Please forgive me blogger brethren, for I have sinned. It's been a week since my last confession... errr... post.

The holidays have stricken me with a major case of meh, broken only by poker it seems. Other than Hunny Bunny, everyone I wanted to spend the holidays with is far off. Ah well. Next year, I say no to the obligation of the in-laws, and we do what we want.

Poker gifts:
Hunny Bunny gave me some fun pokery gifts: a cute little donkey finger puppet and what he calls my "online poker necklace". He found an artisan who makes necklaces out of Scrabble tiles, and he presented one to me with the letters W, T and F in honour of the one thing I utter most while playing online poker. Both shall be with me for all future WPBT events.

Online Poker:
Part of my relaxation therapy over the holidays is permission to play poker "whenever the hell I damn well feel like it". I've cashed some, but the most fun was on Christmas Night after a looooong visit with the in-laws. I had fired up the laptop, and had gotten an IM from Chad. The game was the $3.30 x 180 knockout games, with $11 last longer bet. The rules: all in every hand until busted, the last person standing got the dough. Definitely not a game of skill, but a helluva lot of fun, especially for the table chat comments. I played three of these pushfests, and transferred to Zeem, MiamiDon and The Gnome before I called it a night.

Live Poker:
Hoping to get more live poker in before I go back on the 7th, but my jones was definitely satisfied by the night at the Tuckfards with PokerTart and Bankwell. I wasn't sure what to expect, but everyone was so warm and welcoming, I felt at home instantly. Dial-A-Shots were made, lots of laughter filled the room, and I while I didn't do all that well in the main game, I made some $ on the side game when I went HU with Bankwell. I made second, but frankly, my bed was calling me and I played like a utter goober for most of it (really no different than my usual style).

Guys, thanks again for hosting this and inviting us up to take part in the Tuckfard traditions :-)



Old Year/New Year:
I'll look back on the old year later, but in the meantime here's a Happy New Year wish to all my IIF's where ever they may be.

****

And HUGE shoutout to the Loud one and Graham, who got married yesterday:

Congratulations!!!!

Tonight was Tripjax's Blogger Luck Game, which reminded me a lot of an old boyfriend - it was a helluva lot of fun crammed into 22 minutes, but left me very ... umm ... fidgety at the end and wanting more.

I also played in the Poker Grind's Bounty game. There were only 9 players, but it did seem to go on and on a bit. I've been doing a bit of reading and was trying to put some of it in practice. I did well with that until the money bubble burst, and then the boredom hit and I played a bit goofy. Case in point was the final hand of the game, head's up with Chad:

Full Tilt Poker Game #4605322437: ThePokerGrind.net Bounty (34320406), Table 1 - 150/300 Ante 25 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:46:51 ET - 2007/12/23
Seat 6: katitude (16,040)
Seat 7: cracknKK (10,960)
katitude antes 25
cracknKK antes 25
katitude posts the small blind of 150
cracknKK posts the big blind of 300
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to katitude [5d 4h]
katitude raises to 16,015, and is all in
katitude: i'm bored and all in every hand
cracknKK calls 10,635, and is all in
katitude shows [5d 4h]
cracknKK shows [2d Ac]
Uncalled bet of 5,080 returned to katitude
*** FLOP *** [4c 3d 5c]
*** TURN *** [4c 3d 5c] [4s]
*** RIVER *** [4c 3d 5c 4s] [3s]
katitude shows a full house, Fours full of Fives
cracknKK shows a straight, Five high
katitude wins the pot (21,920) with a full house, Fours full of Fives
cracknKK stands up
katitude stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 21,920 | Rake 0
Board: [4c 3d 5c 4s 3s]
Seat 6: katitude (small blind) showed [5d 4h] and won (21,920) with a full house, Fours full of Fives
Seat 7: cracknKK (big blind) showed [2d Ac] and lost with a straight, Five high

Yep. It was a pretty lame play on my part, a big ole awfukkit moment that, for once, paid me off.

They know me so well.

From Chilly:

Anniversary:

1.	the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event: the tenth anniversary of their marriage.

