I'm headed to Vegas next Friday. This is the guys' trip that two years ago we decided to make an annual tradition around March Madness. To accommodate schedules, we're now going the first weekend of March where there's no March Madness but March NASCAR and March Britney Spears.
One of the group is getting married next month (in India!), so we'll be focusing more on bachelor festivities than gaming. Alas, not many of the guys are gamblers and none play poker, so it won't be as
poker slots-intensified as last trip. I just hope I don't get sick again that caused my descent into slotland.
One grub family member is already representing in Vegas
this weekend, as grubette JetBlued out this afternoon. She even arranged a realtor to pick her up from the airport and drop her at the hotel. Pretty crafty, that grubette! Hopefully she'll give a full report upon her return of terrorizing the touristy Luxor tourneys.
Ever the Scrabble player, she sent me some anagrams of Poker Grub:
- Pug Broker
- Bug Porker
- Keg or Burp
And here're a couple grubette posts from this week (she must really want to play in the next blogger tourney!):
from Tuesday...
No poker for me this week, not til Fri.. I can't wait to go to Vegas!!
The strangest thing happened to me yesterday. I was on my way home and to avoid traffic I went down a side street and was following this huge GMC truck/SUV contraption. She went to parallel park, and in doing so sideswiped a car in back of her. The other car, which was parked, moved under the weight of her huge vehicle. I looked at her, and she was (of course) on the phone and didn't even notice she hit the guy so she parked anyway, right in front of the car she hit.
Trying to be a good samaritan, I looked at her license plate in the rear view mirror, but she didn't have one! So I drove home. On the way though, I was thinking that maybe I should have said something, or left a note on the other guy's car. What would I want someone to do for me? I made it all the way home to my driveway and the Buick was sitting there, with its hazard lights on! How weird is that, no one was home!! The door was locked too, so I took it as an eerie sign "danger! danger! must report the hit and park!" I drove back, wrote down the license, made a note of the time and date and conveniently left off my name and contact info and squished it through the window of the defenseless car.
from Wednesday...
I said I wasn’t going...but I did. I mean, I'm going to Vegas in a couple of days I should be able to wait! I wanted to have a couple hundred extra to bring with me so I got a little (a lot) greedy.
I've actually never played on a Tuesday, so I thought I might see some different people. Nope, same faces, same game. College boy was there playing NL, which I considered. But I'd have to win $100 in $4/8 before that would happen. I sat down at a table where all the players had racks and racks of chips. I won my first hand with a pair of Q’s which put me about $30 up. I should have (weak foreshadowing) left immediately. Five minutes, $30, that’s like $360 an hour!
I move to a different table shortly after because people there were just plain wacko. I'm in the 8s, with 9s being an old guy with cigarette-stained beard hair. He was also dressed in hospital garb, I’m thinking escapee from a local nut joint or orderly. He definitely was no M.D. with those dirty fingernails. Must've been cleaning too many bedpans. Ew. My friend is a nurse and told me she sometimes has to take stool samples and sniff them for possible infection or disease [momentarily pass out at the thought]. 1s was a middle aged guy wearing matching sweats – believe me, not Juicy™ Couture, more like dollah Target “hey the waistband is elastic!” types. And 7s was a financial advisor wearing a cufflinked, button-downed oxford with a sweater over top. Now that’s some style.
Juicy™-wannabe has pocket 4’s when two more 4’s roll out on the flop. Oohs follow. Then I’m in his pot when I have a QJ and the board is KK6K. I’m about to bet (bluff) and he shows me his other K with a wink. I thanked him for saving me money. Another hand or two later I have trips head’s up with him, and he shows me his made straight as I was thinking about betting. Thanked him again. Then we’re heads up yet again, this time at the rag-rag-rag flop, me with AK suited, him with two rags. He checks and smirks, I check the whole way on the rag turn and rag river. He checks behind me and shows me his little pair of rags. Orderly next to me comments on Juicy’s failure to bet when I’m in the pot, “It’s nice to have a pretty face.”
