Weekend Update

Well, I didn’t win the lotto on Friday as I had planned. That put a serious damper on my weekend plans.

On Saturday my wife and I had planned on doing a bunch of yard work. We were on putting in a perennial garden on the side of our house. Now, I’m not much of a gardener, but I am a big fan of perennials. First off, they make my house look nice and that theoretically helps the resale value. Secondly, I only have to plant them once, and they come back as long as I own my house or something like that. Annuals are for suckers. Finally, and most importantly, putting in more garden space means less grass which means that there is less I have to mow. Mowing lawns is also for suckers. I’m on a mission to eliminate as much grass as possible from my lawn, and this is big step towards that goal. By the end of the summer I think we will have decreased the amount of grass on our property by at least 25%.

As I was saying, we were going to do some gardening on Saturday. We changed our mind when it starting snowing. That’s right, we had snow. Granted I live in the Midwest, and snow is one of the hazards of leaving here. I can deal with that. I do have a problem when it is 80 degrees out one weekend and the next weekend it’s snowing. That’s just uncalled for. Unless the 80 degrees came late January. I guess I could live with that.

Instead of yardwork, I got to take advantage of Party Poker’s April reload bonus. And by take advantage, I mean I was able to use the bonus to cover my losses, and break even. At least I hope. I still have a few hands to go before I can claim the bonus. The way things have been going I could end up seriously in the red even after claiming the bonus.

My bonus whoring skills definitely need some work. I went back to multi-tabling to make sure I could clear the hand requirements in time, and proceeded to lose on just about every table I played. The frustrating thing about that is I was actually getting decent cards; I just couldn’t win with them. I had AA lose to two pair, KK lose to a straight and then later to a pair of aces, and QQ lose to A or K high flops. The one positive thing I can take away from it is that I am getting better at recognizing and accepting when I am beat, and getting out of those hands. Most of these losses weren’t bad beats. They were cases where I was way ahead preflop, but behind after the flop, and most of the time I was able to get away. For example when I had KK, and the flop was 679 and two other players capped, I knew I was in trouble. When an 8 came on the turn, I got out right away, and watched the guy who had flopped a straight take out some moron that flopped middle pair. I think a few months ago I would have stubbornly held on to my kings and thrown away some more chips. I guess you can’t necessarily judge your performance by how profitable any one session is. As long as you are making decent plays, eventually everything will even out, and you should end up ahead.

Today was somewhat nicer than yesterday, and my wife and I dug out a section of our yard for gardening. You wouldn’t think that clearing out a 15/15 foot section of grass would be that tough, but holy crap am I going to be sore tomorrow. At least that section is just about done, and we won’t have to do much more until later in the summer.

That’s about it for now, I have to finish off that Party bonus. I was hoping I could come out ahead before applying the bonus. Now I’m just hoping I break even after the bonus. I’ll let you know how that turns out.