2.	the celebration or commemoration of such a date.

Three years ago was my first visit to Las Vegas. I didn't gamble at all, hell, I didn't even play poker then.

We went kind of on a whim, to avoid the duty of family obligations during the holidays. And since we were going to be there, we'd get married by Elvis. Why not....could be good for a giggle.

We picked the place because they had streaming video of the ceremony and told our friends where (and how) to log on. Two couples joined us, Loud and her guy, and Keith's friend Jim and his wife.

I don't remember much of the day except that Elvis had a nice butt (no I didn't grab it, but you can't help but notice it when the guy is wearing tight white jumpsuit), and that we all laughed. A lot.

Happy anniversary, babes. And thanks for giggles along the way *grin.

****

Edit for Pauly:

One of the wedding gifts we received was a portrait session done by an old Invisible Internet Friend who was revisiting photography. We did the usual poses for the happy snaps, but when he had loaded a new film he wanted us to just goof around while he advanced the film and tried different settings. The following is the result, and is the portrait preferred by all our friends and most of my family. I have no idea why.

Congratulations to jeciimd for managing to navigate the minefield of blogger plan and winning the TOC! Nicely done, sir!

Calling all degenerates in Southern Ontario or those crazy enough to come to Canada in winter:

Tentative dates for Eh-Vegas is February 23/24. Why? No particular reason other than it's Joanada's birthday, and she'll be in town for it (right, Joanne?).

Who else is in?

****

Dear Astin, Ed, PokerTart and Mr. Bankwell, Bam Bam and Pebbles, and the Tuckfard crew;

Let's play some live poker, beotches!

My dance card is completely empty from the 30th to the 6th and need to get some pokery goodness in before the second term begins. Email me at badkatitude at gmail dot com or comment here and let me know what your schedule is like, and if you'd like a home game or to converge en masse on Rama or Fallsview.

Holy crap that was fun last night!

Joanne is now back from her self imposed exile (jesus christ woman - FOUR jobs?? you're mad), and played the Mookie and Dookie last night. We fired up a big ole girlie chant and the silliness started. The Mookie was a laugh again, without the pressure of the BBT hanging over it.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the BBT challenges and truly appreciate the hard work that Al puts in to them. But I also dearly love when they're over, and the fun games go back to being fun games. Still competitive, but not so cut-throat anymore.

I busted out of the Mookie quickly - not quite record time, but close at 17 minutes. It was an honourable death: AT vs Chad's AK, the board was AA something, K, something. Then on to the Dookie - I think perhaps maybe I should play more limit. Through some odd quirk of fate, I came in second. I know! I'm shocked too! Just wish I could remember what I did to channel the doneky suckout gods.

I had so much fun that even getting the blue screen of death 5 times couldn't tilt me. This morning is another story however. So I'm saying a big huge fuck it, and am spending my first day of the holidays not shopping and goofing off as I'd planned, but backing up, wiping, and reconfiguring my laptop. Then I'm going to try and figure out why my sidebar looks so shitty in IE. And then I'm going to try and figure out why people still use IE instead of Firefox.

Yippee skippee.

****

Good luck to all those playing the BBT TOC and the freeroll tonight!

****

And thanks to Lightning36 for coining my new favourite word!

Blue screen of death.

CSS and Internet Explorer having their own blogger spat, and not talking to each other.

Messenger becoming a great gaping hole of suck.

What fresh hell will tomorrow bring?????

Dear everyone;

Time to lighten the fuck up. It was funny for about 20 minutes, but it's starting to go too far.

Reality check time: it's online poker; it's not politics, religion, the price of gas, the quality of public education, the writer's strike or the digital divide. It's not disease, poverty, mental illness (well maybe that one a bit), cruelty to animals, child abuse or the inadequacy of food banks to deal with the prevalence of hunger in the midst of our plenty.

In the grand scheme of things we should be upset about or outraged over, this is so small as to be minuscule.

Now the BBT is done and the pressure is off, to some extent. It's Mondays at the Hoy (MATH) night, I am squarely on the fence about playing.

Do I? I would like to play some good thoughtful poker, just to see if I can, especially after last night's personal debacle.

