Man, I'm so frustrated about something I did a while while ago that I can't even write about it.

I am definitely a social retard.

Some of you will figure out when I'm talking about soon.

Tags: friends, stupid me
Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: Pandora

I watched a movie for the first time in a while. I have this disdain for movies that goes back to when I was young, I think mainly it's that I can think of better things to do than to be engulfed in another life for an hour and a half. But anyways, I was browsing through the channels and the name Trainspotting sounded familiar, probably from Paul Phillips' blog, so I watched it, it was about a heroin addict trying to get out of his heroin addict life while getting sucked back in by his mates. The British mannerisms were pretty funny, but I'm generally a bad judge of movies, it was okay. A wise man once told me drugs are bad. C'est vrai.

I also caught parts of Waking Life on IFC, they seem to show it on afternoons on Mondays I guess or something. I saw that and made me think for a bit before I realized thinking was bad. Now I finished watching this movie and I started thinking again. Oy vey.

So I'm sure I've mentioned how there's stuff I want to write about, but never feel like writing or am too lazy to do so. Since I've started thinking I guess this is the time where I let it all out, unless I get bored of cathartic bullshit and stop prematurely. And in general, this livejournal is kind of like a written down discussion of my inner monologue. Most of this monologue has been going on and on for a while, it's just that I haven't written about it. I used to really like writing down all my thoughts on a daily basis, but now it's kind of eh. And then when something does come up, I'm so disenfranchised from this thing that I don't feel like writing. Big thoughts, I know.


Anyway, starting backwards first, I mentioned Relay but didn't mention something tiny but really interesting that sort of didn't happen.

I was walking the track with Ingrid and Karyl at night, doing Karaoke from Ingrid's iPod, and being really goofy. It was probably like 1 or 2am or something. It was really fun talking with them about school and just having fun and not caring about how stupid I looked or sounded trying to sing karaoke (and it was bad). So I turned around to start walking backwards for a bit, since my feet were hurting, and I looked up and saw somebody who looked familiar. That Julie Sullivan girl who I've had a crush on since North. I looked up and saw her face and then kind of turned around. "Wait, was that really her?", I kind of said to myself. I was in a daze for a little while thinking about it... should I turn around and recheck? Should I say hi? Should I confess I've been madly in love with her for years...should I ask if I ever had a chance? It was weird because I went from having lots of fun with Karyl and Ingrid to being self-concious about my stupid past.

She eventually passed us and I could kind of hear her talking to the person she was walking with. I actual think she was walking with a classmate from North she was friends with back then, Tara Rose. I couldn't really hear what she was saying but it sounded like she was talking about a guy, and moving in with him or something. Or I guess that's what I'd like to imagine. For a while I wasn't sure it was her, but it sounded like her, looked like her, and seemed like her.

So yes, I saw her, and I did nothing. I pondered walking up next to them and saying hi, but that's only something I'd do in my dreams apparently. After seeing them walking the track I didn't see them the rest of the time. I saw a few other people I knew from North too (including the three girls who came into Subway one night that I said hi too), but didn't say hi.

In the same vein as that story, there was one day a while back that it hit me. I've been spending my life looking back at the past. Thinking about the past. Analyzing what I've done wrong and messed up. I really need to move on and up. I need to look at what I've done and do something better. The past is just that. I can't really sit here and fuck up any future I could have by repeating all my mistakes. Mainly this means to stop being a lonely bastard and try to be somebody. Intimacy rather than Isolation - Erik Erikson's stage of early adulthood. I need to look for something new rather than pretending I can love somebody I won't ever see again.

