In a fitting end to my month of recruiting travel I once again found myself paying for bud lights at the horseshoe outside chicago. the place was packed, much busier than last time I was there. we had a hard time getting in to a table, but eventually got settled in to a $15 craps table. Once again I drew the amateur night table. the worst part was that it was the same dealer as last time. If you can’t start to grasp craps dealing after 160 hrs of working the table; it’s time to start looking into other career options.

this was easily the slowest game of craps I’ve ever played, but much like sitting in traffic, I was sure that if I tried to move to another table I would have to wait another half hour for a table that probably had dealers of comperable quality.

Oh and another aside: attention craps players: fuck you and all of your complicated prop/hop bets. Seriously, if you can’t figure out what you should be paid, quit using that fucking strategy. Yes, the dealers are slow, but you are making the problem worse when five of you are only making prop bets. I fucking hate all of you.

And one more thing. If your pre-roll ritual takes a long time, it better fucking stay on the table.

I love gambling.

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it has been a long time since I went to a new casino. last month I got a random phone call from Heather, where she explained that Harrah’s was opening a new (remodeled, I believe) Horseshoe near Chicago. I was jealous, and she knew I would be, hence the random phone call.

I had the oppotunity to go a couple last week and I can’t say I was dissapointed. The casino itself is Nice. I have only been to the Hollywood in Auraura previously and this place definitely blows it away. The worst thing about the casino was the fact that you have to pay for drinks, but I’m quickly becming accustomed to it with other indian casinos. It still sucks though.

Both nights I played I stuck with craps, for better or worse. The minimums were decent ($10 = nice) and I’m not sure what the caps was on odds, but I never exceeded it. My first night was marred by what were probably the worst craps dealers I have ever played with. We are talking worse than Resorts in AC.

The second night when I caught up with Heather we had a much better table, though the minimums were up to $15. We had an awesome exchange with some drunks kids that were at the table with us. I finally got to use my extensive knowledge of “Don’t tell mom, the babysitter is dead”. I knew that would come in handy at some point.

All in all the casino experience was good. I will definitely be visiting again next time I go to Chicago; and who knows, I might even play in their fantastic looking poker room.

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And there’s proof. That’s right, last place of the winners is me (avoque). Overall I think I played pretty well. I only made a bad play once when I raised pre-flop with QJs and had someone push all-in behind me. It was probably too many chips to be calling and I was dominated by pocket kings so there was little hope for me.

For my bustout hand I pushed with a little more than 5 BBs with AKo in the big blind. Someone had pushed in front of me with K9s. Of course the 9 hits on the flop. I was sure I was going to get bubble boy honors, but slipped into the money.

AC for the pre-birthday weekend. There’s actually a chance I’ll play some poker while I’m there (if I can get away from the craps tables, that is.). Who hops the fives?? THIS GUY, that’s who.

It’s been almost a week since my surgery and I’m finally starting to get somewhat back to normal. The good news is that my doctor was right when he said I should expect to be walking within a couple days. He was totally wrong about my ability to get back to work though. I can still barely sit up for a couple hours before my knee starts to swell and become really annoying.

The surgery itself went swimmingly. Though there were some annoyances at the hospital (such as having the IV put in my hand instead of my arm), it wasn’t a bad experience. I managed to get home without incident. Something strange happened when I was walking back in to my building though. A doctor that was moving in to the building saw me, took one look at my bandage and knew the doctor that had performed the surgery. Turns out he was a Fellow for my doctor last year; he could tell my surgeon just by the way he wrapped my knee after the surgery. Crazy. And New York is how big?

The procedure itself turned out to be different than expected. I definitely had a bonespur that needed to be shaved off from the screw holding my new ACL in place; but my doctor was convinced my meniscus repair from the first surgery didn’t work and I was going to need to have it removed. Once he got in there, he realized that the meniscus repair was fine, but I somehow managed to tear my meniscus again. That’s right, between the first surgery (seven months ago, to be exact) and now. That explains the constant knee pain I’ve had since February (which is probably when I tore it).

The past week has gone by painfully slowly. I haven’t been able to concentrate enough to get anything useful done. I’ve just been laying around watching the same movies over and over again. That and playing GTA IV; but at this point, I have to admit, I’m starting to get tired of picking up hookers and killing them. Who knew that day would ever come?

Oh yeah, and the knee:

Who knows what the fuck that surgical resident used to write his initials on my knee, but that shit is not coming off. I’m an inch away from trying to bleach it off; and if that doesn’t work, I’ll cut it out like that guy with the tattoo on Six Feet Under.

Almost the same as the first surgery (they even used the same entry points):

That’s right, I’m having surgery again tomorrow. Hopefully this time it won’t fucking hurt all the time.

Because she’s thoughtful enough to call me before defacing the newest tables at Barfly’s.

Oh yes, I will be there later. Indeed.

Time flies. That’s right, it has been two years since I moved to New York. Read last year’s review if you really need to kill time. But here it is:

• Sleeping at the airport sucks
• Music Hall of WIlliamsburg is the best music venue in NYC, even if it is in Brooklyn
• An empty subway car during rush hour is a trap. A homeless guy is smelling it up.
• Bay Ridge yo.
• Mama Mexico is the best Mexican food I’ve had in Manhattan
• New York is not handicap accessible.
• Everything here is under construction.
• It still smells here all the time.
• Any vacation destination that is relatively easy to get to from NY will be completely overrun with people from Long Island and their accents.
• The Borgata will charge you for another night stay if you are still in your room after 3pm.
• I need more waterproof shoes. Still.
• Calling someone a tourist here is equivalent to calling someone a gringo in Mexico.
• The doorman knows all your secrets and tells them to me.

What’s the plan for this year? Oddly enough I don’t have one. I’m having surgery again at the end of the month to try to fix my knee for good, but other than that no plans. I guess everyone got married up last year. So no crazy multiple wedding trips planned for this year. Likely Austin for my birthday and possibly ACLFest. Maybe Vegas again? Who knows….

I’m still exhausted from the PR trip and it has been four days. There is only one solution for this problem - AC. Thank goodness Heather is in town this weekend.

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The reality that I’m never going to recover all the software that was installed on my old hard drive is finally starting to set in. Now I have to start installing everything again. Things I will be really pissed off when I need them and realize that I don’t have them anymore (which could be anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 years from now):

• Microsoft Word
• Visual C++
• CompareIt!
• SynchronizeIt!

Top priority installations:

• McAfee - required for work
• Soulseek - I’m falling behind on my music
• iTunes - I still fucking hate Apple, but I was going crazy with the same music for the past month.
• IE7 and Firefox - In that order, don’t believe the hype.
• Winamp - I hate that they have a new version every three days, but I’d still rather use it than use iTunes more.

In happier news, I think I finally have a successful mechanism for posting from my phone. Even if it does throw in that annoying advertisement.

my computer is still fucked, but so I am trying to get moblogsp to work for me so I can just start posting from my phone. I hope this works.

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