A Typical Vegas Night

Okay … so where was I…? Oh yeah, Vegas. I had just completed a couple hours of poker resulting in a $417 profit (obtained on the last hand) and needed to get back (along with the Toddster) over to Treasure Island for the “Bounty Hunter” tournament that we bought into earlier in the day. I believe I may have ruffled a few feathers at the table when I announced I needed to leave directly after taking what was pretty much the biggest pot of the day; however time – she was a’tickin – as she so consistently does and I wasn’t about to miss a tournament that I had already paid the buy-in for … so, I left…

Todd and I rather quickly made our way back to Treasure Island (much quicker than I expected, in fact, as it was still something like a half hour before the tournament started when we arrived). Todd headed off to grab a bite to eat at one of the available eateries and I bought a rather expensive can of Red Bull (I forget how much I paid although I remember that it seemed quite overpriced at the time) and patiently waited for the start-time to arrive. I smoked a couple cigarettes (something that I no longer do … haven’t smoked since a week ago yesterday…), drank some Red Bull (needed the “wings” I guess…) and watched the ever-growing crowd of people line up for Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère show … it, as well as the “Bounty Hunter” tourney, was scheduled to begin at 7:00pm…

At 7:00 (well, a few minutes before…), Todd returned from his meal and we both took our assigned seats for the game. I wouldn’t be sitting in mine too long – I was eliminated shortly after the first break – however Todd fared much better and would be occupied for quite some time. This, of course, meant that I had some time to kill. Time to kill in Vegas can quickly become expensive for many … for me it actually became a bit profitable. I got bored just sitting there waiting for Todd to finish the tournament so I headed on out to the casino (you know – where they keep all those “one-arm bandits”) and did something that I don’t usually do … I started playing slot machines…

You see, I’ve never quite understood the allure of slots. After all, these machines are basically nothing more than computers programmed to take your money and they (the casinos) don’t even bother to hide this fact. They actually use signs stating something like “98% return on our slots!” to lure in their victims. I understand exactly what that means – it means that you are pretty much guaranteed to walk away from these machines poorer by 2% of the money you play. How is this an incentive? And, if you factor in that – on the rare occasion – somebody’s going to hit big and walk away with many times the amount they were playing, it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to realize that it’s going to take a heck of a lot of people walking away with nothing to keep that median payout at a mere 98%. But I guess that’s the dream – to be the one that causes these losses to be necessary. I was, however, bored … so I thought I’d attempt to be “that guy”…

I wasn’t “that guy” – I never hit anything huge; however I was able to walk away with some profit. I started at a few quarter machines – turned ten bucks into twenty five, another ten into nothing, the twenty five into some smaller amount (I wasn’t really keeping track – just cashing out and pocketing any profits made and considering the busts bad choices at machines…) and finally decided to try out one of those dollar machines. It was a typical slot machine in that you could bet various amounts (1-3 dollars) per spin and, of course, your winnings would have slightly higher proportional payouts if you chose to gamble more. And it had a special “hit” on the third wheel that would let you play the bonus game. The bonus on this machine was a Deal or No Deal type game where you would get offered an amount of money that you could choose to accept or deny on up to four chances. If you denied the first three, you were forced to take the fourth offer. Being that it was a dollar machine, the offers were pretty good. I was actually lucky enough to hit the game somewhere around 4 or 5 times and never ended up taking less than $35 … not bad on a $1 spin…

So basically I sat there playing with any bills I had that were less than $100 until I collected payouts of more than $100. I then headed over to the cashier and got the money and returned to the same machine to play with any new sub-$100 bills until $100+ was won again. It was a nice way to waste some time – I played slowly, smoked a few cigarettes and had a few drinks “on the house” – and I actually walked away with something like $70 in profit (may have been more … may have been less … I really don’t remember…). In time, Todd emerged from the poker room and found me…

The good news was that he was able to place 5th (if memory serves me correctly) in the tournament! The bad news was that payouts began at 3rd … the even worse news was that he didn’t succeed in collecting any bounties either. So basically his results were the same as mine (complete loss of the buy-in) even though it took him a few more hours to achieve the loss. He wasn’t happy about this… But, that’s poker. Especially with tournaments … it can often be a long trip to nowhere… The night, however, was still young and we decided to head out…

