Food.

It turns out that, in addition to being black, my cubemate Juanita doesn't know much about food. I was under the impression that she worked out a lot and ate healthy. Based on her slender physique, I would still say she works out a lot, but apparently she's not as smart in regards to eating as I thought she was.

I was going to get a sandwich the other day, and I asked her if she wanted anything:

Me: "I'm going to get a sandwich, do you want anything?"
Her: "No, I don't want anything heavy right now."
Me: "Okay bye."
Her: "Wait, do they have soup?"
Me: "Yeah."
Her: "Can you get me some soup?"
Me: "Sure."
Her: "What kind do they have?"
Me: "I don't know. I can call you when I get there.
Her: "Can you get me a cookie and a bag a chips, too?"

(You see, this is why I never ask "Does anyone want anything?" when I go get lunch. I don't know what the hell caused me to ask on this particular day, but I can assure you, it will never happen again.)

Me: "Uhh...okay."

I walked across the street to the sandwich place and called her on my cell phone:

Me: "They have vegetable and cream of potato."
Her: "Okay, get me the potato."
Me: "Cup or bowl? Cup is 2.99 and bowl is 4.29."
Her: "Cup."
Me: "And you want a bag of regular potato chips and chocolate chip cookie?"
Her: "Yeah."
Me: "Okay, bye."

So let's review...

Juanita didn't want anything "heavy," so she ordered:

-potato chips
-chocolate chip cookie
-cream of potato soup

Which can be translated to:

-deep-fried oil flakes
-sugar-butter-egg patty
-starchy lard sauce

But she didn't want anything "heavy."

I ordered my standard: turkey on wheat, no cheese. I seriously felt weighed down for the rest of the day. I should have gotten a cookie and chips.

The saddest part of the story is I ended up paying for her. She handed me a twenty. I had no cash. I couldn't pay with with her twenty because then I wouldn't have enough change to give her. So I paid with a debit card and had no change to give her. I guess I could have asked them to ring up the two orders separately, but I'm bad at planning.

Sugar-butter-egg patty.

Sigh.

"How come you never write I like it when you write it makes me sad that you never write."
"Because it takes, like, a whole day to write a post."

So here we are. You get a post everytime the wife complains.

I started playing poker again.

This was unplanned development. Although quitting was an unplanned development as well. I had an okay poker bankroll going a few months ago, but got stupid, lost it, and that was that.

Oh well, it was a good run. I made enough to buy a new laptop, a new monitor set-up (a 20" and a 17"; I should have gotten two 20's) for the online pokering, and some new file cabinets. I never withdrew for that new desk chair I was going to get, so I never got a new desk chair. My desk chair money was returned from whence it came.

So I just stopped didn't think much about it.

Then we went to Vegas, I realized I don't completely suck at the low-limit hold 'em and sort of liked playing.

Then a week later I was in the middle of arranging hotel accomodations for Scott's bachelor Vegas excursion in March and I got a call:

Scott: "We're going to Industry City to play poker."
Me: "I can't go because I'm married."

I couldn't take it anymore. I decided to deposit $200 and if I lost it, that would be it and the wife didn't need to know anything.

I instacashed (those were the days, huh?) $200 into Pokerstars, made about $300, and cashed out my $200 (those were the days, huh?).

I then lost the $300, redeposited the $200, made about $300, cashed out the $200, then lost the $300.

At least I'm still even, right?

For a third time, I deposited $200, made about $300, and cashed out the $200.

And I'm still going on that $300. It's been about 4 weeks and I have about $1000.

And for the readers that live in the same house as me, please be assured that all accounts are completely unaffected by this poker rebirth. All initial deposits were returned to their original location.

Also, for the readers that live in the same house as me, if this urge to return to poker happened after Neteller blew up, the urge probably would have gone unfulfilled and quietly passed. Alas, I acquired adequate poker funds before Neteller blew up, so I'm all set until I go broke. I've got $1,060 at Stars. I have no easy way to get it out of Stars, but that's fine with me.

