Bad Girls

This could pertain to my twins, given that they refuse to come out of room right now. Not that I blame them. The womb is a pretty nice place. But come on, ladies, it's time to see the world! You come out of that room RIGHT NOW!
They're ignoring Daddy.
I"m told I'd better get used to it.
On a poker note — yes, I still play poker, every night, in fact — I've never understood why QQ is called the Hiltons. Are we naming that hand after Paris Hilton and her sister?
If so, good, because I hate Paris Hilton.
And I hate QQ.
I've lost more money with QQ than any other hand. I have made five times as much with 10,10 and JJ. Easily. QQ is like Paris, who looks really, really good on the surface and is a dangerous little wench underneath. Why does it continue to beckon to me? Like the stripper I once dated long ago, before I found the wholesome power rock that is Kate, I know I should get away from it more often but I just...can't.
All small with the board pairing? The guy has the other xx. Aggression before the flop? The guy always has KK or AA (and I always call, at least, with QQ unless it's a shove). Flop a set? It turns into a flush or a straight despite me blistering my finger on the raise button. I finally got stacked last night on a 6,2,9 board when the other guy showed no aggression pre-flop to my raise. I put him on JJ and shoved. He had a set. Maybe if I listened to my don't go broke with one pair mantra, I'd be OK.
I can make great laydowns. All the time. I have no idea why QQ is different.
Maybe it's the looks. That always gets the guys.
I did play the Mookie last night. I felt all right about it after struggling with SnGs lately (0-5 on cashing this week) and wondering why I bother playing them any more at all. Cash games are going so well, if SnGs weren't fun I would just ditch them completely. Strangely enough, my MTT game is pretty good now. It used to be horrible, but generally in every Mookie I've played I've either made the final table or put myself in a good position to do so. I was a coin flip away from being in the top 10 after gasping on life support earlier that night.
By the way, Mookie is playing his ass off. He barely missed another final table. Good show. JJOK seems to be another hot player right now, but he's got the mutiple power working for him.
See, girls, JJOK did a good job with his girls. It's OK to come out. Join the world.
Please.

Finishing Second to Mom is heartwarming but frustrating

For my new column for the Greeley Tribune, I"ll occasionally write a personal column, as I did last month about the Daddy Spot. This is my second one. I thought I would share it again.


A couple quick things:

• I am Mr. Split Personality. I"m just crushing the cash games right now (three-tabling $25 NL on Ultimate Bet), but my SnG game has gone in the tank. I"m still making good decisions, but all my good hands have not held up or I'm just running into monster coolers. But my Mookie game is strong, as last week's third-place finish and fourth-place position on the leaderboard shows.
Of course, this is much better than tanking the Mookie and the cash games and doing well in SnGs, so I'm not complaining.

• Speaking of The Mookie, I'll be there tonight. It's been a blast lately with the good turnouts.




Here's the column:





There is nothing in this world that warms my heart more than when Jayden says, "Daddy!"

But I don't hear it as often as I'd like.

"Mom?" Jayden says to me as Kate drives away for a break with her friends, leaving him in my care at Pheasant Run Park during a glorious evening.

Jayden is a couple months shy of his second birthday, and he's learned to say a few words. He can't put together sentences yet, but one word usually does the trick. "Mom?," of course, means "Where the heck is Mom?"

He asks that 10 more times as our mini-van drives away.

In our home, Mom, not Daddy, is King.

When Kate places him on the bed in the morning, in the few minutes I'll have with him before I have to get ready for work, Jayden usually cries out of fear that Mom will go away. At night, when I'm excited to see him, Jayden squirms when I pick him up, angling his way back to Mom. When I open my arms as he watches "Cars," he'll nod his head "No" and nuzzle up next to Mom.

It's not all bad. When I lay on the floor, Jayden inevitably can't resist the urge to dogpile me. When he's playing in the backyard, Jayden usually comes in to "ask" me to join him (the kid already knows his father). And when I come home, he always says, "Daddy!"

Then he goes back to Mom.

"Mom?" Jayden says to me at the park, in between slides down on his belly while he says "weeeee!" He just saw a woman get out of another minivan who looks like a mom. She is a mom. Just not Mom.

"Go play," I say.

I've got no one to blame for this but myself. I put in my fair share of time, even watching him on Fridays, one of my "weekend" days for working Sunday, but Kate puts more hours than me. She gets up with him early to watch cartoons, feeds him breakfast and takes him to day care. She is extremely good at being Mom.