We walked back to Caesar’s, hopped in the car and headed out for the Palms. There we paid for our free drinks by playing several slot machines. We both lost a decent amount (the figures have long since been forgotten by me) but did our best to make up for the losses in free drinks. In time we decided to head on over to the Rio where we did basically the same before deciding to return to the strip. I’m pretty sure we parked at Paris … pretty sure… Whatever the case, I remember us being at Paris. I also remember heading over to Harrah’s and briefly considering going to some sort of after-hours club that we couldn’t even get into – we were wearing sneakers which apparently wasn’t allowed… Come to think of it, the club wasn’t even in Harrah’s – it was located in that casino on the way to Harrah’s … it’s all pretty much a blur to me now…

One thing that I do remember is that we (Todd and I) must appear to be “easy money” to your standard Las Vegas prostitute. We’re not, mind you; however we sure as hell must appear to be since they were approaching us pretty much everywhere we went. I don’t remember any at the Palms or the Rio; however they were out in full force once we returned to the strip. It was rather comical to see these women in action with little to no regard for the police that were also there. I guess being a cop in Vegas is akin to being a child in a chocolate factory as far as vice is concerned… One lady approached us not more than 20 feet away from a couple of cops that were basically herding prostitutes like cattle. Sin City, indeed…

I think it was somewhere around 5 or 6 in the morning when Todd and I finally called it a night. After all, we still needed to drive the rest of the way to California later that day and we needed to check-out of the hotel by noon – amazingly enough, we were able to accomplish this. Getting Todd up before check-out was not easy (I ended up returning the key with Todd still in the room) but we did leave the hotel without getting penalized… We stopped off for breakfast (well, lunch as breakfast was no longer being served) at the surprisingly decent, extremely no-frills restaurant located at the Knights Inn. I think I had a BLT… It’s not important what I ate … I’m still amazed that I was able to function considering the lack of sleep I had recently had and amount of alcohol I had drunk the previous night. But, hey, it was Vegas; so we finished eating and drove on down to New York, New York … we wanted to see if they had a poker game…

In case anyone was interested in learning, they don’t. We walked around the casino looking for a poker room or at least a sign that might direct us to one; but completely failed in our quest. I even broke down and did a very un-manly thing by asking the lady at the information desk. Interestingly enough, New York, New York appears to not have gotten swept up in the poker craze of late – they do not offer any live poker games. We were directed to try either the Excalibur or the MGM Grand – both located directly across the street from NY, NY; one south and one east. We headed east, across one of the many pedestrian crosswalks, to the MGM Grand Casino. We knew there was poker there…

And with that, I’m going to end this installment of my little blog. Apart from losing around $50 playing poker at the MGM for a few hours and a drive from Vegas to Camarillo that took quite a bit longer than was expected (Sunday afternoon/evening is NOT when you want to be driving from Vegas back to California … traffic is pretty bad…), this also pretty much completes this story. Vegas always ends up being an interesting trip and I’ve already got my next trip to Vegas scheduled at the end of June. The plan’s to meet with my parents, introduce them to my new steady girlfriend, take in a performance of Cirque Du Soleil: Mystère at Treasure Island then drive back to my home in Colorado for –get this – an emissions test. Since it didn’t occur to me that I needed to get this done for this year’s registration, I failed to get an emissions test prior to driving Precious back to California. Now I get to drive back to Colorado in order to complete this task … followed shortly by yet another drive back to California… Precious is finally beginning to acquire a few miles.

