Poker: The Missed Comeback

Last night, E, Big Slick and I played Texas Hold’em. We play a lot, but today, one game was noteworthy. It was the second tournament of the night, no limit, with 15-minute blind increments. We were on the second blind interval; I had a slight twenty-cent chip lead over E, Big Slick was in for ten bucks after going down earlier.

The flop came, it was 7-K-8, and I had A-7 unsuited. There was some betting then the turn, it was another 8. E put out a very low 30-cent raise, Big Slick called, and I tried to take down the pot by calling an all in. It was a risky move, but I thought it would scare everyone off; everyone called!

I turned over my cards and exclaimed that I needed a 7 to make a full house; E nonchalantly stated that it wouldn’t come and turned over pocket 7s, giving her the house I was hoping for. A flustered Big Slick turned over an A-8. He still had a shot at a better full house, but with one card left, it wasn’t looking good. The river came, and E won it all. We sorted out the money, I had twenty cents against E’s $19.80, Big Slick was out. It was my turn to deal; small blind took away half of my chips.

I got good cards so I went all in, E called, no problem for her. I won, doubled up, and did it again with the next hand. The next hand, E folded. The next hand, I went all in; doubled up. The next hand, I folded. The next hand, I went all in; doubled up. I doubled up six times, and took a commanding chip lead over E: about $15-$5. Needless to say, she wasn’t happy.

I tightened up my playing, but two good hands in a row, A-5 and A-7 suited, failed to produce. E won two all in calls when those two good hands missed completely. If I had won, it would have been quite a comeback. I have been on a steady net losing slump, I get some wins, but overall, I am down for the year.

Extreme Materials

I attended the Extreme Materials exhibit at the Memorial Art Gallery this afternoon. The show was put together by an in-house curator - a rare occurrence at the MAG. The show featured works by various artists using materials outside of the standard spectrum, but nothing novel enough to warrant the Extreme title.

Some pieces were wonderful, like the tornado built entirely out of small animal bones, but overall, nothing left a lasting impression. The Cadillac did stick out - due to its size - but small parts of it were excellent; I really liked the Batman that was fondling a young brunette, and the mermaid water gun with finger tip boobs and mounted from behind by an afro-sporting disco dude.

The museum’s special exhibition space is small, which is a good thing, because if this show was any bigger, I think it might have been too much and quickly become a bore. I was surprised to see a Joseph Cornell box in the permanent collection, I must have seen it before, but forgot, no doubt it was pushed out of my mind by preliminary examination studying. Ugh.

Finger Lakes Adventure, Part 2

While we approached Rochester from the hiking trip south of Canandaigua, I couldn’t help but thinking of the Nine’s restaurant in Ithaca, NY. The two people I was with had other plans for the afternoon, so I texted my housemate and planted an idea. Within minutes he replied, we were going to Ithaca for pizza at Nine’s.

We were on the road by 3:30PM; the first song on the radio was Stairway to Heaven, and we all immediately thought of Jeroen Offerman’s wonderful backwards performance of the song on the McSweeney’s Wholphin DVD. A good omen. The sun was low in the sky; by the time we got to the fields on RT 89, it was prime for photographs:

So the pizza, if you have never been to Ithaca, then you won’t know what would posses a group of three students to drive an hour and a half for pizza. But if you have been to Ithaca, then you know that it is a research center, and its main area of expertise is pizza. Even before you arrive in the city limits of Ithaca you pass numerous mom and pop pizza shops. On this trip, we passed many individuals walking gingerly along the road with pizza boxes in hand and eager smiles on their faces.

Nine’s is a rare establishment, in that they have a variety of bar food, sandwiches, burgers, yet maintain an assortment of pizza toppings and delicious traditional and deep-dish pizza crusts. Our nutty waitress that I quickly became enamored with made this visit even more spectacular. She was making off the cuff comments that only one so smitten would find hilarious. Sigh.

We wouldn’t have travelled all the way without a bounty. The ride home was saturated with the aroma of the four pizzas we had in tow.

Finger Lakes Adventure, Part 1

Yesterday a group of three headed out to the Hi Tor wildlife management site just south of Canandaigua Finger Lake. We were lead by RP; he was familiar with the site we were to hike. After a brief discussion, I put full faith in the trail he was about to take us on.

We started at the trailhead, a snow-covered makeshift parking lot. A long, steep, and arduous ascent greeted us. RP commented that what he liked about this hike was that the hard part was first. We paused about halfway up to catch our breath. My heart was pounding and my chest desperately trying to pump out as much oxygen as possible from the cold air. We continued and I start to lag behind, opting to go at my own pace for my own health.

