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Today was home inspection. I went through and took "a bunch of pictures":http://www.flickr.com/photos/feralboy/sets/246911/ to get some redecorating/home improvement ideas while we wait for closing.
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The prickly pear cactus in the front yard is just starting to flower.
* It's time for me to turn in my geek badge. Saturday morning I was futzing around on my work machine, which really is my primary machine nowadays because I'm lazy, installing the latest version of "Firefox":http://mozilla.org/, when right after it completed my screen went black. Alright... I waited for a few seconds, and then just figured I should do a hard shutdown. Upon rebooting, my machine wouldn't go back to the windows login screen. It would show the XP startup screen for a few seconds, then kick right back to the BIOS screen and start all over. Nothing I picked worked; Safe Mode, Last Known Good, etc. I started looking online for problems relating to startup and "mup.sys":http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/1082631480, which is the last line that would load before the reboot, and it sounded like it was more of a hardward issue. I took out one memory stick, and then the other. I even tried different slots, and to no avail. Figuring this was too important to screw up or try to do a rebuild on (and re-installing all that damn software, ick.) I brought it to Best Buy. Picked it back up yesterday, and it turns out that there were some corrupt sectors on the disk (head crash, maybe?). Fixed those, and now my machine is back to normal. All I would have had to do it pop in an XP disc to boot from, and try the repair routines, but I've tried that a few times and broken things enough to force a wipe and reformat, so I simply gave up and wussed out. * In the car I was listening to "Whad'ya know?":http://notmuch.com/ on NPR, which is one of my least favorite NPR shows, but it was on, so (shrug). It was the part of the show where he reads questions people have written down and gives his glib, unfunny answers. One was from a woman who wanted to know if she should be the one proposing to her boyfriend. Long story short, she was trying to use the peer pressure to goad him into saying yes. He sounded very un-thrilled, and then finally said yes. I would have probably done the same, and then screeched out of the parking lot and left her there for trying to put on so much public pressure. Show is "here":http://notmuch.com/Show/index.pl if you want to listen to the uncomfortable-ness.
* Poker continued to be good to me, and even with some ups and downs it was a +$500 weekend. I hit "another":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001479/ ~$250 hand (this time in just a straight $3/6 hand, to give you an idea of how much betting and raising was going on), this time in like a 7-way pot with pocket kings. I've tightened my live and online play up considerably lately. A-x suited in early position? Throw it away. K-10 offsuit early? Throw it away. So far it seems to be working out well.
* House inspection tomorrow. I'll be bringing my camera and taking a zillion pictures, first to give you all a better idea of what it looks like inside, and second so Kim and I can start coming up with a bit of a strategy on getting started on the fixing up. Her lease ends 3 weeks after we close, so we're hoping that we can at least get the flooring and painting in the bedroom done so as not to have to move furniture all around after we're already in. She's quite the ebay maven, so we're going to try and find "everything":http://search.ebay.com/pergo_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8 there and save some bucks.
Last night I headed over to the Diamond to while away the hours waiting for my sweetie to get back. While I was there I sat at what could be referred to as an "action" table; there were a bunch of maniacs raising and re-raising nearly every hand pre-flop. I hunkered down and waited for big hands, and of course none came, and I was soon whittled down from my original buy-in of $100 to about $60 or so. I was just getting ready to leave the next time the blinds get to me when there's a kill pot (a $6/12 hand). I'm under the gun and dealt AK offsuit. Figuring this is as good a hand as any to decide if the poker gods love me or hate me I raise it to $12. 5 callers (see what I mean about it being an action table?). Flop comes 2-3-2. SB checks, BB (who was a completely aggressive maniac who would bet anything and also happened to get lucky a lot) bet, and I called. Everyone called, and everyone is in. Pot is now already $90. I can't put the big blind on a 2, or even a 3, because he literally would bet or raise any 2 cards. Turn card is a beautiful, magical king. SB checks, BB bet, and now I raise ($24 raise at this point). We lose only one player and now the pot is $186. Someone is slow-playing a 2. I know it. Everyone else at the table knows it. We're just waiting to find out who. River is a 7. It's checked to me, I bet my last $9, get all but one caller, and we flip up. Other hands were K6o, pocket 5s, and the rest were mucked. So I got to take down that massive $260 pot! I actually raisied my arms up and did my best Homer Simpson "woo hoo!", which I'm not sure everyone else appreciated, but fuck 'em for being such maniacs. I stuck around for one more orbit or two, lost about $20, and decided to skedaddle while I was still in the black.
