:: Trying to keep track of it all... ::

:: 10.12.2003 ::

Playing poker with fiends

Tabitha and I went out last night to the house of a friend of mine from school. He and his wife were having an impromptu poker game, and they invited us to play, probably thinking we were easy marks.
Being easy marks, we thought it might be fun so we went.

There were 7 of us there, people I know from school and their significant others.
'Till the wee hours we were drinking beer, making fun of each other and just generally having a good time.
They were playing for real money, which kind of threw us at first since we had no experience at all.
But it turned out they were only doing a 5 cent ante. We figured we could handle that so got $5 in chips each and dove on in.

After the basic rules were explained, and we got the hang of the multitude of poker games (anaconda, show-me stud, five card draw, texas hold-em, seven card stud, mexican sweat etc. etc.) we did pretty well. We lost fairly steadily at first which made the other people playing happy they invited us.
After awhile though we got the hang of it (much to their dismay), and then Tabitha won a couple of big hands and started psyching the other people (and me!) out.
All told at the end of the night, we ended up only 45 cents down from our original $10.00 investment. Not bad for 4+ hours of entertainment.
Hey, thats significantly cheaper than going to the movies.

One side effect of the evening is Tabitha is now hooked.
She says she's gonna hit the library and pick up Poker for Dummies, that way next game night we'll (she'll) be armed to the teeth. I guess she's finally graduated up from the slots.

:: Zachary 8:29:37 PM [+] ::
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Loud friggin' neighbors

I'm not sure what the deal is, but so far wherever we live we always end up with these loud crazy people as neighbors.
When we lived in Boston on the first floor, we had the couple above us, who we affectionately dubbed "the idiots". She was a stomp-walker, and he was a loud Phish and Grateful Dead player. When we bought the third floor apartment in that building, we lived above them which was much better. But they moved out, and another loud couple moved in.
Figures.
Here in Portland we have a stomp-walker above us, a super extra bass-y surround sound movie watcher on our right, and a weird music listening guy on our left. Although the guy on the left is the least offensive.
Tabitha is convinced that the stomp-walker above us is a woman, because of the rapid way the footsteps run back and forth across the apt., over and over and over again.
All night... Every night.
Her theory is that no guy would move that way. She might have a point there. I may stomp sometimes, but its usually only one way, and not very fast. What I cant figure out is why somebody would need to so rapidly traverse a 700 sq. foot apartment.

The guy on our left is not so bad, he just has a testosterone laden surround sound system. I dont really blame him though, I wouldnt mind having a kick ass surround system myself, but in an apartment setting such as it is, some volume control would be in order.

I dont think were overly quiet people. Is it just that the rest of the world is VERY LOUD?
I doubt it. Maybe its karma. Perhaps in a past life we were inconsiderate loud people and now were paying for it or something.

The loud neighbors coupled with the road noise, the ambulances, the fire engines, and the airport (now that it gets foggy at night, theyre using a runway that apparently annexes the street right outside our house) our stay in Portland has so far been, oh so wonderful.
Its not Portland's fault though.
Its just a matter of location, location, location.
And apparently this aint it...

:: Zachary 6:32:59 PM [+] ::
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