The Slow Decline of my Most Recent Accomplishment

So recently, I accomplished a long-time personal goal of mine, and made it to the payout structure of an online poker tournament.  Now, this may seem insignificant to you for a few reasons:

1. Poker tournaments are stupid.  Why do you care, and most importantly, why waste your time?
2. Pfft.  I've done that lots of times.  Are you a newb?
3. Ummm, I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

All valid points, so I'll address them each individually.

1. This is just one of those things that we'll have to disagree on, and I don't play poker, let alone tourneys, very often.
2. Good for you!  We should chat and you can give me pointers.  See my response to number one for my recently limited exposure to the game.
3. There are no federal regulations for online poker.  The problem arises with specific states, and oftentimes banks that do not allow deposits.  There are several legal poker sites available for US players, with more anticipated arrivals within the next four years.  For more information check out http://www.legaluspokersites.com, or http://uspokersites.us/laws/

So what did I even do?  It's really not that significant, so don't get too excited.  Basically, I registered for a freeroll tournament (i.e. playing against TONS of people for free...therefore no banks or deposits required.  See the loophole?) and had to make it to the top 100 out of 1200+ players to get...drumroll...

NINETY CENTS!

That's for 100th place, going up to a max of $100 for first place, but luckily I surpassed the $.90 death sentence of mediocrity.

Happy Hamburger Day

It's taken me awhile to gather up my thoughts and emotions to be able to post again, plus life and weekends have been crazy busy.  Here is my attempt to rectify my absence, for the seven people that read what I have to say on a regular basis.  Thank you, seven people.  I appreciate your business.

"What is Hamburger Day?  Did she just make that up?"  Well, yes I did...sort of.  It should come as no surprise to you that today is Memorial Day, and I guess my made up holiday name is a cathartic and snarky way of calling out people who don't respect, appreciate, or understand what today is actually about.  (If you are between the ages of 1-13 you get a pass, otherwise, shame on you)

I can understand the bastardization of holidays like Easter and Christmas, and while I don't condone it, I get it.  Not everyone is a Christian, and not everyone celebrates these holidays with the solemnity and purpose they were designed to possess.  That's ok, because we're all unique snowflakes and not all built to believe, say, think, or celebrate things the same way, so despite my personal feelings on the sanctity of spiritual holidays, I certainly don't judge.

But if you are a U.S. citizen, which I'm going to wager that the majority of people living in our country are, Memorial Day applies to you, and you should recognize that.  We are all afforded opportunities and benefits that other places in the world don't even get to dream of having, and I feel like most of the time it is not only forgotten, but taken for granted.

Break

The last time I shared my thoughts and feelings to the world via my blog seems so long ago, and I promise that it was not an intentional hiatus.  The title of this post seems very apropos, since in addition to my school and blogging break, many things have broken these past two weeks, and my heart was one of them.

Easter vacation for me is pretty normal, minus the triathlon that is Easter week madness.  Between Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, and Easter Sunday, the Roman Catholic celebration of Easter definitely can be exhausting, and this year was no different.

I don't really want to get into details, for the mere reason that that's not what this post is intended to be about.  That being said, my father started feeling much worse than normal right around Wednesday, April 1st, and his spirit left us around 3:55 am on Saturday, April 4th.  Obviously, that changed a lot about my break, and I guess this post is mostly to share with you all- or at least attempt to- what is going on inside my head.

For those of you that don't know me very well, I tend to be a pretty spiritual person.  I try to make it to church on a regular basis and be an active part of the services.  I'm not going to engage in a philosophical debate at this time regarding my religious beliefs, but I'll summarize it similarly to how I silenced one of my interrogative boyfriends: I worship because, at the end of the service, I feel like a better, more complete person.  Agree.  Disagree.  That's cool, I'm not going to judge because we all have our beliefs, but this post will make more sense if you just know that about me.  Cool?  Ok.

For those of you biblically minded, you can appreciate my connection that the most painful day of my father's life, and the last full one at that, was on Good Friday, and also that just prior to Easter Triduum, my father was in the hospital for three days.  I couldn't seem to shake the fact that this was not a coincidence, and if you know me at all, you know I don't believe in coincidences.  Despite that 24-hour period being, to date, the most emotionally draining day of my life, I would like to believe that the fact that it happened to be Good Friday was for me to be able to find some comfort in my father's suffering.  He was not alone.

But it goes deeper than that.  Because my father had no salivary glands from the radiation and chemotherapy from his first cancer 10 years ago, he often took a tiny sponge swab and rinsed his mouth out with water when it got unusually dry.

For those not understanding the relation: prior to Christ's crucifixion, the soldiers soaked a hyssop branch in wine and offered it to Jesus because he thirsted.  It's not exactly the same thing, but as my dad was being hydrated with these little pink sponges merely hours before he passed, I shuddered at the eeriness of the connection.

Vegas Vacation Day 6 - All you need is love…and a good p-p-p-poker face

Day 6- 2/19/15
Today we woke up a bit earlier than normal so that we would have time to hit the Hoover Dam, part of the Grand Canyon, and head back to our resort in enough time to get ready for the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show.  Busy day!