Moral of the story is: get your money in while you have the best of it. One big hand can make your whole night.
Kim left me yesterday to go with a friend to Nawleans for a few days, and as part of my boyfriendly duties I dropped her off at the Phoenix airport early yesterday evening. On the way back down I-10 I go right by the "Gila River Wild Horse Pass Casino":http://www.wingilariver.com/wildhorsepass.php, so I figured I'd stop in again. I had been there once before, and found very juicy and soft games, but didn't get any cards and left even after about an hour. This time went a little better, to say the least. I sat at an awesome $3/6 table, full of loose, passive and flat-out bad players. Perfect example was a hand which had 3 players at the showdown. There was 2 pairs on the board; 10s and 4s. Woman in the 8s turns over pocket deuces for 3 pair, and the other two players mucked their cards, and I saw the 9s throw away a king. Only the top two pairs would play, so all the woman really had was deuce high, so king high would have been the winner. Ooops, sometimes it's better to just let the dealer tell you what you have.
2nd hand I was in I was dealt 2 red kings, raised it up, got one caller and he folded to my flop bet. Ok, that was easy. No cards for awhile after that, but then I started getting some good hands; pocket 10s, then AQ which connected on the flop, followed by AJ which hit on the turn. In each case I had at least 3 or 4 callers to at least the turn, all of them apparently calling with nothing. In all those cases I would show my hand even without callers so they knew I was getting and playing good hands.
Pocket aces? Twice. Held up both times. Later in the game I had pocket kings again in the big blind, raised it with like 6 limpers, hit my set on the turn and pulled in a metric ton of chips. Had A-10 of spades, raised it and had the flop come with 3 spades. I even had a string of kill pots (ie. $6/12 hands) that I was winning with some silly cards, like 6-4 offsuit that my free look gave me a pair of 4s on the flop which held up. Yes, I thought I was playing well and being selective with my starting hands, especially compared to the ninnies I was playing against, but a monkey could have played my cards and done well. I freely admit that I was lucky in a lot of spots, especially these 2 hands:
3-4 of clubs in the middle position. Against a table this loose and passive I can get away with limping in with this one, so along with like 5 other people we see a flop that's 9-7-x with 2 clubs. Woohoo! Early position bets, one caller then I raise. A halfway decent player across the table from me makes it 3 bets, so I call. Other players drop out. I figured he's got A-9, so with my flush draw I'm going to crush him 30% of the time. Next card is a 3, pairing me up and giving me some more outs. I check, he bets, and I call. River is another 3, giving me trips. Now I have to worry about him possibly having a set on the flop, which would give him a full house now. I bet, he just calls and shows 9-7 for a flopped 2 pair.
K-8 of spades in late position. 4 people limp, I limp and the button raises. Everyone calls, and the flop comes x-8-8. Fireworks are going off in my head, but there's 2 clubs on the board, so when everyone checks and the button bets, I raise when it gets around to me. I have to try and make it expensive for flush draws, so better to get their money in now while I'm still ahead. I bet the rest of the way, keeping most of the callers. River is a 3rd club, but luckily nobody had a flush. My trip 8s were good, and that was a crazy big pot.
End result? I was there for a little less than 5 hours, and walked away $300 to the good. That works out to a little more than 10 BB/hr, which is completely unsustainable, although I'd sure like to try and do it again. Rats, I should have taken a picture of my chip stack; I had made a full triangle of 20-chip stacks, 6 wide at the base. I'm thinking I should buy in for that much every time, because it got me lots of respect.
"Woman won't sue Wendy's for alleged finger":http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=4&u=/ap/wendy_s_finger
Walter Sobchak: You want a [finger]? I can get you a [finger], believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me.
The Dude: Yeah, but Walter...
Walter Sobchak: Hell, I can get you a [finger] by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Walter Sobchak: That's not her [finger], Dude. The Dude: Then whose [finger] is it, Walter? Walter Sobchak: How the fuck should I know?
