Turkey, Shopping, Poker, Rollins and, I'm a moron

My oh my how time flies. I spent a bunch of time in front of my computer over the long weekend, but didn’t once check in and write. I really need to write every day or else I end up with too much I want to write about and never get it all down. Plus, all the posts become mini-books… I tend to Ramble (right Todd?). So, I’ll try to keep each chunk as breif as possible. No promisses, though…

Thanksgiving day was great. We had my brother-in-law, his Fiancee, her sister and husband, my mother-in-law plus the 4 of us. We had a 20 LB turkey (way too much, BTW), a big ‘ol ham and a BUNCH of side dishes. We ate dinner around noon. Yes, I used the words “Dinner” and “Noon” in the same sentence… Then, went into a food coma for several hours. Got up, repeat the process, sleep. Pretty much a great day…

The girls all planned on hitting the stores as they opened. I’m not sure if they are all rookies at Black Friday shopping, but I don’t think they were prepared for what they ran up against. Luckily, they weren’t any part of the brawls that took place here in town. After they went out for Round 1, Chris and I went back out and did more shopping around 10. None of the “good deals” were left at any store, but, we still found several items at prices we were happy with. So, we did most of our shopping on Friday, plus we did some more on Saturday. Had to do over again, I’d just wait for Saturday or even wait a week when the stores have a chance to re-stock everything that went flying off the shelves.

I played a fair bit of Online Poker over the holiday weekend. For no real great reason, I’ve switched from playing No-Limit to playing Limit and have been absolutely killing the tables. I’ve finished in the money probably 90% of the times I’ve played over the past month or so playing Limit. Last night was probably the most dominating performance I’ve had… With 10 players all starting with 800 chips, that puts 8000 chips in play. When it got down to the final 4, I had more than 7000 chips. That didn’t leave much for the other 3. I knocked 2 players out in one hand and the final guy on the next hand to finish first. It was sick. I’m going to stick with the limit poker until I see some sort of downward swing. Hopefully, that’s no time soon.

I went out on Saturday with Todd and Mike G (sorry, no link) to the House of Blues to see Henry Rollins perform his spoken word show. He is a well spoken, well traveled guy with interesting views on pretty much any topic you throw his way. If you’ve never seen or heard him perform, check out his site. There’s a sample or two for download. Or, go buy his DVD.

A couple fairly amusing things happend while we were at the show. I’ll start with the one that doesn’t involve me being an idiot… When we got inside, the place was fairly empty still. So, we walked up to the bar, got some drinks and instead of going to find a place to stand, we just hung out at the bar. We had a good view of the stage and we were close to the booze. Doesn’t get much better than that… So, after a while the show starts and then a little while later, to women come up to the bar to order drinks. They end up staying and standing to my immediate right. The girl on the far left starts talking loud enough that she’s making it difficult for me to hear. I’m fairly passive so I let it go… for a while. After a solid 5 minutes of listening to her, I finally have had enough. Plus, I’ve had a few drinks at this point so I’m feeling a bit feisty anyway… I turn to the ladies and say, “Look… I’ll buy your drinks if you’ll shut up.” A lady standing in front of the two next to me turns around and says, “And I’ll pay for half.” Well, this made Todd laugh and say, “That was awesome. I wouldn’t have said a word.” Normally, I wouldn’t either, but damn it, we were there to see a guy “talk” for 2 hours… I may as well hear what he has to say. Plus, I paid a LOT to see this show… (more on that at the end…)

After the show let out, we headed over to a bar inside Mandalay Bay and did some drinking. Then, headed over to Green Valley Ranch and drank until about 3:30. It made for a bit of a lazy Sunday. We ended up doing a little shopping at the Mall on Sunday. It’s a damn good thing it wasn’t very crowded. I don’t think I’d have been able to handle it and may have snapped.

So, I mentioned I was an idiot, here’s the story. I posted a week or so back about the troubles of buying concert tickets 6 months in advance. After ripping my office apart (and cleaning my desk out in the process), I could NOT find the Henry Rollins tickets. So, Saturday morning I gave up and went back to ticketbastard and bought 3 more tickets. After service charges, around $100… I choose to have the tickets left at Will Call. When we get to HOB that night, I go up to the window and hand the guy my credit card and license. He says, “OK, sign here. And here.” It’s the “And here” that gets me. He then says, “You have two orders, here are your 6 tickets.” Well fuck. Apparently I had the other ones set to pick up at Will Call, too. I normally hate the Will Call option so assuming I have plenty of time, which I did since I ordered 6 F’n months in advance, I have the tickets printed and mailed which doesn’t cost a thing… I have a box on my desk where I NORMALLY store concert tickets for upcoming shows. When these weren’t in there, it never even dawned on my to call and check if they were at Will Call.

So there ya go, I’m an idiot. This is likely not news to most of you. For those just catching on, get used to it.