Thanksgiving and stuff

Holidays become so much more...interesting...when you have a kid. We had to do Thanksgiving in Chicago this year at my sister in law's place, but we didn't think it would be that bad, because we didn't need to be there until 1:00. No problem, right? OK, so we woke up to Renee having exploded out of her diaper due to sheer quantity. We can deal with that. Mostly ready to go, and hmm...what's that smell? Yup, Renee blew out of another diaper. Quick change, we've still got some time, and go! Most of the way there Julie smells...yup. Yet one more diaper explosion. So we're on the third outfit of the day, and after pulling off the road and doing a change and trying to dry out the carseat some, we barely make it in time.

The real lifesaver here? We finally have an ipass. I hate paying tolls. Especially since we don't have to up here, it's a real hassle to have to do it down there. But if you've got to pay, holy cow is the ipass the way to go. Tolls are half price, and you just drive right on through now that they have open road tolling. If you don't have an ipass, you have to exit off the interstate to hit the cash booths, and then get right back onto the same road. Which on a normal day may cost you a few minutes (and the extra toll cost). On a holiday like this? One line that I saw I'd estimate at a quarter mile long of bumper to bumper barely moving traffic. And I sailed right on by. We were giggling the whole way as we looked around to the maybe three other cars with us (this was at night on the way back to Wisconsin, so fewer people had the ipass).

Thanksgiving itself was pretty good. Always good to see family, and besides the diaper explosions, Renee was being very cute and spent a good chunk of time as the center of attention. Football sucked, but the teams that I want to win never do well on Thanksgiving, so what can you do? At least I was able to veg and enjoy a good food coma for a while.

Julie summed things up and straightened them out for me so easily last night that I'm almost embarrassed that I didn't figure it out myself sooner. "You can't live scared." So freaking simple, and yet so true. Guess I was stuck in a bit of a depressed funk yesterday and couldn't see that at the time. But I do know, and feel a bit better for it.

Helping this out was going out to play poker with some friends last night. And let's face it, doing well in poker (or anything that you enjoy) and having a few beers is a great way to relax and let some of those negative feelings slip away. I finished second last night, and all I can say is that I'm half convinced that the river should be outlawed. If it wasn't for getting three outed on the river a little before the end of the night, I would have easily cleaned house and won the whole thing. But three outers happen (at least 2 or 3 other times that night to me. Not that I'm still a bit annoyed by them), and I've certainly had my share of three outing people (but it's never as bad when you're the one doing the outting, right? lol). So I guess I can't complain too much. However, I do have one thing that I can complain about:

What kind of lowlife idiot cheats at a free poker game?

Well, as it turns out, a very drunk one at our table last night. This idiot, whose name I never got, so I have nicknamed Drama Jr. (Drama got kicked out of Badger Poker for cheating a year or so back) was already annoying our whole table before he got caught. He was talking a lot of shit, and kept hitting the leg of the table so people's drinks were getting sloshed and spilled all over the place. You know that kind of drunk guy. To make his reputation worse, we find out that he's dating the most obnoxious, loudmouthed, annoying blond idiot at BP. They're a perfect match made in hell. I just hope they don't breed, because I'd hate to see what the demonic spawn of those two would be like. But I digress... So we just come back from a break and DJ (Drama Jr.) has the deal. As he grabs the cards, he even draws attention to himself by saying "I stacked the deck while you guys were away from the table at break, so I'll just shuffle a little more." As he starts to shuffle, he drops the cards on his lap. He picks them up, glances around a bit, and says "yup, that's all of them" and starts to deal.

When the action gets around to Tony, who was seated next to DJ, Tony looks over at him and says "stand up!" DJ sputters and makes some noise and eventually says no. We're all confused at this point, but Tony kept on him, and then adds in "Stand up. You've got two cards under your leg. Stand up and show everyone." So now that we know where this is going, some of us stand up and surround DJ in his chair. Drama Jr goes "I'm not standing up. Fine, here, I'll fold. See, now I'm done. I'm out of the hand." as he tosses the cards in front of him into the muck. But at this point, none of us are going to let up on him until we see if Tony was right or not. And truth be told, we were all believing Tony, even though we hadn't seen anything yet. When DJ sees that we're not going to let him off the hook, he then shoves all of his chips in the middle and says "fine, I quit. Here, take all my chips, I quit, I'm done." A few of us are trying to get Scotty's (the guy who runs BP) attention to come over and help deal with this. I pull DJ's chips aside so they don't mix with what's already in there, and when Drama Jr sees Scott coming over, he says again "I quit, take my chips, I'm done. I fold" and he suddenly throws two more cards into the muck. I didn't see him pull them from under his leg, but I most definitely saw the second set of cards get tossed into the muck by this loser.

Of course he doesn't just leave. He stomps around for the next half hour, and any time his path takes him near Tony he starts getting all pissy and curses at him. I was starting to get to the point of hoping this idiot would throw a punch so I'd have an excuse to jump in and take a shot at him myself. I'm not one to start fights or throw the first punch, but if someone else does, I have no problems whatsoever in finishing them. Luckily for Drama Jr, he never got dumb enough to actually take a swing, even though you could see that he wanted to. For his efforts there last night, he's been banned for at least the next month, and hopefully much longer.