But other times I wonder if it would make a difference if I, say, fixed him breakfast (we'll find out soon enough, when the twins arrive). After spending all day with him Friday, on Saturday morning, Jayden favors Mom once again. Jayden doesn't hand out extra credit for a day spent with him. Either that or Mom gets awarded double points.

I have to admit, sometimes I get a little jealous at being second fiddle, even when I realize that my mom is the first person I call when I'm sick. And I'm 35.

I also know our roles are different. I'm the one Jayden can dogpile. I'm the one who throws him under the bed to make forts. I, more than Kate, take him to the park.

"Daddy?" Jayden says, in the distance, as he struggles to find his way through a plastic tube filled with screaming children. "I'm here," I answer.

Jayden appears a moment later, after another trip down the slide, with his arms outstretched to me, so I can pick him up and put him on a wheel that spins around and around. He laughs. I laugh. He turns to look at me and touches my nose. I pretend to eat his hand. He laughs and wants to be put down. He runs off to the slide again.

"Daddy!" he says, again, before I tell him it's time to head to the car and grab some dinner. It's times like these when the jealousy fades, and I feel good about my place in his world.

Then, as we're walking back to the car, he looks over at another mini-van that's just pulled up. A woman yells at her kids to get in the car.

"Mom?" Jayden asks and looks at me.

Sigh.

— Dan England covers the outdoors, entertainment and the environment for The Tribune. His column runs on Tuesdays. If you have an idea for a column, call 392-4418 or write dengland@greeleytribune.com.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk

I honestly thought meals of boiled race and cottage cheese, topped off with a cup full of Kaopectate were something to look forward to 40 years from now.
But alas.
Alas, I got to taste the chalky yet slightly candy-cane-like peppermint of everyone's favorite "runs" medicine for the first time this weekend, when, after what I thought was a bad cold turned out to be something, well, a little something more runny than just my nose.
Ugh.
Fortunately, two things cheered me up.
First was finishing 10th in my second 180 SnG on Stars. I had a chance to make a really good run at the top prize but my 7,7 lost to A,5 to runner, runner straight. Ah, well. It was fun. I'll play more, as the play in this was less than stellar.
Second was this:



My Kansas Jayhawks are the #1 seed in the West Region in the NCAAs!
Seriously, is there any other sporting event that even comes close to the tournament?

I played in Kansas' basketball band from 1991-93. Usually they took nine players, with only six traveling, and more than 30 usually tried out. Most practiced for months and fought like dogs for a chance to go to the Final Four, and that was just the band members. Competition was brutal. I was lucky to make it all three years I tried out, and I saw some awesome tournament games. College was a much better place for me and holds many golden memories because of tournament time.

So that's sort of carried over to my adult life. I don't let the tournament affect my home life. I don't yell at the TV anymore, now that a little one is running around and has barely heard Daddy raise his voice. I don't throw things. I don't kick the dogs. But I still live and die for the games, especially now.

Kansas beat Texas in one of the best games I've seen for the Big 12 tournament title.
I just hope my insides heal in time for Friday's first-round game. They're going to need to handle the stress.



Rock Chalk Jayhawk!!!




Edit: Here are the details of the baby pool. Three picks per date. Pick when the twins will be born. Due date is June 3, but consider that most twins aren't born on the due date. In fact, the average is 35 weeks, so from late April on we're on call.


It's $5 to enter. Since this is just outright gambling instead of poker, we can use any money system we want instead of Neteller and our government won't care. You can get it to me in three ways:
1) In person, where I"ll keep it in a white envelope in a secret location.
2) By PayPal. My email is dengl5@earthlink.net.
3) My Poker Stars or Full Tilt accounts. I"m pokerpeaker on both of those. If you do that, however, let me know through e-mail so I can keep track of it.
This is most definitely a one-time offer. Let's just say the doctor will, er, TAKE CARE of me as soon as I know those babies are healthy. Apparently I"m dangerous.
You can enter up to five times.

We have one contestant so far. Even if four enter, we'll have a pool!!!

