No Shoes, No Service...

I standing there at the gas pump looking around as I was annoyed with the fact that the little thingie that allows me to clean my windows while I am pumping gas was missing and I had to hold the lever. A white Bonneville pulls up and what I notice first is that the man getting out of the car is not wearing shoes. This isn't to odd because it is summer here on the coast of Connecticut and the guy was wearing shorts. It was odd that he chose to wear tube socks to compliment his shorts but chose not to wear any shoes. He was also wearing an astounding obvious toupee, so his sense of style was definitely impaired. I have accepted the fact that I am 40 years old, my hair is slowly turning gray which I can also accept and it also may be thinning on top which, for me, is a bit harder to accept. My father was bald and I used to tell him that I never wanted to lose my hair, I started telling him this I think when I was 3 years old. My father came of age in the fifties and if you could have seen the head of hair he had all slicked up in a curly pompadour you would think he would have bought a toupee when he went bald. He never did and he also was never a victim of the dreaded comb over. I always admired him for the fact that he was so self assured that hair on his never made him feel any less of a man. So, I can tell you for sure that I will never pull into a Cumberland Farms store to buy my lottery tickets or a six pack in white late model American sedan wearing a toupee, shorts and tube socks with no shoes. I will definitely be driving a BMW ;)

Not much going on

I haven't really been doing much of anything, the munchkin is doing all her stuff and we are getting a break from all the parent-tot classes for a while and I will be trying to spend as much time with her at the park or the beach in the morning before I go to work while the weather is nice. I haven't really been playing much online I am grinding it out on the O8 and Stud8 tables and building my bankroll back up slowly. I have set monetary benchmarks to hit before I move up a level and sticking to it, unlike in the past when I got ahead of myself and decimated my bankroll. I would like to play some more tourneys but my work schedule still is not conducive to that. I am still itching to get up to Foxwoods, I haven't been able to play live in over six months and my live bankroll is burning a hole in my lock box downstairs in the basement. I just heard that the are running a $3,000 buy in deep stack tourney up there and you can satellite in starting at $60, next tourney is on July 19th I'll see if I can get up there soon.

Finally had the party...

We finally had the friends over for the official 40th B'day party and a good time was definitely had by all. I don't know if the munchkin understood that it wasn't my birthday again so soon and why she only had one and seem like Daddy had more than one. She did enjoy all the people that were there to play with her because she is three and that is really the only reason anyone comes over now. I got a couple more gift certificates to the camera shop so I am a bit more than half way to my new digital camera. I of course don't want just any camera I want a Canon SLR digital that can take my lens from my Elan II. I will have to pay dearly even with the money I received as gifts but I know it will be worth it.

Not Enough Time

I haven't had as much time once again to post as much a I would like and I also haven't had as much time to play poker as I would like. It seems that every time that I get a chance to play something in the back of my head is making me tentative to play, maybe it's because there is something else important I should be doing. Let's just being with the fact that a couple of Sundays ago we had the nor'easter tear through and leave several gallons of water in my carpet in the basement and spend the five days hoping that the new dehumidifier would suck it out 60 pints at a time (I know it was wishful thinking). I finally decide for the safety of my family so they would not die of mold poisoning, is there such a thing, I would rip out the carpet and clean out the basement. Now we can start using it as an office for my wife, TV/Playroom for the munchkin and a computer area for me to play poker. Now we can remove the laptops from the kitchen table and reclaim it for the purpose it was intended for.

I guess the time we spend making our lives better and more productive is always time well spend. I would rather have more time than more money because money can always be replaced but the time lost can never be replaced. I really enjoy playing poker even with the ups and downs in my bankroll. I have also learned a bunch about myself while playing, poker has become a mirror for my life, but I would never sacrifice the time I get to spend with my family for any game because that is too important to me. Right now I have been very fortunate to be working afternoon to evenings hours at my job because I get to spend most of the waking hours with my daughter and even though I don't get to read her a bedtime story, I do get to go to gym class, music class and just hang out with her at the beach in the summer more then most dads do. I have made career choice that might not seem right to some other people but the time these first years of her life that I have been able spend with her are worth more money than I could have earned in a high powered career.

