Jen rules. I was the last one out of the house this morning, and there sat a lunch all neatly packed for me.

Subtle, yet GOOD hint that I shouldnt eat out so much

Love you baby. Thanks!

So last night I got into a 10,000 player freeroll poker tournament at Pokerstars. It’s a satellite tourney to a $1k freeroll next Sunday. I had just hoped to do well, increase my skills, play tourneys better after reading a little of Phil Gordons LITTLE GREEN BOOK. I’m only into the book 30 pages, but already its made me more wiser on what to play/ when to play /why to play, etc. A few HOURS (yes hours) into the tournament, I’m completely holding my own. 9,000 players already gone, ok I’m in the top 10%, not bad. Did I mention only the top 27 get the satellite tournament ticket? More pressure, but I play on. Down to 250…. down to 100, now 65… Down to 65 and it gets INTENSE. In the 50′s… and you realize you’re at the top .006 percent of the players. NUTS. K, down in the FORTY’S now. Everyone starts playing really tight so that they can make the cut of 27. Now is when Phil Gordons book pays dividends. "If you’re in position, near the bubble/money line, get aggressive" I’m at about 250k chips about that place, and get super aggressive. When it gets that low, the tables play hand for hand, and I have the chance to bring myself right into the 27 w/ knocking out a short stack. I have an Ace, they’re blinded ALL-IN, I raise to bump out other players, and BAM, Ace hits. 28th player, eliminated.. and I did it! w00t, I’m in… top 27. With all that aggressive play, I’m actually in the top five in chips….10,000 players, top FIVE…. So a few guys go crazy… ALL IN here, ALL IN there… down to ten. Now we’re at the FINAL table. The top .001% of the players, all good. I beat a few, a few drop by others… now down to three. Tension is KILLING me at this point.

I’m at $12 million chips, player 2, $2 million, player 3, $1 million. my hand. pocket 6′s. Pocket pairs in 3 player, I’m going for it. I shove ALL IN. Two callers. UH OH. player 2, pocket ACES… ouch, player 3, pocket 2′s… pallatable at least. So I figure I’m losing.. but not out. Flop comes. K68, all spades. TRIPSSSSSSSSS….. and nobody has spades. Next 2 cards, I truthfully dont even remember I was so estatic.

I just won a tournament of 10,000 players. Insanity. Best poker moment *ever*

And just think, next Sunday is the satellite. Wish me luck

So yeah, I commute 500 miles/week.  Being on the expressway that much, you see a lot of crazy stuff.

The past 6 months I’ve had not 1, 2, but THREE trucks blow out tires next to me, a car next to me got rear-ended at about 40mph, and today, a semi truck ran against a guardrail in front of me for about 5 seconds. Dodging sparks/ raining rubber… so much fun.

Happy Tuesday morning!

So the past 2 months or so I’ve been playing online poker from the client at Pokerstars.net

It’s pretty cool. You get like $1000-2000 in play money, and then you can find tables for anything from No-Limit Texas Holdem, Omaha, etc. There are a few other poker games that I’m unfamiliar with, so I steer clear of them. After poker got big in the past few years, I’ve followed it more on tv, and played it any opportunity I could. I’ve played a few home games with good results, and one time at the boats, also, good results. But this whole online poker craze thing was a lot bigger than I thought it was.

When you watch the World Series of Poker on tv, you always see the ads for it, Play for free this, that. I’ve always found the play for free stuff to be scams, starting with ok, give us your credit card # for verification of your age, etc, but truth be told, Pokerstars is legit. Its completely free, no credit card verification, etc. Never even had to enter one to get an account. Don’t get me wrong, they have another client on which you can play for $, but of course that’s illegal in the U.S. and nobody would do that haha. But I’m content just playing a few hours here/there when I get the chance, and I feel my game is improving too. I’ve entered 5 of their tournaments they call ‘freeroll’, which is just that, free tournaments for fake chips, just to see how you match up w/ other players. Granted this is to give you the gambling bug and get you to download their client on which you can play for cash, but the play alone is satisfying my poker bug. Anyway, the last 5 tournaments went like this. Tournament 1, I took a bad beat IMMEDIATELY and got bounced. Tournament 2 & 3 I got deep into the field and just missed placing. Tournament 4, I played an Omaha tournament, placed 107 of 1750, ‘cashed’. Last night, a No-Limit Texas Hold-em tournament, 5,000 entries.. yes, 5000, I placed 223rd, finishing ‘in the chips’ Although its play $, its still good to know my game is improving as I play more. From starting w/ $2000 chips a few months back, I’m around $24000 chips now. If ONLY that was real $. Dang

So, a part of the reason we moved out of our last house, every weekend was a Home Depot weekend. There was CONSTANTLY something to fix, replace, etc, and with both of us working Mon-Fri, the weekends were our only option.

Now we’re in a new house, and I figured all that weekend warrior stuff was done. Think again. I guess you’re never actually done with your house. Last week was landscaping, this week, my oh so new favorite, DRYWALL. Man does drywalling suckkkkkkkkk. Wielding 90# sheets of gypsum, not exactly my idea of a fun weekend. But, it needed to get done. When our builder built our house, by code, they only have to drywall the walls that back to the interior of the house, and sure enough, that’s all they did. Hell, they didn’t even have an option to finish the garage at the time, otherwise I might have considered it. That left us w/ about 30 feet of undrywalled walls.  A few months ago we insulated the openings between the studs, and said later we’d come back w/ drywall.

