It's Hell getting old

For the past two weeks, I've been working second shift (4pm to midnight). This is mostly because of my upcoming school schedule; most of my classes and my practicum (internship) hours are during the day. School starts next week and during the day of the past two weeks I've had really nothing to do. So, I got really used to sleeping in, waking up around 10 every morning, working out, going to the jacuzzi and the pool, then having lunch with Ray and finally heading to work around 3pm. I'm more of a night person anyways, so this schedule suits me just fine. Plus, we've been painfully slow at work so I have not had to stay later than midnight and often get to leave early.

The working out thing is new too. I have not worked out for about two years so have put on some weight living the good life: lots of food, lots of booze. So, I cut out the booze (mostly), started eating better and have been working out for the last several weeks. Last Wednesday I hurt myself while working out to Billy Blank's Advanced Taebo DVD. I pulled a muscle or something in my back. It's hell getting old....

I go to a chiropractor on a regular basis since I have a bad back anyway and had my regular standing appointment Saturday at 11:30am. Brainchild that I am, I also made an appointment to have my hair cut and colored - at 8:30am - the same morning. The problem? Ray and I stayed up until 2:30am Friday night. So, I only got about 4 hours of sleep before the alarm went off and I had to get up for all this shit. When I was younger, this would not have been a problem. But now I find it hard to function with this little sleep. It's hell getting old.....

Needless to say, my fuse was pretty short due to sleep deprivation.

So I drag myself up (back still aching), take the dog out, jump in the shower and head out the door....at 7:30am....uggggg. The salon I go to is in Newport Beach, which is about 20 miles away. On a good day it takes 30 minutes to get there, on a bad day an hour. With this being a holiday weekend I decided to play it safe and left an hour early. I did not want to get there late. My hairdresser is sooo awesome at what she does and I did not want to piss her off by causing her to be behind schedule. I usually take Pacific Coast Highway to get there, and it can get pretty jammed up around downtown Laguna Beach (tourists.....ick).

On my way there, I decided to see what was on the radio. One of my biggest complaints about living here is that all the radio stations Suck! I'm more of a hip hop or hard rock kinda girl and they have stations that play that stuff, sure, but it's like this: play one good song, then two crappy songs, then fifteen commercials, then talk about stupid shit, then maybe play another good song. It's frustrating! Well, the usual happened, and I got one good song then had to search for something else. God! Nothing else was on, so I played my Jimmy Buffet's greatest hits tape (yes, tape). This calms me down.

Then comes the Prias parade. Have you guys seen these cars? They are EVERYWHERE here in Cali. Not only are they ugly, but the drivers suck. They may be worse than minivan drivers. And, you can't hear them. You literally could be standing somewhere, and one of these things pulls up beside you and you wouldn't know it! I get behind one of these things, and it's going like 30 in a 40 zone and there is a stupid bus in the other lane. I exhale loudly, roll my eyes and drive probably too close to his bumper. Eventually I get around him. But there are others - all I swear just trying to piss me off!

I finally get through Laguna into a more highway type area and THEN come the bicyclers! God! Now these people are everywhere, too, in Cali. They have bike lanes - even in areas that are 55 mph! And these people usually ride in packs. And, they all have their gay-ass spandex uniforms and pointy helmets on. They show complete disregard for staying in the bike lane, and I am actually very surprised that I don't hear more on the news about bicyclers getting killed by cars. So, I have to swerve (a few times) just to get around these stupid bicyclers.

I get to the salon thirty minutes early and take a 15 minute speed nap in my car. Lindsay, my stylist, does her thing and I'm out of there in about two hours, feeling more refreshed (after several cups of coffee, a shampoo, cut and color). Then I head back the way I came. Traffic was much better this time and there were no annoying bikers. In fact, I had extra time to stop at CVS and pick up some school supplies before heading to my chiropractor appointment.

