Wordless Wednesday

Jayden enjoying a hot fudge sundae we got him for his 2nd birthday. He ate every scrap.







Allie, two years away from enjoying her first birthday sundae and settling for milk.




P.S. We're off to Salina, Kan. and a house without Internet, let alone broadband, so this place may be limited with updates, if not downright barren, until Sunday night, when I'll post some pictures from my first climb of the year.

Pacify me

The crying, the endless feedings and diapers, Jayden's screaming (which now earns him a shot of soap water in the mouth), general fussiness from the girls and the 3 a.m. "wakeful" periods all are smooth as silk.
Only one thing has driven me close to believing that worms are crawling out of my eyes.
The pacifier.
Jayden turns 2 today, and he's hopelessly addicted to the pacy. Our doctor has told us it's time to break the addiction as soon as we can, after we all adjust to the twins' arrival (probably when they are 4 in other words). Jayden's still not talking much, though he knows a lot of words, and I'm pretty sure Jayden gets sick more than he needs to thanks to that wretched thing in his mouth all the time.
The girls already need their pacifiers, too, and the green hospital beauties we've brought home with them (free pacy with every baby, act now as this offer won't always be available) are apparently made of Super Ball. When the twins "drop" their pacifiers from their mouths, as they do about 379 times a day, the pacys bounce and roll, usually the couch, under the computer desk as I'm trying to play poker or down the hallway and into the darkest, most covert corner of the house.
I am constantly searching for either one of the twin's pacifiers or Jayden's, usually when Jayden is growing increasingly frantic that his herion dump is being taken away from it and his whine is approaching 747 jet airliner volume.
But that's OK. Let's be honest. The pacifiers are as much for the parents as they are the kids. It's the only thing that quiets down Jayden when he's whiny, and blissful, blissful peace, right now anyway, is more important than addiction.
The same pacifiers also work on the twins, especially when they're convinced that a little more milk won't hurt them, even after they've puked all over me and have burped four times and it's 3 a.m. and all I want to do is go to sleep please God sleep sleep sleep Andie go to bed right now!
Sorry.
We all have our pacifiers, and I've noticed that my pacifier in my poker game continues to be my tight-nut-peddling ways. that culiminated Friday with me folding J,10 on a 10,10,Q,3 board to an aggro maniac when he only bet the pot. Sad, sad, sad. A string of coolers had left me weak/tight and scared to get my money in with anything but the nuts, but after he flashed me 10,4, I realized I gave up a great opportunity to win a lot of money, and that's just as much of a mistake as calling off your chips.
(Poker note: I have seen more money lost from everyone I've played with when they trip up then any other scenario, even with overpairs to the board. So the fold isn't terrible, but I made the cardinal sin of ignoring my opponent's tendencies. If it was a tight player the fold wouldn't be too bad. Why do most push with trips when it's essentially a pair with an extra card. Kickers still play, people, and you're also doomed if someone has a set. I tend to play these with medium pots unless I know my opponent or have a great kicker).
So Saturday I raised and raised and raised some more, and I once even shoved with a set on an all-flush board. Normally I don't play big pots on all-flush boards with a flush myself, but the guy bet the pot and I was convinced he had something like A,K for TPTK and a flush draw. When the J paired the board I knew I was good and sure enough, he showed A,K with the A of spades.
This is not a breakthrough. I've gotten more aggressive these last few months. It's merely a notch, and notches are how we make more money and eventually move up in levels.
I've spit out that pacifier for now.
It's time for Jayden to lose his.

P.S. Pimping is in order here.

I've enjoyed the coverage at this site quite a bit (congrats Pauly on your cash).

But seeing as how I've contributed to the coverage on this site, and it also features the work of a couple good blogging buddies, I'm favoring this one right now.

So here's the pimp!

Thoughts for Thursday

• "When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all"

Who the hell invented this nursery rhyme and why is a song about a baby crashing to earth (along with the crib) supposed to soothe my kids? Should I read a "Friday the 13th Part 8" picture book before they hit the hay too?