Giving sking a cool reception, a Speaker-like experience and a move that made me turn 180 degrees

My alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. An emo band screamed in my ear. I didn't catch the name. I didn't care. Truth be told, I still don't.
I pulled on five layers of clothes, including a sweater that made my hair look like what I'm assuming is the style for the singer of the emo band.
I went outside to the 10-degree air (cold enough, if you're scoring at home or living in California, to keep your ice cream frozen, climbed in my car and drove a long hour to a Park N Ride named after a dinosaur.
I found what I think were Stegosaurus and Triceratops to be, well, extinct. Denver decided to tear two of the four lots out. I hope for improvements. City officials, in their infinite wisdom, chose the ski season to do this. As a result, I battled 573 other cars attempting to park in lots that had exactly seven spots left.
I don't think there is any other group more self-centered than skiers. At least skiers trying to get to the slopes. They parked in the middle of the lot to load their equipment in their friends' cars, attempted to pass me IN THE LOT (unsuccessfully, I might add) and forced me to drive out in the middle of traffic after refusing to let me in. These people make actors at an Oscars party look like a bunch of Red Cross volunteers.
Thankfully, most ski drivers are also stupid. I found a park about a football field's length away from the entrance to the last Park N Ride and enjoyed my pick of at least a dozen spots.
My brother picked me up, and, after fighting traffic for two hours (at 7:30 a.m.), we found a spot at Winter Park, walked to a hill, skied down it and promptly waited in line for 15 minutes for a spot on the lift.
The air was so cold my fingers almost immediately felt as if they had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. They would feel that way most of the day.
When we finally left at 2 p.m., with the long, long lines at the lifts, we had maybe a dozen runs under our fleece belts.
I used to love skiing. When my brother, who also used to be a ski fanatic, commented that, maybe, he was getting a little sour on skiing, I found myself daydreaming about a fun sled down a long hill.
Next year I trade in my skis for an inner tube.

• • •

I had a Speaker-like experience at Taco Bell Friday.
I don't like to name-drop too much on this blog. But one of the many things I love about Speaker's blog is his rants when he's not served properly at a resturant.
So here's my rant.
We walk in and wait at the cash register. Finally an employee saunters up and takes our order. After repeating myself at least four times — she could barely understand English, and while you won't see any redneck "Learn English or Else" comments in this blog, doesn't it seem to be a good business practice to put someone at the counter who can understand the language at least 60 percent of your customers will speak? — she told us to take our seat.
Now, I don't know about you, but when I go into a fast food joint, it ain't to enjoy the ambiance, unless plastic seats, sticky floors and pop music from 1997 is your idea of pleasant surroundings. No, I go there for cheap, easy, somewhat tasty food fast. So when we waited 10 minutes for our food, I wasn't exactly pleased.
And then when they got our order wrong, well, I was less pleased.
I went up to the counter. Um, yeah, I said, you forgot our bean burrito, you gave us a Quesadilla, and you forgot my order of Taquitos.
Anything else, the woman at the counter asked.
No, other than those three things, you nailed the order, I said.
Five minutes later, the rest of our order floated out to us. Brought by a guy who explained that the Quesadilla (which I kept) and the Taquitos were the same thing, except the Taquitos were rolled and the Quesadilla was flat.
He said this in a way that sort of made it sound like I was the idiot, like I should have known that, and how DARE I just not accept the flattened shell instead of the tasty rolled-up variety.
When he finished explaining the unique and special exotic differences of each Taco Bell entree item, I just looked down and took a bit of my Taquito and set aside the Quesadilla.
"Thanks for lunch tommorow," I said.
Ha.

• • •

In poker news, I managed to play two 180-player person SnGs at Poker Stars when I got home all chipper from skiing and after watching KU beat down Texas for sole possesion of the Big 12 title.
In the first one, I'll bet if I took a deck of cards, took out all the paint and those pretty A cards and scattered them on the floor and then took out seven other cards to decrease my chances of a pair and then shuffled and dealt those hands out one at a time, I would STILL better hands than what I got. I've never seen so many low-end hands in my life.
But in the second, after a stretch of cold cards, I got A,Q, pushed my meager stack in on a flop of 8,8,5, a guy with a draw called, and I doubled up. And then I went on a rush and got good cards and played them aggressively.
Pretty soon, I was 15th with 25 players left.
I get KK for the second time in a row.
My M is 15. So on an A high flop, what do I do? I push the rest of my stack. I win right there and I"m close to chip leader.
But the guy, who did not re-raise me, calls off most his stack with A,8 and I do not improve.
It was a $4.50 SnG, so I wasn't concerned about cashing, but I did miss the money by six spots.
I told myself that I wouldn't care about the cash, I still had 15 spots, all with plump stacks, to decent money. But later the move really bothered me. A lot more than I thought it would.
I think now it was the Stupidest Play Of The Year. I had a tight image, yes, but checking it down (there was a third player all in with a short stack before the flop) would still leave me with 10 BB. I had outplayed most of the field and was catching cards. There was no need for desperation. And why play for two hours if you're just going to donk off your stack on a board that shows even a stupid call can beat you?
Anyone else hate the play as much as me?
Thought so.


