I'm published!

It's been a little while since I last posted.  Nothing major has taken place.  I'll make a few posts to make it seem like a lot.
  I have a reason to play poker.  I am now a monthly contributer to Ante Up magazine, and the Mid-Atlantic Ambassador.  A link to the magazine is below, my column is on page 12 and I have another article on page 46.  Here is a link to the magazine:
http://www.anteupmagazine.com/magazine/ante-up-magazine-july-2011.htm

 As for my other poker activities, while Teri and the kids were out of town, I had chance to get a lot of play in.  The evening they left I played in a tournament in Southern Maryland, I lost early-ish.  The next day (Sunday June 12) my Mother and I went up to Delaware Park for the day.  I played a long time, but didn't cash.  I played my usual Monday night tournament at Ft. Meade on 6/13.  I did bring a local author of a poker book with me.  As it turned out, he won the tournament that night!
So Friday night, 6/17 I went down to the VFW in California, MD. Again, lost early.  This was really a waste of my time for this tourney.
Saturday June 18, my Mom and sister went to Delaware Park and played all day.  I started with the 9:00am tourney, then the noon tourney, finally the 4pm tourney.  I didn't cash in either of the first two, but I WON the final tourney!  Not a bad way to wrap up the weekend.  Teri and the kids came home the next day, so my poker has been shut down since then (except my Monday night tourney).
  I do plan to hit Dover on Sunday July 10.  They have a summer poker series and I want to play the 6 handed tournament.  I will probably take my sister and mother again, and maybe my friend Ray also.

Camping…

Next week our daycare provider is taking one of her weeks off (a week each month in the summer months).  So we need to find something to do with the kids during this time.  Teri is taking them with her parents to a campground near Virginia Beach.  Being a campground, they will be camping.  Teri owns a pop-up camper, that hardly gets used.  Thus there is some rotting over the years.  The past couple of weeks, Teri’s parents have been working on it to get it into camping shape.

Yesterday I looked into having the electrical connection for a trailer repaired on my van.  The place I took it to, couldn’t do the work this week.  So I got a brochure to rent a motor home.  For a couple reasons really; a)This is the first camping trip with Becca and easing into this might be better. b)It will be a lot easier to sleep. c)I’m not sure that the pop-up won’t leak.

This is what the motor home will look like.  Its a pretty nice one, it should be an interesting trip.

Mechanic update

After I sent the e-mail to Walt Eger yesterday, he called me in the afternoon apologizing and saying that it was a specific tech that he let go and hoped to have me back as a customer.  I’m not sure if I’m going back.  It won’t be for a little while if I do.

Now the ironic part.  I have my van in the shop at the place I took my van to have the water pump checked (Dorsey Transmissions, but they do everything).  Just an oil change and routine maintenance. They found the water pump was now leaking and needs to be replaced.  I had them do it.

Dishonest Mechanic

Back in December, I took my van in for service at my usual mechanic.  Just routine service and oil change.  I waited to have the work done.

  While waiting there a customer came in to pay for his work and check out. The customer was told that he needed a water pump. I continued to wait when another customer came in to pick up her vehicle. She was told that she needs a new water pump on her vehicle. Finally when my vehicle was completed and I was called to the counter I too was told I need a water pump. Warning bells went off and I said no. I was warned to watch the cooling gauges and I could have major damage if it went up. I know a water pump would effect the engine cooling and I saw no changes in the temperature gauge.

  I took the vehicle to another shop about 2 months after this incident. They visually inspected and saw no leakage and injected a dye into the cooling for a UV inspection. After driving a couple of days I returned and they saw no coolant leaking and all was working as it was suppose to be. The mechanic said a water pump is very obvious when they stop working and usually very easy to diagnose.
 
I bring this up now, because I received an e-mail from Walt Eger's and it got me riled up again.  Over the years I have given them literally $1000's in work and now I question if I got screwed over about other things too.  I don't know if my e-mail will make an difference, or if it will go to the owner.  But to do nothing would not have done me any good.

