, the honest truth is, when I'm working before 10:00 am, I make about $30 per hour in tips. After 10:00 am, it's closer to $40. And don't forget the awesome minimum wage the casino pays me in addition to the tips I pocket. And yeah--it's waaaaay better than working in the pit. If I never deal dice, blackjack, or Pai Gow again, I'm totally cool with that.

I heard that all you locals play video poker like maniacs, is that true?

It seems to be, but I hate it. I *never* play VP unless I'm at a bar drinkin' and needing an excuse to talk to a hot girl who's also playing. Otherwise, I never touch it. Seriously, I hate video poker like I hate Rachel Ray, the Seahawks, and 6:5 blackjack. All of my friends, however, seem to play regularly. I just don't get the attraction to it.

How often do you go down to The Strip?

Rarely, if ever. I only go down there if friends or fellow buffoons are in town, or if I'm playing in a particularly juicy poker tournament. Otherwise, I stay away.

People always talk about playing Spot the Hooker in Vegas. Do you see a bunch at your job?

Rarely. I don't work on the Strip, so the working gals don't usually troll my casino. There are a few on occasion, but nothing like the gauntlet you have to run at the Bellagio.

Do you ever see any of the big-name poker pros?

Not at my job, that's for sure. But sometimes when I'm down on the Strip I'll see them. I've seen Scotty Nguyen all over town, along with that asshat Humberto Brenes. But I've never run into Matusow, Hellmuth, Lindgren, Ivey, Brunson, or Negraneau anywhere outside of the Bellagio or the Rio during the Series. I'm holding out hope that someday I get trapped in an elevator with Clonie Gowan for a few hours, but otherwise, nah, the real poker players don't play in the same games I do.

Anyhow, that's all the questions for now. I'm on my way out to the Chicago Brewing Company with Lars for some 'garlic donuts' and some fine microbrew. He's driving tonight, so it'll be quite enjoyable for me...

Mikey

Dodging A Bullet

Man, this week is just flyin' by--it's hard to believe that it's Thursday night already. I'm spending my evening watching Oregon State put the smackdown on the Men of Troy. And all I can say is that I sure am glad that one of the hottie cocktail waitresses stopped me to chat for a few minutes and totally distracted me on my way out of work today. Because otherwise, I would've made it to the sports book and put some heavy action on USC to cover by 24. Instead, after we got done talking, I wasn't thinking about football anymore and just walked out to my truck and headed home.

I stopped at the bank to make a deposit, and then came home and dozed through my afternoon shows on ESPN. When I woke up, I was all pissed at myself for forgetting to make a bet. Now it looks like it was a brilliant non-bet (as of this moment, I'd be down 45 points!), so I owe my gal Laurie some high-quality Mikey-love for saving me a bundle of cash.

Speaking of high-quality Mikey love, I had an embarrassing moment earlier this evening. After I woke up from my brief nap this afternoon, I was pretty hungry. Normally I eat at the casino and don't eat at home on days I'm working. But they fired all the cooks in the employee dining room and now just haul in the leftover slop from the buffet. And guess what--once that buffet closes at ten pm every night, there is nothing new brought in--just a bunch of awful crap drying out on the steam table for eight hours. So there's no breakfast available during my shift, and basically all there is to eat for lunch is do-it-yourself sandwiches where all of the cold cuts have been picked over by the nasty people I work with, half of which don't wash their hands all day long.

Anyhow, the point is, since I didn't eat at work, I was fairly hungry this evening, and I really didn't have a whole lot of interesting food on hand in my pantry. So I had to break down and go grocery shopping. While I was at the store, I was browsing the Chunky Soup display (it's on sale for $1.45 a can) and I could feel the eyes of somebody staring at me. I ignored it for a few seconds, but then I finally forced myself to look.

I saw a mildly attractive blond gal with an ankle tattoo and a tight tank top looking at me, and it took me a second to make the connection. She said Hey Mikey--how you doing? and I told her I was good. But I panicked because I had no idea what her name was. I kept moving because I didn't want to embarrass myself further, because I knew that if I stopped to talk, she'd totally bust me. The problem was, several months back, I hooked up with her after a night of drinking with my compadres in the pit. We'd all gone out to the bar after our shift, and she was there. Somehow we started talking and hung out for a bit, and after everyone had split up and gone their separate ways, I went home with her.

But even now, after I've been wracking my brain for the past three hours or so, I still have no idea what her name is. I know she must've told me at some point, and you'd think that I would've kept her name and number in my phone, just in case. But that ain't the case.

I guess I'm a very bad person... heh.

Anyhow, besides my momentary embarrassment at the grocery store, there was more drama. Once I finished all my shopping (I went with chili-dogs for dinner by the way--there was a game on!), and was standing in line to check out, I managed to get in line behind the one complete asshole that decided to go grocery shopping at the exact same time as I did.

This jerkoff decided to go and buy all of the Smith's brand raisin bran they had on hand, because there was an ad saying it was on sale. Unfortunately, the smaller size box featured in the ad was already sold out, so he grabbed all of the huge boxes, thinking they'd honor the 99-cents sale price or whatever it was.

No chance on that, the cashier told him, but he decided that that was the flag he was gonna die under and raised holy hell right there in the checkout line. It was fun to watch, because working in a casino, I see people take shots at the house all the time. But I'd never seen anyone take a shot at the grocery store. They even had to get the manager on duty to come over there and tell him to STFU, but he kept on ranting. Everyone in line was getting pretty tired of his gig after about a minute, shooting him dirty looks, sighing, shifting from one foot to the other.

He kept going, and it got to the point that I would've loved to introduce him to my Bitch-be-cool! stick, but luckily for him it was safely tucked behind the seat out in my truck.

I guess they eventually rounded up some rain checks for him and he finally took his chump ass on the road and order was restored in the check-out line.

So I came home, made my chili dogs, and have been watching the football game ever since. I'm not playing anymore poker online for awhile unless I'm either really bored, or I've just got nothing better to do with my money. The ridiculous suckouts are just too common to believe that the cards are coming out totally randomly (By the way, is it ok to use two adverbs in a row? Can I get a ruling on this?).

Anyhow, although I'm taking some time away from the online poker world, I'm still playing the live game. Earlier today I got into the old codgers game and made a quick $45 with some well-disguised three-of-a-kinds while I was 'working', and reading the latest issue of Poker Player magazine, I saw that Binion's is doing their Poker Open series again in October. I'm excited for that--I did really well in that bunch of tournaments earlier this summer, and I like the structure and the affordable buy-ins.

But that's about all there is from my neck of the woods tonight. Hopefully there's more interesting stuff happening in the life of Mikey over the weekend.

Y'all have a good one.

Mikey

Chillin' At Home

Well, I need to post something...

It's nice to be back home in Vegas, even though I really had a great time in Phoenix. It was so nice to be able to relax and not hear the same shiat I hear every day--no ding-ding-ding of slot machines, nobody bitching about their cards, none of that god-awful XM 25 'music' that they play in the casino every morning.

But I'm back now, paying my dues. Luckily work has been much busier this week than it was before I took my little vacation. I've worked full eight-hour days both today and Tuesday, and the money has been pretty good. It hasn't been slammed, where I'm struggling to get any rest or time off, but it's been nice and steady. I think part of it is scheduling--there haven't been five dealers coming in before 11 am every day like usual, so that helps to keep me around.

Once I got out of work yesterday, I had to go by Wally-world and pick up a few things, most notably a bottle of Drano. Before I left for Phoenix, I noticed that my tub had been draining very slowly. And on the last day before I left, I noticed that it didn't drain at all by the time I got back from work almost five hours after I'd had my morning shower.

So while shopping for Drano, I guess I was kinda thirsty too, because instead of just picking up mixables for my rum (juice, Coke, & Sprite), I found myself in the beer aisle, window shopping for microbrews. I noticed that Sam Adams has released it's seasonal Octoberfest beer, so I grabbed a 12-pack of bottles. Normally, I really don't like Sam Adams beer at all, at least their regular stuff. But last year when I went to Grimaldi's for the first time, they had Sam Adams Octoberfest on tap. And I tried it and thought it was pretty damn good at the time. I haven't had any since then, but now the little mini-fridge next to my bed is chock-full.

Now that I'm back home and life is back to normal, I decided to end my latest poker sabbatical. I was getting really sick of the outrageous bad-beats on Poker Stars, so I hadn't played in over a week. But last night I got into another one of their big tournaments but got knocked out an hour into it when some dufus made his two-outer. I was pretty pissed about that, so I didn't play again until this afternoon when I got home from work. And this time I got knocked out by a guy who caught his four-outer on the river.

Apparently, I'm just not meant to win right now.

Anyhow, that's about all that's going on around here right now. I talked to Lars Vargas today and I think we're gonna head over to Chicago Brewing Company on Friday night for some good beer, great pizza, and maybe some of those tasty garlic donuts. We've also got another steak joint on the agenda that we're gonna hit at some point, too.