And oh yeah, since it was cancelled last time, even if I am working, I may just try to play in this:

Online poker mac

The mind of a 2-year-old

The title is two-fold. For one of those folds, see below. For the first, my brain pouted and threw itself on the floor and kicked and screamed after getting clobbered in showdowns with way the best hand in SnGs. If my hands hold up when they should last night I'm ahead probably $35. Instead I'm down that much.
I was planning on feeling sorry for myself, going on a Waffles rant and maybe having a crap in my diaper when I read Trip Jax's post entitled "The Bitch and Whine Fest" yet again and cured myself of my impending snit. I have had, after all, seven winning weeks in a row, and I'm still up almost $600 for 2007 playing fairly low limits, so eventually variance is gonna say "We ain't gonna have THAT!" and decide to kick me over and over until my lower region looks like a couple of playground kickballs.
Such is poker, and such is life, too.
The night started bad when I had connection issues with Full Tilt, and I was literally typing in "Vegas1" when the Mookie got underway. Great final table match, guys, and congrats to Schaub on another 2nd place finish.
I'll be at CC's bash tonight. See you there. Teach me something.
• • •

Here's the second fold, and I have to admit I got this idea (*cough ripped it off *cough) from this terrific blog about twins.

Here's a day in the life of Jayden when Dad takes care of him.

Oh, good, Clifford. I like that big red doggie.
Man, Daddy looks tired.
I'm thirsty. I want some milk. I'll take Daddy's hand and lead him to the kitchen.
Is that my pacifier? Oh man do I need that thing. Must. Have. Pacifier.
That's better.
Daddy keeps telling me to sit with him, but I'd rather walk around.
Hey, look, the dog's water bowl! Oh man is this thing fun. You can put stuff in the water bowl and splash around in it!
What's that yelling? Oh, Daddy keeps saying something like 'No." Wish I knew what that meant. It's pretty funny though.
Can we play on the computer?
This computer is great. I love doing this coloring game. I have no idea why Daddy looks so bored. We've only done it 500 times this week. That's not enough.
I want to look out the window. Maybe if I climb up on this ledge and then climb up on this other ledge and then climb up on this piece of furniture.
That's better. Why is Daddy saying that No word again? I want to see the moon!
Oh, is my diaper dirty? I hadn't noticed.
Hey, look! Something sharp! Cool!
Oh, rats. Daddy took it away.
OK, lunch time. Grilled cheese again? It's funny when I throw this on the floor and the doggies gobble it up. Dad is saying that No word again.
It's already time for a nap? What? No way, man. I'm not....even....tir.....
(Editor's note: Two hours later, I hope)

OK, I'm awake. Daddy. Daaaaady!!!! I'm alone in this crib and I don't like it.
Oh, there he is.
Hi, Daddy. I'm kinda sleepy. Can you hold me for a few minutes?
Although some juice would be great right now.
Why does Daddy keep taking my pacifier out of my mouth? I NEED that thing.
Now we're going to the place called Wal-Mart to buy food. It's fun to bend my back and hang onto the door so Daddy has to struggle to belt me in.
Wow, lots of stuff here, and....
wait....
IS THAT LITTLE EINSTEINS ON A BOX? HOLY MOLY I LOVE LITTLE EINSTEINS!!! Why is Daddy saying we can't buy that kind of cereal? No way am I letting go of this box. Daddy I'm serious I'm gonna scream.
Why is Daddy sighing and putting the box in the cart! This is a great day! The cereal looks really good too! (Editor's note: It wasn't, unless you like sugary cardboard).
OK, we're back. I'm going to celebrate by taking all the pots out of the bottom drawer and bang them together.
There's the water bowl again.
Can we play on the computer again?
NO? Why not?
Mom's home! Who-hoo!
Where did Daddy go?