A few of us went out to dinner at Rosa Mexicano last night. Overall, I had a good time and the food was fantastic. However...my water kept disappearing. I was told today that Ezra stole my water on no less than four occasions and I had no idea what was going on. Apparently he couldn't handle the spicy food. Ezra was obviously zonked and whenever the waiter would walk by our table, regardless of whether he was tending to us or not, Ezra would just yell "ship it holla". The waiter would turn to us and ask if we needed anything and Ezra would just point to some random object on the table and yell "ship that". Anyway here are three chronological sketches to illustrate what was going on. The Red things w/ the green circle in them are supposed to be pomegranate margaritas w/ limes which we consumed many of and which were fantastic.

On a separate note, I think I convinced everyone to come to class with me on Thursday.

Poker is boring. I really don't want to be doing this for too much longer but the money is just too good of an opportunity to pass up right now. In a way I regret not having put in more hours over the past two years, but at the same time I wonder how miserable my life might have been had I been putting in 35-40 hours of poker a week as if it were a job.

As for what my future plans are at this moment, it's absolutely up in the air. There are a couple of good business ideas my friends and I have been tossing around and we are going to seriously try to pursue one of them. Classes are going really well. It's been fun getting to know a bunch of new people.

I'm really don't like structure in my life. I like the freedom to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want. The past 1.5 years have been absolutely fantastic. However, if I was offered a job doing something that would utilize my anaytical skills, I probably would take it. I'm much more interested in doing my own thing though. But many wise people have told me that you really do need experience before you try to start your own business. They're probably right but maybe I'll gain this experience through failure.

The Colts, obviously as a 7 point favorite, are probably going to win. However, I think Bears +7 is a fantastic bet. Also, I absolutely cannot stand Peyton Manning. He is a cocky POS who chokes in pressure situations and then blames the rest of his team for the loss. His comments after the loss to Pittsburgh last year were completely unprofessional. Now compare him to Tom Brady. Not only does Tom Brady have 3 superbowl rings, giving him the requisite credentials to be cocky, but he doesn't do it. I'm just sick of the myriad camera shots of Peyton Manning just shaking his head on the sidelines after the defense gives up a big play or shaking his head and yelling at teammates for a missed block or dropped pass. Shut your mouth you idiot. You haven't won anything yet. What about the 3 int's you threw to Ty Law? That clearly was your defense's fault. Bears FTW.

The best analogy between Brady and Manning I can make is Jeter and A-Rod. Note that I'm a Mets fan, and also hate both the Patriots and Colts, so my opinion here is much more objective than anyone who might respond as a fan of one of these particular teams. If you were to ask who the more gifted, or productive player is, surely it's A-Rod. Same goes for Peyton Manning. However, there's a reason Jeter and Brady have won numerous championships while A-Rod and Peyton have not won one. They have those certain immeasureable qualities that lead to clutch performances. They are good leaders. Teammates respect them. Look back to ALCS between the Red Sox and Yankees. The biggest A-Rod play that sticks out is him trying to swat the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's hand running down the first base line like a big sissy. Jeter on the other hand gave up his whole body and dove into the stands to catch a foul ball.

friend (10:16:13 AM): and why do i have cuts on my left hand and a different mans pants on
friend (10:20:31 AM): hahahaha did i do anything dumb
friend (10:23:14 AM): i am a gigantic donkey with a musroom growing out of my brain
friend (10:23:28 AM): nice
friend (10:23:31 AM): he is not dead
friend (10:25:26 AM): but you put on your own pants?
whitelime (10:25:39 AM): yes thats what normal people do
friend (10:29:50 AM): i drank responsibly until i got 99% naked
'=
friend (10:30:25 AM): where is this donkey with my pants

I have a tendency to pick teams that I want to win so I am going to go with the road teams today. Go Saints and Pats!

So yesterday was my worst monetary day ever. Lost $45,000. It's really odd how it happened too. I go to class (!) and then head over to the bookstore to buy my books. As always during the first week of school, the bookstore is a disaster and I wait in a massive line that envelopes itself around like 6 bookshelves. Finally, I get to the register and am out the door. To unwind a bit, I meet up with some friends for happy hour. Lots of drinks later I head back to my apartment and realize I bought the wrong damn book. I only have limited time to return it and there's no way I'm waiting in that line to return the book (can you say -EV) so I say f it, lemme just order it on Amazon.

To recoup the $100 the book cost, I decided to steal a blind at a high stakes table. I raise button, get reraised, decide to 4 bet and he shoves. Bam, down $3k already. End up dropping 7 more as I'm in absolutely no shape to play good poker. Then I meet up with a bunch of people for dinner. Afterwards, we go to Sahara East and smoke some hookah. I can't get anyone to flip me for $10k, but Ariel (FoxwoodsFiend) is willing to do some $1k flips. Obviously these double each time someone loses, but we all ended up even for the night.

