It's been almost a week since I posted. I apologize for that. Not too much has been happening since I got back to Tuscaloosa. I finished out the week of classes and then had a relatively calm weekend. I watched a lot of football and decided to play a few of the big WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I played really focused, but again was unable to score big even though I cashed in all 3 events I played over the weekend. This has been very frustrating for me online, and as a result my online MTT results aren't nearly where they should be over the 600 or so that I've played lifetime. I finished 61st (of 852) in the 500 rebuy on Friday, 32nd (of 580) in the LHE on Saturday, and 144th (of 2185) in the 5000 dollar WCOOP Main Event on Sunday. I had tons of chips late in all 3 of these, but impatience led to me squandering away chances.

The most heartbreaking of the 3 tournaments was, of course, the main event. It was the biggest tournament in online poker history, with the winner receiving over 1.7 million dollars. There was no reason I shouldn't have been right in the mix competing for the title, but alas I let ego get in the way and doubled up a really aggressive player in one huge pot to sort of cripple myself. I pride myself on not doing that kind of shit, and I like to think that's what's separated me from most of the other (in live events) tournament players. I was sick to my stomach and couldn't sleep, but I netted 9000 or so and life could be worse. Hopefully this will give me the momentum I need to really start crushing the few online MTTs I play. It's not really even about the money. I just want to crush in all avenues of poker tournaments.

Ok, that's the most I've talked about poker in a long time. One cool thing I got to do this week was go on a tour of the Tuscaloosa County Jail for bonus points. My legal studies teacher mentioned it to the class, and I immediately jumped on it. I've always loved prison shows and stuff like that on TV. The trip was quite an experience. My classmates and I got to walk through and see how miserably these people live. Frankly, it's depressing. I think one of these trips is something that everyone needs to do at some point. I'd especially recommend it to any parents reading who have adolescent kids. There are obviously some really attractive girls in my class, so it was a real treat to see the way the prisoners reacted (like animals) as the girls walked through the open area. I was actually propositioned a couple times by prisoners. It was...flattering? At the beginning of the trip one of the correctional officers sprayed some pepper spray in a garage and we got to walk by it and get a whiff and sense of what it's like when fights break out in the facility. Wickeddddddd.

Sadly, I've decided to just skip my scheduled trip to Aruba to play in the Aruba Poker Classic. I'm sick because I love Aruba and I'll very much miss not being there with all my roommates. I just have too much going on with class, namely a huge paper due like the Tuesday after the Saturday I would arrive back from Aruba. I think my mind would be on the beach and Pina Coladas in Aruba rather than where it should be (Edgar Allen Poe or Walt Whitman), and I don't think I would get it done otherwise. I guess I'm proud of myself for this decision. As a whole, I'm really enjoying things since I've been back in college. Things are a little different since I'm a few years older than most of my classmates, but that is mostly irrelevant. I'm learning a lot about myself, getting in pretty good shape physically, and developing a work ethic. I think this is important because I don't wanna be that Dad or that Husband or that Son or that Brother 7-10 years from now that is worthless and just plays poker all day. I shouldn't say that playing poker most of the day is bad, because it's not. I guess I mean I don't want poker to affect me to the point that I can't do other things, because it definitely did for a period of time, especially in 2007.

That's about all I got. I'm almost certainly going to Athens, GA this weekend to see #8 Bama square off vs #3 Georgia!!

SS

As I write this entry I am really tilted because I spent 30 minutes on it the first time then misclicked and X'd out the tab. This happens about once every few months and is every blogger's worst nightmare.

I spent Friday through Monday in Texas and had an amazing time hanging out with Mike and Adam. Here's a long trip report:

Friday Mike and I arrived in Austin on different flights a few minutes apart around 11 a.m.. Adam picked us up. We immediately went to this BBQ place called Rudy's to get the day started. Mike was totally out of his element here (and the whole trip for that matter) since he's from New Jersey. We had a lotta really good food and washed it all down with a couple Bud Lights. From there we headed to our hotel at The Radisson downtown to check in. We got settled in and then headed over to Adam's parents house to say hello. They have a really nice place in a neat area in Austin. Lance Armstrong and U of Texas head football coach Mack Brown both live nearby. After we left the house we headed back to the hotel for a while before heading out to dinner at this nice Tex/Mex place. Finally, we came back to the hotel to shower and get ready for a night on the town on legendary 6th street. Mike and I were really looking forward to this because obviously we love nightlife and the Austin bar scene is supposed to be sickkkk. It did not disappoint. We bar hopped for several hours before the bars closed.

On Saturday we woke up with no particular plans. We originally planned on going to the Texas/Arkansas football game, but obviously it was cancelled. Instead, we spent the day hangin' out at this house party with a Hurricane theme. We polished off some keg beer and watched some football before heading out a few hours later. We swung by this all-you-can-eat pizza buffet to watch the first quarter of the USC/OSU game. Adam talked this place up, but I personally thought it was awful :) After dinner we went back to the hotel to watch the rest of this game at the TGIFs bar in our hotel. Next, we went up to the room to get ready for another night on the town.

Our poker buddy Hunter "HEMIpowerSWT" Frey was in the area and decided to get bottle service at this really hot bar/club on 5th street called Canvas. This place was great. We had a blast for several hours before closing time.