Walter Sobchak: No, without a hostage, there is no ransom. That's what ransom is. Those are the fucking rules. Nihilist #2: His girlfriend gave up her [finger]! Nihilist #3: She though we'd be getting million dollars! Nihilist #2: Iss not fair! Walter Sobchak: Fair! WHO'S THE FUCKING NIHILIST HERE! WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF FUCKING CRYBABIES?
Walter Sobchak: Fucking dipshit with a nine [finger]ed woman.
Not that I haven't been riding, but just haven't been writing about it much lately. Yesterday I went after work for a lovely drive up to "Sabino Canyon and back":http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=10953+E+Tanque+Verde+Rd,Tucson,+AZ+85749&daddr=sabino+canyon+road+and+sunrise+drive,tucson,+az&hl=en. I got motivated to do that ride because it looked very pretty going up there on Sunday with my evil stepmom and Zachary, and as a bonus it was hilly without being Mt. Lemmon. The ride up was lovely, although I was almost out of water by the time I got to the "rec area":http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/forest/recreation/camping/sites/sabino.shtml. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when it gets even hotter; either put more bottle cages under my seat, or start carrying some full Nalgenes in my messenger bag. I'm just now getting over a cold I've had since my doctor's appointment last week, and all that stress wore my immune system down to a nub, and I immediately caught a cold from Kim, who had caught one from Zachary, who probably caught it from some germ-factory at his school. It felt good to ride, to be out sweating and having to work to keep cadence. I saw some bikers out, and I always feel vaguely silly that I'm riding some sort of middle ground between the guys riding the Lance Armstrong Trek bike (with the Lance Armstrong USPS clothes and the Lance Armstrong testicle removal plastic surgery) and the guys riding a beat-up mountain bike clearly going to school/work. I'm out there usually in baggy mtb shorts and a jersey without all kinds of gaudy logos and such over it, messenger bag on, riding my fixie.
Considering how cycle-mad this town is, I'm suprised that I haven't seen more serious fixed riders; although I did see a guy on a single-speed mountain bike the other day (shades of old "bmj":http://anklebiter.net/log/). There is "a decent site":http://www.arizonasinglespeeds.com/ out there, ("the home of ASS"), but the events don't seem to be updated all that frequently.
Anywho... on the way back I noticed a blur of a chunk of something stuck in my front tire, just left of center. Thinking that I probably didn't want to put my weight on it making a leaning left turn, I slowed down and stuck my glove over the tire to brush it off. Big mistake. "fwip" "sssssssssssssssssssssss" Yup, I flatted right on the Tanque Verde Wash overpass. Changing the tire was quick and uneventful, but my handpump doesn't seem to be worth a shite. I could only get the pressure up to about 60 without putting the little pump lever all the way through my hand, so I limped on it to the "LBS":http://sabinocycles.com/. While there I picked up a replacement tube ("David":http://bigbrit.blogspot.com/ told me to always keep two on hand) as well as one of those universal CO^2^ cartridge pump dealies. Still need to get a computer to start keeping track of my rides, since I seem to only get around on the fixie these days, as well as a slightly more comfortable split saddle. More toys, more toys.
Seems like "the house":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001468/ is going to be ours. Got a call from our realtor person last night, and they're having a hard time getting both signatures from the previous owners. Apparently it's some sort of divorce situation, and the woman is in Florida and has signed our offer, and the guy is a long-distance trucker who needed to find a fax machine (the "mojo wire", as HST would have called it), but had given a verbal ok on our offer (and oh, what a fun story their divorce must be.. shades of Britney and K-Fed, that one). Their only counter-offers were that they _weren't_ going to have the place professionally cleaned (which is a damn shame, because it looks pretty shitty in there at the moment) and they weren't going to remove the metal shed in the backyard that was housing all the dog poop. The shed is no biggie, because upon further inspection Kim and I decided that it wasn't really that bad, and our realtor said she was going to pay for cleaning if they wouldn't. Seeing as how she's making $6k to do nothing besides sign some papers and send some faxes, I suppose she can afford it. Today we should be able to get some more ink on papers, and start escrow tomorrow. Inspection within the next 10 days, and I'll be going to observe, and I'll be able to take some more pictures of the inside. Yay, I'm going to be a homo-wner!
Kettle Chips' "jalapeno + tequila + lime":http://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?snack_code=1662 chips = ass. Spicy, oddly-flavored ass.
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My dad finally got his Flickr account set up, and started uploading pictures over the weekend. So far he has his photos from a recent trip to Portugal up; check them out.
