I admit to not liking all the recaps that are going on about the year 2011. Droll.  Boring. We’ve read it and lived it already, let it disappear into the past. 

But it’s everywhere, every media outlet is pulling all plugs to hash and rehash a year past.

2011 was a strange year in more ways than one. But isn’t time like a poker game?  It’s all one long game.  We try to slow it down, set up blocks of it for certain projects, run our lives by it as we synchronize it with other lives we encounter, until, in the end, it was all one long game.  There was never a definitive break when a new year came in or an old one went out. Nothing changed when we turned one year older – other than perhaps social security or some old person’s benefits…yah…I’m there.

As we struggle through and with time, it takes its toll and the biggest downside to it is that the majority of it’s forgotten.  That’s why everyone should keep a diary or a blog…no please…not Facebook.  Sometimes just going back and reading something from the past brings us back to life, to what really matters.

I used to feel quite comfortable blogging about everything.  But in those days I didn’t think anyone read what I wrote.  How I feel about it now is a little tricky to explain. I really don’t want the world to know what I’m doing and how I’m doing it – I don’t mind if the world thinks I’m a bit of a loon but I don’t want to explain to them what makes me that way.

I need to keep a private diary and then, on the day that I want to stop blogging forever, just hit publish and let it all run out into cyber.  But then…no. Why would I want to give away the makings of a reality TV show?

What I choose to write about might seem extreme to me but it may only be the blink of an eye for another.  It’s possible that I’m not really here, I may be living in another dimension and witnessing this existence because I took the blue pill instead of the green striped one. But 2012 feels absolutely no different than 2011 felt.

It does however, feel much different than the year I started dealing big tournaments in Nevada after having ran games in Missoula MT. That year would be 1987. I was ready to make a startling leap out into space at light speed when I called the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas and they were hiring for their Grand Prix tournament, as it turns out, it was their last one.  I hit the road with my then boyfriend, Rod Kaufman, and I auditioned in front of Jimmy Knight.  We were both hired for swing shift.

I was so scared I wanted to wet myself.  The pit had been converted into the poker tournament area – around 30 tables if memory serves.  I really wasn’t used to being treated like I wasn’t even there when I sat down in the dealer’s box…most of those players were pretty good at punishing dealers just for dealing off the top of the deck.  Eric Drache was the poker room manager, Frank Cutrona was his assistant…hell, if that wasn’t another life time ago.

Doug Dalton was my shift manager on swing.  I didn’t know how to collect time.  I didn’t know how to deal pot limit.  I didn’t know how to deal to Puggy and his brother J.C. Pearson, or Stu Ungar, or Cheryl Davis, or any number of them because there was no way to make them happy unless they were winning.

We had bow ties and name tags and aprons issued to us and I felt so weird having to come into work from an entry way that led us down underneath the length of the Nugget and we came out into the casino. And I had to wear a tuxedo shirt with a name tag and a bow tie…and a Grand Prix button was pinned over my pocket.

We weren’t dealing much tournament on swing, it was mostly live, the good old boys, and days where almost anything was a ‘go’ and I hated every second of it.  My first table was 7 card stud, Roger Moore, Walter, Doyle Brunson, with Rosey Grier sweating the game from an almost player’s seat.  He was quite pleasant to me. There was another player but I can’t place the face.  The limit?  $400-800.

Shit, I’d never dealt over $3-6.  I tried to shut off all the circulation in my fingers as I choked the deck to death in my left hand.

They took care of ‘time’ for me because it was obvious I didn’t have a clue.  Funny part of it is, they really didn’t seem to care, they just wanted cards in the air.

I dealt, rather clumsily I might add, and at one point one of them threw out a rolled wad of $100’s with a big thick rubber band around it.  When I started to have that ‘WTF do I do now?” look, one of them blurted, “Just put it on the piece!”

OMG!  WTF was the piece?

Guess you’ll have to come back if you want to read more of this. I’ll really put up a super effort to keep updating in 2012.  Tee hee!