"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after"

Great, a fable about a hiking trip gone very wrong. You people are just sick.

• • •

Haiku tribute to my girls:

What? Easy-Peasy?
Daddy, how could you say that?
No more sleep for you.

• • • 

"So you have twins."
"Yep."
"Cool. Two for the price of one."

Huh? Of all the stupid twins comments I've heard so far - and granted I'm new to this game, and no one has mentioned my fertility rate yet - this is the dumbest.
This comment almost implies it's EASIER to raise a pair of infants rather than one. How they came to think this I have no idea. It's much harder. Even the pregnancy was much more difficult.
My twins readers know this. Try calming one baby down only to have the other one start up (two nights ago) over and over and over and let's see if you change your mind. I'll bet my bankroll you do. Plus the juggling is just unreal. You can't trade off feeding shifts, there isn't one to "play fetch," so when you both have a baby on your lap, one simply just has to get up and get the wipes, etc.

My answer to this now is "Two for the price of four."
• • •

If the twins are in fact identical, why is it that one is wide awake from 2:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. and then the other is awake from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. and then 4:30 a.m. to 6 a.m.?
Identical means the same exact genetic material, right?
So is this nature versus nuture?
Environmental factors are playing a part?
What, then, am I presenting in our home environment that makes it seem OK to be awake at that time?
• • •

Actually, the last two nights have been good ones - they only got up once after I went to bed at midnight - so I can't bitch too much. BUT both babies were really fussing from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., which explains my absense from the Mookie last night (I really miss that tournament). When Mom leaves things are going to be rough. She had one and I had one.
We're pretty sure the girls have acid reflux too, but this time we've jumped right on it. They are sleeping in their car seats (hint, new parents, the crib is not God), and we've started them on some medication. I don't like pumping our new babies full of meds, but if it makes them less miserable, then we're less miserable, and that's the goal.

• • •
Poker continues to be up and down. I'm basically like $30 ahead in the last two months despite the hours and hours and hours I've played at $25 NL. Pretty pathetic if you ask me. Yes there's been the nice spate of suckouts and coolers, far too many to mention here, but I'm also making bad calls as well and paying some of those suckouts off. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong either.
Honestly there are times I feel like just stopping. Last night I had a great night, and I finished down thanks to a massive cooler when a guy had a Q-high flush over my J-high flush, and yes there were only three to the board. If you can fold that, you're a better player than me, and you always will be. Things like this are indeed my fault, and yet they've happened so much, it's why I'm even for the last two months.
I know it could be worse. From what I've read from other bloggers, a lot worse, actually. Whining over.
• • • 

We're gearing to head to Salina, Kan., next Wednesday. That's where I used to work. It's also where Kate's grandmother lives. I don't know if I'd call four days with in-laws in one of the most boring and humid places on Earth with two newborn twins and a toddler fun. It might be boring, though - probably will be, in fact - and right now boring sounds pretty good.
Plus I can get a good peanut butter shake at the local burger joint. This place has like 453 shake flavors. What's your ideal shake flavor? Peanut butter for me. Oh and there's a place that also serves a monster-killer chicken dinner. That rocks.
Maybe that's why Kansas is filled with fat people. The highlights of their days involve food.

