111198851637283140

Same ol’, Same ol’

Not much going on. I’ll give a quick summary:

First, I finally bought a new car. I had been driving a 98 Pontiac Grand Am for almost 5 years. It had 115,000 miles on it and I hated it with a furious passion. It was formerly a Mary Kay car. I bought a new (2005) Infiniti G35 and I couldn’t be happier with it. I described the difference to a friend as follows: “It’s not even like I upgraded. It’s like I moved to a different planet!”

Second, I’ve been playing a lot of poker lately. Essentially, I’ve been breaking even for a couple weeks. Before that, I had a pretty nasty losing streak at $2/$4 Hold ‘Em, so I backed off for a while. That streak came after a big fat winning streak at the same stakes. I’ve been playing tons of smaller stakes tournaments lately (max $10 buy-in) and doing ok. I’ve moneyed a couple times and played some good poker. The highlight was the other night when I played a $3 + re-buys satellite to a WSOP qualifier. The prize was a $650 seat and the top 4 got paid. I finished 6th… but only because my internet connection went out for 20 minutes. I’m convinced I would’ve made the money about 90% of the time… I lost about half my stack while disconnected (blinds were pretty high) and I was dealt KK once while gone.

I’ve also been reading Harington on Hold ’em, by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. It’s definitely the best book on NL Hold ‘Em that I’ve read and it could be tied for best tournament poker book I’ve read. I’m trying to let the info sink in because…

I am playing in a $45 buy-in tournament with 37 other players next weekend. First place pays over $700 and the top 5 places get paid. Last time I played with this group, it was an 17-person $50 buy-in tournament and I finished second and made about $200 bucks. I hadn’t played at all in six months before that tournament and I’m much better now. I just hope luck is on my side. If it is, I’m confident I can win it.

Time for sleep!

111115195436548993

Worst start ever

I guess it’s only been one day, but I’m pretty sure I ain’t winnin’ any pools for the NCAA Tournament this year. I’m in three pools and here’s where I stand after 16 games played: 3/3, 19/20, 42/42. That’s right, my best standing is the Fifth Percentile. It would appear this is one of those years where every game I pick will be wrong and they’ll all be close.

I have to keep reminding myself that most of this is just dumb luck, but my ego still hurts a little.

111086578533257938

The Contender

I guess maybe ‘reality TV’ is an acquired taste, but I think this show is almost empirically good. I suppose there are those who ‘don’t like boxing’, and I can accept that but, for the rest of us, this is a super show. I think it’s because boxing is such an ego-centric sport. More so than basketball, football, baseball, hockey, soccer, and on and on and on. Also, the thrill of rooting against a boxer or for a boxer is much greater than rooting for or against a team. It’s just fun to watch such a battle of huge egos. These guys all think they’re the best thing ever… and only one of them will finish on top.

Anyway, my grammar is horrible and I’m not making much sense. Note to self: don’t drink Sleepy Time tea before posting.

111060777459379387

Can’t think of a title

EDIT: For about a week now, I’ve been trying to decide whether to post this online. It’s been sitting on my laptop in the meantime. I finally decided this is where this post belongs. Remembering things in this post is kind of why I started the weblog anyway.

This week was kind of difficult for me on an emotional level because a co-worker of mine (in Dallas) committed suicide early last week. I found out on my way to the airport, so I had a few hours to think about it while I waited on my flight to L.A. I normally wouldn’t write much about this, but I was surprised by how I felt and what I experienced as time went by.

“Co-worker” is kind of vague; he was also a friend. I enjoyed working with him and he was fun to be around. He never complained (ever), always did his job exceptionally well and never missed a beat.

At first, I was only told that he had passed away at his home; I didn’t know how. Other co-workers had been concerned because he missed two days of work and didn’t call in, so they went to his house with the local police. They found him inside.

My initial reaction was a numb feeling and some shock. It didn’t really compute. Then it started slowly dawning on me that he wouldn’t be at work next Monday when I got back. That took a long time to sink in because he’s one of the few people that I interacted with daily, almost without exception. Then I tried to remember the last time I’d talked to him. I think I was subtly concerned that maybe our last interaction was negative. I don’t even know why the thought crossed my mind because I don’t remember ever having a negative conversation with this guy. He was probably one of the easiest people to get along with in the entire building.

Eventually, I remembered that the last time we talked, we didn’t talk. I was heading up to my desk and gave him the thumbs-up, he responded with the smile-and-nod. That seems appropriate.

More time passed and then a sort of morbid curiosity started creeping into my mind. How? Natural causes, some sort of attack, suicide? I couldn’t figure out why I really needed to know or wanted to know, but I did. I now realize that I became very aware of my own mortality. I thought it was possible that he simply quit breathing, his body decided to stop. And if that could happen to him–he was in good health and didn’t have any unhealthy vices that I knew of–then it could happen to me. Just like that. All of a sudden my co-worker’s death was about me. How did that happen? I think it was a combination of two things: selfishness and a defense mechanism. Selfish or not, it was a lot easier to think about myself than a deceased friend.

I had about 16 hours to think about everything before work the next morning. It was there that I heard he’d hung himself. I was told that any number of things could’ve been overwhelming him, but that no one really knew why he’d done it. My initial reaction to this was sorrow. I felt sorry for him and wished I would’ve somehow known he was considering this. Mostly, I think I imagined how overwhelmed he must’ve been by something, by life, that he took his life. It hurt me to imagine someone dealing with that kind of weight privately, without talking to anyone. I can’t think of how to articulate this feeling. It’s just the idea of someone, alone, bearing so much that he could think of no other way to deal with it. The solution he chose was to die at his own hand, alone.

Then selfishness reared its ugly head again. I felt a little relieved. It took a couple days for me to figure out why: again, it was my fear of my own mortality. His body hadn’t just stopped and mine probably wouldn’t either. Then the relief came from rationalizing that at least he chose to go. He made a decision, it wasn’t made for him. That’s just another defense mechanism.

So now I’ve been back to work and it’s a little strange. There’s definitely the “big white elephant” that no one is talking about. But maybe they talked about it more last week while I was in L.A. Every now and then I’ll hear another detail: he was dressed for work. But those details don’t seem as significant to me as the detail that I’d worried so much about before. They just help to paint a more vivid picture, a sadder one.