Inside Canucklehead
Once a week ain't cuttin' it...
but it's gonna have to do for now... I wish I could carve out some more time for blogging but somehow it just falls by the wayside.
Weekend round-up
Friday night, met up with some of Sara's friends for overpriced drinks and appetizers at the
Cafe Japengo to celebrate a birthday, it was a good time if not expensive, luckily Sara was buying and I wasn't hungary. That place was nice but I just didn't think it was all it had built itself up to be, not to mention the place was full of people eager to show off thier riches, my kind of peeps.
Saturday, went shopping for new soccer shoes and got some beauties down at the Adidas outlet. I tried them out at Sunday soccer and they didn't cause any blisters so that is a plus, but they are blue, that is a minus. Saturday night I went and saw Michael Moore's new movie and it was great a lot of startling stuff presented effectively, mixing of humor, horror, and infuriating information. I can see why dubya and his boys are so upset about it, it doesn't paint him in a good light... going just short of saying he OK'd the attacks on the WTC.
Sunday night Sara and I hit up the Zoo at night with some passes courtesy of my parents. I had never been "at night" (we were there from 5:30-8:30) but almost all the animals were much more active (read: active) than they usually are in the middle of the day. A couple of elephants were making out, the Panda's were wrastling, and some of the panthers and leopards were pacing and climbing around in thier cages, plus many of the other assorted animals also up and moving about, it made for an entertaining time, although by the time we made our way around to the apes and monkeys they were all seemingly hiding out sleeping... but a good time and much more interesting than the normal daytime viewing of animals "resting."
I guess that is all for now...
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What a Weekend...
I had myself quite a little weekend filled with poker and golf. Friday though had neither, the past week Sara and I had been house sitting, so with the previous week having me out of town I felt like I hadn't been home in some time so after making my last house call and going out for dinner with Sara I welcomed the chance to get home early and just chill at home, of course we didn't get home until about 10 anyway so it wasn't calling it to early a night, plus I had golf in the morning and wanted to get some rest.
Saturday morn I met my Dad at Torrey where we played the North course as the first round of a 2 round best ball tournament (both players play the hole to completion then you take the best score of the 2 after handicaps as your team score). We played pretty mediocre, I missed some easy shots pretty badly and after putting up 83 and 87 in my last two rounds, I put up like a 93. Our team score though was 5 under, which put us in a good position for our Sunday round on the South course. The only real bummer about these Men's club events is the pace of play is agonizingly slow as it ended up taking 5.5 hours to play our round, throw in some time afterward sorting out our cards and turning in our scores and it was about 6 hours, ugh. This seems particularly slow since usually you can play there in about 4.5 hrs.
After getting home and relaxing for a little while, I met up with Adam and Diana for a quick bite to eat at thier pad then off we went to play some poker, cash game style. We showed up just before 9 and it turned out that we just beat the rush. When we found out where to sign up there were like 3 players waiting for 1-2 and like 13 waiting for 2-4. We all signed up for 1-2 and in about 30 minutes we were all playing, by the time we were playing the lists had grown considerably to about 15 for 1-2 and 18 for 2-4. They started opening up a couple of tables, and later one of the dealers said that "this was really busy even for a Saturday." I started out playing really loose, since after the first few hands it became clear that it was rare for a pot to be raised pre-flop, so I fell into the trap of "well it is only a dollar" and saw a lot of flops early on, the players at my table were pretty loose too and thus were kind of difficult to play against, but also could be counted on to adding some extra money to pots. Even so a lot of pots were really small, I took a couple of miniscule pots, about $6. After playing loose I was down about $25-30 after a few hours and it was getting close to time to go I took my only good sized pot and got back to even and after seeing a few more cards I left as it was getting close to midnight and I had golf early the next morning.
After getting home at about 12:30 I was quickly into bed and then right back out at 5am to make my 6:30 shotgun start for the remaining round of my golf tourney. We started on number 10, which I thought was nice so it was just like playing the nines reversed and let us keep track of our score easily. I don't have trouble playing early in the morning and usually I think the brisk morning helps me stay sharp and focused and it isn' til the afternoon that I start feeling sleepy. However after some more mediocre golf from my Dad and I we were 1 over for our team on our first nine, so I thought we were in good shape, since I feel the front nine is a little easier, but it was not to be as we both had a couple of bad holes at the same time and blew up our team score so we ended up with a team 78, when after seeing the posted scores a 72 would have been average, and there were a lot of low scores. I guess though it was to be expected, there were only two flights so we were competing with groups that had much better players than us and on the south course the handicaps just don't make up for how difficult it is.
Sunday afternoon I was all primed to fall asleep watching the US open but just as I was about to pass out the golf started getting really interesting... then I went out to dinner for Pop's day, came home early watched a couple of episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm season 2, and it was just as funny as the first season, and was asleep before 10pm for the first time in as long as I can remember.
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Poker!?! I Hardly even know her...
Yet again I have let this blog go neglected for another 2 weeks or so and here is why:
Last week I took a week long trip up to Utah to do some rafting and fly fishing for a couple of days. It was a blast just spending 3 straight days outside in great weather without any real cares in the world other than trying to catch fish. There was a lot of driving involved in the trip, about 2000 miles total, and my car was almost up to it... almost. Before we left I got an oil change and all was good, on the way back though it came to my attention that my two front tires were perilously close to thier end, it was at a gas station that not so coincidentally had a tire store attached, so rather than risk having my tire blow out I ended up getting two new tires up front, $250 later we were back on our way. I was pretty pissed that I was getting hosed, but short of calling in a consult from Papa Stupe I was stuck, my tires were really done, and I really had no one to blame but myself for letting it get to that state. I am horrible at that kind of thing, tires, brake pads, etc. I usually just let them go until it gets to such a state that it requires immediate and costly attention, boo.