That's all for now...

Mikey

A Well-Deserved Overdue Binge

Howdy everyone!

I made it back to the 'real world' of Vegas earlier today, safe and sound, and now I'm just chillin' here in front of the Monday Night Football game and I thought I'd get started with a report of my weekend's activities.

Long story short--I had an absolute blast! It was great to see everyone and it felt wonderful to get away from the casino and the poker tables for a few days.

Work was pretty slow on Friday--we only had one game going, and besides me and the eight-o'clock dealer, we had another one coming in at ten, plus three more at eleven. So I told the floorman that I was willing to bail out as soon as possible, and he was kind enough to cut me loose at 9:30 in the morning.

I hurried home, changed clothes, grabbed my stuff, and was on the 215 heading for Boulder City by 10:20, well ahead of schedule. Traffic was fairly light, and I made it to Hoover Dam in less than a half hour. Once I got out of Black Canyon, I opened up the truck to stretch her legs, and kept the speedometer somewhere north of 80 mph all the way to Kingman. Usually, I stop in Kingman to top off the gas tank, but I must've had a tailwind because I still had more than 3/4 of a tank. Besides, I wanted to avoid as much of the hideous traffic in Phoenix as possible, so I was in a hurry. I elected to just keep on going.

Once I got out of Kingman, heading east on I-40, I was rewarded with a late-summer desert rainstorm. It was dumping so hard that I had to slow down to a crawl, along with everyone else, and the windshield wipers could barely keep up. It lasted about a half an hour, but by the time it ended, I was enjoying the scenery along Hwy 93 as it cuts through northwestern Arizona. Instead of listening to The Joshua Tree, as is the usual ritual on that stretch of road, I had created a 'road trip' playlist on my iPod that included stuff like Ghost Riders in the Sky, Ramblin' Man, Eastbound and Down, Interstate, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Gypsy Road, etc. It helped pass the time, and it was a fun soundtrack.

Before long, I made it past Wickenburg, Lake Pleasant, and all the way to where the Carefree Highway meets I-17. I was tempted to turn left and go just five minutes to Ed W's house, but no, my destination was actually clear on the other side of the fourth-largest city in America, and I had another sixty miles of traffic and road construction to contend with. My original plan was to just stay there on that side of town at Ed W's house, but when I found out that I'd have three days off and could extend my stay, plus the fact that Eddie B's wife was out of town, well, it was bachelor weekend time! (Besides, Ed W and his wife have a brand-new baby, so even though they generously offered use of their guest room, I thought it would be best to go stay with Eddie B this time)

So I kept going...

I finally pulled in to Eddie B's house in Chandler almost exactly five hours after I pulled out of my driveway in Henderson, and I made it on one tank of gas. According to the odometer, it's 316 miles door to door, and I actually squeezed 19.5 mpg out of the old girl, and that was doing about 15 mph over the speed limit almost the entire way.

After sitting in one spot for five hours straight, I was one stiff and tired bandito, but Eddie was kind enough to provide me with a frosty cold Heineken Light to help me wash down a handful of ibuprofen as soon as I shuffled my way indoors.

I freshened up and changed clothes, and Eddie and I spent the balance of the afternoon catching up, drinking beer, and watching the Ryder Cup.

For dinner, the plan was to meet George and Marlisha (Big Stogie and Big Tips) at the Grimaldi's down there in Chandler for dinner. They were already waiting for us in the dining room when we got there, and we had a nice leisurely dinner together. We somehow managed to run the tab up to about $175 between the four of us, which is a neat trick at a pizza joint. Grimaldi's does charge a bit of a premium for their fine pies, but most of the damage was because of the extensive bar tab. We started with draft Peronis all around, but with dinner, we dove deep into the wine list and complemented our fine food with some excellent vino.

After dinner, we drove over to their place and hung out in the back yard for cigars and more cocktails. George and Marlisha seriously need to feature their house on 'Cribs'. Not only is the kitchen the kind of kitchen I'd like to have, but the dining room is more of a game room, the living room is a pimped out media room, and the back yard is a cross between Pirates of the Caribbean and the the grotto at the Playboy mansion.

George turned on some music and the misters to cool things off, we lit up a few fine cigars and sipped on some top-shelf booze, and within a half an hour or so, my tired ass was passed out cold in the lawn furniture. Luckily I was smoking a good cigar where the ashes didn't fall off, otherwise I probably would've lit my shirt on fire. Apparently, everyone else had a really nice visit while I snoozed. At least that's what they told me.

But the combination of a long day on the road, a big meal, and too many drinks had taken their toll on me. Eddie drove home while I dozed in the passenger's seat.

When we got back to his house, I made my way up to the guest room and was out like a light about ten seconds after my head hit the pillow.

I woke up briefly around 4 am when Nemo, Eddie's pet Huskie, came upstairs to let us know that he was ready to go outside and take a piss. The power of suggestion is an amazing thing, and I opted to do the same. Well, instead of using the yard, I hit the guest bathroom. Then I went back to bed for a couple of hours.

I woke up around seven or so, took a shower, and got dressed. Eddie was already up and kicking around the house, and had put on a pot of coffee. We didn't have any creamer, so I volunteered to run down to the grocery store on the corner and pick up a couple of bottles of the flavored stuff (I've got Eddie drinking Don Francisco now, after his 2-week stay at my place in Vegas last year). Anyhow, in addition to coffee creamer, I picked up a 12-pack of Michelob Light, then headed back to the house.

We spent most of the morning switching back and forth between Game Day and the Ryder Cup, and at one point Eddie cooked us up a nice breakfast of eggs, toast, and turkey sausage.

We then loaded up Nemo's cage in the back of my truck, and took him over to Eddie's parents place. Nemo is too damn big to fit through the chihuahua's doggie door, and it's too hot to leave him outside all day, so Eddie talked his parents into keeping him overnight since we were gonna be gone for most of the day and night.

Another bonus from taking the dog over there was that I'd get to see my kitty again. I used to have this beautiful black cat several years ago, and when I sold my condo and moved in with Derek at the 'frat house', Eddie took the cat. That worked out well until he got married, and his wife was allergic to her. So his parents adopted her. And I haven't seen her since I moved away from Phoenix five years ago.

Anyhow, when we got over there, I got to see her again, but clearly, I was more excited about our reunion than she was. She wasn't too interested in me because I didn't have any treats to give her...

Me and my 18-lb. bundle of bad luck.

Eddie and Nemo.

Anyhow, once we dropped off the dog, played with the cat, and visited with Eddie's parents for a bit, we hit the road for that long drive up to Anthem. Our destination for the day was Ed W's place, as he was hosting a home tailgate party and invited everyone over to watch the Georgia/ASU game.

We got there about an hour later, the first ones to arrive at the party. We mixed up some cocktails, hit the relish tray, and the three of us sat around shooting the shiat just like old times. It had been far too long since all three of us were in the same place at the same time so we took advantage of it, laughing it up like we used to. Ed's wife Michelle even snapped a picture or two:

The three amigos.

Before long, everyone else started showing up, and the party was ON! My old roommate Tammie came up with her husband--I hadn't seen her in almost five years. The funniest person I know, Eddie's buddy Wade, also made an appearance, and George and Marlisha came up too, and they were packing a cooler full of smoked meat. They provided a shiatload of brisket, pork butt, and baby-back ribs, all done in their smoker. Holy shiat was it ever tasty! Marlisha even went so far as to make a jug of home-made Jack Daniel's BBQ sauce.

Between all that, the sub sandwiches, the little smokies, the relish trays, the chips and dip, the mixable booze, and the keg out in the garage, nobody went hungry at all. It was a great party, but the game was a laugher, and not in a good way, either. Georgia just kicked the crap out of Arizona State, so by the time the third quarter rolled around, half of the party moved out to the back yard where we did more drinking and cigar smoking.

Eventually, a few of us made it out to the hot-tub, and that's where the party ended. We almost had Ed convinced to re-stage the infamous R2-D2 photo, but he was much too sober for that. But while we were out there, we made some firm plans to get together again soon, once in Vegas, once in California.

Once we finally called it a night, Eddie and I hit the road for that long drive back to Chandler. We paid attention to the odometer this time around, just to make sure of the distance, and we were more than a little surprised to find out that Ed W and Eddie B live 65 frickin' miles apart. No wonder they never see each other unless I'm in town. Holy shiat!

It was really late, sometime well after midnight, by the time we got back to Eddie's house, so we both went straight to bed. Well, we tried to watch a little SportsCenter, but we didn't make it to the first commercial break.

Sunday morning started much the same way Saturday did--a pot of coffee and the Ryder Cup. Besides a quick trip to Jack-in-the-Box for some breakfast burritos, we didn't really get off the couch all day except to fetch the occasional beer from the fridge. We were still wiped out from the day before, so we spent the day being world-class couch potatoes. Ed's dad showed up for the afternoon game--they're both big Steelers fans, so that was the afternoon activity. His mom showed up a few hours later with a big bucket of The Colonel, so dinner was taken care of. Then it was more football as we remained on the couch watching the Cowboys/Packers game, then all of the wrap-up programming on ESPN.