I've also earned enough frequent player point to get a Panasonic portable DVD player. I don't really need a portable DVD player, but I want one for some reason. Maybe I'll save up enough to get the 8GB iPod nano and offer it to the wife as a "I'm sorry I play poker" gift. Although that gift would be wasted on her because there is no way she would ever fill up 8GB with tunes. Too bad the Stars store doesn't offer the iPod shuffle.

I only need 2,800 points until I reach Platinum status at Stars, and I need to do it by Jan. 31. That means I need to play for three hours a day until then. I also have a deposit bonus I need to clear on Full Tilt by Jan. 31, so that means I need to play an another hour at Full Tilt in addition to the three hours at Pokerstars. That's just how it is, honey, I don't make the rules, you need to be understanding. It's not my fault I only have until Jan. 31st and won't get to talk to you until February.

In other poker news, I am the biggest jerk on planet earth for not hanging out with my wife on Friday and instead going to play poker with my friends "for the third weekend in a row!"

Me going to play poker somehow resulted in me having to clean out our storage unit the next day.

Being married is fun.

I won $11 at poker.

Vegas happened.

Unbeknownst to each other, my two colleagues Scotty Win and Mrs. Brick both requested a blog post yesterday.

Scott suggested I post his Vegas trip report as a guest post. I previously announced that I probably would not write about Vegas because I am lazy, and Scott probably felt he should fill that void.

He left it in a comment in the last post, but I will post it here to fill some space:

Latest Vegas Trip Report:

The Bricks and the Wins went to Las Vegas for 2 days. They stayed at The Leaves.

Poker highlights:
-At Genie's, Scotty Win hitting a straight flush at 3-6 for a $390 jackpot
-At Pyramid, Brick playing better 2-4 than Scotty had ever witnessed

Non-poker highlights:
-Scotty achieving priority guestlist status for the group at Spookbar faster than a much-hyped "hook-up" who knew the owners was able to do
-the whole group sharing 2 awesome steaks, 2 salads, 2 sides, and a bottle of wine at EI8HT for the low cost of $250 with minimal complaints
-an incredible Mysteri circus show at Treasure Cove that left Scotty questioning his heterosexuality
-many discounts provided by Brick and his coupon book, such as $50 off for a $104 Mexican dinner at Darguno's that should've been $60 in the first place
-Mrs. Win & Mrs. Brick finding their way into Hugh Hefner's bed at the wax museum
-an Out-n-In Burger lunch paid for by The Leaves $10 free match-play coupon that Scotty & Brick expertly turned into $20 at the blackjack table
-Scotty winning his & Brick's fantasy football match by 7, after Meyton Panning scored 60 points Monday night
-Mrs. Win playing her first game of blackjack and only losing $5 after 30 minutes of play
-Mrs. Win & Mrs. Brick letting their partners play a sufficient amount of poker
-Scotty asking Mrs. Win to walk 30 minutes along the strip when she had sore feet and only a spring jacket on a 30 degree night (Fahrenheit)
-Brick & Mrs. Brick going to "Jamboree!", a show featuring small-boobed topless dancers
-Brick & Mrs. Brick not getting into a fight until the car ride home Tuesday night

First of all, I appreciate Scott's attempt to write in the Brick spirit and give dumb code names to everything, but in this situation, I feel it just confuses things and serves no purpose. I initially started doing it to thinly disguise where I live and work, and I continued doing it to be dumb. Also, I mainly talk about situations where location is insignificant to the story, but in this case, location is very significant. Everyone knows Las Vegas and the names of the casinos and whatnot, so anyone reading will be like "The Leaves? Huh? Oh, he means Palms."

Scott is now mad at me and thinks I'm a dick.

