I heard a rumor earlier in the week that Badger Poker might have a high profile visitor last night. So after taking Julie out to dinner she let me go out to play for a while and see who shows up, as long as I promised to help her put her new shelving unit together when I got home. So I went out, played a few side games. Had a bunch of fun with it and broke even, so life is good there. I heard rumors that you shouldn't leave before 10:30, so I called Julie and told her as much. Well, around 11:00, I'm getting tired, and wondering about the shelf that I still have to help Julie with, when Wisconsin's own Phil Helmouth Jr. walks into our local poker game. Say what you want about him: whiner, poker brat, whatever. He's still a 9 time bracelet winner and former world champ, and that was pretty cool too meet him and get him autograph. He spent a while with us, talking about how he got started, and how much he loved seeing poker grow and leagues like ours running. Someone asked him if he had watched ESPN's tournament of champions, to which he immediately replied "What, you mean the one where I lost to a girl?" All in all a very fun and memorable night.

Unfortunately, since listening to him talk and waiting to get his autograph kept me there until 11:30 or so, I still had to help Julie build her shelf when I got home, so I'm running on about 4 hours of sleep right now. Getting started was a bit tough this morning, but one Mountain Dew Amp and 20 oz. Pepsi later, I'm at least getting a bit twitchy from caffeine type stuff, so that's a vague improvement. And now to try to function for the rest of the work day. 8-)