I had a wonderful conversation with Cufflinks guy, who tells me about a NL game he played, he had trip Jacks that he somewhat slow-played. The board was QJTxx, with the Ten on the river. At the river, the only player goes all in $400. Cufflinks has about $500 and thinks for awhile then calls, thinking, he only started with $100 anyway, and the guy probably had AK. He shows his trips, other guy made a pair of Tens on the river. Guess the story isn’t very exciting, but Cufflinks was so razzed telling it, saying it was the biggest pot of his life. And, at LEAST it wasn’t a bad beat story! In fact, the waiting board at HI-G for NL says, “No bad beat stories.”
While he’s telling this story I have nearly made up my loss from Juicy and need $20 more to be even, with 20 minutes until "American Idol." In a matter of minutes, I get trip Jacks on the flop when I’m outdrawn by a straight. I get pocket K’s and lose to a fisher for a baby flush. I get pocket Q’s the very next hand and lose to two pair. I get pocket 3’s the very next hand and lose to a larger pair. And there it is, down $200. And I missed pink-haired girl from Bakersfield sing on "Idol" by the time I got home.
I woke up this morning thinking about those pocket K’s. It wasn’t a particularly big hand, but it was for what was on the board, and I checked the turn (so did the caller) when betting may have gotten him to drop his 5
9 (no pair). I have a spinning class at 6.30 tonight after work, which gives me about 90 minutes to play until those pocket K’s are a faded memory.
from Thursday...
I'm not normally superstitious or really that in touch with supernatural forces, but this week has certainly been strange. Did you watch that final episode of "The Littlest Groom"? One of the bachelorettes saved a fortune cookie fortune that said, "A short stranger will come into your life." Sort of an in-your-face kind of omen, but one nonetheless.
So I had a spinning class at 6.30, off work at 4, so I had about 90 minutes to play. I'm getting off the exit to go to HI-G and the light is green, so I step on it a little to make the light. As I get closer to the guy in front of me and am nearly at the intersection, a Corvette tears through the opposite red light and whacks the guy in front of me in a dramatic plume of smoke. The Corvette is totaled and the other car sails through the intersection and stops. My first thought is not, should I call for help? or is anyone hurt? or even, good thing that wasn't me. The thought was "there goes my luck." My luck was all used up by missing that crash. And I had just been thinking that my car is unsafe because I don't have an airbag. I nearly turned around and went home. But I didn't. And when I got to HI-G, the notoriously crowded parking lot opened up a space for me in front. More luck out the window.
I sat briefly at a table with a bunch of crazy grinders and left, not winning a hand in 10 minutes. Then sat at an equally crazy table (but they had more money) and didn't win a hand in 30 more minutes so I left at the blind. Saw college boy there again, man he really does do this for a living!
And this morning, waking up about 20 minutes late, I went to the kitchen to check the clock with the "real" time (my alarm clock is always set fast) and the clock had stopped. At 1.20am. This is curious because I had just mentioned the previous night, which was rainy and stormy, that because the power went out on me one time I was super late to work, so I always use a battery operated alarm clock. Then today I still get up late and then can't even confirm the time because my battery-operated clock is dead.
Weird.
I hope this is no indication how my Vegas trip this weekend will go.
All added up, the signs are:
- Danger (phantom hazard lights turning on by themselves)
- Luck used up (avoiding getting creamed in traffic)
- Time has run out (dead clock) = Be careful, you can't be lucky all the time?
My poker days are numbered?
Hope not, grubette. G'luck in Vegas!
lunch:
Wendy's mandarin chicken salad
blackberries
plain M&Ms
2 Diet Cokes
Oreo Blast (Oreo milkshake from "Thank you for coming to Loews, sit back and relax, enjoy the show")
dinner:
Wendy's spinach chicken salad
grub: 40 (incl. parking and expensive $9.50 tickets for
The Passion of Christ... how can you enjoy popcorn while watching poor Jesus?)
poker: 200
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