Anyway, to fill more space, I present Scott's trip report without dumb code names, with numbers added to correspond with my commentary that will follow:

Poker highlights:
1. At Aladdin, Scotty Win hitting a straight flush at 3-6 for a $390 jackpot
2. At Luxor, Brick playing better 2-4 than Scotty had ever witnessed

Non-poker highlights:
3. Scotty achieving priority guestlist status for the group at Ghostbar faster than a much-hyped "hook-up" who knew the owners was able to do
4. the whole group sharing 2 awesome steaks, 2 salads, 2 sides, and a bottle of wine at n9ne for the low cost of $250 with minimal complaints
5. an incredible Mystere show at Treasure Island that left Scotty questioning his heterosexuality
6. many discounts provided by Brick and his coupon book, such as $50 off for a $104 Mexican dinner at Garduno's that should've been $60 in the first place
7. Mrs. Win & Mrs. Brick finding their way into Hugh Hefner's bed at the wax museum
8. an In-n-Out Burger lunch paid for by The Palms $10 free match-play coupon that Scotty & Brick expertly turned into $20 at the blackjack table
9. Scotty winning his & Brick's fantasy football match by 7, after Peyton Manning scored 60 points Monday night
10. Mrs. Win playing her first game of blackjack and only losing $5 after 30 minutes of play
11. Mrs. Win & Mrs. Brick letting their partners play a sufficient amount of poker
12. Scotty asking Mrs. Win to walk 30 minutes along the strip when she had sore feet and only a spring jacket on a 30 degree night (Fahrenheit)
13. Brick & Mrs. Brick going to "Jubilee!", a show featuring small-boobed topless dancers
14. Brick & Mrs. Brick not getting into a fight until the car ride home Tuesday night

We did, in fact, play poker. I was a bit worried about this, given that females were accompanying us. I exchanged the following words with Scott prior to the trip:

Him: "I'm not worried about getting poker time."
Me: "I am."
Him: (pause)
Him: "Yeah."

I told my wife I needed 14.7 hours of poker time. I ended up getting 13.

"No, you got way more than that," said my wife.
"Amount of time away from you does not equate to poker time. You know how long it takes to walk between casinos. We were going to play at Caesar's but they only had no-limit games going so we walked to Aladdin. It was a good 45 minutes before we actually got to play," I said.

Yeah, so I got 13 hours.

It was actually my best trip to date, pokerwise. I made $350 at the 2-4, 3-6, and 4-8 games, and lost $50 at non-poker gambling.

Mrs. Brick actually played poker too. While we were waiting for our rooms at Palms we walked across the street to Gold Coast. I was pleasantly surprised with their poker room. And by "poker room" I mean "roped off poker area." They had autoshufflers, there were plenty of games going, and the players all sucked.

She, Scott, and I sat down at a 2-4 table. The only poker Mrs. Brick has played is our .25-.50 NL home game. (The last time she played she actually complained the stakes were too high. It used to be a .10-.25 NL home game)

I quickly went over the betting rules with her. "You can only bet and raise in increments of $2 on the first two rounds, and $4 on the last two."

We only played for about an hour, and she lost $35. She got caught in the unfortunate situation of catching a straight against a higher straight. She got a free look in the big blind holding 8-3, and it came 6-7-9 on the flop. A 10 hit the turn. Unfortunately the button had J-8. Oh well.

The most interesting part of that hand was an exchange I had with a local 80-year-old nit. He was sitting across from me. When the turn hit I sensed Mrs. Brick hit her straight. She bet out and was raised. She hesitated and I said "you know you can reraise if you want." I realized she probably didn't know about the five bet cap, and she might have thought she could only call the raise. The second I said that the nit across from me barks out:

"One player to a hand, son!"

Me: "Excuse me?"

Him: "You can't talk during the hand."

Me: "I wasn't telling her what TO do. I was telling her what she CAN do."

Him: "One player to a hand."

I wanted to punch him in the balls. I wasn't trying to influence her decision in any way. I was just trying to inform her of her options, much like the dealer does when the action get to someone: "It's on you, sir." "Huh?" "You can call, raise, or fold, sir."

That's all I was trying to do. I'm fully aware of the "one player to a hand" rule. I wasn't violating it.

I won $27 while we were there.

Let's move on...

1. Scott and I played at Aladdin. They have a high hand jackpot we were unaware of. The session was pretty uneventful until Scott hit his straight flush. Scott was getting all depressed because he was losing and I really wasn't doing anything. I was up $100 at one point but a cold deck and me sucking at poker knocked me down to +$9 for the session.