bis später,

Coriolis

Vegas by Day

So that was day one of our little trip – a lot of driving, a little poker and some much needed sleep. I was down a little, Todd was up a little and we had one more full day (and night) left before we needed to leave on the remainder of our trip to California. I seem to remember that I woke rather early Saturday morning – a bit too early for Todd if all his bitching and moaning was taken as an indication. On my agenda for the day was to find a local Wells Fargo (get some cash), find a local car wash (Precious wasn’t looking her best…), get a bite to eat and head down to the strip in search of a decent game. Todd got over his morning grouchiness soon enough and we headed out to find the needed services…
First was a quick trip to one of those automated, brushless car washes. The name of the joint was Terrible’s and all I can say is that this place was named amazingly well – the car wash was absolutely terrible! The poor quality of the automated wash added one more destination for our day: stop #2 – another car wash… For the second wash, I decided to stop in at one of those “wash it yourself with our hose and brush” spots that just happened to be located right next to the Terrible’s Auto Wash … great business planning by somebody as I’m sure they get quite a bit of business leaving their neighbor…

After all is said and done, I was able to get my car washed – twice, actually! She still wasn’t up to the admittedly high standard of cleanliness that I have set for Precious; but she was cleaner … not to mention that we still needed to drive to California the next day so lowering my acceptable cleanliness criterion seemed acceptable. Who knows how much filth she’ll be gathering on tomorrow’s trip…?

Now granted, from the first paragraph of this post, I may have led you to be thinking that it was still rather early in the day. It actually wasn’t… I think it was going on 11:00am after completing the second car wash of the day. It’s all good though – Todd’s not much of a morning person and we both needed the rest. The slightly-later-than-expected start ended up working to our advantage as it was good preparation for the day/evening/night/morning that we were heading into. It was, after all, the only full day that we were planning on being in Vegas and I’m sure I don’t need to explain how these “one day in Vegas” trips usually end up…

Being that it was, however, a Saturday and banks don’t seem to enjoy opening for any useful hours on weekends; we then needed to find a Wells Fargo. I didn’t bring much actual cash with me (for some reason I thought I could just purchase chips with my debit card at the casinos … you can’t, by the way…) and had already burned through the maximum amount of money I allow myself (pre-meditated controls…) to withdraw from an ATM on any one day so I really needed to find a physical bank that would allow me to get some fundage. I was still thinking that I might be playing some of the higher-stakes poker, however I never did; but that’s cool … I was prepared…

This preparation was accomplished when we rather quickly found a Wells Fargo bank. The good news was that it was open – if I remember correctly, it was actually scheduled to be open most of the day – that’s Vegas for ya, I guess… Getting “in” the bank required the ability to quickly figure out the intricacies of a rather convoluted double, automatic, pressure/presence sensitive set of doors with a metal-detector in between; the bank, however, was open. On something like the 3rd of 4th attempt, I was able to enter the bank and withdraw a grand… I was prepared…

After visiting the bank it was a short trip back toward the car washes to get a bit of breakfast (or lunch depending on how strictly you associate named meals with times of day…). Not that car washes are known for having great food available … there was this restaurant, felipitos, that we saw earlier that looked like it had some decent, rather inexpensive meals. It was here that we finally purchased some food. Heck, now that I think about it, I think this might have been the only actual meal that I ate that day … I believe Todd grabbed something at some small eatery in Treasure Island just prior to the “Bounty Hunter” tournament; but I can’t seem to recall eating another actual meal until just after checking out of our hotel. Seems like I should probably get back to eating on a more regular schedule – but I digress – this story’s about Vegas … not my irregular eating habits…

So we ate our rather authentic Mexican lunches and headed out toward the strip. Todd really wanted to stop, but I was able to convince him that we probably shouldn’t stop at the Liberace Museum (not an easy task – Todd just seems to LOVE Liberace…) and we continued past toward the strip. Upon checking the tournaments for the day on my cached web pages the night before, I had decided to park at Caesar’s Palace and hoof it from there to the various casinos we were planning on checking out. It was then just a bee-line (if the bee were disoriented and apt to fly routes in a completely indirect manner) to the Caesar’s Palace garage followed by an admittedly lengthy ordeal at finding an available parking spot. We did, however, find one – on the top floor, near the back…

A bit of a side note here: I highly recommend the Caesar’s Palace garage if you are parking a vehicle that you are a bit concerned about. I’m not sure if many other casinos in Vegas do the same (the list of one’s that don’t includes the Flamingo, the Palms, the Rio and New York, New York…) but at Caesar’s Palace you are required to show a valid picture ID to a live guard upon entering. Whether this equates to any sort of improved security or is merely a “feel good” extra for their patrons remains unknown to me … however, I saw it as a rather nice touch…