I get there and the first half hour is electrodes and ultrasound. Then comes the good part - a 30-minute massage! This is really why I continue to go so often. I mean, I do have a bad back, but with a $45 co-pay every time I go, plus a tip for the masseuse, it can get pricey if I go a few times a month. But, I chalk it up to something I do for myself, and only go once a month now. After the appointment, my back feels worse. So I limp out of the office, crawl into my car and head home. In the meantime, I notice that I have a voice message on my phone. It's my sis calling from the OSU stadium where she is watching the Buckeyes kill the fierce Youngstown State Penguins. I had forgotten about the game - oops - and by the time I got home from my morning extravaganza, the game was over. The Bucks won 43-0. Oh well. I'll catch the next one.
So I get home feeling worse and try to take a quick nap (2nd one of the day). This lasts about 30 minutes before Ray gets home and wants to go out for lunch. Great. We head over to this micro brew place called Stadium Brewery and split a pitcher of blueberry beer and get some food. After this, we run some errands and head back home. It's like 4:30 now, and I'm hurting from the lack of sleep and the intense back pain. So, I take another, yes another, nap. The third one of the day. This one, however, lasts 3 hours and I finally wake up at 7:30pm refreshed and ready to start my day...

Damn it's hell getting old.

Dear Poker, I'm just not that into you.

Lately I've been feeling completely unmotivated to blog about anything. I don't play a ton of poker anymore and this was always supposed to be more of a poker blog. I decided to play a small tourney the other day thinking that it would be a nice change of pace and perhaps rekindle my interest in the game. Once into the game, pretty much the usual stuff happened: I got mostly crappy cards, and when I did get good cards nobody called. I guess I played OK because I made it to the final table. Or, maybe it was the fact that there were only 35 people in the entire thing. At the final table I had a pretty short stack and the two biggest stacks were to my left. I ended up getting sick of being pushed around, went all in with AT and got knocked out when big stack to my left had AK. uggggg......

This did nothing to rekindle the romance.

In fact, I swore I would never ever play again. I could have bought a pair of shoes. Well, not really, but that's how I think of poker in general: I would rather buy something I can keep because I know I don't play enough to really improve my game. I don't have the time. I honestly don't have the patience. And, I don't really care to. You all know my interests lie elsewhere.

So, for a while I just did not even want to blog. My so-called "poker" blog was not a poker blog anymore because there was not a lot of poker content. I got lazy and my posts became a regurgitation of facts and stories straight out of cnn.com. I was completely unmotivated to a. play poker and b. blog. I didn't have anything to blog about. Every time I sat down to draft a post, I couldn't think of anything. I didn't want to whine about my schedule or school or how sleepy I was going to be this Fall. I didn't want to blog about poker. And I certainly didn't want to post any more cnn articles. So, I just didn't post anything at all.

While talking to Ray about this, I actually decided that I wanted to abandon the whole blogging thing and give up. He reminded me that I don't have to say the right things all the time and that I don't have to deliver something full of sage wisdom. A blog can just be a journal of sorts. "Write about anything funny or stupid that happened that day", he said. And all the pressure I had put on myself to write something smart or meaningful started to subside.

So rather than trying to be smart or funny, I'm just going to be me. Which, by the way, is hopefully a little smart and a lot funny. I'll try to write more about every day experiences and my journey to become the person I've always wanted to be. This, perhaps speckled with some sage wisdom will be the "new" blog content. And, if I do play some poker along the way, I will certainly include that too.

Olympic Heroes.....

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Murder Trial, part II

From there, the situation escalates to a verbal confrontation. Both groups begin yelling racial slurs. The defendant yells "skin head" and "red neck" to the guy and calls the girl "slut, bitch and whore". He eggs on the other group, yelling, "do you wanna fight? do you wanna fight?". The other group yells back, calling him "fucking beaner" and tells him to "go back to your country".