That later happened to be yesterday. I woke up, and for some reason was feeling really ambitious, which as a sidenote, if you’re needing to do some drywall, do it on one of those days you do feel REALLY ambitious otherwise you’ll never make it. That’s some hard work. Anyway, we made our trek to pick up the drywall, brought it home and dropped it in the middle of the garage. From there we did any parts that would take full sheets, leaving the custom sections till the end. The part that really sucks is cutting. Hanging/securing the drywall to the wall isn’t all the difficult, but any cuts are a pain to say the least. Ok, so about 6 1/2 hours later, the drywall is cut/pieced/hung. It gives SUCH a different look to the garage from studs/insulation. Looks great.

Now wait, you mean I’m not done. We have to tape/mud/sand too? WTF

Well, knowing there is more work coming stinks, but there is NO WAY I would have been able to get this far w/o the help of Jen. Little did she know when I said I was gonna drywall today that it would involve her. Drywall is a two person operation, and she was soooooooooooo much help. Thanks baby. I know you’re sore too, but the rest I’ll finish and won’t bother you anymore, I promise!

I should have taken a picture of us last night. We were head to toe white from all the drywall dust. Once I get the taping/mudding underway, maybe I’ll take a few pictures.

It was definitely a learning experience for us. Luckily its a garage and I wasn’t too concerned about how it turned out. I think I’ll stick to computers though, drywalling isn’t for me!

So my daily commute consists of 80 miles of highway driving. During that time I obviously am near trucks a good portion of that time.

For the THIRD time in less than 6 months, I have had a semi blow out a tire next to me on the expressway.

Luckily today’s incident the trucks tire that blew was facing the other direction and didn’t destroy my car. But the other two times I’ve had to do evasive maneuvers to not either have the blown out tires bounce off my hood or have me drive over it.

The expressway can be a scary place, and luckily so far I’m still accident free!

So the Mercedes was nice, but stuff was just insanely expensive to fix if it broke. We had a top of the line warranty, which was up very shortly, so it was time to cut our ties with it and get something that:

1) doesn’t take premium gas

2) is more reliable

3) has another good warranty

What’s weird is Jen and I really weren’t actively looking for a new car. The thought has been tossed around after that last round of Mercedes repairs, but that’s as far as we got. Last Friday we were going out to dinner w/ the in-laws, and on the way to the restaurant, we were stopping at the Toyota dealer to pick up the new car they had just bought. While they were off signing paperwork, Jen and I took a stroll around the lot. We saw an AWESOME fully loaded double-cab Tundra. Such an awesome truck, but at about 14-18mpg, not the best option for the 2 of us that drive 800 miles a week together! So looking at Jen’s parents car, the Camry….. hmm, nice ride, and it gets what, 30+mpg… hey now! Maybe we’ll look a little harder.

So, loving the Internet as much as I do, I did my research. I searched ALL Toyota dealers w/in a 50 mile range for the car that would fit our needs (and my legs), and the 2007 Camry did. Having never driven one, I got to the dealer about 30 mins before Jen, and took a 4 cylinder and a V6 one for a ride. Both very nice cars, but you can’t beat a 268HP V6 in a passenger car. And normally when you drop a larger V6 in a car, you can just cut the mpg by about 20% over the 4 cylinder. Not so on this one. Went from 33mpg/highway to 31mpg/highway with that upgrade, making it a MUCH better option than a 16mpg Tundra for either of us.

After crunching the numbers, it’s really not going to be that much more a month for us. What we’re paying more for in monthly payment, we’ll save in gas/repairs, so it’s near a wash for us, and now we have 2 cars that are only a year/two old.

I have to admit. I’ve always been a GM man, and the Mercedes was our first foray into foreign cars. But after having driven both the Tundra and Camry, they’re both really nice cars! And if anybody is looking for a Toyota, the guy we dealt with, Dave Sosnowski @ David Bruce in Bourbonnais, IL (there’s a free plug for you Dave, do I get the next 3 oil changes free????) was a great salesman. No BS, no haggling, and any question we had, he had an answer for. The overall experience was great, and oh yeah, we have a new car out of the deal too! I was prepared for the whole "this is what you paid for the car, I’ll give you $300 over that!" argument, but it basically went down- Dave: here is what we paid for the car, here is what you pay, here is MSRP, sound good? I’m used to the whole GM deal "now wait, I KNOW that LS package is $1500, why are you charging $2000, etc’  and sit at the dealer for 5 hours haggling. This was 1- me driving the car, 2- getting the price and options for warranty 3- deciding yes/no 4- leaving with a smile

Oh by the way, click -here- for a picture of the new car! Right before it made its maiden 50 mile voyage to work (which by the way, it rode way better than the Mercedes, and had more pick-up to boot)

So every 17 years we get these bugs around here called cicadas

they’re insanely loud, big, ugly, and FEARLESS. they fly around aimlessly for about 2 months, only staying alive long enough to make your daily commute hell.

They haven’t been around my house too much, but on my way to/from work, they’re everywhere.

The whole fearless part comes in that I think they actually AIM at you. When driving to pickup my lunch, I had my drivers side window open, and BAM, I get hit in the NECK by one. and they’re not small. really gets your attention. they’ll be gone soon, and we wont see them again till I’m almost 50 years old!

good riddens you beady-eyed sob’s!

[Listening to: Seventeen - Winger]

So yesterday was Jen and mine’s 2 year anniversary. we’ve been together just about 5 years now, but as husband and wife, 2.

These 2 years have FLOWN by. Seriously. I can still remember walking around Hawaii on our honeymoon almost like it was yesterday!

To my lovely wife, thanks for being so awesome. I couldnt write how much you rule w/o having to sit here for 10 hours listing all the ways why. You should know by now how much you mean to me. Sometimes I’m not the best at showing it, but I love you MADLY!!!

Just think at where we are from just even our last anniversary. One year older, new house, new jobs/locations, diff car, etc.

2 years down, 48 to go? (oh man, I’ll be 80 and drooling!)

Love you baby! Happy Anniversary