At the top we sat for a bit overlooking a gorge. I found a long stick with huge walking stick potential and set it where I could find it on the way back. From here we walked on towards a creek crossing. We came upon three climbing ropes tethered to trees, one of which laid across the trail like a trip wire; on the creek bed below were two climbers, one spotting, the other climbing the 50-foot face of ice; icicles were perched near the top, probably weakening as the day warmed. The forecast called for highs well above freezing.

The first test of my faith in RP’s trail was a creek crossing about 8 feet from where the creek dropped 50-feet to the gorge below. The creek had a layer of ice above it. When RP stepped out onto the frozen ice, it cracked but did not break. On the other side was a steep hill we needed to crawl up. With roots and saplings as foot and handhold we made it up and followed the creek upstream.

The sight was beautiful. Ice and snow, with streaming water tunneling through the ice. The sides were layers of carved shale. The creek bed was visible in parts and testament to the power of such a small creek to make this semi-hard shale bed appear as gently sifted sand. We came to areas that many would consider impassable, but RP trekked on and we followed cautiously but somewhat blindly.

While trying to forge the creek, RP broke through the ice and was soaked ankle deep in the icy cold water. We followed along a safe route and stayed dry. We had to cross the creek several times as the side we were on proved to be too difficult to pass. The next forging presented my first introduction to the icy cold water. I was standing on a rock, waiting for RP to safely cross, when the rock I was standing on gave way and collapsed into the water; it was a chunk of ice with the shape of a rock I was standing on.

Brrr! I quickly began wiggling my toes back to life and the fear of frostbite started to creep into my mind. We came upon a handful of wonderful frozen waterfalls. The second to largest one, at about ten feet, provided a dangerous and exciting passage. Shifting along an ice-covered ledge about four inches wide, while grasping an overhang, we headed towards a wall to the left of the waterfall. RP had found a passage there that involved climbing this wall on the layered crumbling shale and then sliding across some ice at the top of the waterfall’s crest to surer footing.

At this point, I started to wonder where we were heading and what path we were taking back. It is one thing to climb up slippery ledges; it is another to go down them — gravity adding, hectically, to your momentum. We were heading towards the biggest waterfall on this creek, an impassible 20-plus feet frozen beauty. From here we would go back the way we came until we found a hillside we could climb up and get back to the main trail along the top of the gorge we were in.

We came to the final waterfall, tried briefly to make it up the slope nearby but it was too steep and the large sheets of shale and rocks were too loose. We headed along the creek, retracing our steps until we came to the falls where we climbed the wall. We knew this was where we had to go up, but no one mentioned it; we just started going up the hill.

It was steep; we crawled up almost vertically, with moist leaves and loose dirt giving way the whole way up. It proved to be the most arduous leg of this hike, maybe because we had been hiking for several hours, or because it required tremendous coordination of upper and lower body strength. I was the last one to the top; I had taken a venture more to the left of the other two, thinking the numerous trees would provide better footing, but it was too steep and I could not get past a small mound that was nearly vertical.

When we got to the top, we rested, then found the well-groomed trail, and headed back to the trailhead. I picked up the potential walking stick and broke it down to a suitable size. I tried but failed to whistle and hum at the same time, a feat RP had mastered before and Ry turned out to be a natural at. A lot of strange sounds were heard from Hi Tor that afternoon. Back at the car, the snow-covered makeshift parking lot was now a muddy mess. In the car, I sat in the back and toyed with a nap while RP and Ry discussed the issues of our generation.

Piano-ing

I went to the piano studios at UR today to practice. Boy am I rusty!

The first piano class I took was at San Antonio College. I was inspired to learn by a piano playing friend. She actually showed me how to play a song or two on her piano at home. I learned about two pages of Moonlight Sonata, which is pretty good since I did it without being able to read music! I enrolled in a beginner class and did pretty well; my teacher thought so too and encouraged me to sign up for the next level class. I learned a handful of songs for my midterm and final in-class “recitals”. However, once I left for the University of Texas in Austin, I never played piano again.

That brings me to today, eight years later, trying to play the piano. When I was playing in the past, I wasn’t as computer literate, so I thought I would have an even easier time now with fingers, so jumped straight into two-handed Hanon exercises I remembered. It was a brutal failure! I broke them down into left and right hand parts and played them several times before I could do them together; it was never without errors. My left-hand pinky finger is the worse. Chalk it up to an accumulation of hand injuries since the last time I played.

After a while I gave up on that for a while and tried some scales. My teacher would always hound on me about properly fingered scales and it stuck with me. I could play most very slowly without reference, but tripped up if I tried to increase the speed. I think if I give it a couple of weeks, I might be able to get to old form… maybe. One thing I couldn’t stop thinking, I would hate to have been the guy in the practice lab next to me.