Yikes! The sands of the hour glass just keep pulling me into the eternal abyss of ‘your time is up’. Hopefully, on the day that my ashes are thrown to the wind over a canyon in Calico Basin or Red Rock, the person throwing them will whisper, “Hey…you did more than your share and realized a thousand visions and dreams in the small time you were allotted on this Earth!”

And then I have to hope that whisper is true. How in the hell can I ever catch up? Time, the most important element we are given in our lives, always escapes me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t accomplish it all. Then we have the people and businesses that waste our time.

The perfect example of that waste would be ‘Dell’, the computer giant on the internet. They have wasted more than two hours of my time right now because I paid off my account with them over six weeks ago – the check was overpayment due to a mortgage company oversight. At the time I sent the check, I instructed them to send me a refund for the credit balance. Three follow up phone calls later and major stress because they want to charge me interest when I owe them but I’m not getting interest from them when they owe me, I’m told the order to pay me was submitted almost a month ago…still no check…must be in the mail. I’m sure I’ll have to make another phone call next week, and the week after that, and the week after that…

The next perfect example is my calling a representative of Rhino Linings, in Vegas, last week and setting an appointment for Saturday morning to have the bed liner sprayed into my truck. Not to worry…I showed up, they didn’t. I waited a half an hour before I gave up. Amazing that I had the money in my hand and their work ethic/standard is so low that they didn’t even show up or call to cancel the appointment. And to make it even more grim, I even called them and got their voice mail, left them a message asking them what happened…no follow up from them to date.

There are a million perfect examples and I would need a million glasses of wine to get through all of it so let me skip onto a medium I understand – poker.

The $4,000-8,000 game has been ‘on’ for the last week or so. They aren’t playing every night – almost every night and day and into the next. It’s quite a point of interest for all the other players in the room. Lots of questions about the players and the game/limit when I’m dealing a $4-8 or $8-16 game. It’s pretty unreal when you stop and think about that amount of money being shoveled back and forth across the table.

The room has quieted down a bit and it’s very pleasant from a dealing point of view. Less noise and confusion and the games are still great…especially the low limit games. Chips rock and roll back and forth across the war zone all day and night.

One particularly cute incident: While dealing $4-8 Holdem, the 5s THREW his cards at the rack. Not because he’d taken a beat, it just appeared that he was overzealous or in the habit of throwing. He was young and I didn’t say anything the first time it happened. The second time it happened, he not only threw them again but he did it four players before it was his turn. I said, “Please wait until it’s your turn to act.”

He candidly replied, “I can throw my cards any time I want.”

I almost spit holding back a laugh as I replied, “First – you are expected to act in turn, wait until the player in front of you acts before you do anything. And second – you cannot throw your cards. Just set them down.”

He did set them down after that and a few minutes later, Eli B. walked up behind him to talk to him. Eli looked at me and exclaimed, “Lucifer – hello Lucy!”

I asked, “How’s it going, Witch?”

We both laughed. We’ve definitely had our share of his card throwing and tantrums over the last 12 or so years. We semi get along when I deal to him now and get along just fine away from the table…other posts in diary pages.

After Eli walked off, I asked the 5s if that was his dad. He replied that it was. Well hell, no wonder this kid knows how to throw cards.