As all of you that follow my blog know, I’ve posted about a tournament held on Full Tilt Poker to help Dennis Klenczar who is battling cancer and unfortunately isn’t on top right now.  A large number of pros turned out for the tournament, although some sat out, it still had a nice feeling to it since many of them that showed have known Dennis from the early days of the Mirage when a lot of them were just regular poker players and didn’t show up in ‘red’ on a tournament lobby screen.  There were 121 entrants total.

My son and I ended up at the same table for awhile.  Then we got moved to other tables. He didn’t make the money but then he doesn’t play as I bad as I do.

I got unlucky with pocket Aces and Kings a few times and I got lucky over pocket Aces and Jacks a few times.  When we hit the money, Hal Lubarsky, a Full Tilt Pro, was chatting off and on.  I dealt to Hal when he was playing $3-6 Holdem at the Mirage about 3 million years ago or so.  I asked more than once how we could donate our win to Dennis and finally when we hit two tables, got the answer…ship it to Hal’s account.  When we got down to the final table I asked if everyone wanted to split out and just ship their share to Dennis.  I was low woman at the time in chips and pretty much got ignored.  I asked again, not much going on there in responses.

I picked up Kings (again) and got three players all-in and the Kings held up, suddenly I had a lot of chips.  The long and short of it, we got to heads-up and I asked TuckyBud420 if they wanted to chop it and send our share to Dennis – no response.  Oh well.  I had a 3 to 1 chip lead and managed to take a couple of beats and then Tucky had a 3 to 1 chip lead.  I lost my steam and my momentum, and pretty much gave the rest of my chips away.  I sent my win to Dennis through Hal.

I was a bit surprised that some of the players asked who Dennis was.  I figured that people who played it would know him or they wouldn’t be there…guess not.  If I’d won a million and shipped it off to Dennis, it wouldn’t change much of what’s going on there.  I wish I could send him a million years of great health and energy.  *sigh*

*****

“I don’t know if you know Grandma, but I’m a bug trainer.”

Riot was out Friday evening and most of Saturday.  We had fun.  We had to lift rocks and bricks and look for bugs.  He found a 3 inch centipede that he promptly squashed part of its body with another block.  I threw it over the fence to the desert where I thought maybe the quail or doves would find it.

He walked around with a ladybug on his arm for an hour and kept telling me how he trains all bugs…yeah, right, kiddo.  Most of his trainings end up in death for the bug from what I’ve seen but since most bugs are not on my favorites list, I don’t care.  I do believe he finally let the ladybug go back to the green weeds he found it.

Him and dadparental went dirt bike riding, Riot has a little 50, the full helmet, neck brace, yadda, yadda, yadda, and this is the first year he’s gotten on it and actually went riding.  He bit the dust (literally) a few times on property before him and dad crossed over Murphy to the desert for a coupla rides.  The boy will be 7 the end of this month.  He is funny, and fun.

We went to Smiths to send out a wire transfer and while I filled out paperwork, a cute, elderly gent was at the counter waiting.  He had a cane, arrived in a automated cart, had an oxygen tank, and was quite chipper.  He kept trying to talk to Riot.  The boy watched him quietly, nodding now and then when asked if he had a girlfriend, what grade he was in, and a variety of things.  The gent’s name is Gino and he gave Riot a $1 bill to buy some candy with.  That brought a quiet, “Thank you.”

I asked Riot why he was acting so shy – that’s not his MO – and when I leaned down for the answer, he said, “I’m being quiet grandma because I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”  Cute.  And correct.

The day before we were at Burger King for a quick burger and we sat where Riot could watch another elderly gent with an oxygen tank and the nose attachment in as he ate.  He was quite thin and his arms were deep black and blue.  I hope that what Riot’s eyes took in will register for many years.  He couldn’t stop watching the gent and quietly told me to look at the gent.  I told him I knew.  He went on to tell me the man must’ve gotten hurt really bad because his arms were black.  Later we talked about working hard at being healthy, eating the right foods, never smoking (Riot interjected that maybe the man had someone around him that smoked too and that was bad…umnhhhh…this kid’s a thinker), and how the tank and the nose piece gave him more oxygen and how his skin might be black because his body wasn’t getting enough oxygen.  It was an experience, especially from my view where I watched Riot’s reaction.

The same day we met Gino, we went to Walmart and said hello to another gent in our aisle that was missing his leg from the knee down.  He was wearing shorts, and had a tennis shoe on his artificial foot and walked quite well with it.  It was another look at Riot’s view for me.  He got a life’s lesson of 3 in a 24 hour time span with a look at what is going on with other people and what they go through.

We also went to Petrak Park for a dog meet-up to talk with a trainer about Scout’s aggression and met my backdoor neighbor (she lives in back of us) Sue with her dog Riley.  Some type of a horse competition was going to take place shortly and Riot got to pet two miniature horses for a moment…he was beaming.

*****

“I have a Linda Green, for a reservation at 7.”

That from the Winery when I called to cancel my reservation for Saturday night. I’m sure you do have a Linda Green reservation, ding-dong. I had a date with the Monkey and two of his golfing buddies that had driven out from CO on a ‘golf-about’ that they make most every year.  I got a text from the Monkey that they all had stomach flu and no one felt up to dinner.  Damn!  I haven’t hit the Winery in a long time and was looking forward to not only the great meal and atmosphere (even if they can’t figure out what my name is),but the company of my long time, insanity sharing pal…M-O-N-K-E-Y!

So how do you force people to fucking wake up and listen to how your name is actually spelled?  It’s impossible.

The day I went to wire transfer money with Riot – I’ve been Western Union’s customer for 2 million years due to having children, grandchildren, and nieces – I looked at the paperwork.  Even though they’ve had my driver’s license in hand to check who I am or am not, and I’ve spelled my name to them, enforcing the fact that there is no ‘r’ in it, I’m in their system as ‘Linda Grenen.’ Go figure.  Don’t think they are scurrying to change it, they aren’t.  Hopefully I won’t go back for a long time and they can kiss my Grenen butt goodbye!

So it is, goodbye for now…