I haven't written in a while. I started to write a post around Christmas time but I wasn't in to it so I stopped writing it. The subject was "Tis the season to be TAKER". Which was an awesome title, but in the meantime I thought of about five hundred other awesome titles for a post but just haven't written one.

Christmas was okay. The Whipple family always gets together on Christmas Eve and that was enjoyable, we did a gift swap thing for everyone so I really didn't have too many gifts to get anyone, just one gift for Roger. I got my mom a few small things from the Christmas tree shop and the family a plastic shovel since we don't have one, and I bought myself like a zillion other things (hence the prior subject), including a pretty good pair of Koss headphones ($35), and the contacts. Okay, that's just two things, but I'm sure there's more.

New Years was boring, I stayed home and finished clearing a PokerStars bonus after I got out of work around 9:20ish. They had a double FPP deal and I easily should of cleared three $120 bonuses during that time and I only cleared one. Kind of annoying.

During work, about the first hour I got there a girl came in. She wasn't sure what she wanted and mentioned being hungover so she got a Chicken Salad with one scoop of Chicken Salad (which is very very little), and a few vegetables, so I gave her a tiny discount (regular price is 4.71 for chicken salad, so I rung her up for a turkey which is 3.45). She then asked if we accepted tips and I said yes, we can take tips by hand, she she started opening up her purse and basically emptying it out, she started with a $1 bill and a load of change (at least another dollar there), saying how she didn't want that in there anymore. Then she gave me three winning lottery tickets, and said how one of them was a $10 winner. One was, and the other two were $4 and $2 winners. I was like wow. I guess she liked me. She was pretty nice and I swear she looked familar. She might of been a friend of Liz's or maybe she's come in before? I'm not sure. As she was leaving and I was going through the Shell station she said "You..*point* have a great night." and I said thanks again. I've gotten $5 tips before and maybe one or two that was around $10, but not that much before, probably came to about $19 and I made $22 the whole day. I can't believe that.

Then, at the end of the night, I was supposed to close at $8 but had very little done so i stayed open till I finished most of that, and only got one customer around 8:40 and then closed. Then a cop came around about 10 minutes afterwards and I told him I was closed, since I had all the meats wrapped and I was getting ready to count the drawer and such, and I felt pretty bad after Peter at the Shell heckled me about not making him a sub. A girl gives me an $18+ tip at the beginning of the day and then I stiff a cop at the end of the night. I kind of felt bad afterwards.

Poker. The end of the year tournament for the home game was this Friday. It was a winners invitiational freeroll and you got starting chips based on how many wins you got, and I started with 1400 which was good compared to the one win stacks of 600 but still very small compared to Kurt, Jim, and Leo, who had about 3000-4000 for each of them. I had a good table draw though, having Leo on my right (who is probably the most conservative of the two of them), and a bunch of 600 stacks as well as two of the looser players who made the final tournament. However, not much really happened. The blinds were raised to 20 minutes with the same structure, which gave a bit more play, but still around 40/80, 50/100, I hadn't doubled up and my high point was only say 1800, making some nice plays on pots to pickup chips.

( Two of the early hands )

I made it to the 100/200 level and got to the final table ten-handed with 1400 chips. The same I started with, and I knew as I had expected that if I didn't gain chips going into the crazy 100-200-400 BB sequence that I'd be screwed. The first hand of the final table IIRC, Jim limps in EP/UTG, and I have KQo in MP. Again, I'm not 100 percent certain what my reasoning was behind this play, but I felt like this was a good hand to make a stand with and I wasn't sure if I was going to find a better spot. I definitely thought about it for a while before pushing it in though, and then Mark in one of the blinds moves in with a smaller stack than mine as well. Sick for about 10 seconds, Jim calls getting even better pot odds when he might have called my bet alone, and they both show 66 for Mark IIRC and 55 for Jim.

A lot of times in NL tournaments, you grind it out for a while when the blinds are short, and then all of a sudden your whole tournament turns around in one key hand. This was that hand for this tournament. I'm about 40% equity here with KQo, and a King flops and I almost triple up to 3900. I was pretty excited at this point since 3900 was enough chips to make some moves, compared to where I was going to be.

However, I went from there and didn't get too far. I called a short stack who went on to win the tournament with K9 on the SB and couldn't bust him, then I made a move on the BB with Q8 after there was one UTG limper, and he called instantly with AJ and went on to finish third. Then I picked up Ace-little on the button 5 handed and got called instantly by AQ. 5th was good enough for some money though, $25, although not nearly as nice as the $210 for first. Not bad for a freeroll though.

I'm going to end it at this for now, this is already a pretty long post. I'd like to write a post recapping my 2005 poker winnings, among writing about other things. Other then poker and work this is a boring time of the year, I don't have school to keep me company between work and right now I'd rather cut myself for money then work at Subway. Such is my life.

