a good tuesday
"You just told me you felt alive for the first time at a fucking card table."
I woke up a little late. I had stayed up a bit late playing poker at Ben's and then talking to Zee. Plus my sleep schedule tends to get pushed late by the weekends and I hadn't quite recovered. Instead of getting up right away I fished the laptop over to the bed and played some poker. I recently put $100 dollars on Poker Stars. I lost like $30 on some .50/1 limit and did a bit better than breaking even on the two tournaments I played. Got blown out on the first one I'm sure you are thinking "wow, what a perfect day!" Ended up driving Zee to school around 1:00 and rolled into work at around 1:30. By this time I was famished, so I told Dan I was going to lunch and headed over to Chipotle.
Chipotle decided to give away burritos to everyone who showed up. On the bright side, free burrito! On the down side, I had to wait in a very long line which probably made lunch take at least an extra 15 minutes. I ran into Barry at Chipotle and ate with him.
Work was kinda eh. We're refilling binders for the prerelease coming up. Its a slow tedious task involving a lot of rearranging of our hideously disorganized main binders and three sets of prerelease binders. This particular task is especially mind numbing to me for some reason, and I'm obviously even as I write this, procrastinating doing it.
Zee rescued me early from the dregs of boredom. She got to Netherworld from class drenched to the bone from walking there in the rain. She'd not called me for a ride because she had some errands to run between the University and the store. She was in bad shape and upset about the day. She asked me if I wanted to go out tonight for some warm spicy food. Maharajah's it is! I went there for the first time last week with her and their shahi paneer is nearly worth dying for. She ended up calling her parents to see if they wanted to go too.
So soon I found myself at Maharajah's with Zee's family and mountains of delicious Indian food in front of me. I really like Zee's parents. They are a great combination of interesting, funny, friendly and intelligent. Zee's mom is the chair of the sociology department at UW and her dad is a computer programmer at Epic Systems. At times they seem intimidatingly successful to me. I'm pretty sure I come off as mostly quiet and boring to them. None of all that really mattered to me last night though. I had a lot of fun at dinner and the food was wonderful. The only downside was that I had eaten a rather sizable burrito just a few hours earlier which kept me from eating more Indian.
My planned activity for last night was the triumphant return of the Park Street Poker Club.
backstory:
Long ago in the summer of 2003, I was rescued from a pretty low fit of depression by the game of poker. I was in the process of losing my job at ACD. While this was a very good thing in the scheme of things, it had me feeling pretty down. My girlfriend at the time didn't really understand what I was going through at that time. She had a few problems at the time herself. I'm not going to get into her. I really needed friends or a sense of community or at least some good times.
So there was this poker game in town that I knew about. It ran every Tuesday night upstairs from a thai/laotian resturant. Becky had been telling me I should go play there for a while. I had been there like a year or two earlier once with Adrian and Becky. Anyway, it was all exactly what I needed. Over the next year and a half I found more friends, community and good times than I could have ever expected. I also learned to be a pretty good poker player and made some money.
Unfortunately the Club got shut down because a few months after I started playing there it really blew up and they were soon running three poker tournaments a week. Alongside this were a large amount of cash games. We were getting a steadily growing college crowd and the poker craze was in full bloom by then. The games overall were pretty harmless. We were playing tournaments with only a 6 or 11 dollar entry usually and the cash games seldom made people lose more than fifty dollars. These are the lowest of stakes in poker terms. Still, word about the game was pretty widespread. We got tipped off by their landlord that the police were asking questions. So we abruptly closed the club down.
So recently my friends who ran the original poker night started renting a new house and since its been a couple years they sent out emails of a new Tuesday night poker game. I guess I wasn't the only one who missed the good old days because there was a pretty solid crew of the old crowd. Zee was originally going to drop me off at the game, but she was a little caffienated on all the tea she drank at dinner and decided to stick around and play a little instead of going home.
All I can say is the magic was back. I had so much fun last night playing. I saw a bunch of people I didn't think I would ever actually see again. Zee had a great time as well. I was glad she got to meet the old crew that was an important part of my life. I won $35. The money didn't matter as much as the thrill of playing a great game with fun people. All in all, a night that really made me feel alive. good times!
Definitely going back next week. The game starts at 7:30 on Tuesdays. If anybody is interested, just ask and I'll give you directions there.
ps: i love my girlfriend.