On the way back we stopped for the night in Vegas, just as we had on the way out. On the way out I think I dropped $40 or so playing some blackjack, but mostly walked around the strip. On the way back after some long deliberation (surprise) I decided to play some poker. We were at the Horseshoe and there were some seats opening up at the 2-4 Hold Em table so I took one, I generally played pretty tight, and was folding a lot and quickly out of hands if they didn't improve off the flop, but my table was letting a lot of flops be seen for just the $2, so I took a few more chances later. I won a couple of small pots that kept me alive (staying within $30 of my buy in) then took a huge pot after my A-6 off suit flopped two other 6's and they held up against a lot of other players not afraid to bet into me. There were a lot of crazy cards turned up in the couple of hours I played, I saw the board show KKA-8-K so two peoples full boats got beat by 4K's, another flop was 444, and it always seemed like flush and straight draws were hitting. After I had a straight draw hit against me when I had top pair and another hand where I flopped two pair J's and 5's (from one of the blinds) with a K on the board it was obvious that at least one other player was holding a K, I was setting myself up to get paid off when it came with running 4's to turn any K into the two pair I was holding, I was down $10, it was starting to get late and I was ready to go have a drink and meet up with the rest of the crew (Little Buhr, Nate, and Jen- L.B.'s g/f). We spent the rest of the night playing some wacky blackjack and a bit of roulette, always a good time.
We returned home Friday night just in time for couples poker night over at Norm and Teri's new crib, which was a lot of fun, we played a mini tourney followed by our usual cash game, I played well and got some luck to win the tourney and some more money in the cash game, so nice work me!
That is all for now...
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Long Time No See
It's been awhile since my last post so I'll try and recap going backwards...
If you don't like golf Eryn or reading about golf Mike skip this section
Yesterday was Memorial Day, I woke up early and went golfing with my Dad at Torrey, we usually go put our name in and go to the driving range to warm up, then when were ready it is usually just about our turn to start playing. This warm up on the range was a disaster for me, I could hardly hit anything straight unless it was a nine iron and I was barely getting my drives airborn, I thought it was going to be a long round. A golf intensive side note here: for the last couple of weeks I have been working on changing my grip a little and while it will probably work out in the end it was in the meantime hurting my game a tad, but it is something I will continue to do. Anywho once I was on the course I was playing really well, especially the front 9, I shot a 40 and in the process I hit 6 of 9 greens in regulation, and was one inch off a 7th, if it wasn't for two 3-putts, including one on no. 9 from like 12 feet, when I had an easy first putt, I would have been ecstatic not just really pleased. I shot a 43 on the back, with another 3-putt, and a lot of missed chances to save strokes with 4-6 foot putts. In the end though I had shot my best round ever so I was pretty stoked.
Sunday night Adam, Diana, and I unsuccessfully attempted to get into a poker tournament at sycuan, there was some miscommunincation on the casino's part really I think on their on-line schedule, so that was a bummer, but we did see some new table game based on poker that was interesting and although those games never give you a better than 50% chance of winning I am still not sure how bad a bet it is. I am going to do some research on it...
On Saturday/Sunday I pretended I was rich and flew up to San Fran for a party. It was Little Buhrs Graduation party, it turned out to be a fun party a good time was had by all. I enjoyed seeing Gabe and Rhiannon for the first time in ages and saw little Landon, who is all grownsed up, alert, active, and a lot of fun to see again. The party was at the
Sir Francis Drake Hotel overlooking Union Square.
An interesting thing happened late in the night a bunch of the boys were out on the patio... in the room directly above us, as we were outside smoking cigars and able to see thier window, a couple of girls could be seen in the window, after they noticed us the girls started acting like they were going to "Show us thier tits" after a little bit one of them finally went through with it and we were all amused. This was the second time within a few months that I had been flashed. My question is has all the girls gone wild videos told women that they should be doing this, is it now an OK thing to do if you are a little tipsy, or have girls always been doing this and I am just now being alerted to it?
Friday night Sara and I went and saw Super Size Me, a lot of fun and presents some interesting information, albeit in a biased outlet. Some things that were particularly interesting: The number of McD's there are on Manhattan, seemingly one on every block. The amount of junkfood in schools and the fact that it an economic wash for one school at least between providing very healthy meals and basic assortments of chips and sodas with pre-packaged, processed foods. Just some of the figures thrown out there on how how much junk food and soda Americans eat in general were pretty alarming.
I gave up carbonated soda some time ago, over a year now I think, I have kept drinking lemonade from soda fountains though, I think I am going to try giving that up too in favor of milk, I don't think I drink enough milk, and I don't think I need all the sugar that is in that "lemonade," we'll see how that goes. I won't be giving up on real lemonade though, it's just too good.
The week previous I was working all hours of the day and night to finish up the draft report for the project I have been working on out in Korea for sometime and I was happy to finally get that done, for now.
After the three day weekend there are only a few days left before I head off on a real vacation about 6 days up in Utah flyfishing and river rafting, throw in a stop in Vegas on the way out, and possibly on the way back and it should be a great trip. I am really looking forward to it I haven't taken more than a couple of days off in about a year, so it will be nice to get away from it all.
I think I'll end my post there... I am tired of typing...
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