Don't I? Tuesday is going to be a 12-14 hour day; a full work day followed by the school's holiday event which is 2-3 hours of kids singing and dancing, and Kat making nicey nicey to parents. A good nights sleep will ensure I don't inadvertently rip someone's lungs out when they start asking me what kind of desktop/ laptop/camera/software/gadget they should buy for their daughter. Ah, the joys of being the geek amongst the technophobes. It'll be a good night if no one asks me how to fix ________.

Do I? I have a few tokens burning a hole in my pocket.

Don't I? I really need to do laundry as I'm down to the emergency underwear (if these are all that are in the drawer, it's an emergency). The laundry room slows down around 9-ish, which means I'll be missing some of the MATH to fold shirts.

Do I? I just want to.

There. Problem solved.

****

And for tomorrow there's the Bodonkey blogger game at Bodog. You have no idea how much I want to play this game!

Is it because Bodog has set up a good game for bloggers? Because the overlays are killer? Because of the bonuses to the top 5 players? Because there is no such thing as being the bubble girl since they give you your buyin back if you're one of the 5 players busted before the payout?

Or is it because it gives $mokkee another opportunity to take my chips and call me a fish? *grin.

Nope. The main reason why I really, really want to play is because I always really, really want what I can't have. Canadian dollars are no g00t at Bodog, alas.

Sigh.

The winners of the Write Your Way contest are:

Winner: Julius_Goat
Winner: Fuel55
Runner Up: luckyjimdixon

Honorable Mention, Humor: jasper6294 (song lyrics)
Honorable Mention, Literary: JoeSpeaker (old man and the sea)

Congrats!!!!!

Sorry for that last post. My inner teenager came out, and had an "I suck" episode. I was briefly tempted to delete it, but \/\/hatever.

So. Now that the adult has taken over again, I'd like to give a huge shout out to Al for setting the BBT up for the second time - you rock babes! And congratulations to all those who won a seat, ITM'ed, placed in the points for the freeroll, or for that matter, just ponied up their entry and played.

It's a disparate community of degenerates, but a community nonetheless. And I am very happy to have stumbled upon it two years ago.

(begin rant, and a effort to vent instead of beating myself up all night. Feel free to move along.)

Yes it's true, what some say. I am a donk of the highest order. No other explanation for being so incredibly dumb. Yeah, I said it, DUMB. Could have played patiently, could have played thoughtfully, but nooooooooooo! Fuck, what am I, new? Apparently so.

"well, at least you weren't out first." Small consolation, because I'm sure I went out stupidest. La la la la, I think I'll call here, why not...oh dear, he has pocket aces. La la la la la, think I'll go all in with pocket 8's...oh dear AT s00ted caught an Ace.

Jesus. What kind of a tard goes through 5,000 starting chips in 22 minutes, with only top pair, meh kicker and middle pocket pair to show for it? This kind.

Fuck me and the horse I rode in one. Talk about delusional individuals. At least with the BBT1, I had the sense to bail when I realized that I had zero fucking chance. But not this time....hope springs eternal and all that. However, like hope, idiocy is eternal as well.

The only way I am getting to Australia is if I wake up, stop playing online poker and put the $ I spend on it in a piggy bank.

Bah.

(end rant)

And no, I don't owe you a buck. Nowhere was I bad beated, except by myself. And no, don't bother telling me that I'm not that bad at poker. I know precisely how mediocre I am at poker.

Well, it's not technically a snow day since it's not a work day, but that "I can't go out and run my errands, so I'm just going to swan around in my pajamas all day" feeling is just as delicious. Especially since I really have nothing pressing to do other than nap, knit and play poker. Oh, and watch movies; so far we've watched the new Pirates of the Caribbean (if it wasn't for Depp, it'd be a total dud instead of only a partial one), Mirrormask (sixth time) and some Monty Python for shits and giggles.

I am one happy camper right now.

Even the poker has been decent; done a few various SnG's and have ITM'ed in all of them (a first, two seconds, and a third). I'm just hoping now that I haven't used up my full allocation of pokery goodness, as there is much to do tonight in the land of blogger poker.

