Category: Personal

Day-to-day life and other ramblings

Vivid Dreams

I’ve had three nights in a row of strong, vivid dreams. They’ve been pretty nonsensical, but powerful, considering that I rarely remember my dreams. I rarely write about them when I do remember them (because reading about other peoples’ dreams is pretty boring, I think), but after three nights in a row, I wanted to note this down:

  • Friday night the dream involved cleaning a large house, though one I didn’t recognize. Somehow that mutated into the house being on top of a tall tree (or something like that), and swinging on vines to clean up dead pieces in the tree. And somehow that ended with me landing on a street corner (which I also didn’t recognize) to watch a performance put on by a group of actors. The actors were three former actors to play Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee (who is deceased), Tom Baker, and Colin Baker, plus someone I didn’t recognize who apparently had played Mister Fantastic back in the 70s or 80s (as he appeared much older now). What exactly they were doing I’m not sure, but I had a lengthy conversation with Jon Pertwee in the dream (which I don’t recall).

    Dreams involving heights are a recurring theme for me, probably because I have mild acrophobia, so that’s not unusual. The presence of Mister Fantastic was probably because we watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on Friday night (not recommended). The rest of it is a mystery.

  • Saturday night I had a dream involving zombies. You’d think this was because I just took the first volume of The Walking Dead out of the library, but in fact I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know where this dream came from. It mostly involved me watching several young teenagers walking back and forth between two points in a small town, including going through a shotgun house in which an old man lived. Obviously at some point they were going to find that the old man became a zombie. When the inevitable happened, one of the kids – or maybe me, since my point of view had merged with them by then – let out with a “Nooooo….!”

    This was so powerful a moment that I actually let out with a loud moan in real life, waking up Debbi and scaring all the cats off the bed. I wasn’t particularly frightened by the dream when I woke up – it didn’t feel like a true nightmare – but I was embarrassed that the dream crept out into real life like that.

  • Last night the dream involved going to the ocean and finding that it had risen quite a few feet, swamping the shore. I met an old girlfriend of mine there, and she was apparently swimming around collecting large sea shells. I think this was the tail of a longer dream, which mostly involved getting to the ocean, but I don’t remember anything but the end of it.

I guess my mind must have a bunch of stuff it’s trying to work through, but it’s certainly not any clearer from all of this nocturnal activity. I’d be just as happy to not remember any of these dreams, because they don’t feel helpful at all.

Not Much Luck

We’re back from our latest vacation to Las Vegas. It was a fun trip, as always – except for the losing part, that is.

We flew in on Saturday as usual, and this time got a room in the west wing of the MGM Grand, where we tend to stay these days. The west wing is quiet and we had a room right next to its elevator, which was convenient since we usually have a hike from our room to get to it. The west wing’s elevator also drops you out near the poker room, which was convenient for me. And the room itself has more gadgets in it than the normal rooms (a television in the bathroom mirror, a touch-to-activate lamp, and so forth), so we spent a while playing once we arrived.

Then we puttered around for the afternoon before going to see Lance Burton at the Monte Carlo. Burton is a classic magician – he opens his act by running down a short genealogy of magicians dating back to the 1800s, with himself as the current heir to the throne. His illusions rely heavily on making things disappear and reappear, the most spectacular form of illusion, I guess. He even has a couple of tricks which made me think of The Prestige to the point that I wondered whether he has a twin brother.

One of the most surprising things about Burton’s show is the gap between his promotional material and the show itself. The posters and images I’ve seen of him are split between him as a debonair high society man from the early 20th century, and a more modern “tall dark stranger” in black clothing (especially the 2009 image all over the Monte Carlo). In the show, though, he seems quite different from what I’d expected from the images, though not at all displeasing: The biggest surprise is that he still has a fairly strong hint of a Kentucky accent, not the “standard American” midwest accent most performers have (nor even a southern country accent). Another difference is that he’s all smiles all the time, not at all mysterious in his demeanor (plus he currently has his hair cut short, very different from in the photos). His act itself is actually rather jokey, and the dramatic flair (such as the masked stranger who appears from time to time) seems too goofy to take seriously. There’s also a lot more skin in the show (in the form of seven scantily-clad women) than I’d expected from a show which seems targeted at families. Overall quite different then I’d been expecting.

But the show is basically a lot of fun: I have some vague understandings of how sleight-of-hand works (I’m far from being an expert, but I’m not entirely clueless), but some of his illusions are truly impressive. We were able to get second-row seats so we got a good view of everything, and I don’t have a first idea how many of his tricks work. And that’s not a bad thing. So if you enjoy magic shows, you ought to enjoy seeing Burton.

