Back In The Game

I have been very remiss lately in not making any new posts. I apologize to my many readers, all 5 or 10 of you and countless others who depend on me for entertainment. In my own defense I have been pretty busy over the past month and a half or so and when I'm taking some down time, blog posting has not been on the top of my list. I need to do a bit better than that.

So what have I been doing that's so important you ask? Actually what I've mostly been doing with my free time is refereeing football. I have been a local football referee for the past 8 years doing everything from little kids up through high school. Even did some semi pro ball one year which I enjoyed but had to take a break from for my own knee health. This year has been a busier year for me than any previous year. I have had JV and Varsity high school games every week except last week along with youth games every Saturday since the end of August.

When I haven't been refereeing I just haven't had much desire to go online a lot. When I have gone online it's mostly been to look things up and do a little mindless goofing off. I haven't even done much poker online. I was running so badly for so long it took a lot of my desire to play though last week I did have some success mostly playing Omaha Hi Lo which is my favorite game. Made 2 nice cashes last week and since then I have hardly played.

When I last wrote we had just taken my daughter to college. The house has just been myself, my wife, and the dog since then. I know my wife misses our little girl quite a bit and they talk on the phone quite often. The girl has been home twice since school started, once my sister in law went out to Orlando and picked her up and more recently my wife picked her up and brought her back. Every year my wife takes a few days off and goes to Universal Studios with some friends from work and spends a couple of days in Orlando. They go to Halloween Horror Nights and visit all the haunted houses, drink, and do girl type things. This time the daughter joined them and they all came back home for the weekend. She visited with some friends, had some fun etc. I had football on Thursday and Friday nights that week. Saturday I had a bunch of kids games to do so I didn't see too much of the little girl. She is doing well in school and really enjoying herself. She and her roommates are all getting along well and she's been making other friends etc.

OMG what in the hell happened to Tom Brady? I just saw an ad on the NFL network for an interview with him and I finally saw his hair. WTF. This is gotta be Giselle's influence. Of course if I were married to her she could do whatever she wanted with my hair too. Still, Tom you're a pro football player, multiple time Super Bowl champ. Try to look the part. Peyton Manning is probably laughing every time he sees your hair.

Ok station break over. So that Sunday the wife asked if I wanted to go with her and bring the girl back to school. Since I hadn't seen her that much I decided to go rather than rest after Saturday's exertions and so I drove back to Orlando. They both talked me into stopping at Wal Mart near the school and getting the girl a crock pot since I had all this extra cash from refereeing (youth games pay us right after the games, high school games get paid off at end of season) so they were able to talk me into it. Besides we're not talking one of these programmable pots, just a standard crock pot. So I figure to spend 20 or 30 bucks max. Or so I thought.

We actually find a nice big crockpot for $18. Cool, daddy gets out cheap. Then my wife starts food shopping. I forgot about the mother effect. You see guys, mothers equate food with love. Remember how your mom always tried to feed you. Every time they say "Eat this" they're really saying "I love you". So my wife decides to spread a little love around. She picks her up a pork loin, some cereal, some other things the girl thinks she needs and by the time we get to checkout, I'm in for 81 bucks. WHAT? I was only there to buy her a crock pot. Did someone reverse the price tag on the crock pot? Yeah right.

So I left Orlando a lot poorer than I arrived, especially after you factor in the lunch tab for all of us, but hey I only have one daughter and I won't be on the hook for her every need (I hope). I did get a bit of revenge last week as the boys joined us for dinner one night. I had mentioned to my oldest son about his sister's 81 dollar crockpot and somehow the conversation got to what all the kids were like when they were young. We talked about how my middle child was a scorekeeper when they were younger. If one kid got something he kept track of it so he made sure he got his. Well as the talk went my oldest son turns to my wife and says "What about my sister's 81 dollar crockpot?" I cracked up. Of course I got a dirty look from my wife. And of course I enjoyed it.

This week the public schools in the county were all off on Friday so I had to work a JV game on Wednesday night and a Varsity game on Thursday night. Which meant I was a little tired and sore when I went to work yesterday. I called up the wife and asked her what she wanted to do after work last night. I figured I'd take her out to dinner and maybe a movie since we hadn't been to one in a while. She decided she wanted to play in a poker tourney at Derby Lane. Since I am usually reffing on Friday nights, this sounded like a good deal to me. I figured to play some Omaha while she played in the tourney as I wasn't in a tourney mood last night.

We get there a little before 8 and she signs up for the tourney. I check the registration desk and no Omaha game. There is always an Omaha game on Fridays, often lasting past midnight, but not last night. There was an interest list with 7 or 8 people listed so I signed up for that. While I was waiting I asked the guy to put me on a 1-1 no limit holdem table. I used to play $2 or 2-4 limit holdem but came to hate that more and more as you can't bet anyone off of a draw or make them pay enough not to draw at it. With the no limit, you can bet enough to make it unprofitable but still get called often times. If they hit you lose but if not you can take a nice chunk off them.

You know when you've been in a bad streak and your luck finally turns. Well it turned for me last night. It started when I called a $4 raise with A-9 suited. The guy who raised had raised before with A-6 and K-J so I felt I was at least 50-50 with him. 3 of us saw the flop of A 8 J. The original raiser bets $6. I call as does the other guy. Turn is a bingo 9. I was all set to put a big bet out when the original guy bets $12. I remembered how he checked the turn the two times he hadn't hit so I just called instead of reraising him. River is a K which I don't particularly like. I am afraid he may have started with bigger hand like AK now and he has me beaten. He surprises me by checking so I check back. I was really surprised when turns over 8-8 for a flopped set. I lost about 1/3 of my stack on the hand but it could have been so much worse if I had reraised or pushed the river.

After that a series of hands develop and I start making a run. I get a couple of draws to actually hit and make a good call with top pair low kicker against 2nd pair. Then the guy to my right gets into it with the guy on my left. The guy on my left was talking about leaving with his profits but didn't. I took some chips from him and then he gets AK and raises. the guy to my left calls. Flop is Q K Q. Guy to my left bets, guy to my right raises, left goes all in and gets called. Guy to my right has QQ for flopped quads. Turn and river are a blank and an Ace so he makes four queens with an ace kicker. The poker room is paying out $500 for the high hand among all the holdem tables every half an hour. This guy is now leading with about 15 minutes left. It actually holds up and he gets $500. He then picks a card from a set of cards and the seat that card corresponds to gets $100. Well he picks a 7 for seat 7 which is where yours truly is sitting. So from being down a bit I am not up about $150 for the day and its not over yet. All I want to make sure is to not give it all away later.

I guess I better quit now as I have to get ready to referee. I'll post again tonight or tomorrow and finish it all up. It might even have a happy ending.