Sunday, October 21, 2007

Mac and Jacks

Recipe for a memorable weekend? Two parts hangover, one part motorcycle safety class.

My sister and her new boyfriend visited Seattle and left for Minnesota on Saturday morning. Naturally, we went out to the Ravenna Alehouse on Friday night for some drinks. My sister and I split three pitchers of Mac & Jacks, while Art drank a few mixers. Art seems like a pretty cool guy, he's a 7-12 Social Studies teacher in Minnesota, so we had plenty to talk about. Sara somehow managed to kick my ass at Golden Tee 2008, so I lived up to my side of the bet and gave her a brand-new frisbee for her long drive back to Minneapolis.

Along with the three glasses of wine at dinner, the five or so pints at the Alehouse led to one wicked hangover Saturday morning. I woke up Saturday morning at the ungodly hour of 7am. It was still dark out. This was the weekend of my MSF course I signed up for a month and a half ago. The rumbling of a thousand elephants kept tromping through my head every step I took. We did the classroom thing Saturday morning, and at noon I was still producing Mac & Jacks flavored burps.

When I got out onto the range Saturday afternoon, I was still groggy. I remember bending down by the motorcycle I was using to check where the fuel lever was. I stood up and got the spins. I'm hungover and trying to stay standing while attempting to drive a motorcycle in a safety class, 14 hours after my last sip of alcohol--a new high in my life.

After 10 hours of the hungover motorcycle safety course, I was ready to pass... the fuck... out.

But, it just so happened to be Marc's 27th birthday, and he, Sarah, Jeremy and Tanya planned on going out for drinks. I couldn't resist, so after fixing myself two brats on the George Foreman and wrapping them in a cheese quesadilla because I had no buns (it was as healthy as it sounds)--I headed over to Jeremy's for some pre-func'ing.

I just wasn't very smart this weekend. In my heart of hearts, I didn't want another 10-hour day at the MSF course being hungover--but it was Marc's birthday, so I drank. And I had a very very good time. We started out with a few beers at Jeremy's house, playing dealer's-choice poker for drinks. I lost, and had about four beers the two hours we were at J's place.

We headed down to Capitol Hill to meet Liz, Kim and a few other ladies at the Eastlake Pub. The pub is a dive bar in the best kind of way. It has four pool tables, a shuffleboard extra-long table, and two dart boards. The ladies were playing cards at a long table when we arrived. They were playing hearts, so Marc and I each picked a horse for the next hand of hearts. After watching a couple rounds, Marc declared Cassandra off-limits, because she had gotten zero points both games. I went with my Boston-friend Kim, while Marc picked the only girl he hadn't met before, Deb.

It was brutal. Kim took 25 of the 26 points (points are bad), while Deb put up a big goose-egg, which cost me a pint of M & J. The ladies finished their game of hearts and we started up a seven-handed game of Asshole. I didn't do as much moving and shaking as I'm used to, going from Treasurer to Asshole--where I stayed for most of the night. I had fun as the Asshole, especially after Marc made the rule that any forced-drink can choose a buddy to drink with, because people made me drink--a lot. I usually made Marc (el Presidente') or Jeremy drink with me, and we were loud, annoying and drunk by the end of the night. I'm not usually that guy, but variety is the spice of life!

We went to Dicks (the drive-in cheap-o burger joint in Seattle) on the way home at about 2am. Dicks was packed, and after standing in the line and not being able to act like adults, Sarah and Tanya locked the three of us in the back seat of the car, while they ordered food for everyone. Marc and Jeremy hatched a brilliant plan to go fishing at 5:30am the next morning. Three hours of sleep, and I KNOW Marc was drunker than I--there's no way they went fishing.

Interestingly, last night was the first time I've ever gone to bed with the spins and not thrown up. I was very surprised when I woke up this morning and wasn't covered in puke, nor had I soiled my sheets! Double-Huzzah! Being hungover again wasn't much fun, but I had some recovery time in the classroom until noon. I wasn't hungover for the riding portion of the MSF course this afternoon, but it was raining cats and dogs at one point--and we were all soaked.

My MSF class was a weird one. Yesterday we had 11 people. By the end of today, only five people passed the course. Ouch. Three people didn't even show up today, so we began the day with eight. One of the ladies had some major fear issues, to go along with her lack of self-confidence, so she bowed out at the start of our range session this afternoon. One of the ladies got booted out by the instructor, because she was terrible and the instructor didn't want her to hurt herself doing the more difficult motorcycle exercises... down to six.

Minutes later, one of the other ladies takes a spill. She was riding a Vespa during the "break while turning" exercise. She got owned. The exercise sucked, because it was raining, and if you didn't straighten out the handlebars before you applied the brakes, down you went! Fortunately, she was the only one that went down, but she face-planted and wrecked the Vespa pretty good. Face-planting on a Vespa isn't an easy thing to do, and it must have hurt like hell. We were down to five for a few minutes, but she was a tough cookie and came back to bring our numbers back up to six. And ended up passing! She was super-psyched, as we all were--except for the one lady who failed. There were a lot of ladies at the MSF course, Waffles would have been in heaven.

Speaking of poker bloggers, I didn't realize Kat was doing a Fergie Challenge. It is a pretty cool idea in bankroll management. Since I have a few dollars in my FTP account, I might just go with that money and adhere to Fergie's bankroll rules. I played some really stupid poker this week, way out of my bankroll, and eventually lost--like I should have. The players at the higher levels (to me) aren't really much better, but there is variance in poker, and not having the roll to withstand that variance spells disaster.

Kat also has a nice little GoogleDocs spreadsheet where you can go check out her progress. It doesn't look to be going so hot for her, mostly because she looks to have gone from strictly adhering to the rules, to playing "Fuck it!" poker. If I were a betting man (...hah!), I'd probably bet on me doing the exact same thing--but right now I'm idealistic, and would never in a million years! Right...

Anywho, I'll put up a link to my spreadsheet in the next few days if I get one going. I'd like to play a few games tonight, but I want to add in a rule that says I will only play when 100% of my attention is spent on poker. And right now I'm completely drained from the weekend and watching Boston pound Cleveland in Game 7 of the ALCS. Ouch, the ball just landed between Cleveland's third baseman, shortstop and left fielder. Blooper reel!

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1 Comments:

Blogger Matt said...

MHG,

Curious to know if you'd be interested in a Seattle Blogger game. I think there's enough of us around that we could get a decent game. I'm thinking around $20-$50 buyin. Interested? If so, drop me a line at my blog.

Later,
Matt

11:22 PM  

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