the WU reborn

baby

congrats to cory and amy on their newborn daughter, nikoletta!  nice work guys!

superman returns

was amazing.  saw a late nite showing last night and it took me back to when i was a kid watching the chris reeve ones in the theater with my fam.  the crowd cheered during the opening credits.

home game/wsop/summertime

lately, i've been playing in a home game twice a week.  the guy has a pretty nice setup, with his kitchen essentially being the room we play in.  he has a professional table, and everyone is there to play.  it's not one of those home games between people who just know each other and want to sit around and get drunk and play nickle dime quarter.  we play 1-2 NL 100 min, 500 max buyin, and hundreds change hands each night.

he provides a nice spread, ordering or preparing food for us, and providing whatever drinks people want.  if you want to take a break, he has a nice big TV, so you can chill out in the living room after taking any brutal beats.  like any game, there are good players and donkeys.  overall, it's fun, and has the potential to be a steady moneymaker.

i tried to qualify for the world series of poker online and failed.  i feel that i'm never going to qualify this way, and it's just going to be easier to go to vegas next year and play live satellites to qualify.  in any case, i need to save money and try to qualify for the aussie millions, which is in january in melbourne.  i wanted to go this year but it wasn't good timing.  next year, i should already be in singapore in december of this year, so a quick hop to aussie won't be that bad.

karl's coming down at the end of the month, and my parents and cousin lih-jen from singapore are coming next month.  it should be a fun time of summer having so many people around.

the weather here has been amazing.  a few days of rain, but mostly lots of sunshine.  i'm loving living on the beach.  last night i cracked open my bottle of hangar one lime that brought up from the states, and made some cocktails for loong and myself.  nothing says summer like gimlets!  recently it was his girlfriend elizabeth's birthday.  happy birthday eliz...you're wiser, not older!

song in a dream

belly full of mongolian bbq, i was taking a nap this afternoon.  i remember hearing familiar music in the dream, through most of it.  i remember it tying into how i was feeling in the dream a lot, and i awoke with it ringing in my ears.  have you ever had the anxiety that goes with forgetting a dream, or feeling that you are about to forget a dream?  i wonder if that's how people with alzheimer's feel.

anyway, i hummed it out loud to myself for a good five minutes, so as not to forget it.  then i wrote down the notation in notepad so that i could come back to it in case i coudln't figure it out.  eventually i realized that it was a guns and roses song, but i couldn't place it.  i went through my library of songs, only to come up blank.  i went online and feverishly checked lyrics and found a song that i thought might fit, and after downloading it, was pleased that i'd found it.

the song is "estranged" off of "use your illusion II." and while i like the whole song, there's a bridge in it that always makes me feel like i'm back in the early nineties lying on the grass in some park smiling at the sun:

'Cause I see the storm getting closer
And the waves they get so high
Seems everything We've ever known's here
Why must it drift away and die

and then later it's the same music is repeated with these words:

I knew the storm was getting closer
And all my friends said I was high
But everything we've ever known's here
I never wanted it to die

and i thought about what those words meant to me then, and perhaps now.  for me lyrics in songs haven't ever been nearly as important as the music, being a former musician myself.  but upon reading the lyrics, it just reminds me that most of us take a lot for granted, and that's how relationships, both platonic and otherwise, do indeed die.  people say things like "people change, they drift away."  this is true, but i think that's the natural state of things unless we make it not happen, by trying. 

for me, it's also a reminder to enjoy people while they're around, because you never know when (for whatever reason) it's the last time you'll see someone.

i don't know where the hell this post came from.  hopefully by next time, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled mischief.

leaving wisconsin & the hellish journey home

new photos in the May Milwaukee album and the 2691 N Lake Drive album! 

overall, the two week return home was good.  most people tended to procrastinate and met up with me in the second week, which made things a bit hectic, but i was able to touch base with most everyone.

mom and dad got home from san francisco during the second week, so we spent some time catching up and having a few meals out.  as their house is for sale, the place is mostly spotless, including the kitchen, which they've been advised not to cook in.  we had a nice meal at fortune, and wanted to check out mr. wok in pewaukee, but it was closed on account of memorial day weekend.  over the weekend, we headed down to the beach to check out a kite festival that was going on before wandering over to tyan and jay's for a cookout.

i managed to get out and play a bit of golf with karl, and head up to grafton to see dave an stacy's new house.  it's quite a palace, and they're finally moved in.  congrats guys!

cory took off work on friday and we played some 2-5 NL down at potowotomi.  we both won, but cory did better than me.  i guess since he's expecting a baby too, the poker gods were smiling on him.  congrats and good luck, cory!

memorial day was spent loafing, playing a bit of rummikub with mom and ann (ann won), and grilling with expectant parents AP and rachel.  congrats and good luck! 

other random tasks included packing boxes of stuff for storage, getting rid of any other personal effects, changing my US mailing address, and selling the piano.  naturally i procrastinated and finished most of these things during the last 36 hours.  i'm happy for my parents that they are finally getting rid of the house and moving on, but it's a bit sad for me.  i'll definitely miss it when it's gone.

tuesday, mom dropped me at the airport.  it was raining, as you may recall, and because of that, and the storms in chicago, my flight to chicago had been cancelled.  i accepted a rerouting to vancouver via toronto, but the plane took off half an hour late, arrived an hour late, and after scrambling through customs, i was told that the 20 minutes i had to catch my next flight was not enough, as the minimum time allowed between flights is 40 minutes.  this made little to no sense to me, but i was not in the mood to argue, so i got a hotel room for the night (that i had to pay for), and waited in the 86 degree muggy weather for the courtesy van to come.

the van took me to the ever-crappy comfort inn, where i was sent to a suite room, which seemed great until i realized the air conditioner's idea of "cool" was somewhere between simmer and saute.  too tired to deal with a room change, i showered, and finally fell into restless sleep. 

four hours later, the wakeup call comes, and without much of a hitch, i was at the airport.  i arrived in vancouver right on time, and tried calling my friend james, who had been up all night playing poker online.  the only problem was that the network was busy, or so my phone told me.  i called the operator, who informed me that no problems had been reported.  funny how the network won't work for anyone except the fucking operator.  after about twenty minutes of this, i finally got through, only to get james voicemail. 

ten minutes later, i was on a bus heading for downtown vancouver.  the plan was to take the bus to the north end of vancouver, where i could catch a ferry into north vancouver, where i would then walk to my parents' condo, where my car was waiting for me.  by the time i got to where i would catch the ferry, james called me and arrived half an hour later.  he took me to north van, and we retrieved the car, then headed for a mongolian bbq lunch.  i relaxed most of the rest of the evening, having dinner with loong and elizabeth, then running some errands with loong, who needed to clean out one of his studios. afterwards, i passed out early (midnight), as vancouver is two hours behind milwaukee.

thursday, i woke up early, and watched fight club with the commentary on.  then i had some soup, and then took a nap for most of the afternoon.  apparently i needed to catch up on some sleep.  afterwards, i went to broadway for some 10-20 and spent five hours making 78 lousy bucks.  oh well, better than losing.  may was a good month at the tables, and this month has started off in the right direction, albeit a small initial session.

that's all i've got for now.  the weather is beautiful.  today it rained, but yesterday it was 70 and sunny. if you'd like to visit, try to do it before the end of september.  karl is coming out at the end of june, but other than that, there are no "reservations" at my shoebox apartment.  get your asses out here, you lazy bums.