Then, I went to work. This girl, Val Hastings came in, who I used to live next to, her dad was our landlord back when I lived in North Attleboro. Her sister used to take us to school freshman/sophomore year. She graduated valedictorian of the class I would of graduated at NAHS, and went to Harvard. I knew this from reading something in the paper about her. Anyway, she came in with this guy, and after a little while I realized I know who he was. It was this guy Steven who I sat behind in my freshman Algebra class or whatever, he was in my home room too I think, and I remember he being a kind of shady kid, which was really strange when I saw them together. I also thought he may have been this kid who I was friends with back in kindergarten but moved, but I'm not sure and was never sure even in school. But yeah, that was weird. Here I am, I told myself, fuck the past, it don't matter. And then I see someone from my past and it all comes back to me. I didn't really say much to her/them, it was kind of awkward.


And then, the other thing I've been meaning to write about.

The end of the semester was just kind of weird. I really liked Tiffany and it seemed like she liked me too. I don't have to go into everything that happened, I wrote most of it down. I just really loved talking to her outside of class and just having a conversation. It felt nice to talk to a girl sincerely and not feel like I'm an inferior man. I did say some goofy stuff sometimes, and I made some sarcastic Colbert-like comments about Bush that I'm not sure she got. Even now I can't really explain it, it just felt good.

But I whiffed. I should of talked to her that Friday, gave her my number or something, and you never know. But now, I'm doing the same thing I've done about every other girl. Wishing I did something when I didn't, and pretending in my head what it would be like if I did, and thinking I still might have a chance. At least I might see her again, like I've said before, I'm holding out hope that if I go back to Fall River for next semester maybe I'll see her around campus.

The strange thing about the end of the semester was I ended up talking to Stephanie outside of class a bit too. You know, the one I originally had a crush on until suddenly I was like, holy shit, this other girl is much cooler. We ended up talking after that other class with someone else about some politicky stuff like abortion, gay rights, stuff from the class, etc. It was kind of interesting and I learned some stuff about Stephanie that I would not have expected. You know, cause I originally expected to hear no stories about her being a naughty girl.

I also ended up talking to her in the lab the day of my all-nighter. I ended up going to the computer lab to print out some stuff from my Child Psychology binder, and as I got out of my car I noticed she was parked a few cars down but didn't say anything. She ended up coming up to the lab later and I don't know how we started talking about stuff but I guess she was supposed to take a final for this math class with the Professor from my recitation. I guess she really sucks at math and was freaking out about the final and I was trying to reassure her and stuff but I guess she really does suck at math. I don't understand how someone sells back their book before they even finish their final.


All that, and I feel like I'm so close yet so far. When I mentioned Erik Erikson, I'm serious and it feels like I'm struggling with the whole intimacy vs. isolation thing. I'm not really close to anyone in the friends sort of way. Granted, I never really have been my whole life. Isolation is good until you realize intimacy is awesome. And I kind of don't have much experience with intimacy. Now, when a lot of people see intimacy vs. isolation they think sexual intimacy, and for those who haven't read Erikson's eight stages eight different times, it doesn't just mean that sort of intimacy but mainly intimacy between other human beings, like as friends.

I've just spent most of my life isolated. Back in middle school/high school, in my room, alone. Can you really have intimacy through an internet connection? Ask me that 6 - 7 years ago and I'd probably say yes. But now, I feel like I've experienced what intimacy is between people and I feel like I've lost it. I'm a pretty bad friend, I've always hated phone calls - they feel distant and weird to me. And yadda yadda yadda. I do have to say, poker helps, and I've gotten pretty close to Kurt from poker as a friend. He probably knows more about my life than my parents do.

I don't really know where I'm going (actually I do, I just don't want to write about it). I want to be intimate with life, I want to get to know people and get to know myself through other people. This is one of the reasons I wish I went to a real college and all that, and got to meet more people. That and I should just ask out the next girl who seems to cool just to get practice on that whole girl thing.

To finish off this long entry, I was just listening to a Matt Nathanson concert and he made this comment about Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl"..

"Okay, so in this song he's saying, I want Jesse's girl, but I can't have her, and I'm just going to sit back here and for the rest of my life I'm going to wish that I could of had her." ... Kind of what I do.