Sunday we woke up ready for a long day of watching football. I planned on heading back to Alabama late Sunday, but my flight was actually cancelled due to the weather and gave me a great excuse to skip my Monday classes. Mike and Adam are in a big Fantasy Football league, so they like to sweat every single play of every game. I should've played Fantasy but I'm too lazy to put in the time necessary to do well. We ate lunch at a deli and then headed down to this really cool pool hall on 6th called Buffalo Billiards. We called ahead to make sure they had the Sunday NFL ticket. We watched atleast some of every single game that ran Sunday. There was some great football. Perhaps the sickest finish was the Denver game where Mike Shanahan went for two at the end of the game instead of the conventional extra point for the tie. While we were there we also played several games of bar shuffleboard. We all played pretty even in our warmup 100 dollar per game affairs, but when the real money came out Mike beat me for a laughable figure. This was a microcosm of the whole trip as I lost lots of flips and other prop bets :(

After we left Buffalo's we headed out to dinner at this really cool place called Ranch 616. I had a really great Beef Tenderloin dish. We sweated the SNF game there. Finally, we headed back down to the bars to get in one more night of debauchery in Austin. We have two friends in Austin, Cristina and Claudia who joined us on Sunday night. Cristina happens to be a top ranked amateur/semi pro pool player, so we were kinda eager to see her in action. After a couple of drinks we walked across the street to the venue we'd been at all day, Buffalo Billiards. Cristina embarrased us but was nice enough to teach me a few things which was awesome. I am pretty fascinated by the world of professional billiards, and I think it would be fun to get really good at the game. I've played a fair amount over the last couple of years and like to think that I'm quite a bit above average.

After we got tired of playing pool we headed down the street to a place called Betsy's Bar where I think we set a bar record for most Soco/Lime shots consumed in a 15 minute period of time.

Monday we woke up around noon and had to get on the road to Dallas where we now planned on attending the Monday Night Football game. Needless to say, we were unspeakably excited. We grabbed some lunch and then headed out. On the way we stopped off at some gas station to use the restroom. Mike and I saw lottery tickets and felt like we'd be doing ourself a disservice not to create some sort of prop bet out of them. We bought the last 35 dollars worth 5 dollar tickets that the guy had in the roll. We agreed to split the wins or losses from the cards but we bet 100 on the side on who would win more money on their tickets. Amazingly, we turned profit on the tickets when we won 40 bucks (5 dollar profit), but I had to pay Mike 100, sigh.

We finally made it into Dallas and checked in at the Embassy Suites. We headed over to Texas Stadium. The parking situation was pretty insane as we had to wait for like 90 minutes as we snaked our way through to the back parking lot. Luckily, we'd left really early. We got into the stadium at 6:55 for the 7:30 kickoff. We grabbed a few beers and made our way to our lower level seats which were conveniently right in front of a group of Cowboys' cheerleaders, bink.

I'm sure a ton of you watched the game. WOWOWOWOW what a game. It was easily the most entertaining sporting event that I've ever attended. There were a couple of long passes, a Kickoff return for a touchdown by Felix Jones, and a bunch of other great action in this interdivision game. How about the DeSean Jackson "fumble" on the 1 yard line? This play will be on blooper reels for centuries to come. The game was back and forth but thankfully Dallas rallied in the final minutes and scored to take the lead. They were able to fade a late drive from Mcnabb and the Eagles to hold on.

We decided to check out the Dallas bar scene after the game. Not much was going on since it was a Monday night, and I guess most people work on weekdays. Still, we had a good time hanging out in this place called the Greenville district.

We made it in around 2:45 a.m. and to my chagrin I had to be awake at 5:15 a.m. to catch my 7 a.m. flight out of Dallas. This early flight was necessary in order to make it to my 11 a.m. class in Tuscaloosa. Somehow I made it, and here I am in Tuscaloosa. The trip could not have gone better, and I'll remember it forever.

I've gotta shower and go to class. Bama is at Arkansas this weekend. I will not be going, but I might go to Auburn this weekend for the Auburn/LSU game.

SS

Sooooooooooo. I've got a flight to Austin out of Birmingham in about 8 hours. I'm still in Tuscaloosa. It's like midnight, I'm doing my laundry, I haven't packed, and I still have to drive an hour to the airport, so I'm a bit tilted. Things could be worse. Very sadly, the NCAA has cancelled this weekends Texas versus Arkansas college football game due to Hurricane Ike. We had tickets, and I was really stoked about going to one of the best stadiums in the US to check out a game. The cancellation isn't really necessary since Austin is so far off the coast. It will probably just be really heavy rains, but I don't masquerade as a meteorologist. Still, Austin will be a lot of fun. Can't wait to see Mike and Adam.

Onto sad news, it is hard to believe that its been seven years since the attack of September 11, 2001. It seems like just yesterday my high school baseball teammates and I were in the weightroom at Shades Valley lifting on that Tuesday morning and heard the news on the radio. As I post this, I just looked back at my blog archives and saw that I said "I can't believe it's been 5 years" when I posted on this date two years ago. I will say what I said in that post: Our daily problems are so secondary to so many things when you think back to a tragedy like that.

I hope none of my readers had his or her family affected on that fateful day.

In other sad news, I saw today that the legendary Cousin Cliff recently passed away. Anyone over the age of, probably, 18 who lives in Birmingham will know who I'm talking about. I remember seeing his shows so many times as a kid.

Back to a brighter note, school is going really well. I got my first official grade back, an accounting quiz, and aced it 100/100...weeeeeeeeeee. I'm very much enjoying the routine of just getting up (albeit it no earlier than 10:15 am) and getting things done. I actually get to experience the sunshine, which was a rare happening when I was always playing poker. This is much more enjoyable than last semester when I came back and attempted to complete the impractical engineering work. Things honestly could not be better.

Zack and I had another great week in the weightroom. My body is really starting to transform the way I want it to. I've been eating pretty damn healthy Monday through Thursdays. The weekend everything is kind of fair game because it's pretty difficult to eat fruits or salads while watching college football with a half case of beer beside you.

Bama's got a scrubby Western Kentucky this weekend. I'll miss it of course. Hopefully improve to 3 and 0. That's all I got. More later.

SS