California Work and Play

Lets blog, its been a while…Im sitting here in the airport bar having breakfast, almost 2 hours before departure, my mom would be proud, not racing for the gate or missing my flight.

I just spent the last two weeks in California. The first week Sarah and I came out for SteveG’s wedding, and vacationing. We stayed Huntington Beach, which is a prett great area. The wedding was a few miles down the coast In Laguna Beach. A nice place for a ceremony overlooking the ocean. The highlight for me of the ceremony was little Steve being pulled down the aisle in a decked out wagon, by another little tike prolly twice steve’s age (maybe 2 years old)!!! After the ceremony the celebrating (boozing) really began. After numerous shots chased with jack and cokes it was time to take the limo back to our hotel. Somehow (mr danials fault) Sarah and I forgot we were supposed to share the limo ride back to Huntington and left someone behind at the beach resort…whoops. Apologies were given and all was good the next day. Where we reminisced over some beer and wings at Hooters, while we watched the first 2/3 of the football slate. We then returned to Steves house for the final game, but two long days of partying was taking its tole on me and I was ready to call it a day.

The next couple of days Sarah and I explored the coast a little bit. We went south a little bit past where the wedding was and walked a really nice hidden beach in Laguna called Victoria beach that Sarah read about it the ‘hotel book.’

We then moved our home base from Huntington to Commerce, quite a downgrade, but Commerce is the part of California that I have been to most and that’s where they play pokah!!! Sarah was unimpressed with the industrial jog around the smog filled buildings after being spoiled with the boardwalk jog on the Huntington Beach pier. The next day we drove north, through Santa Monica all the way up to Malibu where we had some beers and lunch at a beach bar before heading home to Commerce. Both nights we made it to downtown LA. It’s a pretty eerie feeling compared to Boston. In Boston the financial buildings are surrounded by bars and restaurants so even at night there is a constant flow of traffic and people. In LA everything is more spread out so the roads were almost dead at night, with the occasional car and rare cab driving by.

Our vacation was now over and Sarah was heading home, and I was going to work and play poker for the next week. I quickly got into a routine, where I would go to the gym, then play poker until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Go to bed, rinse repeat. This went on for almost a week. There were a couple interruptions, mainly the Red Sox. I made it to Anaheim to watch game 2, where the Sox were able to pull out the win after slowly letting a 4 run lead slip away. Then meet a bunch of people to watch the Sox clinch it in game 4. Im glad I turned down several invitations to go ‘out’ during this week. In the past I would always jump at these chances, weather it be a dinner or ‘just drinks’ or whatever. I do not get a chance to play that much live poker and while I was in the poker mega of the world I wanted to play as many hours that I possibly could. All in all it was a good trip. I give some back the last night which kind of makes me mad, but the game was real good and I quit as soon as the spewtard monkey stopped peeling hundo’s off his roll.

Poker content-

-I got stacked with set under set a 10-20nl game for a little less than 3k, not sure I played it right or wrong, this was the last time I played this game while waiting for my limit holdem seat

-one of the things that tilts me most about commerce is when a player goes on a rush, wins a couple racks and immediately calls the chip runner to color ‘his chips up’ to bigger denomination chips, like hes basically locking up the win, taking chips off the table and just basically being a douche in my opinion

-commerce players, maybe all live players, LOVE 3 betting the flop and checking behind on the turn after they get checkraised on the flop---this lasted about 2 days before everyone began getting 4 bet on the flop

-another tilting thing about live poker, when waiting for a game and paying close attention to the board and game your wating for, then seeing a seat open and someone not on the list getting the seat in front of you…man I guess it’s the way of live poker and floor people and tipping and what not, but for gods sake Im sitting right there and that’s my dam seat

-theres prolly about a hundered other poker tales I can share but sick of typing and have this turkey sandwich and bloody mary waiting for me