I remember taking a shower and shaving at one point, but after the football games, all we did was play with the dog out in the back yard for awhile. Overall, it was a pretty mellow day, but it was just what I needed. We both turned in early--I think I was in bed by 10:30 or so on Sunday night.

I got a good nine hours of sleep, and once I got up and showered, I packed my things, ready to head back to Phoenix. Eddie had been up for over an hour, working, and had a pot of coffee on. I sat there in his office with him for awhile drinking coffee and just watching him do his thing (he gave up the brokerage business over a year ago and earns his living as a self-employed day-trader now). It was quite interesting and he made a few profitable trades while I was sitting there watching all the lights and charts. It made me realize just how much knowledge I've lost since I left the trading desk at Schwab--I've forgotten so much stuff that I'm surprised I know anything about the market anymore. But it was fun to see Eddie in action.

I couldn't delay the inevitable any longer, and finally had to say goodbye to Eddie and hit the road. I stopped to fill up my gas tank and check my Powerball tickets before jumping on the freeway. No, I didn't win the 160 million, but at least I won four bucks. That paid for an energy bar and a bottle of Gatorade, and I was on my way. I also won a three-team parlay this weekend that put $140 back in my pocket, so besides everything else, it was a great weekend.

Anyhow, I said goodbye to Phoenix until next time, and I was kind of sad to leave. It's funny, but nowadays, I'm not so excited when I make that drive to Vegas from Phoenix. Ironically, going back to Vegas is going back to the 'real world' for me, and Phoenix is the destination for a weekend of drunken buffoonery.

I was not blessed with another summer rainstorm to accompany me on the drive home, but I had Brother Jimmy singing to me about all the stuff that makes me happy--sailboats, rum, and sunny places full of shady people. It made the long drive seem a bit shorter, and before I knew it, I found myself parked on top of Hoover Dam, waiting for the tourists to get out of my way. But I had my camera handy, so I snapped a quick picture of the bypass bridge that's under construction. I can't wait until it's finished--it will easily cut another half-hour or more off of the drive to Phoenix. Right now, Hoover Dam and Black Canyon is just a biatch of an obstacle to have to drive through, and the bridge will alleviate all the hassle of winding up and down through the canyon and crossing the dam itself, which is a royal pain in the ass.



That picture was taken from right in the middle of Hoover Dam, 700+ feet above the canyon floor. The bridge deck is another 300 feet or so up above that. Can you say vertigo? That's gonna be an interesting drive once it's finished.

Anyhow, I made it home without incident, and dragged myself and my gear upstairs to my room. I took a quick shower and changed clothes, and just laid down to take a nap when my phone rang. One of my girlie friends I hadn't talked to in a couple of months was calling 'just to say hi', so we chatted a bit. That turned into an invite to come over, so I spent the rest of my afternoon at her place, forgetting about cocktail waitresses.

We eventually had some dinner, but then I decided to come on home. I've got a ton of dirty laundry that needs attention, and I have to work in the morning anyways. So I have to spend the night in my own bed, as much as I'd rather not. But it was a perfect ending to a perfect weekend.

And now that I'm here, it's nice to be home.

Mikey

No Time For Love, Dr Jones

Of all the things I want to do today, work is not one of them...

I wish I had more time to write, because I'm feelin' it now, but instead I've got to hop in the shower, get dressed, and head down to the casino for a couple of hours. If only they'd let me use my laptop there at the empty poker table while I'm sitting on my ass doing absolutely nothing... Oh well.

Anyhow, once I pull the ripcord from work, it's a quick stop back at the house to change into some comfy road-trippin' clothes, grab my bags, and hit the road. I've got my fingers crossed that it's somewhat slow today and I can bail out by 11:00, and get on the road by noon.

Y'all have a great weekend.

Mikey

PS. Go Sun Devils!

Is It Thursday Already?

Ok gang--one note of housekeeping here. This blog is about to get a wee bit more boring. I had a sit-down with the Boss and the Big Boss this morning, and the bottom line is that I had to sign a confidentiality agreement. So the Word from On High is that whatever happens in the poker room, stays in the poker room. No stories from work can be shared here in the public forum.

No, I'm not in trouble at all, but there were some drama going on, involving other people, and we all got swept up in it. I'm not sure, but I think some other folks paid a severe price for it, if you know what I mean and I think you do, so I'm not going to take any chances. And that's all I have to say about that. On the plus side, however, I went from thinking I was going to get canned when I got to work this morning to finding out that out of all the part-timers, (and remember, I'm the lowest-ranking toad in the poker room), I'm the one getting the most hours scheduled every week. And my schedule is improving too--not just more hours, better hours.

In the meantime, I got home early today, and set about downloading some music. At the same time I was wasting my afternoon over on YouTube, and I found these two videos from our overseas troops. Well, one if from the Brits, but I still consider them 'our' troops. Anyhow, they gave me a giggle, so I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. First of all, from the Navy:



Secondly, from the Brits:



Catchy tunes, huh?

Anyhow, that's what I've been doing with my afternoon. When I got home today, I saw that my check for my poker winnings had arrived, so as soon as I make this post, I'm off to the bank, then I'll get my truck washed and the oil changed. When I get back home, I'll finish my laundry and start packing for the weekend. I'm hoping to get out of work a bit early tomorrow and hit the road early enough to avoid the worst part of rush-hour traffic in Phoenix. My first stop is at Eddie B's place, and he lives waaaay down in the southeast valley, almost an hour past Ed W's house.

We'll have some dinner, drinks, and maybe a cigar or two, but we decided to cancel our traditional evening at the 'ballet'. Regardless, I'm gonna take lots of pictures while I'm there and I'll have some good stories to share, too.

I may post some more later, but that's all for now.

Mikey

Lost and Found

Yeah, I'm thinking I probably should've disabled my alarm clock before I went to bed last night, because I'm up at 5:00 am for no good reason. I'm not scheduled to work today, but I'm on call. And they ain't callin' this morning, I can almost guarantee that.

Since I've decided to take a short hiatus from the poker game, it's left me with a bunch of free time that I wasn't aware that I had. First of all, I got plenty of sleep last night, which is why I'm wide awake right now. Also, it's given me time to think about other little projects to do, and I've also got time to do some reading someplace besides the small tiled library that adjoins my bedroom.

One of the projects I've slowly been working my way through is to rip all of my CDs to my computer, and in turn organize them into different playlists and load them onto my iPod. So far I've got my Jimmy Buffett collection loaded, along with all of my U2, Erasure, Duran Duran, a 'Road Trip' compilation, a party tunes playlist, random favorites, and all of my Christmas music too.

The one that's bothered me, however, is that I looked high and low for one of my missing Buffett CDs, and I couldn't find my Essential Dean Martin double CD, either. And that one is an integral part of my 'Vegas 1961' collection. I had a huge cardboard box full of hundreds of CDs, and I went through the whole thing the other day, plus looked in my 100-CD wallet I usually carry in my truck, and couldn't find 'em anywhere. Hell, the other night I even got up in the middle of the night with a flashlight and went down to my truck, checking all of the door pockets and under the seats, hoping to find a clue to their whereabouts. No luck.

So that's been bothering me for several days. But last night I was lying awake thinking about where I could've possibly put those CDs, and it hit me. When I was moving, I packed up everything on my desk into three different shoeboxes, and one of them was full of CDs. I just had to find the storage tote full of shoeboxes. It wasn't down in the garage, it was sitting in my bedroom closet the entire time. But it was a minor jackpot to find it, because there were plenty of others in there that I'd forgotten about--some Clapton, Tommy Shaw, Frank Sinatra, Johnnie Cash, etc. So now I'm fairly certain that I've located every missing CD in my collection. Now I just have to get them all ripped and organized.

Anyhow, when I woke up this morning, I was extremely thirsty. Not wanting to put on a pot of coffee, I went down to the kitchen and fixed a tall glass of juice on ice. While I was shopping the other day, I picked up a carton of 'Pina Colada Juice', which is just a mixture of tropical fruit juices, heavy on the the pineapple and coconut. I came back up here, took one sip, and thought, hey, this is missing something. Oh yeah... Now I remember.

So does that make me a drunken degenerate to be sitting here sipping on rum-spiked juice at 5:00 am on a Wednesday morning? I justify it by telling myself that 1) it's my day off, 2) I haven't drank drunk had any rum in several days, and 3) it's five o'clock somewhere!

I'm not totally irresponsible however. Before I mixed in the good stuff, I called work just to make sure I wouldn't be pitching the cards anytime soon, and they confirmed that I was off the hook, at least for day shift. And since I have to be in tomorrow morning at six, I won't be working swing shift tonight, either.

Game on!