Serenity in Small Doses

Yesterday was the kind of day that would have seemed busy five years ago.
I stained the wooden swingset out back, mowed the lawn, ran six miles, worked on an iMovie for a couple hours, watched "Children of Men," did a couple of Pokerworks articles and played some poker.
Bliss.
Saturday Kate took our litter (sorry if that offends twin parents, but I think a toddler and two twin girls equals a litter) down to her parents an hour away for Father's Day. You might think I'm getting hosed on Father's Day, but in fact, an empty house for a couple of days - I couldn't go because I work Sundays - is probably the best present I could get from her. That and a pretty cool "dri-fit" running shirt.
The girls, as I've said, have been easy, but they're still newborns, and there's two of them, and it took one bad afternoon to cause an earthquake-sized rift between us last week.
The worst time of the day for Kate is in the late afternoon, when Jayden needs to be fed and bathed, the twins need to be fed and Kate has to get dinner for herself. It's also the time when the twins start to get a little fussy. One or the other inevitably wants to be held around that time, and at times even the magic swing can't appease her or her.
On Wednesday nights I run intervals with a track group full of friends, and on Thursdays, I have a softball game. Both of these activities take an hour.
When I came home Wednesday from track, my mother watched, tight-lipped, as Kate informed me that I had to give up everything.
After a couple days of wrangling with each other, including probably the first time we've gone to bed pissed off at each other, we've worked out what I think will be some solutions to the age-old argument. Those include bringing Jayden to track with me, finding different hours to work out and, most importantly, getting Kate out of the house as well.
There are many things I value in life, but most of all, other than my kids, Kate and my health, I value serenity
I am an introvert. Oh, don't act so surprised. Most poker players are probably introverts, like most runners and most mountain climbers. That means we get our energy from being alone. Alone time, as you might guess, is pretty hard to come by these days.
Sometimes "alone time" means trying to pitch a softball across a plate or smack it to the outfield fence. Sometimes it means trying to run faster than I should or reaching a summit or playing a pocket pair well.
Other times it means watching a thoughtful movie, reading a probing book or dinking around on one of the kids' movies on iMovie.
It always means time when the only person I have to answer to is me.
It's who I am. Many times I wish it were different. For years I've kept few friends, not made nearly enough business contacts and, in the past, hurt even relationships I trust because of this. And now that I've got three little ones, I've wondered why not even time with them gives me the same energy as being alone does. Maybe it's because I'm constantly trying to prevent Jayden from killing himself (look, Daddy, I can take four stairs at once), but I've felt incredibly guilty over the time I haven't spent with him and now the twins more than proud over the time I have, even when I've made what I think is a good effort to spend hours with them every day and especially on weekends.
This is exactly why for years I hesitated and even dreaded having children. I knew they would be a challenge. There's nothing easy about getting up four times a night, being exposed to gag-inducing diapers and telling a toddler 786 times that day not to do something only to see him do it for the 787th.
My challenge, I knew, would be to ration the energy I needed from my free time and be OK with the fact that it would be many years before I got as much as I needed.
Maybe that's what this weekend was for.
Because, Sunday morning, I woke up later than 8 a.m., went for a bike ride and came home, and I was struck the quiet of the house.
It seemed pretty empty.
An hour later, I went down to grab the first iMovie I ever made, a 65-minute opus about Jayden's first year, complete with songs by the Barenaked Ladies sent to shots of him naked and running through the house, which would probably get me arrested if they weren't so damn funny.
A diaperless 1-year-old boy IS pretty funny, even if that occasionally leads to disaster.
I did it because I wanted to see where we would be in a few weeks and months.
I also did it because I missed my family.
Today I'm at work, and for the first time in weeks, my body does not feel like a truck ripped through it. My body is rested and my mind is clear.
And I can't wait to see them tommorow, when the chaos comes back into my life.
I'm thankful for times of serenity like this weekend.
I'm also thankful I get them in small doses.

Wordless Wednesday, with a touch of news

Do they look identical to you?

Because they are, apparently.

Our doc got the report back today and the woman who examined the placenta said it looks like they're identical. To me this is being a little bit pregnant, but I'm going with that despite the fact that they don't look exactly alike to me. Their haircuts are different, though, and that may be skewing my view.

At the very least, I'm really thrilled with the news. I don't know why I cared, but I was hoping the girls would be identical. I guess I've always thought identical twins were kind of cool, and not for the reasons you're probably thinking, and that if I was going to have twins (at one point, I'm sorry to say, I even thought "subjected" to twins), then they might as well be identical.


