Dentist survival rule #1, take a drug before you go if you have one, if not, ask for one from a friend that has their own supply.

Dentist survival rule #2, sit down quietly, open mouth, keep it open, as wide as possible. (No, this isn’t a porn lesson)

Dentist survival rule #3, as soon as they say you can leave, run like hell so they don’t change their mind.

Just kidding!  Except the drug part on Rule #1.  I had a cake walk through today’s visit.  I expected it to be a long term grind (sounds like poker) and it was only about 3 1/2 hours.  My chin/jaw and upper lip/nose area are a bit sore from taking shots (not the kind that make you tipsy) but overall, things are damn good.  My dentist added more composite to a couple of upper teeth to even out my bite and it worked wonders.  And I no longer have the pressure of 6 teeth being held captive by one piece temporary torture chambers so life feels pretty good right now.

Since I was running on almost no sleep the last few nights, five hours Monday night, three hours Tuesday night, I came back to the hotel and hit the bed, sleeping through the numbness wearing off, and waking periodically (cause that’s what grannies do) to feel the changes in my mouth and bite.  I will go back to the dentist on Thursday of next week just for a ‘let me see how it’s going’ check and then out the door until it’s cleaning time in October or somewhere in there.

Don’t think it ain’t weird as hell to have both your upper and lowers numbed at the same time.  At several points when I tried to swallow, my tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of my mouth and I didn’t know if my mouth was open or shut.  Try drinking something in that stage.  Just a tip if it ever happens to ya, I took a straw and my water bottle and muscle milk (chocolate, I love it) with me.  I had to hold my lips closed around the straw (that does create one helluva picture doesn’t it) to be able to slurp up liquid, but it works.  There’s no way to hold a glass to your mouth, or a bottle, and even know the pour/tip zone on it, or hold liquid long enough to swallow it.  Enough of that though!

When I hit Vegas yesterday, I checked into the Suncoast, headed for the Rio to meet Jennifer and Aaron and see about picking up our media passes, and have lunch.  Media passes would not be ready until today, so we made the trek through the hallways and casino to the Buffet.  Get ready for a week’s wait here.  If we hadn’t been gabbing and really had no plans to be anywhere else, I would have left immediately.  We were in line for over an hour, and although there were seats open in one whole section, no one was moving.  The meal/available selection was mediocre in my opinion but the company was great.

On Jennifer, she’s a writing machine and covers a lot of territory writing different articles for PokerWorks and other sites too.  Love the woman!  On Aaron, he’s a…a guy!  He writes great strategy articles for PokerWorks but he’s a bit diptarded about his opinions on poker and our conversation went to tournament play on the internet MTTs.  He gave me the lecture that it’s NOT ABOUT THE CARDS!  No shit!  But every now and then you are going to have to have something at showdown or you are out of the game.  And some tables are filled with 8 live ones that love to go all-in so if you want to stay and play a bit, you need to have valuable hand selection abilities.  And hey, this isn’t my first poker game.  On some points I completely agree with him, on others (I read all of his strategy articles because I’m the one that puts them up), it’s all game dependent, the players, the blind levels, etc.  But why am I esplaining, Lucy?  Sometimes I just like to fan the fire and watch the heat rise.

After late lunch it was time for a trip back to the hotel to do a lot of work.  Then I had a ‘meet and gab’ session coming up with a reader that had sent me an email yesterday, saying he was in town, if we could have coffee or food, it would be great.  We did.  We met at Mimi’s Cafe a little after 8 p.m. and as much as I hated to cut it short, we parted around 9:30ish and I was back to work and trying zone out and sleep by around 2 a.m.

But the ‘meet and gab’.  Steve was a such a wonderful visit, completely relaxed, asking questions, talking about poker, families, and a variety of things we could cram into a little over an hour, it was a very nice break in my day.  One thing that cracked me up was he said I was a lot younger looking than he expected.  I snorted, “You haven’t read the part about me hauling wheelbarrow loads of #2 gravel around?”

All was good though, I take it as a compliment.  I’m only 62 when I feel like I’m 108, the rest of the time I’m much younger.  LMAO

Our conversation went to poker and obsessions and…and…and…

I related a bit of my first poker experience in our conversation and much later, thought about that time period in a lot more detail.  It’s easy to see how people get hooked on new, seemingly innocent adventures, and I put poker in that category.  There is nothing wrong with playing poker, it is a lot of fun, but when it becomes your whole focus, there is something wrong.

As I talked to Steve, I explained that my first glimpse into poker was a world where people didn’t behave by any rules.  They had no discipline.  By that I mean they didn’t go home when they should, they sometimes failed to even go in to work, opting to play poker instead (mainly when they were losing), they didn’t honor social obligations, they screamed when they got beat, they threw things when their aces got cracked, they were verbally abusive and at times even got into physical fights.

I had grown up and lived in an extremely regimented schedule where I woke up, took care of my kids, cleaned house, went to work, came home and cooked meals and did laundry, took care of my husband…repeat, repeat, repeat.  It’s possible that I was one of those ‘sleepers’ that was set for mental imbalance from birth and completely angry with the structure my life was set in and didn’t even know it.  At least I didn’t work at the post office and was going to go postal. But I’m sure I had a lot of issues with trying to grow up and didn’t even really know how, but felt that I had to do things because society/parents/life put me in a category and I needed to be forced into that square hole with a big hammer and can of wd40…and I was.

When I experienced all of the insanity at the table, it was an escape hatch from life.  If you lost today, or someone got upset with you or you with them, you came back tomorrow and faced off again and everything was OK, because you were playing poker.

That teensy part of the whole picture doesn’t even begin to explain the highs and lows of losing, the social impact of having an audience that was glued to the stage like I was, and the show!  The show was unreal. I learned about their lives, families, jobs and histories and they shared some of mine…and I rubbed elbows with a lot of oldies that were fascinating to listen to when they talked about the old days…and it was hellerly fun to bust off a big hand for them – they all played so tight it was unreal. In the games I learned to play in I thought you were always supposed to get mad when your aces got beat…almost everyone else did, so that’s how I started my career.  Little pissy fits when I got beat, but I was just like them, trying to beat everyone else with all those bad hands they beat me with.  It was a psychotic roller coaster.  And I felt right at home.

The mind, what a frightening place to be left alone in at times.

Steve, great to meet you.  Right now I’m off to meet Claudia for a meal.  (one can get fat in Vegas just meeting friends for food…it’s everywhere)  Laters.