We started by heading to Dunkin' Donuts (duh) and got our caffeine and pseudo nourishment for the day before we headed out to the Hoover Dam, which was only about 40 minutes away.

Once we arrived, we knew we were going to be doing a lot of walking based on the location we parked, but at this point we were used to it.  The first thing we got an up close view of was a bottomless hole, that I had a really hard time understanding at first.  We pretty much all agreed it was definitely the tunnel the Orcs used in Lord of the Rings.

We elected to not take the Hoover Dam tour, and I'm not much of a tour person so I was happy.  It turned out that Darrell was pretty much a wealth of knowledge on the subject, and most of the really cool views were from the top anyway.

Vegas Vacation Day 5 – Batman needs a better dental plan

Happy Birthday, Mom!  Her birthday is not today, but it was on the fifth day of our trip, so I figured I’d throw a shout out to her regardless.

Day 5- 2/18/15

Because of the flexibility of the time share where we were staying, we were able to move to another Vegas resort for a couple of days, which was kind of nice because we could change it up a bit.  The Grand Desert resort was much closer, had more shuttles, and was a lot larger, although the rooms were about the same.  This one may have been a bit bigger, but they both had the same amount of space and amenities.

For lunch, we headed to Naked City Pizza, which apparently was featured on the show Diners Drive-Ins and Dives.  It was really good, despite the waitress needing a little bit of help taking our order.  From my own experience, it’s tricky to take a party of six’s order from memory without errors, which is why I don’t attempt it.  I’m assuming that it’s usually easier with pizzerias, as even larger parties likely end up sharing a pizza, two at the most, but I guess we are not most larger parties.  She got the order right eventually, I think.

After that, we were able to drive back to the resort, since we had rented a vehicle for some ease in traveling.  We wanted to head to the Hoover Dam, and possibly the Grand Canyon at some point, and we were told by many a person that renting a vehicle would be easiest.  Since a trip like that would wipe out a lot of the day, we opted to do that tomorrow, and today’s trip would be to Old Vegas on Fremont Street, which was also highly recommended to us.

Luckily for us, I thought, I was super observant after the show last night, and when we went to Harrah’s to transfer to the Rio (where the World Carnival Buffet was located) I noticed a shuttle that advertised Fremont Street, so we were going to opt for that instead of trying to drive there in hectic traffic.

I worded this whole travel scheme so poorly that everyone assumed that the shuttle was AT the Rio, which we were able to rectify before we got on the Rio shuttle, thank goodness.  This is why I’m not a travel planner.  Well, that and a lot of the SNAFUs found in Day one’s post, but that is neither here nor there.  After discovering that the shuttle was actually at Harrah’s, we investigated further and found that this was a veeeerrrrryyy roundabout way of getting to Fremont Street, and were gauging the delicate ratio of time traveling to time actually spent at the location before having to leave.  It was at this time that a lovely man calling the cabs suggested we take a limo, since it would cost more to take two cabs.  We agreed, since we were running short on time, and while most of me was super embarrassed that I was a terrible travel planner, a small portion of me was psyched to be in a limo, since I’ve never done that before.

I LOVED everything about Fremont Street.  It felt fun, cozy, and a little bit more real than the “new” Vegas where we had been occupying most of our time. 

We even got to meet some Super Heroes who I could only describe in the following way:

Vegas Vacation Day 4 - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

I usually like to post my blogs over the weekend, but since it's already Monday it appears I am a day late and a dollar short.  By the end of this post you will soon realize that day four left me a bit more than a dollar short.  Karma, I guess…

Day 4- 2/17/15
Dyllon and Lisa arrived a little later than they had expected to, but it was still fairly early in the morning.  We got them situated in the condo, and then headed down to the Silver Sevens Casino and buffet.   The breakfast buffet was highly recommended to us, and if we registered for the Player's Club card, we could get it for $6.99, can't beat that!

Due to our cab debacle the night prior, we decided we would walk today, since the casino was not that far from the place we were staying.  It was also sunny out, and we figured a little walking would do us some good, since we were planning on gorging at the buffet.

Sooo…it maybe was a bit further of a walk than it appeared in a taxi cab.  It was definitely at least a mile, which wasn't awful by any means, but it took us about a half hour to walk there, considering traffic and crossing the streets.  Despite the fact that it indeed was sunny, it was not particularly warm in the shade, which was primarily where we were walking.  I'm absolutely not complaining, since at this time it was about 95 degrees warmer in Vegas than it was back home, but whether you're in 68 degree weather or -30 degree weather, dressing inappropriately for the temperature at hand is still not the most pleasant experience.  I tend to (wrongfully, for sure) plan my outfit based on the amount of sunlight outside.  It could be 80 and dark, or 20 and sunny, and I would without fail dress stupidly for both days.  It's a psychological thing, I guess.

We may have been in Nevada, but it's just about the same effect