Firstly, there's Don's Big Game, the final installment in the BBToo Aussie Millions Challenge. I looked at the leaderboard today, and I'm currently in 56th place. While I'm under no illusion that I'm going to eke my way into the TOC, I would very much like to be in the end of challenge $1,000 freeroll. Not to say that my goal isn't to kick ass and take first, but hey, I do try to be realistic.

Then there's Chad's Blogger Skill Game. I am tempted to once more go into the breach and demonstrate yet again how few skills I have at HORSE, but $33 is a tad much for my bankroll after depleting it for Vegas. Plus I suck at multitabling at the best of times, much less when it's different games. Now all you guys go and check out his site, and thank him for the anatomy lesson.



And lastly there's the Poker Grind's Bounty Game. This looks like it's going to be an ongoing game, which should nicely round out the weekend. $15 goes to the prize pool, and $5 goes to a bounty on each player to be gathered when you knock them out. Great, just what I need, another target on my forehead. In other words, yeah, I'll be there *grin.


EDIT: Shit, I almost forgot, there's the Brit Bloggerment game on Pokerstars at 4pm EST. I highly recommend as it's good fun without any chat bullshit. And it's only $5.50. So if you read this in the next hour and a half, sign up. I've put a bounty on my head for the buyin.

Man I do love Tiki Bar TV:

Don't forget tonight is your weekly group therapy meeting....eeeerrrrr, I mean the Friday Blogger rebuy madness. The insanity starts at 9 EST as always (PW = donkarama). It's my friends birthday party tonight, so if I can keep my eyes open I'll be ehading to her place; otherwise you'll see me online, blindly hitting the rebuy button as always.

Plus it's Don's Big Game on Sunday, the last installment in the Battle of the Bloggers Aussie Millions Challenge. I'm in, thanks to some much appreciated ad revenue.

Or I think it's the last...I see the Riverchasers game was voided last night. Keeping my eyes peeled for a do-over.

I have been having a lot of ups and downs lately, as the eight people who read this blog can attest to. I'm not facing middle age as gracefully as I had hoped, and the desire to shake things up, to crash some catastrophe into my life is at times overwhelming.

Being in Las Vegas last weekend alleviated this to some extent, but while you can take a lovely vacation from your life, it's always there waiting for your return.

I came back to life tilt, more report cards, report card corrections, computer problems, and staff freaking about said computer problems - seriously why call me at home at 10pm saying the server is down...wtf do you expect me to do at that moment in time? Jump out of bed, race over there and bail your sorry ass out from behind the 8 ball where you placed it? Not bloody likely.

I would really like a Vegas do-over.

****

So now, for the first time since I've been back, I have an hour or so to myself to recollect and write my trip report.

And my mind is a big ole blank.

Not because I don't remember (didn't drink that much this time), or because other people have done it so much better (which they have).

It's because words just fail me.

Really how can one put into words the delight of seeing these good friends again, and the regret of not having enough time to spend just hanging out with them?

Just rattle out the high points, Hunny Bunny says. Yeah, how can I do that, when except for when I was attempting to sleep, it was pretty much all a high point?

But some of the best parts were

• walking past the Geisha Bar to check in and seeing my first glimpse of bloggers and a "Howdy Ma'am" from the honey-voiced Gary. I practically ran up to the room to drop the luggage and get back there.
  
• having chicken-fried steak three breakfasts in a row!
• finally connecting with Gracie, Maudie and Pablo.
• realizing that I love Crazy Pineapple, followed closely by the realization that I'll probably only ever get to play it 1-2 times a year at blogger mixed games.
  
• beating Iggy at Roshambo, then chilling (read drinking heavily) at the the MGM Sports Bar where Iggy spent a lot of time telling me what he should have done (weenie)
• getting my ass-grab fix satisfied. And yes, it's true. Instant Tragedy really has no ass - don't ask me how his pants stay up. And yes, Pablo's, Pauly's and Iggy's are as fabulous as ever.
  
