Poker, I Hardly Know Her

Another day, another dollar. I'm still not yet hooked up at home, and with me having off from work this past weekend, I wasn't able to make any postings. Considering what I have posted of late, this may or may not mean anything.

My weekend off revolved basically around one poker game taken to extremes. I was working until Midnight on Friday, and even though I could have gone out afterward since Saturday was my day, I didn't. I came home, plowed through some movies (Slasher and Yes Men were both OK. Not great, not terrible.) and hit the hay. Saturday morning I was awoken by a friend who needed some IPOD help, and by help I mean wanted to pillage my downloaded/upload music. It was great spending a few hours with Kate, even if she was there under false pretenses (kidding) but my session of moving tons of music from Itunes to her IPOD wore me out and I wind up taking a nap instead of seeing movie or leaving the house.

Saturday night was the big Poker game anyway, and I would need my rest. We assembled, all 6 of us, over at Gabe's house. Gabe was in charge of his 1 year old son Max while his wife was out of town and decided the best thing he could do was to make a ton of food, buy a shit load of beer and have a group of guys over for poker. Father of year you say? Well, you ain't heard nothing yet. So the game gets under way at about 9 PM, by about 10 PM one guy is down $70 and about to head out to Wawa to tap MAC for more cash. Yikes. I was up early and then rode a steady wave for the next 5 hours. When 4:30 AM rolled around, all the Wild Turkey and Boddingtons mixed with my allergy meds made me sluggish and I curled up on the couch in the next room leaving the remaining 4 players to continue on. (The guy down $70 in an hour did go to MAC, but dropped another $20 I think and then evolved into strictly downing shots of bourbon to take away the pain.) After an attempt was made to write all over my face, ah drunk shenanigans, I decided to seek refuge in a bed upstairs knowing that at some point everyone would need to crash and I should mark my territory on a bed before things got nuts. Imagine my surprise when at 7:30 AM I here Gabe's kid screaming in his crib in the room next to the one I wound up in. I did my best to block him out and did so successfully for about an hour at which point my instincts as an older brother who has reared a ton of kids in my day took over and I decided to see what was going on. I think baby Max was not relieved at the site of me coming to his rescue, but he is 1 so there was much fight he could put up. Plus an hour of straight crying must have worn him out even with a long night's sleep under his belt. When I came down stairs searching for Daddy I was shocked to see almost all of the guys still drinking and playing cards. It's 8:30 AM Sunday morning and these dudes are still at it. Amazing. My boy Weasel pulled his usual disappearing act in the early AM, but otherwise everyone was right where I left them. Gabe being intoxicated and sleepless were going to make the rest of the day a long one now that his kid was awake. It was at that moment that I thought to myself...thank god for rubbers. In any case, I rounded up my car pool mates Kevin and Shoe and headed out at 10 AM to go home and drop. Sunday was a wash as a result. I had Kevin crashed on my couch until about 7 PM, and by then I was tired of sleeping/lounging but not feeling quite ready to do much of anything else. So there you have it, one poker game controls my weekend. I guess I should be thankful that I only lost about $20. And woke up before my face was covered in marker.

As an addendum to this story I found out that Shoe left his coat with his keys in it at Gabe's house and when I dropped him off on Sunday morning he had to kick in his front door. Being completely shit faced, he wasn't really up for dealing with the cops who mistook him for a robber and drew guns on him when they showed up. I guess his story is probably more interesting...but I'm not him.