And I'm shooting for 300k vpps (milestone bonuses are a lot of money).
Ok, well I've already been to Paris. Well, not even Paris this time (that was earlier this year), I went for three nights to a small town called Aymet, like 50 miles from Bordeaux or something, and stayed in a villa that my friends parents rent every year. I didn't pay for a single thing - that's how my friend sold it to me, other than the sun and the pool, of course - and I made it known that my intention was to drink every waking hour that I was there, and I did. I probably got through 30-40 bottles of beer as well as a couple of bottles of wine, but wasn't really binging, just drinking slowly, and being mildly drunk all day. My only responsibilities were to eat well, swim, get a tan (burn, really - might upload the amusing pictures of my back), and make the odd fruit salad, and I fulfilled them, despite my drunkenness.

Amsterdam will be my friends stag do, just going for the weekend. That's in two weeks, after I go to Notting Hill Carnival next weekend. Then I move, to a place unknown, probably a friends place, for three weeks to a month, preferably near Leicester Square so I can play WSOPE conveniently.

After that it's up north to Manchester for a friends birthday. I'll probably fly straight from there to Tel Aviv, where my friend is getting married, and stay for a couple of weeks to see family and other friends.

When I get back, I think I'm moving to Buenos Aires. I've been thinking about a move out of London for a while. Financially it makes a lot of sense - even though London dropped down the list of most expensive cities in the world, I'm still not doing much more than breaking even after living expenses and my stupidly lavish lifestyle. If I could just resist spending money for any of the three years I've been playing this game, I would have a pretty big bankroll. But I'm stuck at $3/6. So I'd like to relocate to a city that fulfils the following criteria: cultured, civilized, cheap living costs, nice climate, lots of young people, hot girls. From what I've heard, Buenos Aires is all of that and more. I've always been scared of the unknown and have backed out of a few similar ideas, so I'm determined to do this. And if there's any time of my life to do it, why not when I'm young, single, with no responsibilities or dependents, and a job I can do anywhere in the world? It would be silly of me not to do this, in fact.

The sick thing is, this month I think I'm on 40k hands or thereabouts, which is the most I've ever played in a month. I've been playing 10-12 tables like 4 hours a day on average or something, and I'm winning more than 80 buyins from $50PLO to $600PLO since I got back from Vegas, which is cool. My goal is to make 300k vpps by christmas to get the $2k milestone bonus from stars, on top of the $1k bonus at 200k vpps (I'm at ~170k now) as well as the regular bonus money. That's feasible if I can get in 40k hands per month from now until the end of the year, but with all this shiznit going on, I might not be able to get there save for a massive end-of-year push. Yeah, playing 10 hours a day during the festive season while it's summer outside seems like an attractive idea.....

As an aside, I'm excited for the new season of Mad Men, Entourage has been good so far this season, Californication season three starts in about a month, and the last season of Lost beckons at the dawn of 2010. The Premier League has restarted. I have the first two episodes of 2 Months 2 Million queued up and I expect that to be good. Meanwhile, female singer-songwriters dominate my playlists, topped by Lykke Li, Regina Spektor, Laura Marling, Nelly Furtado, and Ida Maria. Tai-chi and the gym have stopped and I've started smoking again since about a month ago.

This has probably been my best summer ever. I'm looking forward to the second half of 2009.