That, and I think I finally figured out the meaning of Everything Else. "Cause everything else doesn't matter/really cause that girl/that you want/she's never going away/and if you want her you can't have her". She's still in my mind...and I can't have her, and she's never going away.

Woe is me.

Tags: bcc, friends, future, girls, julie, life, nahs, t, the past
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Matt Nathanson

I now understand why many people just don't use LiveJournal anymore. Lately I've got to the point where I've been too busy to write a focused LJ entry, even if that busy is just trying to concentrate while winning $2k at poker in 20 days. At the same time not much has really been happening other than poker and work so there's not much to write about that is really that interesting. That and I kind of wish I could write one post about things happening, one post about things bothering me, and one post about poker rather than them all together.

Few weekends ago I did Relay, it was pretty good although a tad damp. I ended up raising a little under $200 in tips from work. I really enjoyed getting to see everyone I hadn't seen in a while and walking the track at night doing karaoke with Karyl and Ingrid. I ended up doing 20 miles of walking and a tiny bit of running, with a margin of error of probably a mile or so. I kept losing track. I was very very sore afterward and that lasted until about Wednesday the next week. I ended up working 12-9 on Sunday, on my feet the whole time, and when I went to bend down to grab a 20lb box of bread in our freezer...oh man the pain.

Like I said, other than that the only thing I've been doing is working and playing poker.

I took first in the first tournament of the night at the last league night. I sucked out with KJ vs. AJ on a Jxx board early on for all my chips against Peter, a King came on the river and I was off to the races. I was getting cards and playing good. I don't remember too many important hands, when we got to short-handed at the final table I was playing the bully role really well and getting cards. Always a bad combination. At the final table I believe I knocked 2 people out who had already gone all-in short in chips with 99, which is a really strong hand in that case. On the final hand of heads-up I was up against Bill and he was so short that I moved in blind on him. As he was pondering whether to call or not, I looked at one card and it was a King of diamonds. I was like Ooooh.. that's a good card. I didn't look at the other card yet but I pushed it over towards Ron and X and others who were watching along the table if they wanted to look and after Bill called I looked at the other one and I was like "Holy shit!", It was another King! I moved in blind with Kings..lol. Needless to say unlike the last time I had Kings heads-up they held up against Bill's T5s.

One funny hand was when I had Ax overcards to Kurt's 66 when we got it all-in (him all-in). I was running so good at that point that I started grabbing for the pot before we even saw the flop. I ended up flopping an Ace and had already begun to collect them until a 6 came on the river. It was pretty awesome and everyone got a kick out of me reaching for the chips before I had won the pot.


Online poker wise, when I said I was busy winning $2k in 20 days, I wasn't kidding. I've been running better than I ever have before in cash games and playing higher than I've ever playing before, usually around 3/6, 4/8, and 5/10 US and Euro on Supreme Poker. A Euro is 1.17 more than a US dollar on that site, so 5/10 Euro is about 6/12, I've only played 5/10 Euro a bit though. Of my top 20 best all time sessions, 9 of them have been cash games during the past 20 days, starting 6/2 when I had that ridiculous run I mentioned a while back.

Here's what my sessions graph looks like since 6/2.

( Graph )

My bankroll (graph) has gone from being between $3k and $4k for nearly a year to up $2k in 20 days. On 6/2 my bankroll was at $3257.69, today it's at $5362.54. I love running good.

And yes, I realize I am simply running insanely good. I may post a bunch of hands that exemplify how good I've been running, but I've been certainly playing good as well. My biggest mistake is that I think I may call down too much and occasionally try to get value out a weak hand when I'm in a situation where top pair/top kicker is no good, while at the same time I sometimes don't bet/raise with a set on the end after heavy action, but I've been raising to get free cards in the right situations (and getting the card), flat taking people off pots several times, and getting all kinds of value against calling stations. And the players at the Boss Media sites are just very loose/poor at the 3/6 - 5/10 limits.

