Today was an example of how the events of the day before can really screw you over. In short, today sucked.
Dreams
I had some weird and kind of scary dreams, but they are pretty foggy now and I can’t remember them. One had something to do with the latest Batman movie, but there was a lot more that escapes me right now.
Oh, another one just came back to me. I had a dream where I was in the halls of some building that was like an old college, but the professors were all evil. I was showing the friend that I was with how to escape from them if they saw us. There was like a mirror at the end of a hall, and we had to get them to look at it and it somehow drove them away. We did that, and then we ran away but we were chased. I left a trail of spoons behind me (I don’t know why I had spoons) in the hopes that I could get far enough ahead to create a false trail and escape for good. Thankfully I woke up before much else happened because it was pretty scary.
One Year Ago Today
This was my last day visiting Rochester. I went to church, hung out one last time with Andrew, then drove back home. I got back just in time to watch the NBA All-Star game, which was really entertaining.
Thoughts
Today I had yet another revelation, which is a word I use for phrases which I’ve heard all my life but didn’t fully understand until now. The latest phrase is “Barking up the wrong tree,” which I heard today in the Weird Al song “Dare to Be Stupid.” For some reason I always thought that the ‘barking’ was like someone yelling, so in the sense of dogs barking. But I realized today that the expression is clever or whatever because of tree bark. I’ve always known that bark is what it’s called on trees, but in this expression I somehow never made the connection. I think it was just a few days ago that I was thinking I might never have another revelation, but sure enough I did.
My Day
As I said in the title, yesterday screwed me for today. Obviously things that happen one day can ruin the next day, but it was smaller things that came back to bite me today. Yesterday I woke up early for church, and because of that I was really tired today and slept in late. I thought the clock said it was 3:30pm, but I guess it was 4:30 when I finally got up. That sucked because although I had time to shave and shower before work, I didn’t have enough time to eat breakfast. That again brings me back to yesterday, because after work we got out just too late to get Taco Bell, and I ended up eating some stupid noodles for dinner.
I managed to leave on time, but since I didn’t have anything to eat my mouth felt really bad. I passed a McDonald’s in a service area on the Thruway, so I stopped there quick to get a Shamrock Shake to give me a little something. I made it to work right on time, and there weren’t too many cash games going which made me happy. The tournament wasn’t too big either, so I figured it should be a pretty easy night. But there weren’t too many dealers, so that initial assumption couldn’t have been more wrong.
I started at a tournament, and my next down was another tournament table. I realized that because the tournament our downs would mostly be those for at least a few hours, so the night would be terrible. Just like yesterday, I only had one cash game down in the first two hours, and it was bad. I looked at the board and saw that there was only one break, which is the minimum since we need someone to set the rotation. The day shifters were still there for at least another hour, which was terrible because it meant that the board would not get any easier until much later.
I saw that I was near the end of the string, which was only good in that I was close to getting a break, but really it was bad since I would be one of the last ones to get a break. After 3 hours without a break I was finally at my last down, and near the end I broke that tournament and thought I would finally get a break. But Pete came over and said, “No rest for the wicked,” followed by telling me that I was going to another table. It seemed really late, but it was only 10:30. Since I hadn’t eaten since like 3am the night before, I was going on 20 hours without food.
That table was $2-$4 which made it even worse, and I told Jon how I just wanted to get food so he was rubbing it in by talking about food. After my next down I was finally at a break, but I looked up at the board and saw that it was changed to STAY which meant I had to run the board to give Rich a break. I looked at Pete and Rich in anger and disbelief, and yelled, “Are you kidding me?” They started laughing and took it off, and told me that Pete decided to mess around since I was the only one who hasn’t had a break (in 4.5 hours). I can appreciate a joke like that and I laughed along, but I was really hungry and needed a break. I would have flipped out if they did take that one away from me.
I had time to get a little wrap, which I planned on being one of several meals of the night. I had another three downs straight after that, and I broke a table after one hand and got to go home after 6.5 hours which made me really happy. For most of the night the tips were bad so everything was terrible, but at one table there was a guy who was tipping me very well. He won one good pot and tipped me $20, which proportionally was really high but it made my down right there. There were a lot of drunk and loud players all night, as well as an unusually large amount of black people. I made $180 tonight so it was good money-wise, but one of the worst nights work-wise.
I grabbed some sushi on my way out, and I ate it at home before bed. Then I typed all this up, and now I can finally go to bed at 5am. I’m really tired so I’m happy to get some sleep, but I’m hoping to wake up closer to 2pm so I don’t have to rush before work. I’m happy though that after tomorrow I get two days off, which I really need after today. I know my job is easy, but it doesn’t mean I have to enjoy every minute of it. Thanks for reading, and “When the thief takes, when our hopes cave, You build us back, You build us back. When the earth shakes, when the world breaks, You build us back, You build us back.”
—Eric Del Medico