So I'm gonna enjoy my juice, maybe surf the internet for awhile, do a bit of reading, and once the roomie is up and out of the house, I'll start doing noisy stuff like laundry and puttering around in the garage. At some point today I've got to get my truck washed and get the oil changed--I'm about 500 miles past due on that little chore, and I've got that long drive ahead of me this weekend. And the truck is absolutely filthy--I haven't washed it all summer long, and instead of it's regular pretty garnet metallic paint job, it looks more like desert camo.

That's all for now.

Mikey

I Shouldn't Complain

You know, we all have good days and bad days at work. Overall, I'm fairly satisfied with my job, but lately it's sucked like crap on a stick, money-wise. But I worked a full eight hours today, for the first time in what seems like forever, and the money was actually decent again. Well, good enough that I stopped at the bank on the way home to make a deposit. It's been awhile since I've done that.

Early on this morning, we only had one game going--I was dealing a short-handed 4/8 game. I think there were four regular players at the table, plus the 8:00 am dealer and the floorman who were both playing on the clock. But the game came to a stop when an old man came stumbling in to the room, looking like he was having a heart attack. Seriously, he barely made it to the desk, and he couldn't talk and he was barely breathing. The game came to a halt, as the floorman and the other dealer hopped up to offer assistance.

The security desk, with a portable defib kit, is just a few steps away, but the guy recovered after a couple of seconds and refused all assistance, saying Oh, this happens all the time, and then he asked for a rack of chips, wanting to get into the game. Everyone at the table, myself included, was like WTF? Did you see what I just saw?

He sat down and joined the rest of us, playing like nothing happened. It was a surreal moment, to be sure.

He was sitting in the 10-seat, just to my right, and since I was locked down for several hours, (yep, I sat there dealing for 3 1/2 hours straight at one point), I was worried that he'd keel over right there next to me. Since he was sitting right next to me, I could see his cards every time he looked at them, and I could see that he was about the worst poker player I've seen in months--he was calling damn near every hand with the worst draws or bottom pair--he would rarely fold. But he was great for the game because in the four hours he sat there, he re-bought three times, giving away $400 before calling it a day. The rest of the players loved it, and I have to admit, so did I. Whenever there is a big fish at the table giving away chips, I'm pushing better pots because everyone wants a shot at his bankroll, so I end up making good money due to all the action.

Every time he called for another rack of chips, you could see the other players all grinning and giving each other knowing glances. Before long, the table filled up and nobody was willing to give up a seat.

Eventually, he ran out of money, and we were worried that the game might break, but by then the room was much busier and we actually had three tables going. I *almost* had to work overtime, but even though there was just one more dealer than open games, and a waiting list, I got cut loose on time.

Anyhow, the point is, even though I wasn't expecting much when I got to work at 6:00 am, and still sat on my ass doing nothing for the first two hours of the day, it turned out ok. And as frustrating as it is some days, I really do enjoy my job.

So I probably shouldn't complain, it could be much worse...




Mikey

Grudge Match

It is ON! This weekend, my lowly Rams travel to bigfoot country to take on the hated SeaChickens of Seattle. Since T-Rev is a long-suffering Seahawk fan, we decided to make it interesting. He'll be in town in early December, so the wager is that loser buys pizza and beer at Grimaldi's during his next visit. I thought it would be a sucky bet at first, putting me at a disadvantage because the Rams ineptitude knows no bounds, but he's giving me the 9.5 points.

I'll take that.

So the grudge match is on. On the other hand, as much as it pains me to do so, I'll probably lay a few bucks on the Seahawks in the book this weekend, just to hedge. If I have to pay for T-Rev's pizza, I may as well do it with house money.

Mikey

Changing Poets Fire Into Frozen Dust

Hey gang, I know you've all been diligently checking in on me over the past couple of days, waiting for some entertainment.

Unfortunately, I just have nothing to say. Well, at least an interesting way of saying whatever is on my mind, so I've been staying away from the keyboard. Besides having nothing to share, nothing too interesting has happened lately, either, so I've got no stories to tell.

Well, something highly entertaining happened at work yesterday morning, but it's not a story I would ever be able to share in a public forum such as this, just because if I were to report the asshattery I saw on display, well, it'd get back to me in a hurry and there would be unpleasant consequences. Let's just say that it put a smug grin on my face for several hours--somebody got what was coming to them, and I was lucky enough to witness it. Anyhow...

As far as the poker game goes, after my big win on Friday night, I cashed out for a little over $800, leaving exactly $150 in my online account. Since then, I've played in about eight or nine more low-priced tourneys, and I haven't cashed once. The first five knockouts were ultimate-suckouts, one of them being a guy catching the ONE single card in the deck that would make his hand, on the river, to knock me out. It's been so ugly that I'm starting to give some serious credence to Sticky's "Doom Switch" theory now. Since then, it's been just comical--earlier this evening I pushed with pocket Queens, the first pocket pair I'd seen in two hours, and I got one caller--the guy with pocket Kings.

Since I have been running so bad, I'm doing another poker hiatus for at least a week. That last $150 of house money is down to thirty-five cents now, and I'm not making another deposit anytime soon. I'm so ashamed... But I figure, if I'm gonna brag about the big wins, I might as well fess up to the losses, too.

I think the one that stung the most was being the first one knocked out on Sunday night in the weekly buffoon tournament. Doc Al caught me with my hand in the cookie jar on a semi-bluff, and his hand was just good enough to make a call. That led me to do the whole Teddy KGB monologue from the end of Rounders -- Nyet! He beat me. Pay him. Pay that man his money... It was rather embarrassing, but again, I think it speaks volumes about my competitive nature (and none of it good, I'm afraid) when you realize that it was a just five-dollar and fifty-cent tournament!

I was ok a few minutes later when I got into another tournament, but then that's where my string of bad beats began.

But enough about that.

However, speaking of shame, it's feeling pretty bad to be a Rams fan right now. And an ASU fan, too. Seriously, losing at home to UNLV when you're a 22-point favorite? Between those two games, I was doing the face-palm all weekend.

On the other hand, I can take small solace in a couple of things. As bad as the Rams are, it's easy money betting against them in the sports book. They may tear my heart out with their on-field ineptitude, but if I make a hundred bucks every time they stink up the joint, I should easily be up a grand or more by the end of the season. Besides that, that deathly silence you hear coming from Seattle, interrupted only by the occasional cricket or tumbleweed, is music to my ears.

It's one thing for my Rams to lose to the defending Super Bowl champions, I mean, we're not burdened by expectations. But it's a whole 'nother kettle of thrown fish for the Seahawks to get beaten at home by the lowly 49ers. Heh. That made me giggle almost as much as watching Ohio State take a beating on Saturday.

Anyhow. I wish I had more stuff to write about, but life is quite mundane right now. I work, I play poker, I try to sleep, I start all over again. If the routine changes, you'll be the first to know.

Mikey

How I Spent My Friday Night

No, I didn't spend it on the couch watching TV like my alter-ego Homer Simpson there.

I was up all night long on Thursday, watching movies because I couldn't sleep. I finally went to bed around 7:00 am, and woke up at noon with my phone ringing. It was the poker room. Thankfully, they weren't calling me in for Friday, but telling me that I had to work on Sunday morning. That's ok with me--I need the cash and I forgot to make my football picks for the week. And I certainly didn't want to drive back down there if I didn't have to.

Anyhow, I was still tired, so I dozed a bit more before getting up, taking a shower, and getting dressed. I had a couple of errands to run, so I fought the Friday-afternoon traffic for awhile while I went to the bank and such.

I had some dinner and thought about playing some poker, as I got back on track yesterday. I considered going down to Planet Hollywood and taking some money off the tourists, but I decided to stick around at home an build up my PokerStars bankroll.

So I found a good $15 tournament that had open registration, and as it turned out there were 471 players. Quite a bit of difference from my usual single-table sit-n-go tournaments where I only have to knock out eight other players.

It started at 7:00 pm Vegas time, and I just finished up a few minutes ago. Here are the results:

PokerStars Tournament #107235184, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $15.00/$1.50

471 players
Total Prize Pool: $7065.00

Tournament started - 2008/09/12 - 22:00:00 (ET)

Dear T2V Mikey,

You finished the tournament in 3rd place.
A $724.17 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Yep, five and a half hours later, I busted out in third place. I know, I should be more excited, but honestly, I'm kind of pissed off about the results. When we got down to three-handed, I had an overwhelming chip lead (more than double the chips of the second place stack), and got a pair of fours on the button. The short stack went all-in, and I called. He had King-Jack offsuit. Nothing came on the flop, but he caught two pair on the turn and river.

So that knocked me down a bit. He then hit the other guy for a big pot, so he had me covered a few minutes later. Then I pushed all in with Ace-Jack suited, and he called with Ace-Ten. Of course he caught his three-outer ten on the river to knock me out. It was a sick suck-out. It felt like a kick in the nuts. And first prize was $1300, so that stung a little too. Had that ten not come on the river, I would've had about a half a million in chips, and both of the other guys would've had less than 50K each.

