Blogiversary (almost 4 years)

Wow I just looked at my archives and have been doing this for almost 4 years now. February 20th 2005 was my first post. I only posted 10 times during that year and had no idea what blogger tourneys even were. I belonged to a lot of poker forums and posted frequently on the message boards of those forums and played alot of poker on sites like Poker Host, Titan, CD Poker, Royal Vegas, Bet365, Interpoker etc. I was a freeroll junkie and built a small investment up to almost 4k spread out over a ton of sites. I still have money held hostage on Microgaming sites that I won and cant get off because of UIGEA. I also lost about $150 of money on JetSet when they went belly up. Fortunately I had never deposited on JetSet and it was all freeroll winnings from forum events I had played and then used some of those winnings to play the small dollar buy-ins. I used to love the JetSet Headhunter tourneys.

Anyway, I've noticed like most of us poker content is fewer and far between in my posts. I know for a fact I am not glued to my computer 7 days a week like I used to be back in 2005/2006. I still play alot of poker but I usually now take 2-3 and sometimes 4 days a week off from playing. I haven't played live since New Year's Eve but should be back in the live swing in a bit. Ive had deep runs in a bunch of the Pokerstars $11 buy-ins but no big scores. Typical situation I flip with QQ and get called by a bigger stacks AK and they pair their overcard and I go out 40th or so instead of vaulting up to being a top ten stack and final table bound. One of these days I will win my flips late stage and take one of these bad buys down. It doesn't make a difference if I win $18.93 for 44th place or $33.46 for finishing in 18th place by fold fold folding and playing like a nit. Id rather bust out or be in position to finish in the top three where all the money lies.

The feral cat we've been feeding, will come over to me if hes out of his box when I come over to bring it water and food. I have been able to scratch its head and pet him. And he purrs and rubs against me. But he can still be very skittish. The other day it got sick on frozen milk it had been eating and threw up when i was there (it threw up the milk crystals it must have been licking) . the poor little thing fell over on his side and I thought he was having a seizure or was dying on me but he righted himself and came back over and wanted the water I had brought him. I dumped all the milk. The elderly owner of the porch where he resides leaves him milk as she has nothing else to give him and thinks its a good thing. She was even pouring milk into the water and I'd find a frozen concoction of milk water which sent me over the edge. I'd call up Joan and say "Joan, I'm gonna kill Jean shes gonna kill the cat with the milk. Jean, came out today when i was working with the cat and I told her she doesnt have to leave him anything, Joan and I and our mail lady are feeding him kibble and fresh water. He is not the prettiest of cats. Hes almost cross eyed, hes got a really round head and a lumpy body and kind of walks funny. Hes the cat version of either a puff-a-lump or an oompa loompa from Willie Wonka. But mail girl will take him if I can get it more socialized. So far Im the only one who has been able to pet it. Just call me the cat whisperer. (I also can do great things with plants)

And Happy Birthday to Snake5970. It's his 46th and he headed to Foxwoods with his brother today for a couple of nights, as a former co-worker of his and current co-worker of Rich (his brother) had some comped nites. We went to Carrabbas last Friday nite for the football bet I won. I gave him a cool card that had a poker theme I found at Target (a green felt cover with a spade royal flush on the front) and a Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hit CD so he can get ready for the show. He only has like 6 CD's total in his collection and is definitely not a music person like moi.

Carrabba's was excellent. I'm a fan of the family style portions at Buca de Beppo but Carrabba's was really really good. We ordered the Bruschetta as an appetizer which we didn't need and that was probably the weakest part of the meal and it was good. I wound up ordering the Steak Marsala with garlic mashed and Caesar salad with the anchovies. Ray wound up getting three appetizers for his dinner. The steamed mussels, the fried calamari and the appetizer sized shrimp scampi. When all the food came out we started cracking up because our table was covered with platters. We pretty much split everything. then for dessert we ordered the sampler of 6 of their desserts which comes served in little rectangular shot glasses: there was a cannoli mousse, a tiramisu, a Kahlua espresso mousse, a zabaglione and a strawberry lemon mousse cake and another one i cant remember. By the time dessert came Snake was only able to have a few spoonfuls and i don't think he tasted them all. i laughed at him and said "remember the saying your eyes are bigger then your tummy?"

We had a marathon TV movie watching session planned for after dinner. First we watched the new reality series Jockey's on Animal Planet. Snake is a major horse racing guy and he wanted to check it out. One of the horse's he has a % of should be making its debut in the next few weeks probably at Gulfstream in Florida, then we watched the 4th episode of the 1st season of SNL featuring Candace Bergen as the host.. (we had watched the first three episodes back in January). Esther Phillips was the musical guest and she had a weird style to her singing. There was one skit where Bergen is playing a journalist over in the Middle East and refers to John Belushi who is playing some sort of Arab diplomat as a raghead which kind of shocked me but then I remembered this was 1975 and not the PC era we now live in. And of course the weekend update featuring Chevy Chase had lots of clips referring to President Gerald Ford as a klutz. Its kind of cool going back and watching the old SNL's and there's only about 33 more years to go!!

Then it was a choice between Zack & Miri make a Porno or Pineapple Express. Since our 420 friendly poker playing Olympian was making headlines we opted for Pineapple Express. Anyone who has ever ripped bong hits will get a laugh out of this movie. And Snake and i both agreed that Michael Phelps was no stranger to using a bong. I know i graduated to a bong from a joint and pipe when I used to partake (our bong in college was called Beast after one of my college friends stated man that is a Beast of Burden after the Stones song). As i said to Snake, who cares that he was smoking weed, I'd smoke some too if i spent every day of my life from the age of 7 swimming mindless laps & staring at the bottom of or lane line in a pool. Swimming may be one of the greatest exercises but its boring (Ive only swum a minuscule smidgen of the mileage Phelps has and I can attest swimming is boring but hypoxia can be kind of cool). Heck he's a young man who has to make his own choices and they may not always be the wisest or smartest choices as viewed by mainstream America but hes gotta walk his own path and find his own way. He cant have a coach or mom or US swimming dictating his every waking moment. Oh and btw lest we forget, Phelps isn't the first Olympic Gold Medal winning swimmer caught smoking pot. Anyone remember Gary Hall Jr who just retired after failing to qualify for Beijing? He was suspended by Fina for Marijuana use back in 1988 in between his 1986 and 2000 Olympic appearances.