You really can freeze wine – if it lasts that long. The last few weeks or months or days or whatever have been like ‘shoot me up with a one hour Everclear IV and then spin me in the direction of the deep end! Oh! Ask that guy if he’s selling the boat anchors or if I could get one for just an hour.’

That’s not to say life is tough, it is…damn straight it is! It’s to say that the tough part just gets tougher sometimes. I’ll just hit a few of the tough spots that don’t even rate an “oh fk!” on the ‘this is bullshit list.’ Meaning there are much heavier things going on that if I should write about them here, I might not ever be able to have a decent relationship with my kids again, or others I know. I’m actually considering a personal blog that no one would ever find or read unless they searched certain key words like “my mom’s car insurance is going to cancel on expiration because of my driving record.” or “the cop pulled me over because he was profiling an area, not because I did anything wrong!” or “My 1st x found the 1st x of my 2nd x and hooked up with him to piss off my second x” or “I figured if I set up a bong and some beers for these kids, it would keep them busy.” You know, the stuff that happens but we never talk about it kind of thing?

It’s out there! It’s waiting to sabotage your life and make you crazy…we just don’t talk about it! I do talk about it, when the moon is in orbit around the second sun of WTF. Yet…on the other hand…I keep a secret if someone asks me not to mention something, I’m OK with that too. But if you’re a dung brain and something’s awry, I may end up shouting about it. There are things I want to shout but they aren’t for the ears of Table Tango, they belong to the ear of the world because they intertwine with poker, but they aren’t dependent on poker to carry their own volume.

The short version is my life is crazy. There are times it settles into a routine and my brain spins in a vortex controlled by the elements of earth and my goals are defined. Then I feel settled and happy with my existence and being. There are other times the emotes of life jump out of everyone’s pocket and start strangling me. It’s painful. *pain eased by 3 glasses of wine so far – not frozen because they don’t last that long.*

Obviously I am in blabber gut mode. Let me start with the last four days. As happens every few years, PCs become bogged down and almost stop functioning. It was that time again at my house. I want a new PC, but with the hit on the economy, I’m right there with everyone else, I can’t afford one. So off we go to reformat land on the laptop. It’s a Fujitsu Lifebook and this little beauty has climbed a million mountains for me, been reformatted three times, and managed to hold out almost forever…even after I spilled an orange soda on the keyboard when I first moved into the coach. I wanted an external mouse and keyboard anyway so it all worked out.

The reformatting began, I first installed Windows Vista Ultimate from the recovery disk. I had upgraded to win7 before the reformat and wanted some of the original features on the laptop so little midget sponge brain that I am, I thought it might wheel in the right direction. I’m trying to recall how many updates Windows Vista did…but I believe it was close to 300, every 50 or 100 it had to shut down the computer, reboot, and guess what? There’s a new update waiting to be installed as soon as you log-on.

Then, unfortunately, some of my programs didn’t work. So off to win7 land where it won’t let me just upgrade, we must do a clean reinstall. Oh yah…more updates, more updates, more updates. I started this project at least 4 days ago, most of my programs aren’t even installed yet but the good news is there is plenty of wine in the fridge and my hair is still on my head.

I have home projects going on, like cloning clusterberries and purple smoke bushes and planting desert plants from seeds. I love the earth and the growth and my trees and the clusterberry fence shrubs I’ve already planted. And I’m trying to paint the walls of the house in some of the rooms.

And enjoy the earth as the sun sets.

I still write about poker every day, I still miss playing it online.

Here’s a poker spin that really makes me wish I was playing online. PokerStars is hosting a $20,000 Freeroll – twenty-thousand, get it? And US players are sitting in the dark wishing…I’m one of them. And the MicroMillions has been dealing, dealing, dealing, and the WCOOP is gearing up.

And of course the WSOP is over for the summer and two women were so close to the October NINE if one had hiccuped, it would have shoved the other into an October seat. Once Marty Zabib was out in 35th place, I really rooted for the girls to win it. Marty dealt at Bellagio with me, we talked screenplays, he was part of our Pan Game Plays – follow the link trail to see a great picture of him.

And during the WSOP the news of Lee Watkinson’s Chimpanzees escaping into the streets in Vegas broke. It’s not a pretty story. Back in 2007 at the WSOB, the chimp came to the festivities – I believe it is the one that is no longer with us:

The crowd had the chimp kind of fenced in, most were sitting on the ground. I felt badly for the chimp, it was hot, getting dark, and the crowd was pressing in. Offering him an alcoholic drink? UGH! He took a swing at David Sklansky – maybe he didn’t like David’s latest book – and connected from what I heard.

And when I went back to look at the pictures, I found this one:

I still have a hard time thinking of him as ‘gone’ I still think if I walked into Bellagio’s poker office on swing, I would see Pete sitting behind the desk. Damn!

I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be with all the things I wanted to scribble out on this page, but quite frankly, the weather has been stormy and rainy, it’s quite muggy, my dog needed a drug today to calm down from the rolling thunder boomers that were running for at least 20 minutes before stopping to start the next one, I’m beat, and tomorrow I have to spend more time on resolving the computer blues.

G’nite.