And, apparently, I'm not the only one who is excited at the news:

Whiny ass post, v. 7.3

I simply need to vent.
Blog, you're it.
The twins have decided that they were making things a little too easy for us, so they've swapped times they needed to be held throughout the day. Jayden also apparently had a Chernobyl-like meltdown for almost an hour, and though I wasn't there to witness it, I felt it when I got home, as the fallout from said meltdown turned our normally cheery household into a black hole sun.
I was mentally exhausted by 9 p.m., and after another hour-long battle getting both girls down (I'm awake, no, I"M awake, no, MY TURN NOW to be held by Daddy), I finally got a chance to sit down at poker.
I played well, if I do say so myself. I won a big pot with Q-Q, bluffed several times, had a couple draws come in and twice got all my money in when I was at least 5-1 to win.
And I lost both those pots.
And I finished down $30 for the night.
And I was PISSED.
I still am. In fact, just thinking about the two beats leaves a thin drool of anger creeping down my chin.
Again, I'm venting. The first time I had a set of 4s, turned my full house and gladly called the monkey who decided that was a good time to push his A-A (he could not have telegraphed his cards any more even by turning them face up).
Still, shit happens, right? I played well enough to crawl back into even or close to it, and then with five people in the pot, I called a raise with 7,7 and got a board of K,5,7 rainbow.
Beautiful.
By the time the betting is through, three others push their stacks in, and I need to call $22 to win a $84 pot.
Um, OK.
What do you think they all had? I put one, the initial bettor and a donkey who bet two times the pot on an underpair, one on A,K, and the third on an underset.
I was right on the initial bettor - he had 8,8. One other guy did indeed have A,K. The third I was wrong about. He had two pair. He was the only one who had me covered, of course.
I really don't mind the call with two pair. It's probably not a great call but he was getting nice odds on his money, and as I said before, those other two players really had a wide range. You could even make a case that the big bet with 8,8 wasn't terrible. At least he was betting. The call with A,K is simpy inexcusable. What on earth would make you think top pair was good there?
Well, for my good play, the poker Gods saw it fit to reward Mr. Two Pair and give him a runner, runner flush.
So. If my monster, huge favorites hold up, if the odds just play out, I'm easily up $75 for the night, or at least three buy-ins. That's a lot for me. I'm a conservative player. No way would I ever, ever ask for a suckout to get those numbers, as I know that will never happen. I've also reviewed the hand histories and poker tracker and I haven't sucked out for a big pot, or even a pot over $5, in two months. Unbelieveable, isn't it. I think the ratio over the last two months is 25-1.
Now, yes, this sucks anyway, but in the last two months, I've basically been treading water because of beats like this. Yes, I've made a few mistakes, but most of the beats have come just like this one, where I get my money in and get fucked over. I'll show you the hand histories.
When you have kids in the house, you can't throw something or even yell, so I'm hoping this will work out some of the anger. I haven't been this angry in a while, and I really don't know why. Maybe it's because my poker time is limited now, so it burns me when I lose money cause it's hard to win it back, or maybe it's just everything else and I'm really tired. Or maybe I'm really fucking tired of losing when I make the right play. That was a huge pot last night, and I won't get another chance to win a pot like that in months.
Honestly I'm so fucking discouraged right now I am thinking about putting poker off for a while. If the game is truly like that these days, where you have a great night, slowly build your bankroll the right way and then continue to have it chopped down like a tree because of some fucker catching his miracle card, forcing to you once again build it back up and then rinse and repeat, so be it. I don't need that in my life right now, not with demanding kids and climbing season approaching.
We'll see.
I've got a meeting with a group I'll be guiding this summer up three 14ers, and then I've got a date with the new James Bond.
And when he loses that huge hand I've heard about, I'll simply smile.
We've all been there, Mr. Bond, and misery loves company.


P.S. Stay tuned tommorow for some cute Wordless Wednesday pictures instead of a bitter, whiny poker post.