I actually have switched to "Fortune Poker" as well. I googled rakeback and boss media and found a site, RakeBrain.com that has 30% rakeback at one of the skins of Boss Media. Supreme Poker was a site the douche doooook from the poker community advertised that had 10% rakeback but I never seemed to get it, I think the bonus that didn't seem to clear correctly as advertised didn't count, because I went back and noticed after I had cleared the Supreme bonus I had a random extra 2 cents in there, probably from rakeback I got after I cleared the bonus. But 30% is better than 10% anyway.

With 30% rakeback and continued play at these tables, I may have to seriously consider quitting or working a lot less hours at the real job. While you can say, why don't I just do both, well, if I'm making more money sitting at home playing poker than working at Subway, why bother going to work?

Anyway, I'm not going to think too seriously about it until I experience a 100BB downswing in an hour at 5/10. Then I'll realize it's a bad idea. Like I've said about 5 times, I realize I'm running good and I'm playing the highest I've ever played. I have a good bankroll for the higher limits now, but still it's really going to hurt when I have that huge downswing I don't expect. With rakeback though, if I played enough at enough tables I could easily make more per hour simply from rakeback than I would from working.

So yeah, needless to say I feel really good after winning $2k in such a short time period. I mentioned it to my parents a few times, once to my mom after I spent an hour and 15 minutes at after I had closed to finish cleaning shit. Subway puts me on tilt right now. My step-dad mentioned how that would pay for a nice car.. yeah fuck that. Education. That's what I'm thinking about right now. If I can keep running good I can easily pay for BCC this fall.

That's all for now, playing a side game at Kurt's/Greg's house tonight that's non-league, then probably playing more cash games on Saturday and dieing Sunday when I have to work.

Tags: friends, life, poker, work
Current Music: Matt Nathanson live

There's a stray cat that's been wandering around our place and over the weekend my step-father saw kittens in one of the abandoned greenhouses near the house. My mom was able to get one of them and we've took it in for now although my step-dad doesn't want to keep it. It's realllly cute and small, I'll have to get a picture eventually.

My cat Patches got outside too a few days ago but he didn't go far and we found him recently.

I worked almost 8 hours both Saturday and Sunday and was really worn out. Saturday night me, Adrian, and his friend Eric went and saw Land of The Dead. It reminded me of Kenny's movie. It was funny when the humans pulled a "help me trying to crawl away from zombie" move just like I did. The movie was pretty good but guns need to run out of bullets more often and why can't they just kill the right fucking zombie the first time? That and the ending, in a way, sucked. "Okay..we saved some people, hey look the zombie's are pussies, we're going to Canada, bye."

Today a homeless guy with a bag on his back kept coming into the store for stuff, and was in the bathroom for like 10 minutes. The girl Andrea over at the shell station got some customer to knock on the door when he was in there to see what was going on, and he was like "I'm pooping!" apparently, which is pretty funny. But I do feel kind of bad for the homeless guy, since he probably didn't mean to be kind of creepy and supicious. And was kind of scaring Andrea.

( Poker )

Tags: cats, friends, movies, poker, work

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

Relay for Life went well on Friday/Saturday. Fun times with everyone. Bringing my guitar rocked, I had fun with Cherisa singing over relatively simple chord changes. ("Cheung's an asian/Who wishes he was caucasian") Walked with Matt for like 4 hours straight at night, after I had ran a mile, which was probably the worst part of it. I was really really messed up after that, I pretty much couldn't move my legs much at all. I tried to walk it off but I walked so slow and it didn't help and I couldn't get any beauty sleep at all. In the end I walked like over 15 miles, probably about 17, I think I lost count at 68 when I stopped. Got home, car survived, and I slept.

My car made it to the tournament in East Providence in one piece. Stalled a few times, I entered a wrong pin too many times at a Sovereign ATM so I didn't have much money for the cash game, but I made it there.

( tournament )

Tags: friends, poker
Current Music: tv