The first tournament I was interested in checking out was, according to the information I found online, a $330 buy-in tourney at Casear’s. It was scheduled to be starting at noon – which, by the time we finally arrived at the poker room, was quickly approaching – and was supposed to be a very good “Skill Level 6” event. The thing that interested me the most was that players started with a $10,000 chip-stack which made it a more skill-oriented tournament as opposed to the BINGO-esque free-for-alls that often arise in the tournaments where the starting stacks aren’t sufficient to cover the quickly increasing blinds. Add to that the 40-minute blind levels and this tournament sounded pretty good to me…

Unfortunately, due to the scheduling of the World Series of Poker circuit events, this weekly tournament wasn’t running. There were several WSOP tournaments that we could have played; however paying the cost required to possibly win a seat into a tournament that we weren’t even assured we could attend (life has its way of interfering with spur-of-the-moment planning…) seemed a bit silly. We decided to try our luck elsewhere and headed out toward the Mirage.

To be honest, I don’t even remember checking the poker room at the Mirage. I’m sure we did although my lack of recollection tells me that we didn’t find anything playable there… We basically did the tourist thing at the Mirage – walked around a bunch, saw the large aquarium behind what appeared to be the hotel registration desk (at least that’s what I believe I remember…), checked out a few of the interesting bars and attractions and spent some time near the Beatles, Summer of Love – Cirque de Soleil gift shop. We didn’t attend the show and, from what Todd has told me he heard from several that did, didn’t miss out on much – as far as Cirque de Soleil shows go, the Beatles aren’t quite the right material… We then decided to head over to the Treasure Island tram (one of the few no-cost travel conveyances left in Vegas). After arriving at the Treasure Island Casino, we quickly found their poker room and headed in to check out the possibilities…

Treasure Island has a rather interesting, somewhat low-cost tournament run on Saturday evenings – the “Bounty Hunter” tournament. I believe it’s actually run every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7:00pm and is a standard no-limit Hold’em tournament with a bit of a twist. The buy-in is $125 with a $25 fee and the prize-pool is split 50/50 between the top 10% finishers and bounties. The way the bounties are paid is that every player in the tournament has a $50 bounty on their head – knock anybody out and you instantly claim the $50. This gives an opportunity to make the money without actually “making the money” … you could, theoretically, win back all or some of your buy-in without even making it to the prize payout. It’s an interesting twist and a rather decent tournament for your standard weekend visitor…

Todd and I decided to buy-in to the “Bounty Hunter” tournament, plopped down the $125 and received our starting seat assignments. Of course, since it was only early afternoon at the time, we needed to eat up the remaining several hours before the start of the game… We decided to check out Vegas a bit and began the activity that is ever-so-popular in Vegas – walking…

We headed over to the Wynn, waited a bit on a bus to take us to the north end of the strip – and perhaps downtown – that never came, walked past the Palazzo (apparently a newer extension of the Venetian) and ended up at the poker room in the Venetian. The games at the Wynn were a bit too expensive for Todd (and, a bit more than I was comfortable playing at the time) but we were able to get a couple seats (this time on the same table) in a $1/$2 no-limit ring game at the Venetian. I bought-in for $300 and Todd, I believe, for $200 and we ended up spending the remaining time prior to the “Bounty Hunter” tournament here. As poker usually goes, it was a bit of a rollercoaster ride … I was up, down, even … until the last hand I played…

I had been playing for at least a couple hours thus far – Todd, unfortunately, was out. The table had the usual cast of characters – the kid with the horseshoe stuck up his ass that kept getting slapped in the face with the deck (he had recently left the table), the guy playing with his poor girlfriend stuck watching (she must not have been a player and he was trying to impress her with his poker prowess…), the aggressive guy that I was patiently waiting to spank and a few obvious tourist fishes that really shouldn’t have been sitting there. I was back to my starting stack of around $300 when I was dealt a pocket pair of 7’s. Nothing to get too excited about – just a mid pair; however I was the big-blind and the miniscule raise made by the aggressive guy pre-flop wasn’t enough to get me out. I called the additional $5 in order to see a flop…