I get home, still annoyed that I'm somehow down $10k as a result of a stupid textbook and start sending out mass IM's to see if anyone will give me $5-10k flips online. I think I lost $15k to (David) raptor, won $10k of (Phil) Jman, lost $50 to prevaricator and lost $30kish to mperich. A total of -$45,000 for the night.

Surprisingly, I'm not too upset about it today, even despite the Neteller disaster. I'm most upset about the first $10k, when I definitely never should have sat down to play poker. Also, being up $31k in my past 3,000 hands helps too.

As for classes, I already dropped 8 credits worth, so I'm not graduating in May. I think this is for the best though because I will be able to enjoy myself, do some travelling, play some online poker, and at the same time pass some classes.

I am scared to death. I took 6 credits last semester and somehow passed both my classes. However, to graduate by May, I'm taking 17 credits this semester. I wonder what the vegas line will be on me passing all of them. Probably not good...

I'm planning to make a Thu-Sun trip to the Borgata either this weekend and/or next weekend to play some of the tourns. If you are going to be down in AC, definitely let me know and we'll meet up. I think a few of us are going to try and book a suite, but I'm not sure if they'll have any available.

Yahoo needs to get it's act together. I'm a staunch supporter of Yahoo over sites like Google, mostly because I think it offers more, and does so with the fewest clicks. The sports, tvguide, news, email, finance and weather sections are fantastic. I use almost all of them daily. However, for some reason, yahoo revamped its tvguide section and it's a cluttered piece of shit now. It's infinitely slower and requires so much more work just to check what channel the game is on or whether the house episode will be a new one or a repeat. The previous tvguide was so much better and I hope yahoo realizes this.

Random Rant about PCA food:

I am a huge pure maple syrup fan. When given the choice, I refuse to eat pancakes or french toast w/ fake syrup. I'm 99% sure there's actually some law in the USA that prohibits labelling fake syrup as "maple syrup". Unfortunately, this law doesn't exist in the Bahamas. In the Atlantis room service menu, it specifically states "Pancakes w/ maple syrup". Boy was I pissed when they sent up pancakes and gross artificial Heinz syrup. People need to be educated that there is a huge difference between maple syrup and the fake stuff.

I'm gonna do a PCA recap in two parts because a lot went on. Hopefully, I still remember most of it.

If you didn't hear, I ended up cashing in 21st for $28,000. Ryan (daut44) actually ended up busting me. Congrats, btw. Overall, I'd rate my play at about an A- throughout the whole tournament. There were probably 3-4 hands that I would play differently now that I've thought about them a bit more.

They completely misquoted me on the PokerStars blog. After I busted out, I got interviewed briefly where some girl asked me background questions like how long I've been playing/college/etc. Then she asked what I was going to do with the winnings. I just wanted to laugh in her face. Like how can she possibly have this job and ask such a stupid question. She obviously knows nothing about poker. Anyway, I go into a brief explanation about how tournaments have top heavy payouts and you really have to play to win or finish in the top few spots, otherwise, you won't have a good ROI. Here is what she quoted me as saying:

8:28pm--With the exit of Emil Patel, we're down to 20 players. Emil tells us, "Basically this money is useless." Obviously, he's not all that pleased with cashing where he did. He bought in directly, so his payoff isn't as big as the folks who qualified in satellites. I'm sure he'll get over it.

I had a good time on the trip. Ran into a ton of people I know and also met a bunch of others. I won't bother mentioning names because there are too many and I'll probably leave some out. The food/service down there was terrible but I guess that is to be expected.

Among the ridiculous things that happened down there...

1) $50,000 coinflips in the Atlantis lobby.
2) Ben blacking out twice, the first time in the middle of a road, the second time on the Booze Cruise in between two old couples. (Don't worry, we have pictures)
3) Winning a $5,000 bet on Seattle/Dallas game where Ben somehow got the bet in for me as a "pick'em". The line opened at Sea -3 and closed at Sea -1.5. They won by 1.
4) Poker players to remain anonymous hitting on the 14 yr old girl on the Booze Cruise.
5) Tony (Tongni) not being able to sit in his seat on the bus ride back and the subsequent sunscreen battle and near brawl.
6) Dani (Ansky) going apeshit at some Bahamian local who wouldn't pay up $50 on a prop bet about a club being open/closed.
7) Taking a 16 person taxi back to Paradise Island filled w/ drunks. The driver gets out for 10 minutes at some random spot and an unknown drunk kid almost drives us home.
8) Josh's rolling job on the beach and repairs.
9) Ben Spier blacking out at The Atlas.

2006 Audi S4