The Morning After

I slept in this morning. I wasn't up late or anything like that (though I did consume several Coors Lights over the limit). I was election fatigued and took the opportunity to snooze all the attack ads out of my system.

It was a storied election. Exciting, exhilarating, enlivening. Of course, I voted for Obama - this old, mid-west liberal sat with tears in his eyes as he watched the President-Elect deliver his "victory speech". I was transfixed, once again I was reminded of the power of words to create and punctuate a moment in time. Words have power - they can kill or make alive. Our new President knows that well, I believe. I will offer prayers for him, and the country often in the days and years ahead.

I hope that we will be patient with him -- he has inherited a horribly dysfunctional economy. I trust his wisdom to gather around him other folks to try to sort out the morass in which we find ourselves.

I'm glad to be done with "Palin". Although, to the extent that she contributed to the defeat of the Repbulican ticket, I'm glad she got the exposure she did. Her choice should be a reminder to all of us that our country is too complex to be governed with "gimmicks". She should become the lowest common benchmark by which women are measured on the political scene from now on. McCain's flaw in his VP choice, in my humble opinion,was that he couldn't convince Condoleeza Rice to run with him. That would have been a highly formidable ticket and the election might have had a different outcome -- certainly it would have been a much closer battle.

On the Poler front -- I haven't been playing online much lately. I used a bunch of my bankroll earlier in the summer to prop up the family while we were struggling with the restaurant debacle (another post -- a long one). I tried to win an entry to the BC Open later in
November but couldn't get there. I played well, just never could get the big stack accumulated.

Paula (wife) and I spent a couple of nights at Spirit Mountain (Grande Ronde, Or.) about a week and a half ago. We left on the day we signed the sale papers on The Albina Green. We got out of town late so I missed the Thursday night bounty tourney. I played Friday's tourney - got through the first level and 1/2. Saw three flops in that time -- got it all in w AK against A9hh - flop came Jh,7h,Qd - turn was 3s, river came 9c -- rivered and out. Played cash game from 2pm till 9pm. Cashed out the princely sum of 60.00.

Saturday we played Pai Gow together for most of the day -- dreadly boring game - but an action game nonetheless. She snagged a couple of straight-flushes on the prop bets and we ended up up a few hundred bucks. Pai Gow creates an interesting social scene -- all players play against the dealer and no one can screw up the play(like in Blackjack where folks can affect the outcome of play by hitting/not hitting correctly. A little community forms at the Pai Gow table where folks are in each other's corner and bonded by the constant vision of the dealer with a Jack high Pai Gow.