Sunday morning we had brunch at the Café Bellagio, and then went to check out the new property on the strip: City Center, a 5-hotel project which reportedly cost in the vicinity of $11 billion (with a ‘B’) dollars to build. We walked through some pieces of it, but mostly went and gambled at the Aria, the only hotel of the five which has a casino, including a poker room. The thing is certainly a step forward in elegance and extravagance in Vegas hotels, but – it’s still a Vegas hotel, and making a bigger, posher one is just no longer impressive in and of itself.

Sunday was also the day of the NFL championship games. While we were at the Aria, the Jets/Colts game was on, and it was amusing to hear the cheers from the bar nearby while playing poker: Jets fans were much louder (and therefore probably more numerous) than Colts fans, and their TVs were showing the game a few seconds earlier than ours were, so we could tell when a big play happened based on how loud the cheers were. Since I always root against New York sports teams, I was happy to see the Jets lose. Despite being a Patriots fan, I don’t have any problems rooting for the Colts; the teams have been big rivals in this decade, but it’s hard to root against Peyton Manning, who I think is clearly the best quarterback of his generation.

Later in the afternoon we gambled at the Flamingo, during which time the Saints/Vikings game was on. At one point I took a bathroom break and passed a bar with 5 people sitting at it, all wearing Vikings jerseys. Vikings fans seemed to greatly outnumber Saints fans, and there were plenty of Packers fans wearing their Favre jerseys, too. I was rooting a little more for the Saints, since I went to college in New Orleans, but seeing Favre get to another Super Bowl would have been fine, too. But it wasn’t to be for Favre, as the Vikings turned the ball over 5 times – including Favre’s last-minute interception throw in the 4th quarter – and the Saints won it in overtime. The teams did hit the over on the total score of 53.5, though, and the Super Bowl had an over/under of 56.5 when we left Vegas, so it may be an exciting game.

We finished the evening with our annual meal at Bally’s Steakhouse, which was delicious as always. The after-dinner coffee with kahlua and grand marnier was excellent, too!

Our weekend at the gambling tables was not quite as much fun, though. We’ve almost entirely moved away from slot machines and video poker, to games which have less of a house edge, or in my case, no house edge, at the poker tables. Debbi mostly plays Pai Gow Poker, where the house still has an edge, but you can play for a long time and often break even. Our first day we played some Pai Gow together and Debbi won what I lost, and I lost a little more at those tables over the weekend. But at the poker tables themselves, I had a really rough weekend.

The first game I played was 2/4 limit at the MGM, which was a tight-passive game where I basically bleeded off chips over two hours. The next game, 3/6 limit at the Aria on Sunday, was a loose-aggressive game where I did not get very many good cards and lost over a full buy-in. Finally at the Flamingo on Sunday, the 2/4 limit game was good to me and I was able to recoup some of my losses. But Monday I finally tried the 1/2 no-limit game at the Flamingo, and got stacked twice, mostly I think through bad luck, but it overwhelmed my good luck. I finished the weekend with a break-even session of 2/4 back at the MGM.

A few memorable hands:

  • In limit at the Flamingo, I got a “big blind special”, flopping a flush with J5h and getting paid off. I later flopped the nut flush with AKh and got paid there, too.
  • The first hand in which I got stacked in NL: I had about $110 in the small blind. After a few limpers, I raised to $10 with pocket Queens. The big blind reraised to $20. The limpers folded, and I raised to $50. The big blind called. So there’s about $105 in the pot, and I have about $60 left. The flop is AA6, and I go all-in. The big blind calls and shows Kings. The final board is AA6-6-A, so even if a queen had come, the 3 aces would have counterfeited my full house. The big blind was a guy from Russia who didn’t speak English (his English seemed limited to “I don’t speak English”), but he crushed the table, going on a tremendous run and winning about $500 in a little over an hour. In a later hand, I managed to get out from under his turned nut flush (which he showed) when I folded my pocket Tens on a Jack-high board.
  • The other hand had me on the button with about $75 in my stack. After 4 limpers, I raised to $12 with pocket Aces. The small blind called, and the big blind and limpers folded (pot $34). The flop is KQ9r, and the small blind bets $10. I go all-in for my last $63, and she calls. She shows K9 for two pair. I hit my 5-outer on the turn, a Queen, and she rivers her 4-outer, a King, and I lose. Yes, she was sitting in the same seat as the guy who stacked me the first time.