I woke up a little late. I had stayed up a bit late playing poker at Ben's and then talking to Zee. Plus my sleep schedule tends to get pushed late by the weekends and I hadn't quite recovered. Instead of getting up right away I fished the laptop over to the bed and played some poker. I recently put $100 dollars on Poker Stars. I lost like $30 on some .50/1 limit and did a bit better than breaking even on the two tournaments I played. Got blown out on the first one I'm sure you are thinking "wow, what a perfect day!" Ended up driving Zee to school around 1:00 and rolled into work at around 1:30. By this time I was famished, so I told Dan I was going to lunch and headed over to Chipotle.
Chipotle decided to give away burritos to everyone who showed up. On the bright side, free burrito! On the down side, I had to wait in a very long line which probably made lunch take at least an extra 15 minutes. I ran into Barry at Chipotle and ate with him.
Work was kinda eh. We're refilling binders for the prerelease coming up. Its a slow tedious task involving a lot of rearranging of our hideously disorganized main binders and three sets of prerelease binders. This particular task is especially mind numbing to me for some reason, and I'm obviously even as I write this, procrastinating doing it.
Zee rescued me early from the dregs of boredom. She got to Netherworld from class drenched to the bone from walking there in the rain. She'd not called me for a ride because she had some errands to run between the University and the store. She was in bad shape and upset about the day. She asked me if I wanted to go out tonight for some warm spicy food. Maharajah's it is! I went there for the first time last week with her and their shahi paneer is nearly worth dying for. She ended up calling her parents to see if they wanted to go too.
So soon I found myself at Maharajah's with Zee's family and mountains of delicious Indian food in front of me. I really like Zee's parents. They are a great combination of interesting, funny, friendly and intelligent. Zee's mom is the chair of the sociology department at UW and her dad is a computer programmer at Epic Systems. At times they seem intimidatingly successful to me. I'm pretty sure I come off as mostly quiet and boring to them. None of all that really mattered to me last night though. I had a lot of fun at dinner and the food was wonderful. The only downside was that I had eaten a rather sizable burrito just a few hours earlier which kept me from eating more Indian.
My planned activity for last night was the triumphant return of the Park Street Poker Club.
backstory:
Long ago in the summer of 2003, I was rescued from a pretty low fit of depression by the game of poker. I was in the process of losing my job at ACD. While this was a very good thing in the scheme of things, it had me feeling pretty down. My girlfriend at the time didn't really understand what I was going through at that time. She had a few problems at the time herself. I'm not going to get into her. I really needed friends or a sense of community or at least some good times.
So there was this poker game in town that I knew about. It ran every Tuesday night upstairs from a thai/laotian resturant. Becky had been telling me I should go play there for a while. I had been there like a year or two earlier once with Adrian and Becky. Anyway, it was all exactly what I needed. Over the next year and a half I found more friends, community and good times than I could have ever expected. I also learned to be a pretty good poker player and made some money.
Unfortunately the Club got shut down because a few months after I started playing there it really blew up and they were soon running three poker tournaments a week. Alongside this were a large amount of cash games. We were getting a steadily growing college crowd and the poker craze was in full bloom by then. The games overall were pretty harmless. We were playing tournaments with only a 6 or 11 dollar entry usually and the cash games seldom made people lose more than fifty dollars. These are the lowest of stakes in poker terms. Still, word about the game was pretty widespread. We got tipped off by their landlord that the police were asking questions. So we abruptly closed the club down.
So recently my friends who ran the original poker night started renting a new house and since its been a couple years they sent out emails of a new Tuesday night poker game. I guess I wasn't the only one who missed the good old days because there was a pretty solid crew of the old crowd. Zee was originally going to drop me off at the game, but she was a little caffienated on all the tea she drank at dinner and decided to stick around and play a little instead of going home.
All I can say is the magic was back. I had so much fun last night playing. I saw a bunch of people I didn't think I would ever actually see again. Zee had a great time as well. I was glad she got to meet the old crew that was an important part of my life. I won $35. The money didn't matter as much as the thrill of playing a great game with fun people. All in all, a night that really made me feel alive. good times!
Definitely going back next week. The game starts at 7:30 on Tuesdays. If anybody is interested, just ask and I'll give you directions there.
ps: i love my girlfriend.