Sunday, November 27, 2011

Running log--Week #7

So another week down the drain. As you have already read, last week I only ran one day due to an injury. At the beginning of this week, my knee was still a bit tender. I didn't end up running at all, mostly because of it being Thanksgiving week and I knew that I wanted to eat, drink, and be lazy. Thanksgiving was fine and I was happy to have lots of pumpkin pie. Saturday I went tailgating with some friends at the NU game v.s. MSU. It ended up raining a little bit before game time, so we decided to just hunk her down under the 2 canopies we had and drink more alcohol. I tasted some Salmon flavored Vodka.
The only way I can describe it is to say that it's probably a little better than prison rape.  I will have to admit that I have never been in prison for that to have happened.
I am hoping to get back in the saddle of running tomorrow and start off very easy as not to injure myself again. I did get a quick trip to the casino last night and was up $37 after a little over 2 hrs playing NLHE.
I am still working on the opus that will be my hypothesis of the government's policies toward online gaming as well as the Financial Sector. I have finished about 40% of the 1st part which I hope to post in mid December. The next part will probably be up later that month or early January. I hope all is well. Have Fun!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Poker Update

It's been a while since I have given any strong update on how my poker playing is going. The reason for that is because I haven't been playing much poker lately which is disappointing to me and at the same time, fuel for my writing. I've taken to Twitter in order to voice small sound bite opinions or pass on articles and opinions of others that I'm following. (I hate using slang and meme)
 First off, my dual poker challenge has basically taken an indefinite leave of absence. In case you haven't read my earliest entries which began right after Black Friday (that's poker related Black Friday, not the one right after Thanksgiving). The first challenge was to get experience playing NLHE live at my local casino. It started off well and then saw some bumps in the road. It then got harder and harder to find time to drive all the way to the Casino, especially being a Stay at home Dad. I played very little poker in Las Vegas a few month back and have yet to play live poker since then.
 My online challenge hit some rough waters as I had a major downswing/runbad/playbad  October. Finding the time to devote to playing A-game poker online has also become much more difficult. I've been using free time to either run or research my epic multi-post blog entry relating to online poker and Wall Street. I hope to have it done before Christmas and more importantly, before legislation is passed which would make my writing a bit moot.
Well, I will let you all go and hope that some of you who visit stay a while and read some past blog entries. Have fun!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Running log--Week #6 a.k.a "Sonnuva bitch!!!"

So, things were going well in my training through 5 weeks. I had seen some bumps and bruises along the way, but all in all, training was steady. I was averaging 10-12 miles per week, running 3-5 times. There were a few days that I would have to take off due to soreness, or fatigue, and weather. I started off week #6 in good form by running 3 miles on Monday night and I felt pretty good. The next day I was  a bit tired, but still planned on running. My wife ended up having to work late so I had to miss Tuesday, but that wasn't horrible. Wednesday was normally a day off of running, so I would just switch with Tuesday and not skip a beat. The problem was that my left knee began to hurt around noon. It slowly became more and more painful as the day went on. I decided not to run and by the time I was in bed my knee hurt like a Mo Fo. I ad a difficult time falling to sleep and woke up today with some tenderness. Perhaps I just needed to take a few days off and let things get better. Well, it may be more than just a few days as I can barely walk on it without feeling sharp pain in my knee. I'm not sure if I hyper extended it or what, but it's not happy.


When it comes to setting goals in the year 2011, I am getting kicked in the crotch over and over again. I really hope that this is not long-term and I can start up again by next Monday, but I haven't felt this much pain in my knee in a long long time. If any of my readers...Hello?
If any of my readers are religious in any way shape or form, then please pray for me as I am basically an atheist and will get no reply for god as he has most definitely "unfriended" me a long time ago. Thanks and I hope we passed the audition.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Week #5 running log

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I was disappointed by not being able to run on Monday or Tuesday. Weather and children's schedules got in the way, so I ran 4 days in a row starting Wednesday and am quite sore now. I am hoping that my body starts becoming stronger in the next 4 weeks so that I can add on the mileage before the end of the year.