It’s not clear that I could have gotten away from either of the big hands, although on reflection I should have played the first hand more carefully, since AK and AQ were within his range (even though I hadn’t been at the table long enough to get a read on anyone) and obviously crush me on an AA7 board. Then again, with him having Kings, AK, AQ and AA were within my range so I arguably had some fold equity. I dunno.

All told this was I think my worst showing at the tables in Vegas I’ve ever had, which was pretty demoralizing since I thought I’d been getting better over the last couple of years. But other than one encouraging session, it was almost entirely disappointing. Just bad luck, or so I have some serious work to do to improve my game to take on even the low-stakes tables? I’m not sure.

We flew out Tuesday afternoon. It was still a fun trip, but the losing part did color it unfavorably to some degree. I’m sure we’ll go back next year (if anything, because Debbi wants to go see Garth Brooks), but it might take most of that time to work back my enthusiasm for the trip. At least for the gambling part.

What “Driving Carefully in the Rain” Means to Me

Here’s what I do when driving in bad weather like this week’s rainstorms:

  • Drop my usual speed 10-15 MPH, maybe more if conditions are really bad.
  • Don’t use cruise control.
  • Leave more space between me and the car in front of me. Be prepared to slow down if someone merges between us.
  • Turn on my headlights.
  • Keep an eye out for standing water on the road. Try to avoid large puddles if possible, slow down (but not too quickly) if not.
  • Stay in the rightmost lane if I’m one of the slower cars on the road.

I actually always drive with my lights on, day and night, good weather and bad. This is because years ago our local traffic newspaper columnist Mr. Roadshow had columns which noted two things: First, that driving with your lights on all the time runs only about $3 per year (probably all the way up to $6 with higher gas prices), and second, a trucker who said he found it much easier to see cars on the road in all conditions because nothing else really looks like a car headlight. I decided if it made it easier for truckers to see me, then it’s well worth the minuscule cost.

Epic Rainstorm

The Bay Area is having an epic series of rainstorms this week, with the heaviest downfall hitting today. While we had thunder Tuesday morning (and our DSL had gone out, though rebooting the modem fixed it), it’s just been pouring, pouring, pouring this morning. When I got up this morning, Blackjack was hiding in the closet. He’s come out and been social this morning, but he doesn’t like this weather. I think this is the most rain we’ve gotten in such a short span of time since I moved here. (I wasn’t here for the El Niño storms and mudslides of the 90s.)

Naturally there have been plenty of traffic accidents, including this impressive story about three men pulling an unconscious driver out of his burning car.

I’ve been delayed getting out this morning by spending time trying to improve the drainage routes in my back yard, since I noticed there was half an inch of standing water on my patio. The thing just wasn’t built for this amount of rain. I unclogged the main artery for the patio to drain, which routes the water into my pond. The pond is a pretty good place to send the rain, since it’s away from the building, and I can also grab a bucket and bail it if necessary. I bailed 10 bucketfuls (20 gallons, maybe?) into the sink this morning, to provide some more space for the water. Perhaps I should invest in 50 feet of hose to use the pond’s pup to just pump the water steadily out of the pond and into the sink. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

The rain’s picking up again, and it’s time for me to head out. I’ll drive carefully, you can bet on that.

Birthday Party

The birthday party last night went off without a hitch. In fact, it might have been the best one I’ve thrown. I’m not quite sure why, but everyone who came stayed until the end, and everyone was talking with everyone else, which seems like a sure sign of a good party. A little oddly, everyone suddenly decided to leave around 10:30 (the party started at 7:00) – it’s only odd because literally everyone left at the same time (save for a couple of folks who left slightly earlier).

Shortly before the party Debbi and I debated who would be the first to show up. I put my proverbial money on Josh, who’s usually pretty punctual, but I should have put my money on Chris, who only lives a block away and who arrived just a little after 7! I think Josh was fourth.

I always tell people they don’t need to bring gifts to my party, but Chris brought one anyway – sort of. He gave me five packs of arguably the worst Magic expansion ever made, Homelands. He said he’ll have won if any of the cards ever show up in my decks at his Monday night Magic sessions. There were actually a couple of not-too-sucky cards in the packs (Abbey Gargoyles could be useful in our metagame), but yeah, it was a pretty weak set of cards. I told him I might be more likely to put the note he included with the packs in one of my decks!

I don’t throw many parties – pretty much just my birthday party once a year – and I always worry that we’ll try to cram too many people into our relatively-little house. There are always a few people I’d like to invite but I’m wary of going overboard (there are also always a few people I don’t think of until the day of the party, so my apologies if I left you out!). In fact, we managed to fill all our chairs and still have a few people standing or sitting on the floor, but we weren’t quite packed together, which was good. Getting through the living room without stepping on someone was a feat, though. I believe we had 13 people show up, plus me and Debbi.