Pop culture Monday and MY exciting weekend

"The Sopranos," other than "The Simpsons," is probably my favorite show of all time.
And I'm not pissed off today.
Most fans of the show are, but not only have they forgotten what the show's about, they didn't really watch the show. I think they were too busy slobbering over whether Tony would get shot or go to jail or what what what and failed to see just how much this show actually did resolve.
I won't go into detail. It's not my job to be a spoiler, and in this age of DVRs I know it's possible some of you may not have seen it yet.
The Sopranos remains one of the more real shows on television ever, regardless of all the mob stuff, thanks to this ending.
Yes, the ending was a little strange. I remember cocking an eyebrow at it (as much as I can, I'm not very good at that), but I like the way Chase left it up to you to decide how you want the show to end. I actually loved that part of it actually.

Finally, here's the thing, folks. Final episodes are NEVER satisfying. There's too much expectation. Imagine planning to have sex with someone for six months. The tension would build and build until the day actually arrives. Sorry, but that session or two sessions or whatever won't ever measure up to your expectation for that day. No payoff can match that anticipation. Let's face it, with any successful series, the "last episode" hype and all the plot buildups over the years, the anticipation builds to the point where we're expecting strawberry lube and bubble baths and 50 mirrors and silk sheets and Barry White not only playing but singing in the damn room with you both and maybe even a friend joining in and toys and a video camera replaying everything in slow-mo and possibly even a hair metal ballad or two.
And the last episode of any well-loved series is just that, the final payoff.
It never measures up. "Cheers" failed, "X-Files" sucked, "Seinfeld" sucked and "St. Elsewhere" was just weird (the whole hospital was just a snow globe in some autistic kid's head?). The only episode that lived up to it was "M.A.S.H." and that was just too easy because the show was about a war, and when the war ends, the series ends and everyone says goodbye. Easy-peasy and not a fair comparison.

"The Sopranos" managed to end the series while avoiding all the cliches and yet also resolved many things and hinted at the future. The rest is up to you.
What's wrong with that?

• • • 
We saw "Pirates" 3 for Kate's birthday. Mom stayed home with the twins and also watched Jayden. Newborn twins and a toddler. Mom is now crowned champion babysitter of all time.
Maybe I'm biased because I actually got a see a movie in the theaters with my wife, an event that happens now about as often as I had a girlfriend in high school, but I didn't think it was as horrible as the critics say it was. It wasn't great. In fact it has plenty of holes. But it's a summer movie. Summer is the only time I lower my expectations for movies. Usually they are pretty sky high. So the movie met my lowered summer expectations. Barely, though.
• • •
So you all got to go to Vegas eh? I had an exciting weekend too. I grilled chicken on the barbecue with my brother, did three 3 a.m. feedings and changed about 20 diapers.
Jealous?
I thought so.

P.S. My second article
in a series I'm writing for Pokerworks is up. It's been great working for Linda and I hope it can continue.

A little bit of poker in my life

As you may have noticed, this is still a poker blog, but only in the technical sense.
I still write about poker, and I still play poker every night, and I still even consider myself a poker blogger.
But as you may also have noticed, when I'm writing these days, poker doesn't get near as many words as running or the twins or Jayden. There's a lot more there with a pair of newborn ladies and a toddler than writing about how I screwed up A,J in EP yet again and how I suffered yet another bad beat and poor me and I hate our government.
You have, after all, read all that before. Much more eloquently, in fact.

The last thing I do these days is offer poker advice. Let's face it. I'm a good player. I've never deposited past my initial foray of $200 in pokerroom.com (man, that was another world ago), and through a series of withdraws, I've funded Full Tilt, Poker Stars, Bodog and Ultimate Bet accounts from that initial $200. I'm one of the leaders on the Mookie board and won one this year.

But I'm hardly as good as many of you. My thinking rarely travels beyond third level. My highest level of cash games are $50 NL, and I'm currently enjoying three tables of UB at $25 NL. I still play low-level SnGs, and even those lately have sucked. I don't ever expect to win a MTT, and though I have a healthy bankroll, a win in the Full Tilt $26K would probably surpass it.