I'm still shaking my head. That was a bad, bad, costly beat.

On the other hand...

I still got my money in with the best hand, and that's all I can hope for. And I've turned it around as far as my earlier running bad goes, so I'm ok. Oh, and seven hundred bucks helps take the sting out a little, too.

So the first thing I did was cash out $800 from my account--I've got a truck payment and electric bill coming up next week, and I've been making NO money at work, so I'll gladly use my winnings for that. Plus I'm going to Phoenix next weekend, and that's a couple hundy just for gas.

Anyhow, I had kind of an epiphany the other day when I was playing badly. It's one thing to get knocked out of a tournament when I've got the best hand, but it's another thing entirely when I get beat by making a bad call. I could see myself making bad plays, not paying attention to my table position, and just 'guessing' too many times.

So I said to myself, That's it--no more poker until you start playing up to your capabilities. There was more to it than that, but that's the gist of the self-conversation. I just had to kick my own ass and remind myself to play better. I was thinking, What's the difference between me and all those poker pros on TV? I mean, besides fame, fortune, and bracelets... Hey, I'm just as smart as most of them are (138 IQ baby!), but there's something else too. Part of it is fearlessness. I'm not quite there on that one, but stuff like figuring pot odds, taking advantage of position, reading my opponents tendencies, using measured aggression, and above all, patience are all things that I can do pretty well.

Well, patience has always been an albatross for me. Rather, the lack of it. But I'm learning. I just keep telling myself to 'think like a pro' and it seems to be working--I've cashed in five out of six tourneys since then.

Part of it is practical, too. I *really* don't want to go back to dealing in the pit, but the poker room is dead slow and I'm lowest guy on the totem pole. If it gets much worse, I will get laid off. I harbor no illusions about that--casinos treat employees like meat, and if the bottom line is affected, they start throwing bodies overboard with no remorse. And there are just no poker jobs out there in this town right now, so if I were to lose this job, I'd be well and truly fucked.

I have to treat playing poker as a part-time job. At least for now. But hey, at least it's a fun job. And I don't have to wear a name-tag or hair net, either.

So I'll play a little more today, once I get some sleep, but then, it's time to get serious. Starting in November, the Venetian is putting on their month-long Deep-Stack Extravaganza, and the buy-ins are $330 for each tourney. So I need to build a little bit of a bankroll for that. My goal is to cash in a couple of those, and maybe have enough scratch to play in the World Poker Tour events at the Bellagio in December. No, not the main TV event, but some of the preliminaries. I figure that will give me the experience it takes to play in the World Series next summer.

We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm just trying to make a few extra bucks and take the pressure off at work.

Mikey

It's An Agreeable Town

Me? Wide awake, hoping the phone doesn't ring for the next several hours. The rest of the world--asleep, preparing for an easy Friday at work.

Yeah, I've been up all night, but my mood has improved considerably. I got a nice long nap in yesterday afternoon, and played a bunch of good poker, too. Yep, after my second place finish after I got home from work, I played in five more tournaments, cashing in four of them. I think the nap helped!

Once I grew weary of surfing the internet and playing cards, I settled in to watch a movie from the DVR library. I recorded Shooter a couple weeks ago, and while I know that a lot of people make fun of Mark Wahlberg's acting chops, but I enjoy his movies. It was a fun action flick for about an hour and a half, but then they had to go and have Ned Beatty and his pig-squealing ass give a fantasy political speech that added nothing to the movie but eye-rolling from the audience. They made up for it, though, by making sure he got whacked at the end. Anyhow, it was a nice diversion, but the DVD won't be getting added to the collection anytime soon.

Now that the movie is over, I'm keyed up and ready to do something... Anything. But I don't know what I should do. I'm not sure if my roommate is home or not, so I don't want to go down to the kitchen and bang around. But then, I'm not really hungry. I sorted some laundry, wiped down the bathroom counters and scrubbed the toilet, picked up all the scraps of paper on my bedroom floor, and farted around at my desk for awhile. Now I'm out of ideas.

I feel like I should be doing some writing, however, as much as the flesh is willing, the spirit is weak on this one. Something maybe coming to me later, so you re-clickers might have something to look forward to, but I don't know.

I guess I could spend a few hours ripping CDs to my iPod--that would give me something to do while I watch ESPN...

More later.

Mikey

Can't Get No Satisfaction

I was prepared to make a whiny bitch post, but I'm suddenly in a better mood because I just got second place in a $30 sit-n-go. Actually, I didn't want to post at all, because I was in a foul mood. I have been running extremely bad playing poker--it's been a weird cycle. From Sunday to Tuesday, I was on fire--just couldn't lose. And then the last two days, I couldn't win at all. Hell, after work today, I even played in a live tournament again, and of course I got knocked out when a guy caught his six-outer on the river. Ugh.

Anyhow, so I was a little pissy the past 48 hours or so. I couldn't win a hand of poker, and I haven't been making any money at work this week, either. I've been scheduled every day, but have gotten sent home after just a few hours. Between working and playing, things just weren't going my way. Luckily, I got back in the saddle...

So my mood is a little brighter now. As far as work goes, I'm on call all weekend. I was scheduled to be off on Saturday and Sunday, but I told the boss to go ahead and put me on 'Alert Five' status since I haven't made hardly any money this week. She agreed, so I'll be keeping my phone handy.

I finally feel like I've gotten enough sleep, now that my work-week appears to be over. Yesterday, once I got home, it was nap-time of course. But then when I woke up I realized that I hadn't eaten anything in over 24 hours. Hell, I knew it was bad when I was getting the munchies from watching Andrew Zimmern. I noticed that Lars had dropped the garlic donut hint a couple of times in my comment section, so I took a shot and called him. Unfortunately, it went to voice-mail, so a trip out to Chicago Brewing Company didn't happen.

I kicked it around the house until hunger overtook laziness and I headed out. I was planning on going to Timbers, but when I pulled in to the parking lot, I noticed a new Nathan's Famous hot dog joint in the same plaza. I'm always up for a good dog, and having watched more than my fair share of the Travel Channel, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Unfortunately, my string of bad decision-making remained intact. I should've gone to Timbers. When I got inside the restaurant, it seemed that it was more of an ice cream joint than hot dog stand. And it had an absolutely huge dining room, which seemed odd for a hotdog stand. I didn't know if I should sit and be served or stand at the register by the ice cream display. But they finally handed me a sheet with the hot dog menu.

Seriously, all I wanted was two hot dogs with mustard and a cup of fries, but that was nowhere to be found. All of the hot dogs were 'jazzed up' with multiple toppings. I didn't want a loaded Chicago-style dog, I didn't want sauerkraut, I didn't want onions. So I finally decided on a chili-dog with Pringles (WTF? No fries?), and a 'nacho platter'.

I sat down in the dining room with my Coke and a magazine, waiting for my food to show up. It seemed to take an extremely long time to wait for a hot dog, but it finally showed up. The nachos not only looked bad, but tasted bad. They were made out of several-days-old generic tortilla chips from Costco, with canned cheese sauce, chili, jalapenos, sour cream, diced bell peppers (again, WTF?) and the completing the vortex of suck were generous dollops of almost-frozen guacamole. And no, it wasn't real guacamole, it was that crappy artificially-colored 'avocado dip' that looks like baby-poo and tastes like salted baby-poo. Worst nachos I've ever had, and that's no exaggeration.

The chili-dog was just as bad. First of all, all of the Pringles were broken--not a single one of the chips looked like it was supposed to when they come out of the can. Second of all, the hotdog was waaaaaay overcooked, like it'd been on the meat treadmill at 7-11 for three days non-stop. The chili sauce was non-descript, the same stuff they had on the nachos, and the bun had the pretzel-like chewy toughness that told me it had been put in the microwave for far too long.

At least they were consistent. It was the worst hot dog I'd ever had, coupled with the worst nachos you could imagine. Seriously, after a couple of bites, I felt as if I were eating lunch in my high-school cafeteria. You'd think that a place that specializes in hot dogs wouldn't screw one up so badly. You'd be wrong, though.

I managed to eat about half before giving up in disgust and walking out, the clueless drone at the register offering me a free refill on my way out the door. No thanks. I certainly won't be going back, and actually, I'd bet a couple of paychecks that the restaurant won't make it six months. Not only is it horrible, but it's overpriced, and it's in a poor, hard-to-find location. Maybe that's a good thing, so more people won't have to suffer like I did.

Still hungry, I stopped at the convenience store on the corner and picked up a bag of beef jerky for dinner, instead. Then I came home and proceeded to get my ass kicked at poker all night long. Not a good day for Mikey.

Anyhow, as Foreigner said, that was yesterday. Today seemed to be heading in the same direction, but my almost-win at the poker table helped, and then a phone call from Reverend Dave helped put things in perspective. At least I didn't come home from work and find the locks changed and all my shiat on the front porch.

Sounds like brothaman is single again...