The flop that came was pretty good for me – ace, king, seven … none suited… I was first to act and decided to try to trap the aggressive guy – I checked it. This was quickly followed by a $5 bet from Mr. Aggressive and a call from one of the remaining fish. Excellent – my trap worked. I “hesitantly” raised the bet to $10 which Mr. Aggressive quickly took to $15 and the fish came along for the ride. I went “all-in” (somewhere around $300) and was called by both. This brought the pot up to a bit over $700 (I had more money than both remaining players) and all betting was over with…

Now the rules for ring games are varied depending on casinos. At the Venetian during a ring game, an all-in player doesn’t need to show his/her cards until after the river is dealt. It allows people to “save face” on stupid plays as well as creates a game where bluffing is a bit more fostered. Since my goal was to spank the ultra-aggressive guy in this hand (nothing bothers me more than machismo-induced, hyper-aggression – and it seems to me that the airing of the WSOP on ESPN has increased the likelihood of running into this type of player several-fold…) I decided not to wait for the river and slowly turned my pair of 7’s over…

After a few choice words and a lot of excited emotional spasms, Mr. Aggressive slapped down his Big Slick. I think all the fish had was an ace-nothing which, of course, lowered Mr. Aggressive’s already miniscule number of outs to three. After the remaining cards were dealt, my two opponents were busted and I pulled in a profit of $417 on that one hand. That actually ended up being my final hand at that game as Todd and I needed to get back to TI for the “Bounty Hunter” – it was scheduled to be starting in a bit over a half hour…

I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait for the rest of this story as I’ve written all I’m going to for this day. Thanks for reading my silly little adventures and remember to come back for the remainder of this trip – you can learn what not to do in Vegas… Actually, who am I kidding? I think the Vegas lessons have already been taken by most … whether or not they are ever “learned” remains the unknown. Heck, I’m sure I’ll be signing up for the course again in the near future … perhaps in late June…

bis später,

Coriolis

Vegas, Baby...

A couple weeks ago, Todd and I had ourselves a little adventure. I had, as mentioned earlier, flown back to Colorado to participate in the DPT semi-finals, get myself a new tooth (in the form of a porcelain crown) and pick up my Firehawk. It was in the Firehawk that Todd and I would be driving back to California and Todd had a flight back to Colorado scheduled for the following Wednesday. Of course a road-trip from Colorado to southern California just wouldn’t be complete without a short stay at this quaint little city that we would be passing through on the way – Las Vegas! So we decided to book a room at the Knights Inn for Friday and Saturday nights.

It’s about a nine hour drive from Longmont to Vegas and we left bright and early Friday morning – I believe it was about 9:00am when we began the drive. I had gotten enough sleep the night before and was feeling pretty good – a large bonus as I would be the one driving. Todd, on the other hand, could’ve used a few more hours… It didn’t matter though, we were Vegas bound and there’s not much better for a couple of poker players on a mission…

Okay, so let me qualify that last statement a bit… I was more of the “poker player on a mission” than Todd. I’ve been earning a pretty good bankroll as of late with my job in California and figured that this might be a nice time to give some of the more substantial games a try … perhaps I would buy-in to a $500 tournament, maybe play some of the higher-stake ring games … you know, give this whole poker-for-a-living idea a real world test. You can’t go pro if you never actually start… As it ended up, however, I never really played anything big. In hind sight, this is probably a good thing – Todd’s bankroll was somewhat smaller than mine and he had the sense to stay within his means (as much as is possible in Vegas…). And since I didn’t want to abandon the guy in Vegas, I ended up staying within my means as well…

Our first stop on the journey ended up occurring at Copper Mountain, CO. We both were in need of a nicotine hit (no smoking is allowed in Precious…) and I figured I could top off the gas tank. Also, it was a nice place to pick up a Red Bull to keep my wits about me whilst driving through the wet and slushy portion of I-70 that we were currently traveling through – as fate would have it, a little snowstorm had just passed through this section the day before. Amazingly enough, my little sports car actually performed pretty well in these conditions – a nice surprise to a guy that had previously driven his old Z-28 into not one but two freeway dividing walls in the past during snowstorms… The only problem with this first stop was the realization that we didn’t dress appropriately for it – it was 29° F at that stop and we were basically wearing jeans and T-shirts, standing outside the vehicle, quickly sucking down cigarettes and risking frost bite. It was a pretty good way to wake up though…