All of this at a free game. Nothing on the line except some points that if you get enough of you get to play in an invite only tournament. Oh, I forgot that you get a pint glass for making the final table. Yeah, that's worth cheating for. (insert sarcastic look here) Yup, for those elusive points, this idiot has permanently gotten himself labeled as a cheat, and won't be able to get a game with anyone at BP. I'm reminded at this point of George Carlin, who said "Think about how dumb the average person is, and then realize that half the people out there are dumber than that!" This idiot is definitely pulling down the curve.

Zach just added me as a link on his blog, which is usually quite entertaining, so check him out.

I really wanted to start out my first post after being linked from his with something funny and witty, so anyone clicking on it wouldn't think this a complete waste of cyberspace, but unfortunately it just isn't going to work out that way. Pages like this can be used for a lot of different things from funny stories, to news about life, to ranting and raving and getting things off your chest, and this is kinda going to fall under that last category.

Mondays always suck. One of those trusims of life. But today had about the worst start yet. As I'm driving in to work and getting near an area where my cell signal usually sucks and goes out a lot, my dad calls. Which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but his news floored me. My cousin Brooke was found dead this weekend of an apparent suicide. I'm just happy that I stayed on the road when I heard that.

Recently I hadn't been as close to her as I would have liked, especially with her living in Madison, but when you think about it, it's the kind of thing where you say "well, that's life. It gets busy, and I can catch up with her some other time or she can call me too." Well, that only works up to a point, and that point was some time last week. Last I saw her was a few years back, and she seemed to be doing pretty well. Had a good job and was happy with it. Talked with her parents daily, and other relatives a lot, and was just generally doing well. My dad told me that right up until the end she called her parents daily and there was no indication of anything wrong or bothering her. And I know, a lot of people won't tell their parents when things are bothering them, they just don't want to deal with the parental interference, or don't want to bother them with it, or whatever.

That's part of what really gets me on this. Being a parent now, what are things going to be like in 25 years? Will Renee feel like she can talk to me about anything? Will she tell me when she has problems? Will I have prepared her well enough to handle them when they come up? Because it's not if, it's when they come up. Nobody has a perfect life. And how do you deal with having to bury a child? I can't even imagine. Being a parent is normally such a joy, but every once in a while, it's enough to scare you more than you've ever thought possible, and now that's just been ratcheted up a notch.

And I know, the easy answer is you just do your best and hope that they learn well and adjust well to whatever life brings them. But that's a lot harder to accept when you see what can go wrong. I just pray that her parents can find some kind of peace soon.

Quote of the week: "If I want to be romantic, I don't swear at a girl."

-was going to be annonymous, but Zach thinks it's funny, so there.

I'm having a seriously huge geek out moment. We had a spare 19" LCD monitor laying about here, so I decided to confiscate it for my own use, and now I have on my desktop a PC with dual 19" LCD monitors and a 20" iMac next to that. So I'm just doing a little happy dance with my uber geek self! In celebration of this, I bring you, yet again...



PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!

It just has to be brought back every once in a while... 8-)

file this under wtf...

There are lots of times that you can say "it's great to be a guy/girl because...". I think underwear generally goes on the guy's side. Three packs for under $10? How can you argue with that? Besides making it a six pack, because let's face it, guys relate well to six packs. But I have to stop and wonder when I'm looking down at this package (pun intended), and see that not only does it have a ziplock-like resealable opening at the top, but they advertise the fact that it's there on the package. I actually just stopped and stood in the middle of the aisle staring at this. Is born on dating coming next? Is this needed? Are we concerned about the freshness of brand new purchased underwear? Will slightly used/funky underwear be coming next that it would necessitate being able to reseal the package to keep that odor nice and strong if you pull out one pair? Why is it a pair of underwear when there's only one thing there? I don't know, but I am vaguely scared.

Poker...the new football?

So I'm playing in my weekly poker game on Monday night at Badger Poker, and we've got our same usual five at our starting table with a few familiar faces filling in the other three seats. Generally having a good time, especially since the premium hands kept coming and kept hitting and improving. Always a great combo! But, as luck tends to do, it turned fast for me, and I lost 90% of my stack on a hand that I had pocket queens that I raised with, to have another guy push back all in for most of my chips. I call, see his pocket threes, and feel great right up until the first card on the flop is a three. Sigh...damn two outers. Anyways, I'm in the blind in the next hand and someone turns a full house, so there goes the rest of the chips.

So what does this have to do with the title? Well, I was the second to last of my friends to be eliminated. Scott was still in, and Heather was watching him play, so I went over and we became his mini cheering section as we tried to peek over his shoulder to see his cards and get the WSOP pocket cam feel for the game. Now I know that I enjoy poker a lot. I jumped on the bandwagon a few years ago with half of the country, and I'm loving the ride so far. But I realized as I sat there for two hours, just watching other people play, and having a blast, that this is so like football for me. I've always said that if it's football I'll watch it, I don't care if it's Pro or Pop Warner (c'mon, kids running around in oversided pads and helmets is cute and funny!). I'm realizing that poker is the same way. If I'm playing it, watching it on TV, watching friends play, whatever, it's just fun. It also helped that in the space of about a half hour I saw Scott flop top set and turn quads to take out a guy who semibluffed with an open ended straight draw, a different guy turn a royal flush, and a third guy flop a straight flush (with someone else flopping and ace high flush!). I was just as excited and having just as much fun watching as playing.

Makes you wonder what future possibilities hold for Daniel Negreanu's Full Contact Poker... 8-)