Mikey

The Hard Eight

It's been a helluva week for me. Work has been a total grind, and today was the first day all week that I actually worked a full eight hours. But it wasn't a good eight hours--the first two were spent on my ass doing absolutely nothing, the next four were half-on, half-off, and then I was finally busy for the last two hours.

Didn't make much money though--like I said, it was a grind.

I didn't get much sleep the night before, so I zombied my way home this afternoon, then took a shower and tried to watch some tv. I tried to stay awake, but there's only so much info on Tom Brady's knee that they can say without repeating, so sleep was a blessing. I dozed right through the first hour of the WSOP coverage on ESPN before waking up.

Since I'm not making any money at work right now, I've been playing a little more online poker, too. I won $225 last night, and once I woke up this afternoon, I won another $90 in a $22 sit-n-go. But my lucky streak came to an end a few minutes ago when my pocket Aces got cracked by a dude on a draw. He got there, and I arrived a little early for my appointment with the rail.

Otherwise, there's not much going on around here. I'm taking the rest of the night off from the online poker tables, but sipping a nice tall glass of OJ and silver rum. I may watch a movie then try and get a full-night's rest tonight.

Sorry for the dull posts, but the muse isn't speaking to me right now. Maybe later this week.

Mikey

I Want That Trophy, So Dance Good...

When you little scamps get together, you're worse than a sewing circle...

Well. I'm glad to see that I gave you guys something to chew on over the weekend. But you're all just a wee bit off. I spent a lot of time with Beth on Saturday, and we had another lengthy conversation today, and the truth is, there is no problem. I'm not sad, depressed, rejected, or anything like that. And my collection of rum bottles still looks exactly the same way it did in that picture I posted.

For one thing, I'm not all wrapped up in her like I was with Kimmy. True, she is so attractive that it's almost to the point of distraction every time I talk to her, but that's not the issue. I call her my favorite gal, because, truthfully, there's just nobody else I'm interested in. And she makes it very easy to forget about Kimmy, although, the other problem is that they're damn near best friends, and so I took a few uncomfortable questions on Saturday. But that was just a small part of our conversation.

Anyhow, the bottom line, is that while we get along well, are quite compatible, and I make her laugh, I found out that she's kinda on-again off-again with her ex-husband. She admitted as much when pressed, which kinda put me in an awkward position. So I told her I didn't want to get in the way of that, especially since they have a child together (who would obviously be much happier if mommy and daddy got back together). But once that was out in the open, well, it was like a tension-breaker and it was much easier to just sit and talk about everything.

So no, there's no there there. But it feels like we're actually closer now. It doesn't make sense on the surface, but it's true. Unlike Kimmy, she still calls and texts me and still wants to hang out on occasion. Kimmy says she does, but she really doesn't. Hell, Beth called me this morning just to tell me about her day so far. Kimmy hasn't called in over two months.

Anyhow, that's the story as far as the wimmenfolk go. I figured it was too good to be true, but it was nice to live the dream for a couple of weeks. Just this morning I had to correct somebody at the casino who saw us together a couple of times, telling him, unfortunately, that no, she's not my girlfriend. She's just a smokin' hot girl I'm lucky enough to hang out with sometimes.

As far as work goes, it's been dead slow lately. Really slow. I'm scheduled every day, but I spend half my shift doing nothing, the other half dealing the old foga's limpfest game, and then I get sent home early. The money has been horrible this week, so I'm trying to make it up at the poker table.

I won a few bucks online this week, but not quite enough to retire on just yet. But I'm working on it.

Later on this evening I'll post some more nonsense, but I wanted to clear the air... All is well in the life of Mikey. I just wish I were a little busier at work, that's all.

Mikey

A League Of My Own

Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.

As great as my stint in the majors was, I think I'll be toiling in the minors for awhile.

Mikey

Too Much Is Never Enough

4.1 bottle of happiness:


Or, as I like to call it, the Four Horsemen of the Rumpocalypse.

Ok, so after my little shopping trip to Lee's Discount Liquor the other day, I was feeling a little remorseful that I didn't pick up any Captain Morgan. I had none in the house, and it's a staple, every bit as important and useful as coffee, hot sauce, or peanut butter. Seriously, running out of The Captain is an inconvenience almost on the scale of running out of quilted Northern. You can do without it for a few days, but nobody's gonna want to hang out with you...

So this afternoon, as I was oot and aboot (as Sticky would say), I decided to hit the liquor store again and fill that hole in my rum collection. My original plan was to pick up two different bottles, and I was leaning towards a bottle of the Captain's Private Stock, but I was tempted by the fruit of another on the rum aisle. I saw something that wasn't there earlier in the week--a bottle of Mt. Gay Eclipse Silver rum. I've never had that before, so that went into my shopping basket, along with a bottle of the original Captain. I love silver rum--if you get a good one, it's the best thing to mix with fruit juice. People that drink bloody marys or screwdrivers with their breakfast have no idea what they're missing.

And as it turns out, my favorite gal is currently "on a Patron kick", so I picked up a mini-bottle of that for her while I was there, too. That explains the point-one thing.

So in addition to my twenty-odd bottles of rum I already have on hand (my garage is beginning to look like that underground stash on Pirates of the Caribbean, before Elizabeth Swann got to it), I've got four new bottles of tasty goodness to choose from.

If you look closely at the picture, you'll see that I've already had a tot or two of the Sugar Cane rum (bottle "D"). It's pretty damn good, but it doesn't surpass the flavor or depth of my favorite, the original Eclipse version (bottle "C"). And that Eclipse rum makes the best pina coladas you will ever taste--just add ice, pineapple juice, and some Coco Loco.

Anyhow, that was kind of the highlight of my afternoon. As it turns out, I didn't get my manicure today, as per the original plan.

Last night, just after midnight, I was asleep in front of the SportsCenter highlights when my phone woke me up again. Beth was calling, and she sounded kind of upset. She had just gotten home from work and there was some drama she had to deal with, and she wanted to talk for a bit. I listened and we talked, and eventually, I helped her get back in a better mood and giggling again. In the course of our conversation I found out that I was her only appointment for the next day (today), so I told her that I'd reschedule if she wanted to, saving her from having to go into work for just an hour. But she came up with an offer I couldn't refuse.

She said she'd get her stuff from the spa, and she'd rather just have me come over to her place this weekend and get my manicure done for free. I couldn't pass that up, so instead of having to crash the gates at this country club where she works, we're eliminating the middle-man and I'm gonna just go spend the afternoon with her. I'd rather do that anyways. And of course I wouldn't let her do my nails for free--she's gonna get dinner out of the deal, so it's kind of a win/win situation as far as I can tell. And as a bonus, I get to spend some *real* time with her, free from work schedules or time constraints.

Other than that, there's not much else to report. I've got a poker-centric rant in the hopper, but that'll show up maybe on Monday morning. Tomorrow kicks off six days straight of work for me, plus my much-anticipated afternoon/evening with my favorite gal, and it's also the beginning of football season, so I won't be around much until probably Monday.

See ya then!

Mikey

Why Is All The Rum Gone?

It may be hump day, but it feels like a Monday to me. First of all, I had the day off yesterday, but it didn't seem like I took full advantage of it--I want a do-over!

I was unable to sleep all night long, so around four or five am, I forget which, I put on a pot of coffee and started writing. Once I made my post and finished my coffee, I turned off the computer and the light and immediately fell asleep. For two hours.

I was awakened by Tom Jones. Well, not exactly Mr. Jones himself, but a certain attractive young lass's ringtone is She's A Lady, so I've been conditioned to dive for my phone whenever I hear that song. But she was texting me first thing in the morning, which made my day, since I figured I wouldn't hear from her until I saw her on Friday. But after a few messages back and forth, I told her to get some rest and that I'd see her in a couple days. But then my mind was racing and I was unable to sleep.

Tired as hell but not being able to sleep is a tough combo, and it ate up most of my morning. But around noon, I got up and took a shower, and as soon as I got dressed, I laid back down and immediately fell asleep. For two hours.

The TV was on, so I woke up in the middle of Pardon The Interruption, and I watched that until it's conclusion, and then forced my droopy ass up and out of the house. My first stop was at Angy's favorite store, Lee's Discount Liquors (there's one on Eastern and Sunridge Heights Pkwy, just a few minutes from the house), to pick up some rum. Not just any rum, but a bottle of Mt. Gay Barbados Rum, which is my personal favorite. I grabbed a bottle of that, and then spent another twenty minutes or so just browsing the aisles, trying to keep from going crazy and spending too much money on all that tasty booze I was drooling over. I considered buying some Tuaca, maybe some Grand Marnier, more Baileys and Kahlua, perhaps some vanilla or blueberry vodka. Hell, they even had my favorite wine on sale for $18 a bottle. But in the end, I found my way back to the rum section and picked up a bottle of premium Mt. Gay Sugar Cane Rum. I've never had it before, but I heard it's very good.

I suppose a tasting party would be in order, very soon.