As usual I picked up cakes from the Prolific Oven, and ice cream from Rick’s, and it all went over well. Rick’s is one of the best-kept-secrets in the south bay, it often seems, and I’m always happy to introduce new people to their yummy treats.

The cats retreated upstairs when the first people showed up, as usual, but three of them came downstairs to check people out. Newton in particular examined everyone’s shoes, getting a good sniff since they were all laid out in front of the hall closet. Jefferson needed a little encouragement to come down, but eventually sat and watched from the stairs. Blackjack is becoming our social cat, as he made the rounds several times.

My friend Cliff showed up about 10 minutes after the party ended – he’d had another commitment not too far from us, but it didn’t wrap up until after we did. But he hung out for a bit and we caught up on his holiday adventures and vice versa.

All-in-all, a very fun party.

Today we had a quiet day mostly at home, although I did go out to get my hair cut. Debbi kind of wanted to go out and do something, mainly because although she feels okay she’s dealing with an annoying cough and she’s just plain tired of being sick. After our very busy weekend last weekend, I was happy to have a day at home, and she didn’t push very hard since it’s my birthday weekend. We watched football, did some reading, and I came upstairs to pay bills and build some new Magic decks this evening. 🙂

This has been a pretty low key birthday, but I actually feel really good about it. It’s been a fun weekend all around, except maybe for the complex fire alarm we had to deal with yesterday (but it turned out to be nothing). I hope next year’s is just as good!

Forty-One

Age 41 doesn’t feel very different from the day before age 41, other than that my birthday falls on a weekend this year. None of the angst that accompanied turning forty (not that I was crying in my beer, you understand). The most awkward thing about 41 is coming up with a witty title for the Evite invitation for my party tonight; I expect next year will be easier.

Other than preparing for the party, today will be a pretty normal day. I actually have a couple of chores to work on outside today, because I want to get them done (or at least make some headway) before the rains set in tomorrow (we’re expected to get 8 inches of rain in the next week). Debbi baked scones (from Iveta) for me this morning, and I talked to my Dad for 45 minutes. But, well, for the most part birthdays aren’t very different from other days, at least, not at my age.

And that’s fine.

A Strange Week

This has been a strange week.

For one thing, I learned this week that one of my friends at work has decided to leave, another decided to get married – today (he told us yesterday and invited some of us to dinner to celebrate), and a third is expecting a child. Quite a bit of change for the first week of the new year!

In addition to that, I was home from work sick on Tuesday. I woke up with a queasy stomach and just couldn’t get going. Once I realized I didn’t feel up to driving, I decided to call it in. I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t recovered enough from my cold from last week to have been up playing Magic ’til 11 on Monday, or if it was just flaring up again. On further reflection, I think I might have gotten some low-grade food poisoning, or otherwise just ate something that didn’t agree with me and it just laid me low for a day. Wednesday, after a good night’s sleep, I felt much better.

But then at my friend’s bachelor dinner last night I ate too much, and this morning I still felt full, so I skipped breakfast. Bad idea; I was zoned out all morning, and even after lunch I was pretty sleepy for the afternoon until I got coffee, after which I felt much better. Hard to believe I used to never eat breakfast in the morning, and now I feel like I should never skip it. Which I probably shouldn’t.

On the one hand, I feel like this week deserves a do-over. On the other hand, illness aside, it hasn’t been a bad week. I even kicked a little ass at Magic on Monday!

Ringing In The New

2010 started about as poorly as 2009 ended, with me suffering from this nasty cold. I thought I felt better when I woke up, but I quickly went downhill and slept for a couple of hours a little after noon. I’ve spent most of the day on the couch, alternately half-dozing and finishing John Scalzi’s Zoe’s Tale.

Debbi – who’s still getting over he own colds – has been very nice in taking care of me, making me tea and bringing me things to eat. IF I sound like a wuss, well, I rather feel like one, but then I try to get up and it takes me a couple of minutes to motivate myself, and then I feel a little dizzy as I walk around. So yeah, I’m pretty sick.

What I hate the most about being this sick is that I just can’t do very much. I can’t clean up the leaves in the back yard, I can’t do more cleaning of the study, or measure the closet for new shelving, or even help much around the house. It feels like a wasted day – doubly annoying since it’s on my holiday break! But, I guess these things happen.

I’m feeling better tonight than I was earlier today, and definitely better than last night, when I was totally zoned. So that’s something. It’s a crappy way to kick off the year, though.