Yet here I go. If you think this tip is somewhat like trying to teach Miles Davis how to play the blues in B-flat, then by all means, have yourself a chuckle and skip over it. But it's a good tip, and it seems to play out again and again, without fail.

I have KK and $30 in front of me in a $25 NL game. I raise 3x, and I get one caller from a lady who has a $13 stack. She typically buys in short. This, as we'll see later, is important.
The flop is a decent one, Q,9,3, all rainbow. She has position on me, however, so I bet the pot, $2.
She smooth calls. At this point I'm not too worried. I suppose she could have J,10 or maybe a weak Q. She could also have a set but I can't worry about monsters just yet.
The turn is a harmless 2, and I bet $4.50 into the $6 pot. I wouldn't mind a call here but I don't want to give odds out either.
She pushes all in.
What's your move?

• • •

I don't mind it when other blogs make you wait for a day or so to get comments, but what I'm saying here isn't really all that amazing, and in many cases, it probably won't be much of a decision for many of you. So I'll continue here.
What do you think she had?
At that point I was fairly sure I knew what she had.
I put her on Q,J sooted, and that's what she flipped over when I called.
I was sure because of the tip that's coming, and it's a strange trend, in my mind, yet it plays out over and over and over, and I'd be willing to be it plays out at all but the highest levels.
When a player is on the short stack, they are far too willing to gamble with a marginal hand like top pair.

I know. "Wow, thanks Peaker. You're amazing. I'll bet you raise in EP with AA, too, don't you? You should write a book on poker stragety."

But here's the thing. This is a cash game, remember? It's not a tournament. And the "short stack" is relative. Let's say this was a tournament. With the blinds being .10/.25, her M is 37. That's hardly a time to be pushing with only a decent hand.

Yet what I've found, over and over, is if a stack has less than 60 percent of a buy-in, that person will gamble with anything, and usually that means top pair, weak kicker. Sometimes it even means a pair in their hand with overcards on the board, or it could also mean an overpair.

You should call these players more often than not if you have a good hand, but not a hand you would normally blow half your stack with, like just a pair with a great kicker or an overpair that can be beaten by higher overpairs. I doubt this is true at the higher levels, but at $25 NL up to $100 NL, this seems to be the case.

It really amazes me too. It seems like such a dumb play. Apparently there's a school of thought out there that OTHER players are going to be willing to gamble with much less, too, and I do think that's true. If she shoves with $40, totally covering me, I think twice before calling with KK, and unless I've got a good read on her (which I did in this case, she wasn't a good player), I fold.

Yet most of the time, what I've found is I wait for those players to make those mistakes and shove their stacks and I pick them off. I've made more money off these players than any other except for spiking sets or big hands with sooted connectors against a big overpair.

Reckless short stack cash game poker is rarely profitable, it seems to me. But if there are shortstack players who make money off this strategy, I'm willing to listen.

After all, as we've just seen, I'm no poker author.