After cashing out at the liquor store, I drove over to the cleaner/alterations shop and picked up my work clothes that had gone in for repair, and then hit the Taco Bell next door for some grub. I came straight home and ate my quesadilla and crunchy tacos while watching the WSOP main event coverage on ESPN.

When that ended, I considered playing a little online poker, but I just wasn't feelin' it. I did, however, go to the T2V chatroom and talk to Angy for a bit, but after that I wanted to go outside, sit on the balcony, smoke my cigar, drink my rum, and just enjoy a peaceful evening. But damn, my lack of sleep was just killing me and I was just too tired--when I thought that it'd take an hour or more to smoke my cigar, well, it just killed my motivation. So I turned off the TV, got undressed, turned off the lights, and went to bed.

This time, I slept for three hours.

I've been up ever since. But my alarm is set to go off at five, so if the pattern holds, I should be able to get another two hours of sleep if I close my eyes as soon as I post this...

I'm out.

Mikey

Can't Fight It

I guess it's probably a combination of routine and paranoia, but I just can't sleep. I've been awake all night, and as hard as I've tried to fall asleep, it just won't happen for me. It seems that my phone is always ringing in the middle of the night, calling me in to work, and even though business is somewhat slow right now and I'm fairly certain I won't have to work today, there's still that off-chance that they'll need me. And since I'm always up at this hour anyways, well, my system wants to be awake, no matter how much I need to rest.

So I've got Brother Jimmy providing the background music, and I put a pot of coffee on, and here I am, alone with my keyboard.

After my roommate got home yesterday afternoon and I informed him of how ill-behaved the critters were while he was gone, he set about taking care of business. First of all, we steam-cleaned the carpets in the loft, and after that he installed a baby-gate at the top of the stairs. But not just any baby-gate, this one got screwed to the wall, has hinges, and we can secure it with a bungee cord. If one of the canines wants to get up here now, they're gonna have to crash the gate at full speed and tear it out of the wall.

There ain't no way they're gonna get up here now. No more jumping up on my bed in the middle of the night, either, begging for me to play.

Speaking of baby-gate, I think I'm gonna spend a good portion of my day cruising around the internet, entertaining myself watching the far-left freaks just come absolutely unhinged about our next Vice President. As much as I despised the crooks from Arkansas back in the 90's, I never flipped by shit over a political figure like some of these folks have. I can only shake my head in disbelief when I read some of the comments I've seen on different political websites. Hell, even though my affiliations run to the right side of the aisle, I vowed several years ago that I'd never vote for Grumpy John, and I was tempted to sit this one out. But after hearing Friday's announcement, watching the acceptance speech, and then doing a little research, not only have I gotten off the proverbial couch, but I busted out the MasterCard and sent in a generous campaign donation--something I haven't done in over eight years.

(BTW, that previous paragraph was not an invitation to use my comment section as a political forum. Respectful comments are welcome, no matter what point of view. Remarks from feces-flinging monkeys will be deleted with extreme prejudice and your IP addresses will be blocked. One paragraph does NOT make this a political website, but you know, my house, my rules).

Anyhow, once the upstairs part of the house was cleaned and secured, I played in a cheapie online tournament while watching the UCLA/Tennessee game, but I bubbled out to a better hand and a bigger chip stack. Then I saw that Sticky and Steve B were also playing poker, so I spent the rest of my evening watching them--it was cheaper than chasing cards which obviously don't want to land on me right now anyways.

As far as today goes, I've got a couple of errands to run--I've got to pick up a couple of pairs of work pants from the alteration shop, and I've got a couple of pairs of shorts to drop off in their stead. I may get the oil changed in the truck too, as it's about 500 miles overdue, and as a lucky coincidence, the Express Lube place is just across the street from the alterations shop. And right next door is a Lee's Discount Liquor store, and even though I have about 25 bottles of rum on hand, I'm out of my favorite, Mt. Gay from Barbados, so I'm gonna pick up a bottle of the Good Stuff.

And the temperature is gonna be a bit milder tonight, so I think it'll be a perfect opportunity to mix up a cocktail, grab a fine cigar, and sit out on the balcony enjoying the lights of the city for a couple of hours. I might as well be drinking my favorite rum while I'm smoking one of my favorite cigars and gazing out at my favorite city. If only my favorite gal were here to join me, it'd be a perfect evening. But alas, that is not to be, for she is engaged in a more noble cause this night--delivering free booze to gamblers, nurturing that wellspring of currency that flows like a river through this fine city, thus enabling me to maintain the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed.

Anyhow...

I'm actually looking forward to getting out of the house and running my errands today. One of the reasons is because of my new sunglasses. Seriously, it's like driving around in HD when I'm wearing them. My old sunglasses weren't prescription, so my eyesight wasn't so great during the day. At night, obviously, I'd use my regular glasses, but aside from all the neon and flashing lights, there ain't much to see. But damn, during the day, now that I've got these prescription sunglasses, everything is so clear that it's amazing. I feel like Homer Simpson in that episode where he suddenly went three-dimensional.

I'm also finding that I forget to take them off, so I'm that dork walking around indoors--like at the grocery store--with my sunglasses on. And if I wasn't afraid of looking like a jackass, I'd probably wear them at the poker table, too. Hell, I've already got the iPod, and I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find myself a backwards cap to wear, too. The bottom line is that I can't sing enough praises about my new shades. They're that good. I feel the same way about my cell phone and my new wallet too. All three have completely exceeded my expectations, so regardless of the cost, I do not suffer from buyer's remorse.

But my spending is done for now. There are bills to pay, a trip to Phoenix in a few weeks, and time with a nice gal I need to save for. No more toys for awhile.

Mikey

Labor Day Weekend, The Sequel

Hey everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend, and took a moment to remember those of us who had to 'labor' all weekend.

I'm pretty sure that I've got the day off tomorrow, so I'm sitting down with a tot of rum and a glass of Coke, getting ready to enjoy the Tennessee/UCLA game. But I thought that I could go ahead and throw something up on the ol' website to satisfy all you re-clickers out there, so I'm multitasking.

My weekend, besides having to work, was rather uneventful. I had Friday off, so I went out on Thursday night, hoping to watch the kickoff of the college football season at the sportsbook. Unfortunately, I was sitting in front of the most obnoxious person in the entire book, and could only take about a half-hour of listening to him before I got up and left.

Realizing that there were plenty of TVs in the poker room, I went over there instead, and put my name on the interest list for the No-Limit cash game. While waiting for that, I sat down at a 4/8 game to try my luck.

Unfortunately, I spent an hour being reminded of just how much I hate limit poker now. After playing no-limit almost exclusively for the past four or five months, putting the brakes on and hoping my big hands held up against five or six callers was just an exercise in futility. I lost about a hundred bucks in that hour, mostly because of everyone calling all the way down to the river and catching their miracle card.

That wasn't much fun.

Luckily, the no-limit game got started, so I was much happier once I got to move to a different, and better, game.

I thought I'd just run over the no-limit game, but there were two factors working against me. First of all, the room I work in has some *excellent* players--it's an extremely tough game to beat, and second of all, I was experiencing a run of dead cards like I'd never before seen in my entire poker-playing life.

I bought in to the game for $200, but at one point, I played over three hours straight without ever seeing a flop. Yep, I folded every hand for at least 20 orbits around the table. How do I know this? Because without playing a single hand, in three hours I was down $60 in blinds (it was a $1/$2 no-limit game). It cost me three bucks in blinds every ten hands, so I went 200+ hands straight without ever seeing a flop. Talk about a shiatty run of cards.

Adding insult to injury, when I eventually won my first pot, it was a split one. But since I had no place to be the next morning, I was content to hang out and have a cocktail or two and laugh it up with a few of the other players for several hours. The guy who was on the short side (the $30,000 winner) of the bad-bead jackpot was sitting next to me, and we were having a great time there at the table. He got me started drinking that Tuaca stuff, which I thought was some sort of Mexican liqueur, but I soon found out was Italian brandy. It was damn good, though, and I think it would make a fine companion to a good cigar (much easier to drink than Grand Marnier).

Anyhow, as much fun as I was having playing at the poker table, I finally called it a night around 2:00 am. I played fairly tight, but after nine hours, I'd nursed my $260 as far as I could take it. And in the final tally, I went the entire nine hours getting nothing better than two pair. That's right--I never once got three of a kind or made a straight. One hand I was lucky enough to be holding the Ace of Clubs and it was checked all the way to the river when four clubs were on the board, so I got a small pot on that flush, but otherwise, I didn't make a hand all night long. Completely blowing the law of averages, I only got six pocket pairs the entire night, the highest of which were Jacks, and they went into the muck after the flop when an Ace and King showed up and two people ahead of me couldn't wait to get money into the pot.

I swear, I've never been so card dead--it was awful. Before I headed home, I stopped to get a Fatburger and some onion rings, which was about the high point of the night, as not only did I just donate to the poker economy, but I'd also made a decent bet on the Oregon State Beavers, who not only didn't cover the three points they were laying against Stanford, but they lost the game outright!