• the look on Pauly's face when Hunny Bunny grabbed his ass
• being able to talk to CK, Betty Underground, Instant Tragedy and Irish Jim for more than a "hey, how's it going".
• only being called a fish once by $mokkee at the tourney *grin
• not sucking at the tourney. I think I ended up in 26th. I'd have done better if my bluff on Rooster hadn't failed.
  
• talking to Mrs Cox, although briefly. Carrie, you rock!
  
• having a deja-vu moment, where I'm with a bunch of bloggers, wandering around a parking garage in a very Seinfeld-esque moment, looking for the damn car. Oh wait, it isn't deja-vu, it happened last year.
• raging solo on Saturday night. Went looking for some trouble, but for once it didn't find me. I received no answers, but the questions are bit more clearly defined.
• Monty Python fix with Spamalot on Sunday night

Most surreal:

• saying goodbye to everyone at the IP sports book, and feeling very sad as it will be months before we lay eyes on each other again, yet walking away saying "see you Wednesday at the Mookie".

Regrets:

• having a recurring ailment that ensured I was fatigued and bleary the whole time
• playing no pai gow
• missing the chance to meet Shane Nickerson. Again.
  
• not spending nearly enough time with you lot. When is the next one again?

Thank yous to:

• Falstaff, for his effort on herding the blogger cats to this meeting in the desert.
  
• Special K for setting us up with some Goody's Headache Powder. I tried one before the tourney. Wow. I think it was around 6 the next afternoon when the caffeine rush subsided.
• Gracie for the most perfect and timely gift ever.
• Keith, for his constant support of my poker habit, and his potentially misguided faith that one day it will pay off. And for coming to Vegas just because I asked, even though there really is sfa there for him to do, him being a non-drinker, non-gambling type.
  

Well I'm almost over my post-Vegas bummer. Almost. And already counting the days to the next get-together.

Sleep deprivation is making me so cross-eyed, that everything on the screen is blurry even with the funky new glasses. I'm going to make a valiant effort to stay awake until 10, mainly because going to bed at 7:30 is too lame for words.

Vegas was fun. More tomorrow.

PS: my apologies to those I promised to Dial-A-Shot, but didn't. I did think of it, truly, but I retained enough sense to remember that 1 am Vegas time is way too late to call those back east.

...or at least I hope it will.

I just had lunch with Jules before she goes back down under, and I can tell you it completely sucks not to know when the Martini Goddess and I can hang out with her and drink too many martinis and joke with gay waiters again.

I think I'm letting myself hope a little too much that I can win one of the Aussie Millions seats, so I can see her again in January.

Far too much time passes lately between friends connecting. Work, family and other priorities take precedence, one day slips into another, and next thing you know six months have gone by since you hung out.

My dear IIF's, I am straining for the next two days to pass quickly, so I can hang out with you again. If only time could run quicker on demand; work would go faster, and fun slower.

I think my head is going to explode.

I have so much shit to get finished before Thursday noon, it's frightening. I did make a list, but the sight of everything itemized in one place made me want to curl up in the fetal position and let my mind gibber like a howler monkey for a while.

So I burned it. And I feel much better now.

I should have the critical report cards done by late this evening. The remaining thirty-five high school reports aren't due until Wednesday, so I've already consigned those to the do-when-I-get-back pile. FYI, this is also known as the will-come-back-to-bite-me-on-the-ass-later pile.

But fuck it. In 48 hours I'll be on my way to Vegas. And that's as far as my brain gets before it starts giggling in anticipation.

We've added a few things to the basic itinerary - we've always wanted to go check out the Neon Museum's Boneyard, and are trying to get in on a tour.


Plus, at some point, I need to head to Binions for a cash game or their NLHE tourney. I love Binions; the seedy and grungy air of the place comforts my punk-rock soul.

****

Thanks to Special K for setting us up with Hunny Bunny's headache powder fix. Merci beaucoup :-)

When Hunny Bunny was in Atlanta, he tried something called Goody's Headache Powder, and thought it was the bees knees. However, it's not something you can get up here, so if someone could buy a few boxes and bring 'em to Vegas, we would be most appreciative.