I was really glad when Scott hit that jackpot because I know he needed a confidence boost.

He hit the straight flush on the turn. Luckily his straight flush card gave someone else a full house. It wasn't a high full house so the other guy slowed down when Scott reraised him.

Scott turned his hand over to many "OOOHs" and "AAAHs." The floor confirmed the jackpot and gave Scott his $390 in chips (oohh, black chips, we've never seen those before).

Scott asked me about tipping. He had already tipped the dealer. Scott asked me if he should tip the other guy, the guy who lost the hand with his full house. "No fuckin' way," I said. "The only time you do that is if the other player called your bets instead of folding so the pot reached the minimum required amount for a jackpot."

Scott is a big silly goose.

2. We went to Luxor for their dumb high hand promotion from 5AM to 9AM. According to Scott, I destroyed the competition with unparalleled poker skill. What can I say? I was just in the zone. The other players were playing their cards, and I was playing them. Actually, I was playing my cards, and the other players were playing worse cards. The chip fountain installed in the 7 seat didn't exactly hurt my cause, either. Let's review one hand involving Chip Fountain:

-Margarita King straddles UTG (for the benefit of those readers happening to be my wife, a straddle is when the person first to act after the big blind puts in a raise before the cards are dealt, essentially doubling the big blind)
-I call the straddle with K-Jo (this was dumb, I should have reraised to isolate the straddler, although in this game a reraise probably wouldn't have done jack shit)
-Chip Fountain calls with J-7o
-flop comes 6-7-K, Margarita King bets, I raise, Chip Fountain calls, Margarita King folds.
-turn is not a 7, I bet, Chip Fountain calls.
-river is not a 7, I bet, Chip Fountain laments his situation: "Man, I hate throwing away a pair, and I gotta keep you honest," and calls.

Thanks Chip Fountain. You know you could have avoided that situation by not being retarded. I appreciate you contributing that $16 that had no business being in the pot. He said "I gotta keep you honest" about 37 times that morning. Please continue to keep me honest. Thanks.

As 9AM approached, Chip Fountain announced he had lost $350. I can't believe how unlucky he was.

We had a good time. Most of the players were locals. It's pretty comforting to know how awful most of the locals play. There were two guys I remember from last time (I was actually expecting to see both of them) who held their own, but were nothing special. They just knew it was actually okay to fold sometimes and that you should probably reraise with the nuts instead of just calling to "disguise your hand's strength."

By now you're probably wondering who Margarita King is. At about 8AM some guy came and sat down. It was obvious he was just killing time before a flight home. He looked to be of middle-eastern descent (no clue about this. Let's just say he had dark skin and he wasn't black, hispanic, asian, or Indian.) He wore a black suit jacket over a black t-shirt. The t-shirt had a goofy pattern and he wore a lapel pin with the same goofy pattern.

Sucky local player: "Hey man who are you? What's that pin you're wearing, are you the carpet king or something?"
Margarita King: "No man, I'm the Margarita King."
Sucky local player: "Oh okay, the Margarita King."

It turns out he really was the Margarita King. He had fancy business cards with his picture that said "Margarita King." He was some bigshot restaurant owner from San Francisco. The banter between him and the sucky local player was pretty entertaining. They also both made an effort to suck at poker so that was good, too.

I came out ahead $150 for the session. I guess that's pretty good for a 2-4 game with a $4 rake and $1 jackpot drop.

But enough about poker.

We arrived in Vegas late Sunday morning for a cute little couples vacation. We were staying at the Palms, which is a good distance from the strip, so I figured a car rental was necessary. Scott and I went to the rental desk. I handed the lady the proper items:

Her: "So did you want to get the full fancy coverage or just regular coverage? You should probably just get the regular coverage."
Me: "I don't want any extra stuff."

She then harrassed me about insurance for about five minutes and basically said that I was going to die and be cast into the fiery pits of hell if I didn't buy their dumb insurance. I then signed my name in about 37 places to declare that, yes, I was, in fact, not buying their dumb insurance.