Driving home, I figured that Thursday was an aberration, and that the cards eventually had to come my way. But I wasn't going to risk it, and I spent Friday doing absolutely nothing but sleeping and reading. I didn't even go out that night except to fetch some groceries.

Of course, I went to bed early, figuring that I'd get called in to work early, too. It was a holiday weekend, and even though I was scheduled to work at 6:00 am on Saturday morning, I was fairly certain that there would be a little carry-over from Friday night and my phone would be ringing.

I was right, and had to go in at 4:00 am. But my bad luck continued, as just after I got to work, the overnight games started breaking up and I ended up dealing a short-handed game that wasn't very juicy anyways.

And looking at the daily schedule, I knew I was in for a crummy day money-wise. The bosses had completely overstaffed for the weekend, and there were 10 dealers slated to come in before 11:00 am.

I managed to make a few bucks before my game broke, but then I sat on my ass doing nothing until 8:00 am when the next dealer came in. By then, a few of the old guys came in, but their game was short-handed. Since there were a couple more dealers coming in at 9:00, meaning that we'd have more dealers than players, I took myself out of the rotation and volunteered to prop the game with my own bankroll.

Unfortunately, my card-deadness continued, and I played for an hour before giving up in disgust, burning through $80 without winning a single pot. Again, I got a few pairs, but nothing better than two pair the whole time. I finally clocked out and went home, figuring that the poker gods had forsaken me this week.

Since I have a whole new stack of books from Amazon sitting on my desk, and it was opening weekend for college football, well, the rest of my day was pretty much taken care of. But when I got home, I walked in the front door and immediately got that Han Solo what-an-interesting-smell-you've-discovered look on my face. The house just reeked!

I came upstairs to the loft and discovered the reason for the stench--there were piles of dog shit everywhere on the carpet!

Now, that caught me completely off-guard because the dogs are extremely well trained. But my roommate had told me when I first moved in that Charlie, the mama-dog, would get upset with him when he left and go upstairs and pee in the loft when he didn't come home at night. So we blocked the stairs. But then once I moved in, having somebody around kind of set her at ease, and she was cool, and after a few weeks, the dogs were free to come up here whenever they wanted. Nobody treated the floor like a litter box.

Anyhow, since it was a holiday weekend, my roommate and his girlfriend took off for California to spend the weekend on the boat. And since I was working all weekend, there was nobody here at the house for hours and hours on end. So Charlie got mad at us and shit all over the floor!

So I spent about a half hour or so picking up the dog turds (luckily they weren't runny and too nasty) and doing what I could to clean the carpet. And when I left the next day, I set a couple of cocktail chairs at the top of the stairs blocking access to the loft.

Sunday was another lame, slow, and overstaffed day at work, but I refused to prop the game that day. I wasn't about to throw any more money down the poker hole. Again, it was so slow that I got sent home after just three hours, and I was kinda curious as to what condition I'd find the house in.

Well, the dogs were still pissed off--when I got home, one of the cocktail chairs was halfway down the stairs on the landing, and there was a nice chunk of drywall taken out of the wall. One of the dogs hand managed to defeat the roadblock, and I found two fresh puddles of piss on the carpet. Again, the spray bottle and towels made an appearance, and I blocked both the top and the bottom of the stairs, basically putting the dogs in time-out, refusing to play with them like I normally do when I get home. They knew they were in trouble after that.

There was another T2V poker tourney that night, and I really didn't wanna play, but I saw that one of my favorite lurkers, Krista, had signed up, so I bit the bullet and registered.

It was an extremely lame tournament--it had been accidentally set up as a limit tourney, so it took twice as long to finish, and not only that, but a couple of PokerStars trolls had managed to get into our private tourney by just asking for the password in the chatbox, and one of the players, being friendly, gave it to them. That kinda irritated me, and coupled with the dog piss, the crappy money at work, and the limit format, well, I was in a foul mood. And even though I made it to the cash and got third place, I really didn't have much fun.

After the tournament, I spent some time updating my iPod, which is always kinda interesting, and I managed to get my entire collection of Jimmy Buffett loaded and organized. Well, all except one album. For whatever reason, I cannot find my Beach House On The Moon CD anywhere, so that one is conspicuously absent. But once that was done, I spent the rest of the night listening to Brother Jimmy sing while I drank a rum and coke and read The Sailing Life.

I went to sleep in a much better mood.

It wasn't much of a sleep, however. I was scheduled to go to work at 6:00 am, but I was still half-awake at midnight, dozing through DeNiro and Pacino in Heat on TNT.

While I was lying there in bed around 1:00, I remember thinking Why is my phone lighting up? A split second later the music started playing and that could mean only one thing--work was calling. The voice on the other end asked if I could come in by 3:00 am, and of course I said that I'd be there.

I reset my alarm for 2:00 am, and tried to doze for another hour.

It was impossible, and I finally stopped fighting it, got up, and got ready for work. When I got to the poker room, there were two games going--one no-limit game and one 4/8 game. The 4/8 game looked like it was going to die at any moment, but the no-limit game was full of all my favorite players.

My spot in the rotation put me at the limit game, and I dealt about five hands before the game broke. But my shiatty luck continued, and while I was closing the game down, the asshat with $700 worth of chips sitting directly next to me in the #1 seat said "Well, I guess I'll just stay here and keep you company".

F*cking great.

This jackass had managed to turn his hundred-dollar buy-in into $700 over the course of the previous eight hours, and since nobody else would listen to how great of a player he was, he had a captive audience with me as I had to reset the decks, balance the rack, and close the table. So he droned on about what a great player he was, and since he was sitting next to me instead of across from me, he couldn't see me rolling my eyes. Finally, I locked the lid on the rack and just walked away, and he was still sitting there droning on about what a great player he was. Even the floorman was like What the hell is he doing over there?

I just shrugged...

But the guy wanted everyone to see him sitting there at the 4/8 table with a couple of racks of chips in front of him, but by then, the room was empty except for the no-limit game. But he desperately wanted the attention. He even started saying that he wanted a seat at the no-limit game because he would cut it up and bust the table.

I would've loved to have seen that, because there was one guy there who is about the best no-limit player I know, and it would've been a bloodbath.

At the bottom of the hour, I pushed in to the no-limit game and a couple of my better players asked me what was up with the guy. I told them what he had said, and one guy immediatgely offered to go and play him heads up. At that point, Mr $700 declined and cashed out and left, shrinking from the challenge. Asshat.

Once I got into the no-limit game, the floorman sent the other dealers home and I was locked down for the next three hours. I certainly didn't mind because it was one of those table you dream about--nice crowd, no obnoxious drunks, fun players, all good tippers. It truly didn't seem like work as I was laughing it up the whole time and getting a cut of each pot. It had a home game vibe and everyone was having a good time.

At some point, I reached that magical point where the shirt pocket wouldn't hold any more chips, and they were spilling out whenever I'd lean over the table to rake in the bets. I managed to rathole a bunch between hands, and when the next dealer came in at 7:00 am, I was good and ready for a break. The first stop was at the desk, and when I emptied my shirt pocket, I found that I'd made more than $200. As soon as I cashed that, I ran to the bathroom for the first time in over four hours. As soon as I unzipped, my pants went directly to my ankles. I was like, WTF?

But by then, I was committed to the task at hand and couldn't do anything about it. Luckily, the men's room was deserted, so I stood there finishing my business looking ridiculous all by myself. When I pulled my pants up I realized that I still had a pocket full of chips that I'd forgotten about. That's what gave gravity the assist, causing my pants to fall to the floor. So after leaving the restroom, I went back to the desk and colored up again for another fifty bucks. Woot!

I still had 20 minutes worth of break left, so I headed over to Starbucks and got a big hazelnut frappuccino with an extra shot of espresso, thinking that I could use a jolt--it looked like it was gonna be a long day.

But as soon as I got back to the poker room, they told me I could go home. I was thinking that another down at the no-limit game would be nice, but they were down to four players by then, and it was gonna break soon. And I'd already made almost as much in four hours as I'd made in the previous two days combined, so I was cool with taking off.

I stopped at Jack in the Box on the way home and got me a croissant sandie to nibble on, but as soon as I got home, I took a shower and went back to bed for several hours. It felt like I needed the sleep, and I took full advantage.

I woke up to the phone ringing, as usual, but this time it was my sister Sherry. She was down in Key West with her husband and called to tell me that she was sitting in the Hog's Breath Saloon drinking Mt. Gay pina coladas and toasting me and our departed brother-in-law David. (About five years ago, the three of us sat there getting absolutely smashed on pina coladas all day before going to Nancy's wedding later that afternoon across the island at the Truman Annex). So she wanted to call and let me know she was thinking about me, and it was nice because it brought back a flood of fun memories.

Anyhow, that's all the news from this end. I'm on-call tomorrow, which means that it's about a 99% certainty that I'll have the day off. I've got no plans, so that means that I'll probably do some more writing.

Mikey