After a quick stop in Glenwood Springs for a bite to eat at Burger King, it was just a bit of driving … and driving … and driving … through a rather large portion of Utah and a rather small portion of Arizona before our next meal stop in Mesquite, Nevada. There was a $4.99 prime rib dinner in Mesquite – how could we pass that up? The best part about this stop – apart from the surprisingly good cheap meal – was that I was finally able to get in touch with my newly acquired girlfriend. Okay, so we weren’t technically “boyfriend/girlfriend” yet … heck, we weren’t even officially dating; however after leaving a couple voice messages on a couple unsuccessful contact attempts and not getting the anticipated return call from my new female interest, I must admit that I was beginning to worry. That just seems to be my luck in the relationship department – I finally meet somebody that I honestly connect with and she dies in some horrible twist of fate before we’re even able to explore the possibilities… Turns out she left her cell phone at home and I was able to contact her at her place of employment after the prime rib dinner. I was relieved, recently fed and excited to complete the 80-some miles left to Vegas. We easily covered the remaining distance in less than an hour…

The sun was setting as we arrived in Vegas. Unfortunately, I was quite a bit worn from the drive. But that didn’t matter – we were in Vegas! The first task at hand was to check-in to our extravagant hotel. (Don’t let the sarcasm pass you by … the Knights Inn is basically a dive. When in Vegas though, a hotel usually becomes just a place to crash and, to a certain extent, pretty much anything will suffice. The Knights Inn approached this extent rather precariously…) After some poor navigation by myself, we found the hotel, checked in and – in what was obviously a bad choice due to my worn condition – headed out to the strip to find a ring game…

Now this was a bit of contention between me and Todd – not the poker game, but how we were going to get to the strip… You see, driving Precious around the mean streets of Vegas with all the insane, possibly drunk tourists was not – I’ll repeat that for emphasis, NOT! – something that I was looking forward to. Todd – having really nothing to lose in the ordeal – just didn’t seem to understand my concern. Okay, he probably understood it, but he sure as hell gave me shit for having it. I finally gave in when we checked the shuttle schedule at the Knights Inn – best described as “not very often nor very late”. That and the realization that my car would probably be much safer in one of the larger casino/hotel’s parking structures than in the parking lot of the Knights Inn eased my concern a bit. We parked Precious near the top of the Flamingo’s garage…

We then set off to find ourselves a game. The Flamingo had one seat open on a $1/$2, no-limit table however, rather than wait for a second seat to become available, we decided to head on over to Harrah’s. Todd had played there before and thought the game was pretty good. Here we were able to find a seat for each of us (on different tables – no sense taking each other’s money…) at their $1/$2, no-limit game and sat down with $300 (actually, I think Todd may have sat down with $200) in chips.

Todd did pretty well. I don’t remember the exact amount, but within an hour or so he got up from his seat and called it a day. I was down about half my stack at this point. What I should have done, of course, was “cut my losses” and get some sleep; unfortunately I chose to continue playing until I went broke. The worst part about it is that I know damn-well that one should never be playing poker when they aren’t well-rested and eager for the game. I was neither and was even considering not playing this night and opting for some sleep instead. BUT – I was in Vegas… So, as is usually the case with being in Vegas, decided instead to pay $300 to once again take a class that I thought I had already passed. Oh well, perhaps I will learn better with iterations – costly iterations … perhaps…?