Monday-Had little time to run and the little time I had, it was raining cats and dogs.
Tuesday-Had less time than the day before. DAMMITT!!
Wednesday-Ran for a little over 30 minutes and felt pretty good the entire time. Not so much after though. I drove the loop I ran to verify the distance and looks like I ended running close to 4.4 miles.
Thursday-ran for 30 minutes (close to 3 miles)
Friday-Ran for 30 minutes (close to 3 miles)
Saturday-Ran for 30 minutes (close to 3 miles) Feeling rather sore as I ran 4 days in a row to try an make up for missing Tuesday.

Monday, November 7, 2011

running log week #4

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Finished up my first month of running and I was hoping not to feel like a car that is breaking down. One day it's my knees, the next day it's my quads, the day after that it's my ankle. I am hoping that things start to feel bettter in the next month otherwise it's going to be a long 52 weeks. It's going to be a long 52 weeks anyways, but I was  hoping for it to resemble the Chariots of Fire theme song rather than the Little Enging that could.
Monday--ran for 30 minutes ( I think close to 3 miles).
Tuesday--Ran for 30 minutes (close to 3 miles, I think).
Wednesday-off
Thursday--did not run
Friday--Ran for 30 minutes
Saturday--Ran for 20-25 min (felt a bit tired near the end.)
Sunday-off

Friday, November 4, 2011

Why am I a stay-at-home-dad?

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"By choice man!"
That, in the most simplistic way, sums up why my wife and I chose for me to be a stay at home Dad over the alternatives. Before my wife and I were married, we knew that it was fast becoming inevitable that we would be engaged and have a wedding together. We had already moved into a condo and were talking about what we saw in our future, both together and our own lives. We both wanted to travel, eat at some nice restaurants, live in a house with a yard, work hard at our jobs, and of course have children. When discussing children, we were pretty much on the same page in our expectations. We wanted to provide a warm upbringing that consisted of love, care, education, fun, laughter, and experiences. One problem was day care. At the time, I was working in retail which had an ever changing schedule that included at least 2 nights a week and sometimes to weekend working days. My wife's job had always entailed a steady Monday thru Friday 9-5 type of work schedule which meant that we weren't always off at the same time and if that didn't change in the coming years, then child care could become an issue.
One day, my then girl-friend (I will just refer to her as wife no matter if we were married at the time) pointed out a Newsweek article about the rising percentage of stay at home Dads in America. She asked me if that was something that I would ever consider. She brought it up because she has a chance at becoming a full partner at her law firm that would require more of an already large time commitment and an obvious increase in pay. If I were to continue working then we would never see each other and were both agreed that that was not the way we wanted our lives to go, especially with a child. My first reaction was to completely balk at the suggestion, which is pretty much my nature to do whenever faced with a new idea.
After a few weeks, I began to talk it over a little bit with my wife (remember we're not married yet, but let's just call her my wife) and we discussed the situations that may come up in which it would be best to have one of us, mostly me, be a stay at home parent. We had no problem with the possibility of hiring a nanny, depending on the time commitment as well as the cost. All of our parents would probably be in their 60s and 70s when we had children so it would be quite difficult to count on them as full-time daycare. We didn't have to make any type of definitive plan, but it was important that we knew what our options were and if we felt comfortable with them.
Fast forward 3 years and my wife is told that she is going to be induced into labor because of her symptoms of preeclampsia. Everything works out and although the little guy is a little underweight, things turn out. I took 6 weeks off of work because my wife needed a little bit of bed rest and then went back to work. Things started out well, but that was because my wife was still on paternity leave and had help with her parents during the day. A few weeks after she had gone back to work herself, the schedule began to get a bit hectic. It became quite clear that my wife was not happy about the differences in our schedule and wanted to make some sort of change. At first we talked about hiring a nanny for 3-4 days a week and soon found out that it would cost roughly $28,000-$25,000 per year based on what we needed. That would be 3/4ths my paycheck after taxes and would require that my wife have a little more restricted work schedule herself. Since our wedding, my wife had gone from a law firm to an in house job as a corporate lawyer and was moving up the ladder. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense for me to stay home full-time and take care of our son. My wife would be able to get promotions which would mean more money, her job already was paying her quite well, and we would be almost breaking even at the end of the year from a financial standpoint if we were to hire a nanny.
It was settled. Now what the hell do I do?
Surprisingly my wife was quick to accept my proposal, not only the first time around, but this one as well. Once I got in to the groove of the daily schedule and felt comfortable in what to expect, I really enjoyed being at home for a myriad of reasons. The retail business was in a general decline and management jobs were becoming much more competitive without the benefits. You were expected to work whenever it was called for which no longer seemed fair to me. More importantly I hadn't gotten a chance to know my own Father who had died when I was 4 years old, so I thought this was a wonderful opportunity for me. Now 4 years and 3 sons later, I am feeling more of the same way. I would be lying if I said that it wasn't incredibly tough and draining, but for me, this is where I want to be. I am not religious at all and I don't know what's going to happen, so I don't want to miss watching my kids growing at this age. I could go into a lot more detail, but that would take up countless entries and hours, but most of all, I'm happy to leave it at that.
Thanks for reading.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