We managed to get the hell out of there without buying insurance. Our "large" car, which was supposed to be a "Dodge Charger or similar" ended up being a Jeep Liberty. Yeah, I can see how those two cars are almost the same, seeing as they are both...cars.

5. Later in the day we went to see Mystere at Treasure Island. That was somewhat amazing. Totally gay, but amazing. I didn't know it was possible to climb up a pole using your neck.

The one thing I didn't get though was the fat guy dressed like a baby. Was there some point to that? Did the crazy acrobatic acts need to be interspersed with scenes of some fat guy acting like a baby? For those that haven't seen the show, it involves a fat guy dressed like a baby.

Did the show producers have a meeting prior to opening where one of them said:

"You know what this show needs? A fat guy dressed like a baby."

And then someone else chimed in:

"Yeah! YEAH! BRILLIANT!"

And then the other guy says:

"And what do guys think about bringing out a giant snail at the end that bobs its head?"

"BRILLIANT!"

For those that haven't seen the show, it involves a giant snail that bobs its head. I didn't get that at all. It contributed nothing to the show and made no sense. It was onstage for about ten seconds bobbing its head (otherwise not moving at all) and then the show ended. WTF?

I guess maybe the show was supposed to be like a dream or something and wasn't supposed to make sense:

"Yeah man I had this wacky dream. I was having sex with Chelsea Clinton in a parking garage and then a giant snail came out bobbing its head and then I woke up."

It's not like the rest of the show had a cohesive storyline. But it didn't need the baby or the snail. They should also update the wacky, new-age soundtrack. It's completely obvious it was composed in 1993.

It was an awesome show, though. Also, Scott is now gay.

We headed back to the Palms in our Jeep Liberty for:

4. Dinner at n9ne. I showered and put on my gay clubbing clothes. This place was...well...it was pretty gay. You get there and are greeting by two hot chicks. One of them directs you to a table and then a douchebag in a white blazer starts sucking your dick. I've never really been in a "fancy" restaurant before. Growing up I thought Olive Garden was a fancy restaurant. Is dick sucking standard? I guess maybe when dinner costs $100 a plate.

Like Scott said, each couple split a salad, steak, and side. This was actually a perfect meal size. We both got the porterhouse. I can honestly say it was the greatest steak I have ever tasted, although I'm not anywhere close to being an expert. I even enjoyed the fat chunks around the edge.

We also got the lobster mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese. These were good, but not as good as all the reviews say they are, so they were a disappointment.

Dinner was exceptional. I'm glad we went. Mrs. Brick didn't think we should go:

Her: "Remember that time I took you to that fancy restaurant for your birthday?"
Me: "Yeah."
Her: "And you were acting all weird and complaining about how expensive everything was?"
Me: "Yeah, well everything was really expensive."
Her: "Well, you made it really uncomfortable and unenjoyable and this Nine place is going to be more expensive."
Me: "I'll be good."

I am cheap and I do have problem with spending $46 on a steak, but the evening was enjoyable and I can see how that might be a fun thing to do once a year or so.

I was good.

After dinner, we went to:

3. Ghostbar. This place was unexciting and the waitresses wear platform moonboots and the Miller Lites cost $6. There were no famous people there. The clear floor you hear about was a one square foot section of the balcony. Maybe we just went at a bad time. There weren't too many people there. Also the Miller Lites cost $6. Luckily just about none of the tables that cost $300 to reserve were reserved and they were cool about letting us sit down and not charging us $300. They also had Miller Lites available for purchase. They were $6.

I can honestly say I don't get what the big deal with this place is.

I have Miller Lites at home.

That's all I have to comment on except:

14. I don't remember what this fight was about. I remember we had a fight, though, and it was fun.

It was a really good trip and it was entirely too short. I hope Mrs. Brick enjoyed her second trip to Vegas and I hope Mrs. Win enjoyed her first.

I would also like to thank my wife for not getting mad at me for that time I left to play poker right after we had sex.