For Sale Sign and Poker

Its funny how little things can change your life so much. Just doing something different. I am a Starbucks junkie and I usually always go there. In fact in the one near my house mostly all the staff know me by name (not sure if that's a good thing). My youngest son also works for Starbucks but not at the one I frequent( that would be weird). I go pretty well everyday take my laptop, check email, write this blog, people watch. You know the usual things you do in a coffee shop. Anyways on Wednesday I was across the street from Starbucks and there is another coffee shop there. I think I have been there twice before. The wife was with me and said lets get a coffee here. Sounds good. We go in have coffee (was really good) and when we leave we notice an open house sign just around the corner. I said lets go have a look. We walk in and we love the place. So we go home, talk about it, sleep on it and decide to make an offer on it subject to us selling our current place. They accept our offer. Now we have our place up for sale. Now we had no intention of moving before Wednesday. None. Zilch!! We like the place we are in. Not a thing wrong with it really except a bit bigger than we need. This new place is smaller, brand new but we will put some money in our pocket after selling (if we sell). Kind of a shock eh? I know if we hadn't gone in to that coffee shop we wouldn't have seen the open house sign and we now wouldn't have a for sale sign in front of ours. Hopefully its a good thing.

So of course now that our house is up for sale we had to go on a massive cleaning, arranging and chucking out things type of day today. Its not that our house was dirty but when you are going to have people coming through looking at your house you can't have anything lying around. Its amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in a short time. We bought this place 3 years ago and it was a downsize from our previous place. This new place will be even more of a downsize which is a good thing. We currently have a den and 1 bedroom that never gets used unless we have overnight guests from out of town but that's not that often. So now the fun begins. Realtors phoning with clients and looky loo's coming through..... Joy Joy!! What is good this time is that there is no pressure to sell. We like our current place just fine so if we don't sell no big deal. The market has actually picked up in our area of Canada so should be interesting to see what happens in the next 60 days. Funny thing is that the listing runs out on the day we leave for Las Vegas. I have lots of thoughts about realtors but that's for another day.

Okay I got to admit I watch Big Brother. Yea I know its lame but for some reason I always watch. The new one started last night. This season they have divided the house in 4 cliques. Just like high school. The popular group, the athletes, the brainiacs and the offbeats. Then they brought back Jessie from another season. Guy is a egomaniac so already someone to hate. When I was in high school I was in the party clique. Yep we just partied all the time. Not sure how I graduated but I sure had fun. Anyways should be interesting to watch and I certainly don't watch much TV. And yes its really lame!!!

I played my usual Thursday night live game last night and as has been the norm lately I was out early. I had limped in a couple hands missed the flop completely and folded. This time I was dealt AJ. One limper before me so with the blinds at 100/200 I bet it up to 600. Everyone folded except the limper who called somewhat reluctantly. Flop comes A 8,3. Two diamonds. Limper checks. I think what would be a good bet and decide to just push as I have about 3500 in chips left. I figured I was good. Limper ponders a bit and the calls. He has K3 diamonds. Okay so he has a diamond draw and he paired his 3. He called my all in with that??? Risked his tournament life. Did he catch his diamond??? Of course not . He caught a 3 on the turn. River was a blank. That eliminated me. Now even more mind boggling was the fact he called my initial raise with K3. He had limped in with that out of position , then called my raise. HMMMMM interesting poker. The guy is a really nice guy but I know I certainly wouldn't have called my all in or my original raise with his hand. Then again I went home and he continued to play. Ha Ha. It's why I love poker so much!!!

Poker,Obama, Starbucks,Running

I was reading another blog yesterday here that was talking about politics and it got me thinking how the change in leadership in the U.S has changed the way we here in Canada think of our American neighbours. For the past 8 years all talk here in Canada has been mostly negative about their past president and the policies of his cronies. With the election of Obama all the negativity has gone away. That is a great thing. I don't think most Americans realized (maybe some didn't care) how much damage Bush did to their reputation world wide. I have always been very pro American and for the past few years its been hard listening to everybody complain about Bush but unfortunately most of it was justified.

Now I know Obama is not going to change everything but I will use his recent address at Notre Dame as an example. Prior and during his visit all the pro life abortion people were protesting his speech at a Catholic school. Now Obama who is pro choice could have just ignored the protesters and not mentioned them in his speech but he did and what he said impressed me. He said basically let's agree to disagree but do it peacefully and respectfully. I mean we can argue until the ends of time whether you think abortion is right or wrong (I am pro choice) and the debate will never end. People just need to respect that we all aren't going to think and act the same on all issues. Okay enough politics.

My youngest son works at Starbucks and one of the great things about that is he gets a free pound of coffee a week to take home. Since he doesn't drink much coffee at home as he also gets free coffee while he is working. Guess who gets that free pound? Me. Well my wife shares it too. I love it. We have a cupboard full of coffee. It also make great gifts too. Now I know some people hate Starbucks coffee saying its too strong or whatever but personally I love it and this from a guy who until a couple years never drank coffee. Seriously!! I went through most of my life without coffee and now of course I am an addict!

Well I played my usual Monday night game last night and I actually played pretty well. I think there was 40 of us. I started off well when getting dealt a couple of low pairs early 5's one time and 6's another and both times managed to bet people off the pots.. Then I went card dead for awhile until someone went all in in early position and I looked down and had A10s and I called and doubled up. He had pocket 3's. I hit my straight. After that not a lot of memorable hands but I managed to make it to the final table. I won a couple decent pots there and was looking great until I got dealt KQ. 3 of us limped in. Flop came Q63.Lady to my right immediately went all in. I had her covered and figured my hand was good so I called. The other player folded. Lady turned over QJ so I was looking great and had her covered . Yea you guessed it the lousy Jack came on the turn and she doubled up. I was crippled after that but managed to hold on and went out in 6th.

Watched a movie on the weekend called Taken with Liam Neeson. It was not bad. Lots of action although a little hard to believe that one guy could do all what he did in the movie but without giving away too much plot it certainly was worth renting. Basic storyline is his daughter gets kidnapped and he has to find her.

My running is suffering lately. I am still running 4 days a week but I used to run 6 or 7. I used to always have a running goal whether it be an upcoming marathon or half marathon now the motivation just seems to be not there. I honestly don't know whether I will ever run a race again. One thing now though is when I do run I always enjoy it now and before I used to force myself on some days to run as I knew I needed to get out there and put in the miles. Maybe that's a good thing. Running is supposed to be fun.