Tags: family, poker, work

( Finished 2nd for $320 in East Providence tournament )

So, Uncle Chris was back over our house on Sunday when I came back, so I didn't show off the money with him there because I didn't want to get begged for money. I guess he was doing better and stuff, although it sounded like he had lost his normal job. Then Monday he heads off for my grandparent's, I come home from work, and Mom and Larry tell me he got arrested for DUI. Nice. It sounded like he was doing good too. Fucking unbelievable.

Owner's daughter who likes stealing money came in and might have stolen stuff from the drawer. It was short like $70 I think, although sometimes the computer figure is off by a lot and it easily could have been another problem. This really pisses me off because I should of told her not to touch the drawer and watched her more closely but I was doing stuff. Fuck me.

I'm planning on taking the 2 courses at BCC to avoid health insurance costs. Double my course load. Take Economics and Abnormal Psych. Looking forward to it, but still wish I was somewhere else right now.

Also got my hair freshly cut today, not bad.

Tags: bcc, family, poker, work

Played the $25 tournament in Milford Thursday night. I was sort of familiar with the area in Milford, so I didn't get totally lost which was nice. It was a 30+ minute highway drive though, so not the greatest of places to play.

I have a serious problem in that, I can't remember any of even the most crucial hands I played 100% accurately. This really bothers me because I can't figure out how badly or well I played if I don't know what I did. I didn't bring any sort of note taking devices like I have at the East Providence games, although I didn't use them then anyway. I definitely need to come up with a system or get used to remembering hands. This really frustrated me when I was trying to write this post up for 2 hours and I realized, I don't know all the really important or even the most important details well enough.

( Anyways... )

On the way home I wasn't sure if I would make it back on gas. I get about ~20mpg probably a little more on a 12 gallon tank and I had gone about 240 miles on the current tank, so I stopped at a full service Shell that to my surprise was actually open in the center of Milford and got $10 at $2.39, which at the time was a little bit of a bad beat because I was going to get gas at the Hess in Seekonk at $2.26 earlier but I was impatient and all the pumps were full and I figured I could make it to Milford okay. On the way back home on RT 1 I saw the Hess station which I didn't even know if it was open at $2.22 and stopped there and lessened the bad beat, averaging out at $2.30. Now the Hess station at Seekonk today was like $2.31 and other places were up to $2.43. Gas is insane.

In other news, Patches went missing again for 4 days or so, and then was found the other day but wasn't doing too good. It ended up he was bit, probably be that stray cat that had the kittens, and had to have minor surgery or something to fix whatever, and he might have Rabies. Although you would think that if it was the stray mother cat that bit him, and that cat had to have Rabies to pass it on to Patches, then wouldn't the kittens maybe have Rabies too? So hopefully he'll be all right, but it also worries me if he does have Rabies he could pass it on to all our cats which would not be good (although I guess the Rabies boosters are up to date on the other cats, cause it wasnt with Patches). Also, new cat George who just loves to hang around on the roof porch allll the time fell off the roof the other day and they were looking for him when I came home from work. We were able to grab him and he's home now but no roof for him for a while. My old cat Ginger supposedly fell off the roof at one point a while back as well.

Today's quote of the day goes to my mom, who when I said I would need new bedsheets for Fitchburg asked me if I was going to live there. No mom, I've heard their dumpsters are pretty comfortable and the commute isn't too bad.

Tags: cats, college, family, poker
Current Mood: my head kills and I can't remember anything (then)
Current Music: Local H - Hands on the Bible

Today, I will try to write the cliff notes version of my livejournal.

• I had my cousin Jason do the tune-up on my car, since he's out a job and he's looking for any money he can get. Pretty much all it needed was the spark plugs changed, and it now drives pretty awesome. On Sunday I drove to Taunton following my parents to another cousin's college graduation party, and with my tiny little CD boombox I bought for $15 at Benny's, driving kicks ass.
• I hung out with Billy on Friday, and we played pool at the mysterious bar on 152 no one knows about. He beat me pretty good but I still won a few times. 75 cent games are fun, but blisters on hands from pool sticks are not.
• I got acceptance letters back from both Westfield and Fitchburg. At the moment Fitchburg looks much more promising, because their deadline for priority housing is July 1st, compared to Westfield's which was June 1st. Stupid stupid admissions rules making my application late. I need however, to call them about Financial Aid, because I haven't gotten anything back yet. I will probably do that today. I also may go visit Westfield and/or Fitchburg soon on my upcoming days off (Fri, next Tue/Wed). I also like Fitchburg better because it isn't in the middle of no where. From Fitchburg I could go see people in Boston, or come home if I had to, where as in Westfield there's no way to get anywhere if I don't have a car.
• My over/under for my uncle Chris drinking again after detox was way off. I was never good at making bets. He got out Friday I think and he was drinking again on Saturday or Sunday or something. Apparently he was really messed up Sunday, was going crazy drinking or something, messed up something at work and might have been fired, and my mom was trying to find him or something on Sunday because he was probably at the air show near here (there's a family history with the air show). My mom is pretty pissed because she also owns the insurance to the car he is driving. He called up Monday to talk to my mom and sounded relatively good surprisingly.

( Non cliff notes - poker )

Tags: college, family, friends, poker