My poker history 2009--Part 3

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After a bout with shingles, being a new parent of twin boys and being utterly exhausted, I decided to take the rest of July off. In fact, I hadn't really known whether or not I would return to playing online poker with the same interest or focus as I had before. As August rolled around, I started to feel the itch to get back into playing some poker. My wife and I had a night nurse 3 to 4 days a week so that we could have some sleep which was crucial now that we had 3 children all under the age of 3 years old.
Most of my sessions were around 11 PM after everyone had gone to sleep and I had an hour to myself. I moved back down to .50-1 so that I could feel a bit more comfortable and 3.27 BB/100 winner over the course of 5,100 hands which gave me a nice ego boost.
 September wouldn't fair as well although I still ended up a winner with a disappointing .78BB/100 after playing 7,500 hands. I had attempted to stay on the LAGier side of TAG, but not to go crazy postflop. I was also trying to use seat selection much more carefully than before. I started off October doing fairly well and by mid month, saw some opportunities to move up and play a few 1-2 FR tables with some immediate rungood. I limited the amount of tables I played when at 1-2 to no more than 3 at a time and usually only playing 2. I finished that month at 2.58BB/100 over 4,900 hands. It was obviously a more successful strategy at the time than playing nearly 10,000 hands like the previous month. Even though that plan seems to be rather obvious in hindsight, I was still expecting a lot more out of myself which was one way for disaster.
November began much like October in that I was mostly playing .50-1 with a little dabbling in 1-2. That quickly changed as once again I saw myself as shark ready to feed. Much like June and July, I was terribly wrong. Near the end of the month I saw a lot of losing sessions without many winning ones. I finished the month down money wise, but technically up as far as BB/100 goes with my .50-1 sessions helping to stave off the big losses at 1-2. You can probably see where this road is headed can't you?
December was basically my first all 1-2 month, which was most definitely a mistake given the circumstances. Surprisingly enough I had a very good month with the exception of one day in the middle when  had a 60 BB downer which hurt my BB/100. All in all I ended up at 1.02BB/100 which is ok, especially taking into consideration that I was not playing A game poker.
Much like the beginning of the year I had some other high notes in poker during this time that were not attributed to cash games. In August I finished 2nd in a 180-man SNG which brought in $144 and then in late December I netted my first 180-man SNG win in NLHE which brought in $108. I finished the year with $522 in tournament winnings and $1,433 in cash game winnings, which includes all of the holdem variants. It was a roller coaster ride at times, but I learned quite a bit. Not that I would apply all that I learned right away, but at least it was stored up for the next go around.
All in all I knew that I had a strong love for poker and wanted to learn a lot more. I learned that when I stayed in my game that I could reduce my risk and pick up the skills that were needed in order to move up. I was beginning to learn that moving out one's comfort zone didn't mean becoming a crazy aggressive player overnight, but that's another story for another post.
Thanks.