There ain't no cure for the post-race blues

Sunday I ran five miles.
Every step was a struggle.
I could barely maintain a 9-minute-mile pace when just a week ago I was running at 8:35 without much effort.
So what’s the difference?
One is that not sleeping as well as I should - two tiny girls have something to say about that for now - may be catching up to me.
Two is I gave blood a few days ago, and that’s literally robbing your system of oxygen. At sea level that’s a slight problem. At 5,000 feet that hurts.
Mostly, though, I’m suffering from something else.
We runners call it the post-race blues, and I think it pertains to my life, not just my running.
The Bolder/Boulder is a tough race, and my body is still feeling the effects of running hard for 50 minutes.
This, though, goes beyond effort.
Training for an event is a tricky thing when your main goal is to be fit for life. You start to see the race, the mountain, whatever, in your bathroom mirror in the morning. Skipping a workout doesn’t happen because of The Goal. You eat well, sleep well (if you can) and take care of yourself. You are focused.
And then the day comes, and then it’s over.
It’s impossible not to have a letdown.
I have other goals for the summer. I have Race for the Cure, a 5K, on July 4. I have another 10K, the Human Race, on July 28. I have several mountains I’ll be guiding this summer. But those goals are distant, and the sense of urgency isn’t there right now.
And that brings me to the twins.
A birth, especially this birth, was much like a race. We didn’t know the exact day, but we worked for it, and when it got here, we worked and worked and worked and ran and charged up hills and got up at 3 a.m. and changed a mountain of diapers.
And then, well, now we continue to do it.
Parenting doesn’t have a finish line. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any letdowns.
The girls have been so good, I’m nervously waiting for the other, Exorcist-like side, to come out. I’m wondering if they’re good only because Mom is here, and when she leaves, will chaos, instead of being kept on the sidelines, will charge off the bench. I’m wondering if I’ll be getting up at 3 a.m. for months, not weeks.
I’ve gotten an invitation to play a home game this weekend. I hope I can make it but I’m thinking I can’t. I haven’t had a good poker game with my buddies in at least a month. I haven’t even seen a movie with them. I miss them. I am wondering how long it will take for Kate to start to view our increasingly clingy and active toddler as Dennis the Menace and not our lovable little guy.
The grind, already, is getting to me a bit.
My poker game has reflected the post-race blues a bit, seesawing back and forth $25 up and down, and yet I still believe I’m playing well. I’m playing, I believe, better than ever, dumping two pairs and sets with abandon when its so obvious my opponent has drawn out on me (and that has happened FAR TOO MUCH lately). Yes, it’s possible my opponents are merely making moves on me, but this being $25 NL, I doubt it. You just don’t see it at that level. Every other time someone else has looked them up, they’ve got their third club or that made straight.
There are days when life gets drenched in the post-race blues. One thing I have learned.
It’s best to attempt to put on your running shoes, put the feet forward, and start churning away toward the next high.
So here I go.

It's not my fault

You've probably already heard about the Cards at the World Series of Poker.

Those cards are Poker-P-E-E-K cards.

I am Poker-P-E-A-K-E-R.

P-E-E-K
P-E-A-K

See the difference?
Good.


In other news, I'm nearly as weary as you might think. The twins are still relatively easy-peasy and are basically sleeping through the night, albeit with some feedings and some 11 p.m. fussing, usually right when Daddy is planning to check-raise his set on a two-flush board.
They also seem to have a knack for shitting when we take the diaper OFF. Sweeties, you've got it backward. At least I think you do. Maybe you're doing it on purpose.
And Allie seems to have a knack for sensing my presense. She sleeps a lot but when I'm in charge of watching them, she pitches a fit and kinda makes it clear she wants to be held. So I hold her, and she looks up at me and whines occasionally until I talk to her.
Is this how it starts?
Ya know, I DO control your destiny right now, little ones. Perhaps you shouldn't toy with me.
Mom has been a Godsend here. I truly don't know how we're going to do it when she leaves in a few weeks.

Now that I'm strictly a cash game player - I haven't played an SnG in weeks, and I only make it out to the Mookie, where I finished a respectable 14th last week - I'm getting a little tired of the see-saw battle. I've been up to $700 on Ultimate Bet, where I'm mostly playing right now, and I've been down to $635 all last month. I would love to blame most of it on suckouts. And, yes, the suckouts have been horrific and plentiful (as an aside, I sure would like to suck out, but I have this darned knack to keep getting my money in ahead most of the time; how stupid of me). But I've also made the occasional stupid play that bumps me back a bit.
Last night I thought I played as well as I ever have and I finished $1 up. Sometimes it truly isn't about the results.

I'm also feeling weary after the 10K race and giving blood for the first time in a year (and, I suppose, not sleeping my full 8 every night). Time to get the energy back up. I need wings!