40 years and 1 week or so

I made it through the first week of the second half of my life and the funny thing is that I don't feel any older than I did a week ago or even a couple of years ago. My hair started turning gray a few years ago which I guess is better than the rest of my family, my Mom and Sister went gray in their twenties and even though my Father didn't go gray until his late thirties most of it had fallen out by his mid-twenties, shortly after my sister was born. Now that I'm thinking about it the bulk of the gray turning happened after my daughter was born. What's going to happen when she turns twelve and wants to go to the mall with her "boyfriend"? Let me get her in kindergarten first I'll worry about that later.

On the poker scene I have been sticking with the Omaha8 game and added some Pot Limit play to that and I have had some success in the low limits. I am not sure if I like playing this versus the limit game I will give it a few more goes and see what happens. I am going to continue to add some sit'ngos to the mix when I can dedicate more than a half an hour to my play. My real life just keeps getting in the way of my poker life but I guess with the hours I work, a three year old and everything that goes with it, that's just the way it goes. If I could win Powerball I could do whatever the hell I want but when you can't even match one lousy number...well need I say more. Is there such thing as Powerball tilt?

F-Day eve

T-minus less then 24hrs until I turn 40. I guess I should be taking stock of my life and accept the fact that I'm officially middle aged. The funny thing about it is that I really don't feel as old as I am. I guess it the difference between being childlike as opposed to being childish. I refuse to act my age and grow a pot belly and get cranky, but I have no problem going gray now, as long as my hair stays in my head I could care less what color it turns. My goals for the next 40 years of my life is to be happy, healthy and wealthy in love and money and of course to play as much poker as I can for as long as it makes me happy.

Rest and Relaxation

We just got back from our trip to Pocono Palace or the land of love, as they like to call it. The wife and I had some alone time together and it was long over due and well worth it. We have been to the Poconos a number of times before and we always have a great time. It is a bit on the tacky, dated side but how can you go wrong with a heart shaped pool and a champagne glass jacuzzi in your room. I ate too much, drank too much and did other stuff just enough. We went driving in the mountains to see if we could find a candle shop that we stumbled across a couple of trips past. It was this great shop with rows and rows of candles in every possible scent, these huge double scented, double wicked things that were scented from cotton candy to the cliched french vanilla. We motored up down the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, but we just didn't make it up the right hill to find that particular shop. What we did find the road that could lead us to The Promise Land. An actually green and white road sign came out of nowhere and pointed us onto the road to salvation. Yes, I thought, just like you, that prayers and good deeds would get you there but no a tank of gas and a good GPS is all you need. Needless to say we opted not to turn.

This trip was the first time we left the munchkin with her grandmother for more than one night and it was a bit traumatic for my wife. I had a slight bit of apprehension only in sense of would she go to sleep for my mom the second night after the novelty of it all wore off or would she remember that someone other than her mom or dad can take her to do potty. My wife for some reason felt that we were being negligent parents, it's something that she got over very quickly once we got there and took our first dip in the pool. I think that as long as we leave her with someone responsible and not the descendants of the Mason clan we are doing our jobs as parents.

On the poker front I have been splitting time between playing some heads up sit'ngos, single table sit'ngos and some of the split games. I have haven't really played many heads up games and I sometimes like them. I have found if I can take the lead early I can dispatch the other guy most of the time before we even get out of the first level. It is interesting to see what some people will play and if you have any sense of how to play you position in spite of your cards you can exploit some pretty bad play. If you get some one who plays to tight and doesn't know to raise on the button, unless he has some premium cards, you can steal blinds with just about anything. The fact is that when playing heads up you really do have to be willing to die in order to live. You have to stick your neck out sometimes knowing you are taking the worst of it and hoping to win the coin flip races. I just got tired of having my pockets Jacks running into Aces or Kings at least fours times in the last week. I may never play them again, well not this week, ask me again after I bust someone on a weak Ace or something the like.