"Airplane graveyard":http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.167883,-110.865633&spn=0.008390,0.003573&t=k&hl=en, as seen by Google Maps. This is only a few miles from my house. Found via "jwz":http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/465388.html.
Let's try this again, shall we? Yesterday Kim and I signed another contract, this time on "this place":http://longrealty.com/Property/search_details.asp?searchType=Residential&MLS=2508513. It's big (2200 sq ft., which is way too big!), in a decent neighborhood, and has loads of fixer-upper-ness. Apparently the couple is getting a divorce and trying to unload it quick (so quick that when we did a walkthrough there were still toys and loads of dog poop in the backyard), so this fits into our plan of buying, updating and flipping. New floors, new cabinets, new paint, and sell it for a healthy profit in a year. We should hear back Monday if our offer was accepted or not.. we'd close in 5 weeks if it is!
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Word today is that Buca di Beppo is going to take back all their PJPII busts.
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So, yesterday early afternoon Poe came back from his usual rounds through the yard with his one eye closed. I couldn't really get a good look to see if he had something in it or what, but his hair around his eye was a bit sticky, so I though maybe he got bitten. Sure enough, a big bubble of blood started to form right above his eye while I looked at him.
Took him over to the vet and dropped him off. They called back later to tell me that he had a nice puncture wound above his eye, and nearly lost it. I don't know who he scrapped with, but I think it actually might have been his brother, who was sniffing around while I was looking at Poe and getting growled and hissed at by Poe the whole time.
The vet cleaned him up reasonably well, got him up to date on his booster shots, and gave him a feline lukemia test (it was negative). All in all, very happy to have my boy home and safe.
Google Maps coverage of Area 51 "is redacted":http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rachel,nv&ll=37.641563,-115.810575&spn=0.104370,0.156727&t=k&hl=en! They're hiding aliens!
So, my bloodwork came back. I have a slightly elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) level which signifies non-cardiovascular inflammation. What that really means is I have the slightest of slight cases of IBS. All I really need to do is eat a little bit better, lower my stress (the biggie) and get my regular exercise. I was sorta hoping it was H Pylori, so I could treat it and be done (because I'm lazy), but just knowing what's going on is a relief. The rest of my numbers looked really good... i have _fantastic_ cholesterol levels, both LDL and HDL, and everything else falls in the normal range. I go back in 6 months to get my CRP checked again, and hopefully I'll have a normal number by then.
"Google Maps":http://maps.google.com/ has now added seamless satellite photos to its already stellar map service. I guess when they bought KeyHole last year that it was bound to happen, eh? So far it seems to be pretty cool, and makes finding "pictures":http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.254443,-110.758721&spn=0.006845,0.009795&t=k&hl=en "of":http://maps.google.com/maps?q=416+Noble+Street,Pittsburgh,PA&t=k&hl=en "addresses":http://maps.google.com/maps?q=309+South+Braddock+Ave,Pittsburgh,+pa&t=k&hl=en a whole lot easier than that Microsoft Terrawhatever site from a few years back. In other news this afternoon is my followup appointment to find out what's going on with my poor belly. I'm sure it's not going to be anything bad, but of course I'm completely nervewracked about it.
Ready for home improvements, originally uploaded by feralboy.
Had an offer on a house accepted today. Wahoo! *Update as of 6:15 p.m.:* Contract signed. Earnest money check being dropped off tomorrow. Loan application being filled out tonight.
*Update as of 11 a.m. next day:* After some careful consideration, the house is too expensive per sq foot for what you actually get, so we're bailing. "Onwards":http://tarmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Tucson&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail&ARGUMENTS=-N632851996,-N282522,-N,-A,-N4761188 and "upwards":http://tarmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Tucson&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail&ARGUMENTS=-N632851996,-N282418,-N,-A,-N4761188!
First off is belly update; went to the testing lab this morning to have my blood drawn, and my followup appointment to actually find out what the results are is next Tuesday. I've felt pretty much the same since my appointment last week, so I'm hoping I can just take some antibiotics and be done with this. Laura is in town for her spring break this week; got in late last night and is still napping now while I'm working. She'll have my car and a map to get to toole around Arizona this week while I'm working, and we can try and do something fun this weekend too. Desert Museum is always a popular spot for the out-of-towners.
