:: My Urban Eyes ::

…and I’m going to be travelling, yea!!! So far it looks like this: I’ll be going down to Long Island from December 26th to December 29th, then I’ll bus back to Albany so I can train to Toronto on December 30th and stay until January 6th. I’m going to look into tickets tonight, try to finalize my plans. I’m afraid that the train tickets are going to be more expensive than I’m anticipating. If it’s too much, I’ll stay on Long Island longer and go to Toronto after New Years… though I desperately want to spend the holiday there. Bhairavi said something about a pajama party… sounds like so much fun! ^_^ So Toronto people (especially Fyre!), let me know how these dates look for you! ~crosses her fingers~

Watching more poker on tv. I’m bad. When I get to Glenn’s I’m going to try and convince him to play with me for chips… his folks must have some chips somewhere. I hope, anyway. ^_^ I don’t think playing for slips of paper would have the same appeal. Raising someone to only have your “chips” scatter because of a draft doesn’t seem very romantic. (Smoky dark poker room romantic, not You’ve Got Mail romantic.)

They seem to be running through a whole bunch of eps that may be old to most, but new to me. I love the look of the ESPN shows (did I say this before?)—they make the casino look dark and mysterious, even smoky, which is quite a feat considering there’s no smoke in there. :P

Worked Monday at Harry and David, going back in tomorrow as well. Lemme tell ya, Christmas season is so much better than the summer. During the summer plan (what the company wants us to make, usually a percentage over last year’s business) was around a thousand dollars a day. If we make a thousand dollars an hour this week, we need to pick up the slack. On Monday in order to match the year before we needed to make $29,000… that just blows my mind.

My favorite part was being able to work register constantly. I’ve gotten pretty speedy at it! Oddly enough, cash sales take less time than credit. That’s probably for two reasons—our modem takes a while to validate each card (it may get queued with four registers going), and cash purchases tend to be smaller.

Some people buy so much! A thirty dollar tower for fifty people in their office. A cheesecake for every last one of their friends. A thousand dollar purchase is not unusual, and if people call ahead to reserve what they want, it can go even higher.

And there are men working in the store now, gasp! One of them is kinda cute, too. -_^ They’re mostly hired muscle, doing heavy stocking both in the back room and on the floor. I don’t even know if they get register training. “Can you move boxes? Great! You’re hired!”

Ooo, writing these in Word first makes me more verbose. :P

I’m scared to go out sailing on PP, with my connection, but I’m really glad I can sign on. You guys are what keep me sane… I love youse guys! ~huuuug!~

Random thing before I go—has anyone seen Ocean’s Twelve? I didn’t hear as much fanfare about it as I thought I would, at least right after the open. Any good?

Lately I've been getting into poker. Not to the point where I'm playing cash games or anything, but I'm trying to learn more about the game. I first got into it with the World Series of Poker on ESPN a little over a year ago... Glenn and I would watch it together, and he'd tell me stories about the players.

Glenn knows me really well. If he went into long technical lectures about the odds for each hand and why so and so folded I would've turned the tv off. But hearing the stories behind players' nicknames and famous hands they've played kept me interested.

So know I know enough to play fake hands with Glenn and win one now and then. Last night, while procrastinating, I learned the basics of seven card stud, razz, and omaha. I loved the options of omaha, it felt freeing, especially heads up. At a table it must be a different monster, though. Seven card stud was a bit of a pain, as I don't know how to process all that information yet (four of the cards dealt to each player are face up... it's a lot to keep track of). Razz is an interesting study, I think--you want me to make the worst hand I can? I enjoyed thinking about things backwards. When else can you think, "Oh, crap, I got a pair of kings. Better fold."?

Tonight I actually read a few articles to try and increase my knowledge base. I don't know if it helped my game at all, but some of it was good reading. I think the psychology of poker, tells and the like, are very interesting. I found myself drifting towards those articles more often than not.

Glenn said I'm getting good at poker, and while I think he's sincere, I also think he has an ulterior motive--to get me to join his buddies' $10 cash game. I'm hesitant (obviously!), but I'd like to play for chips sometime, as I've never had a chance to sit at a table and read players (and conversely, be read). I'm curious as to how it would go. Especially if Glenn is at the table... I think I would read him decently well. ^_^