The defendant is raging at this point, but his two friends manage to push him back to an area of the parking lot where their other car was. Midway there, the defendant yells out "fucking white people". This infuriates the man in the other group, who throws off his shirt and runs back to the bar to get his friend (the victim). The victim runs out of the bar, also rips off his shirt, and they head over to the car. One guy kicks the car, putting a large dent in it. The defendant gets out of the car, and a fistfight ensues.

Things get a little "fuzzy" at this point, as we heard testimony from several witnesses that contradicts where each person was located. One version says that the defendant and the victim were fighting on the ground. The defendant was on top of the victim and they were both punching each other. The other two white men were also fighting on the ground. The Korean man (friend of the defendant) pulls the defendant off the victim and that fight stops briefly. The defendant sees his friend fighting with the other man, and takes out his knife. He yells "I have a knife", intending to stop the other fight. It works for a moment and he puts the knife away. But, then the girl runs by and tags his friend (defendant's white friend) three times in the head as he is getting off the other guy.

This starts the fighting again, and the Korean man again tries to pull the defendant out of the fighting. The defendant breaks away from him, and runs to another area of the parking lot, towards the other men. He again pulls out his knife. Then, the girl runs by him, hitting him in the head once. He calls her a "f-ing bitch". Her boyfriend, the victim, charges towards him, swinging. The defendant throws what looks like three "round-house" punches. The bouncer of the establishment is close by and yells out "you've been stabbed!". The victim looks down, seeing the stab wounds and says "you f-in stabbed me???" He attempts to walk away, making it only about 20 feet and then collapses. His girlfriend, friend and the bouncer rush over to him, trying to revive him. The friend of the defendant had called 911 moments earlier, but help arrives too late.

After the stabbing, the defendant folded his knife and tried to throw it on the roof of a nearby building. It slid down, falling to the ground, where it stayed until the authorities arrived.

This happened in May of 2007. The victim was 26 at the time, and the defendant was 23; he has been in jail since the incident. The girl was convicted of 2 counts of assault, and is currently serving time in jail, now pregnant with another man's child.

The jury deliberated for two days. We found the defendant guilty of Voluntary Manslaughter. The sentencing is Sept. 26th.

Murder Trial, part I

The trial is over. The verdict has been read. The story is as follows.....

The stabbing murder of Mr. J took place last year during the early morning hours of May 8th, 2007. Two groups of three people, one group of 3 men, and the other group of 2 men and 1 woman, were playing pool at a local pool hall. The first group of 3 men included the defendant, Mr. C, and his two best friends, Mr. P and Mr. Y. Mr. Y. is a large Korean man, and he drank water all night. The second man, Mr. P, is a Caucasian man, who drank one alcoholic beverage at the beginning of the night. The defendant, Mr. C, had between 6 and 8 rum and cokes.

The other group consisted of the Victim, Mr. J, his girlfriend, Miss. L, and their friend, Mr. D. They consumed several drinks throughout the night, including several shots of red-headed slut, several Red Bull and Vodkas, and two pitchers of beer. There were no problems between the two groups while inside the bar that night. After last call, around 12:30am the groups started heading out of the bar. Mr. P headed out first, followed shortly after Mr. C and Mr. Y. They continued to chit-chat outside the bar, and two of the men smoked cigarettes. They were standing by Mr. Y’s car, which was parked just to the right of the door, next to an exit ramp.

Next, Mr. D and Miss L exit. She is riding piggy-back on him, and they are spinning round and round. They then bump into Mr. P accidentally. She dismounts, and they apologize to Mr. P. Now, Mr. P has a pool stick in his right hand. It has been broken down into two pieces, folded and is down at his right side. For some reason, Mr. D notices the pool stick, and says something like “What are you going to do with that pool cue?” Mr. P does not reply. Instead, the defendant, Mr. C responds “P is not doing anything with the pool stick”. The attention of Mr. D and Miss L turns towards the defendant. Mr. D tells Mr. C “fuck you”.

To be continued....

Tao poker

LOLOLOL

I played in Dr. Pauly's tourney tonight and donked out 400-something.
QQ vs. KK......oops!

Ray just shook his head.