One of our daycare providers, Chris, is an avid poker player and has been after me to join them in their game. They usually play the kind that is on TV a lot recently called No-Limit Texas Hold'em. I've never played really outside a few hands with Elena so I was prepared to just go and lose my money.
I called Chris about meeting and he said to come to his house around 7:30. I got there and met up with him and two of his friends. We drove to another guys house to play. They asked me if I had ever played before and I said that I've seen it on TV and their eyes lighted up. But for a $10 buy in I wasn't going to lose much.
They handed out lots of colored chips and we started playing. It took me a while to figure out how the turns went around the table because it isn't necessarily the person to the left of the dealer who starts. Plus the forced bets were a bit odd for me.
I think it's called beginner's luck because I smacked the five other guys around and won the first tournament. Some of my hole cards were a pair of aces that took one guy out. A pair of kings took two other guys out and then I outdrew the last guy to win.
The second tournament we played I stayed back a bit and let some other guys take each other out then was able to take it to two players when I flopped a straight. I had a big chip lead and was punishing the remaining guy but heads up anything can happen and it did. He doubled up a few times on me on 50/50 hands and then he was way out front. I went all in with a pair of twos and he took me out when the flop paired him up with eights. I was bummed about that loss because I was way out front but that's poker.
The third tournament I lasted three hands when I tried to bluff Chris, the chip leader, into folding a big pot but he stayed in and took my money. Doh.
So -$10 to enter, +$60 to win, -$10 2nd tournie, -$10 third tournie sends me home +$30. It was a lot of fun. Time to go on tour on the World Series of Poker with $10k buy-ins.
I had a store credit bonus that I spent a good amount on a pressure washer. It is an electric one so not very powerful but all we want it for is to wash off the deck or the car. I tried it out and it worked ok but nothing special. I was a bit disappointed in it but I'll try it out again. Maybe my expectations were a bit high.
It is still fun to use though.
Olivia and I had fun this morning opening up a coconut. I used a cordless drill to make holes to get the milk out. I poured it into two glasses for each of us. She gamely tried a sip but that was it. To crack it I drug out my vice and crushed it until it cracked into a bunch of pieces. I knifed off some for the girl and she chewed on it but then spit it out. I carved away at the meat and put it in a bowl. Then Olivia would sneak her hand in there and fish out a sliver. She would then gnaw at it for a while and spit it out. Goofy girl. I ate my fill of it and had to toss the rest.
Travis and Michelle invited us to their Forest's b-day party tonight. We also met their new daughter Amara from Ethiopia. They spent two weeks over there getting to know her and all. She is 21 months old and likes to smile. At their house they had a couple of small pools out for the kids to play in. They had what looked like a long air-mattress that sprayed small streams of water on itself with a shallow pool on one end. I had fun tossing the kids through it.
Olivia likes to point at things she knows and verbalize them sometimes quite loudly. She recently learned what a truck was but unfortunately pronounces it with an "f".