Birthday Party Day...and other stuff

Reunion...
My sister Cindy and I haven't spoken since she left Florida last month.  Teri convinced me to call her and I did Friday evening.  She wasn't home, but Teri go in touch with her and talked briefly Friday.
Saturday morning she stopped by and we had breakfast together.  We got caught up and I think things are good now. 
Birthdays...
It was a Perfect Storm of birthday parties on Saturday.
After my sister left, Teri and Becca went to Wal-Mart for birthday present shopping.  They came home and made a cake for him.  I put Mickey down for his nap, and took a nap myself.

It was my father-in-law's actual 71st birthday.  The in-laws came over to try to fix Teri's pop-up camper.  I woke from my nap and found that Teri went to the doctor, the presents wrapped, and cake made for my father-in-law.  Teri has had a sinus problem for a couple weeks and her ears were stopped up.  She got sick of it and went to Right Time.
After Teri got home, we sang happy birthday to Dad and opened gifts.  Then it was off to the next party.

The boy next door Bradley, had his 6th birthday party.  Becca seemed to have a really good time, as she was there 3 hours.

Finally, it was off to Pump It Up for Becca's daycare friend, Samantha's 5th birthday.  We all climbed all over the gigantic inflatable slides, bounce houses, obstacle courses and more. All had a good time!  We got home around 10:00pm and were done for the day.  All in all, a great day!

Another job update...

I had my interview at TWM, Tuesday morning.  This is the job that seemed really good.
I got there about 20 minutes early, but you never know how public transportation is running, so it's better to be early then late. 
I meet with the CEO if the company and a couple of things jumped out at me right away.
"...I need an Architect, not a Scanner..."  I don't thing I have Architect anywhere in my resume.
"...we have about 25 employees, and I don't want to see it get much more then that..."  It doesn't sound like there is a lot of growth potential at this company.
I then went on to meet with 3 other people.  None could really tell me what my specific job would be, nor could they tell me what their job was.  They seemed friendly, but it seemed like they were just going though the motions.  They really didn't want to be there to interview me.  It was rather disappointing.  I had such high-hopes for this interview also.
They didn't say straight out that I wasn't going to be hired, but I could feel it.

I'll probably hold tight on the job I have for the summer.  Unless a REAL offer of something a lot better comes along.  I'm stuck here.

Memorial Day Delaware Poker tour

As part of my duties as the Mid-Atlantic Ambassador to Ante Up magazine, I set out Monday morning with my Mother to visit (and play in) a couple of the poker rooms in Dealaware.  Frist up was Delaware Park.

At first my mom and I were put off a little.  It seemed small.  This was our mistake.  We went in the wrong entrance.  It's a very nice casino and while the layout snakes around, it's all there!  Getting to the poker room was a little strange at first but I found it and all was good.  The website satated that the $10k tournament started at 11am.  This was a mistake and it started at noon.
The floor manager recognized this pretty quickly and noticed a lot of people milling around and asking about cash games.  He was quick on his feet and immediately opened 2-3 cash tables.  This was smart.  If people had to wait too long, they migh just leave the room and come back when the tournament started.
I did speak to the asistant room manager and he was very friendly and helpful.  He took my card and told me he would send me information on upcoming tournaments and specials.  He asked when my deadline was and will be sending me information about poker room happenings.  This seemed to go pretty good.

So about the tournament.  There were 155 entrants, which was a nice size toruney.
I started off with a string of hands that were just second best and fell behind.  I was down to my last 1500 (with 400-200 blinds) in chips and got king-nine of clubs.  Good as time as any to move in.  One caller and he had king-queen (yikes).  I ended up hitting a 9 and stayed alive.  A couple hands later I am UTG and get ace of spades, ace of clubs.  I push all in with 3300.  I got two callers.  On the flop one of them hit his set of 8's and I was done.  Time to collect my mother, have lunch, and head down to Dover.

We got to Dover a little early, but I thought it would give me time to play cash game, and talk to the room manager.  Well the room manager really wasn't ver forthcoming with information about upcoming tournaments.  He was just the assistant manager and he asked me to call the regular room manager.  I spoke to the regular room manager last week and he wasn't very helpful.  I was hoping a face-face meeting would break the ice a little, but no doing.
I did play in the 7pm tournament in Dover.  There ended up being only 8 entries.  This was bad.  They blamed it on being a monday, but it was Memorial Day!  Anyway, I did end up winning the tournament (technically splitting) for $252.  Beats loosing, but it would been nice to have had more people in the game.

Now I'm off to write my column!