After generously donating my money to the nice people at my table, I got in touch with Todd and we headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We checked the cached poker tournament information my computer – the Knights Inn does not have WiFi so cached sites were all we had – for the next day, selected a few possibilities to check out and got some shut-eye. It really wasn’t that late either – somewhere around midnight although neither of us had adjusted our watches so it may have only been 11:00… Whatever the case, we got some sleep…

Well, as is sometimes the case, this posting is getting a bit on the long side. I also have other tasks that currently require my attention; so I will be stopping here. I’ll try to get around to posting the remainder of this story sometime in the near future; however I received a package Todd recently sent me that might limit my available time for blog writing a bit. Check back in a little while if you’re interested in hearing the rest of this story…

bis später,

Coriolis

It's All Good

Well, in case anybody was wondering, I am still alive. I do realize that it’s been quite a while since I posted anything on my blog; and I apologize to anyone that might have been expecting some interesting reading. Of course, my writing again may not be of any solace – I’ve never guaranteed any intrigue … I will, however, continue to write about life a bit – basically mine…

As the title for this post suggests, my life is going pretty darn well as of late. It’s funny how – usually when you least expect it – life has a way of surprising you. A lot of times these surprises take the form of a negative – money woes, problems with your automobile, the loss of something or someone special, your standard bad days… We deal with these downturns and continue to trudge through life with the hope that something better is on its way. There are, however, the rare occasions where life hits you straight in the face with an unexpected BINGO! This is when the time spent getting through the downturns pays off – it makes the pain vanish and reminds us why we’re alive. The latter of the two aforementioned scenarios has happened to me recently and I must admit that I’m feeling pretty good…

A couple weeks ago I headed back to my home in Colorado. I decided that driving the Pussy Wagon around southern California was something that I needed to stop. Heck, I own a couple other cars that were left in Colorado when I headed out here and one – Precious, my ’02 Trans Am Firehawk – seemed like an ideal car for cruising southern California in. I decided that I would fly back home, participate in the Denver Poker Tour semi-finals (I didn’t make the finals), get a crown (dental work, that is) and drive back to Cali in Precious with my buddy Todd. And, since I didn’t make the finals at the DPT, we could spend a couple days in Vegas on the way back. It was a good plan…

The part that I didn’t plan was meeting my soul mate. It’s a complicated story and I really can’t get into the details for reasons that I can’t explain right now; however I will say that I have met someone – here in California – that has pretty much reminded me what life is all about. The interesting (well, to me anyway…) part about it is what I have learned in such a short period of time. Granted these lessons are pretty much self-evident; but in all my years of being by myself, I’ve forgotten them. Not so much “forgotten” as lost faith in their existence. Please bear with me for a bit whilst I pontificate on some ideals that I beg you, the reader, to never lose faith in – no matter how hard the current day society attempts to eradicate them…

First and foremost is the fact that there is always somebody out there in the void that will appreciate you for who you are. I mean, that pretty much goes without saying when you consider the number of people that exist on this planet; however the point I want to make here is that there is never a valid reason to pretend to be somebody you aren’t in order to win somebody else’s affection. And I do realize that many people constantly play the game of wearing a façade in public with the intention of getting the one thing that they’ve fooled themselves into believing they desire most – sex; however you must be careful if you start playing this game. Play it too much and you risk becoming what you are portraying. You risk losing your desire for actual happiness to the far more materialistic desire of the sexual act. You risk losing your humanity… The whole attempt at becoming what the media is portraying as desirable leads many to abandon their true selves. This, my friends, is not only unnecessary but, in my opinion, very dangerous.

Another thing that I have recently discovered … realized … remembered … is that even the mundane tasks that life is filled with become so much more enjoyable when they are shared with the right person. Even when we can’t be together, I find that I am much more willing to complete these trivial tasks quickly and efficiently in an effort to gain more time that can be shared when we are together. The interesting side effect of wanting to make time has actually turned me into a much more productive person. Who’d of figured…?

I apologize if I’m sounding preachy or arrogant with this posting – after all, who am I to tell others how they should behave? All I know is that my life has been broadsided by a completely unexpected greatness that I am positive I would have dodged had I seen it coming. As some of you already know, I had just begun to play “the game” and even went as far as studying the playbook (I’m now on David DeAngelo’s mailing list…); however I must admit that it is a relief to discover that playing the game is, at best, unnecessary… When all is said and done, the people playing the game are usually not even who they appear to be … how are you expected to have an honest relationship with a façade…?

bis später,

Coriolis