Wedded bliss and a giant albino

A big congrats goes out to J & J on their recently committed nuptials. The wedding was quite spectacular, taking place in Chicago at a place called the Ivy Room. It was beautiful and very well put together. I don't know if the couple used a wedding planner but all of the details were well-attended to and everything was really quite nice. The happy couple is off to Fiji next week, enjoy!

Many very close friends from the area where I grew up were in attendance. I don't get to spend nearly as much time with those folks as I used to, so it was fun to get some quality time in. Much ridiculous activity ensued, including typical silly dancing (Q, the drop the keys move was a BIG hit with this crowd) and for many, far too much alcohol consumption. As usual, many plans were made for trips together that will likely never happen (although that Vegas junket sure sounds sweet!) and hopefully a reunion of sorts at Thanksgiving. That, of course, assumes that certain among us have recovered from this weekend's festivities by then, and you know who you are! In addition, I suspect that I will be posting at least one picture from the event shortly.

I mentioned that I'm reading Moby Dick for my class this fall. I wanted to post a very short excerpt demonstrating Melville's ability. This comes at the beginning of Chapter 37, p.182.

"Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun - slow dived from noon, - goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies her endless hill."

Stunning descriptions, this really struck me for some reason.

Song lyric of the day "And the shadow of the day / will embrace the world in gray" Linkin Park

Until next time.

Ace

Back to reality

Well, the second break of the summer from class has come and gone. It's amazing how quickly time has gone. #1 heads back to school starting tomorrow, #2 fires up next week and I start up this week as well. The nice rhythm the family has gotten into will now be thrown into chaos for the next couple weeks until we get into the new routine. We will be going in a lot of different directions though. Fortunately, #1 is entering first grade and will be in school all day, lessening the running around a little bit.

As far as my progression, my application to grad school is still in progress. I've got all of the transcripts requested, my letters of recommendation have been submitted and the only thing left for me to do is take and achieve an acceptable score on the GRE. I took a practice test and scored right at the minimum qualifying score. So, I need to spend a little time studying/practicing to make sure I've got a little breathing room on the exam. I'm glad to be so close to done with that piece, I think I should be able to finish the GRE in the next month or so.

Assuming my acceptance into the grad program, it's looking like I'll need to take five additional classes to complete the degree. Ugh! So, unfortunately, it looks like I'll be pushing back student teaching yet again. In some ways, this is frustrating because in reality, I could be student teaching right now if I stayed on my original schedule. But, in other ways, it's a bit of a blessing as it allows the family to save some extra money, pay off some items like the cars, and better prepare us for the period where we are on a single income until I'm able to get going with my teaching gig.

It's a lot to digest but I'm at peace with where I am now. I am looking forward to the time when it is all completed though. And I start up class this week, taking a single course in American Lit from the early 1800s. I've already started reading Moby Dick in preparation for the class. Melville is quite a writer!

Enough for now.

Song lyric of the day: "On the way to school / I'm glad it wasn't you" Drivin N Cryin

Until next time.

Ace

Trip report: Horseshoe Casino, Hammond, IN 8-9-08

After the big trip to New York, I wasted in no time in setting off for another trip. Up next, a trip to Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana. The casino underwent a gigantic renovation recently, costing half a billion to complete, and the grand re-opening was scheduled for August 8. As it turned out, the Smashing Pumpkins were brought in to play at the new theatre called The Venue, which is conveniently located only up a staircase and down the hall from the casino. As a Pumpkins fan and gambler, this was a fortuitous combination I could not pass up. So, I hooked up with my boy Q and we were off.

I got to the casino and easily found my way to the poker room. Wow! This is the closest thing I've seen to a Vegas type poker room outside Sin City. 34 tables in all, a very nice front desk/brush area, and a two tiered room (with the upper tier reserved for nosebleed stakes), this place was very nice. Of course, everything was brand new, including the tables, a commemorative set of chips for the grand re-opening, the electronic waitlist, and (unfortunately) the dealers.

The wait list process was a little cumbersome. I didn't call ahead to get on the list and by the time I got to the room there was a wait of about 2o people on the 1/2 No Limit game. Most of these were call-ins though so I was able to get a seat in about 30 minutes or so. Not bad, but they could have easily opened another table or two while I was waiting and there would have been no wait at all. I'm sure that is something that will be worked out with a little more experience.

The dealers weren't so good. Many of them had a very difficult time keeping the action moving, making decisions when a card was inadvertently exposed, etc. One cool thing was that the room has chip runners, meaning the dealers were not selling chips, which kept the action moving. Once the dealers get some more experience, the play should be pretty quick at Horseshoe. There is a lot of space in the room, as opposed to most of the other rooms I've frequented. This is a very good thing!

I sat down about 1:45 pm or so and started playing. I didn't have much in the way of hands for most of the session. In fact, the entire 6+ hours I played, I only wound up showing my cards on two hands. I'll dissect a few hands here for your reading pleasure.

Hand #1. Guy 2 seats to my right has been splashing around quite a bit, raising with a lot of garbage. He likes to talk a lot and is generally your typical table captain. He pops it up to 12 preflop. I look down at pocket sevens in the small blind. I might consider folding here since only one other person had limped into the hand and I'm out of position. But, given the aggressive nature of the captain, I decided to call. Other guy calls. Flop comes down 678 rainbow. Not a perfect hand for a set but beggars can't be choosers. I check, the limper checks and captain bets 25 into our $36 pot. I've got the captain covered and think he's likely on an overpair or just pushing around. But I'm not taking any chances. I push all in for another 100 or so. The limper folds and the captain goes deep into the tank. After a minute or so, he decides to call me and turns over pocket nines. He has an overpair and open ended straight draw. Rag on the turn and the river is an eight to fill me up. Nice pot and suddenly I'm up about $200 or a buy-in.

Hand #2. I'm on the button and about 5 people limp in to me. I look down at A8 off suit. I don't usually play this kind of hand but since I'm on the button decide to see a flop. Small Blind completes and BB checks. Flop comes down A88, bingo! SB leads out for $15 into the $14 pot. I'm disappointed as it folds around to me. I smooth call, wanting to extract as much as possible out of senor SB. The turn is a rag and he bets out another $20. Again I smooth call. River is yet another rag and SB bets out $30. This time I think about it for a while and raise another $90, figuring with $158 in the pot any eight and any big ace are likely to call me here. He goes into the tank forever and finally (argh!) mucks his hand. He shows an Ace as he folds. Dang it, I guess I raised a little too much. But, I've added to my growing stack.

Hand #3. Shortly before dinner, I finally look down at a premium pair in late position, spying AA. I'm in late position and there are four limpers in ahead of me. I raise up to $12 and get 3 callers (yikes!). Flop comes down T73, 2 diamonds. Checked to me and I bet out $20 into the $52 pot. Guy in 3rd position raises it up to $60 and it folds around to me. Did he hit a set? Maybe but I'm putting him on something more like pocket Queens or Jacks. This guy isn't a very good player and the only set I saw him play all night he slow played all the way to the river. I re-popped up to $120. Guy has about $300 behind, a nice sized stack. He fairly quickly calls me. Turn is a beautiful, wondrous, glorious Ace, I'm now sitting on the nuts. Dude checks to me and I bet out another $75 into this $300 pot. He fairly quickly calls. River is another seven, pairing the board and giving me a full boat. The only hand that beats me here is pocket 7s, which I thought was a possibility but I tell myself that's monster-under-the-bed type thinking. He checks to me and I fire out another $75. He's got about $150 left behind and the pot is already around $450. I think I've bet little enough for him to call, especially with such a big pot. He thinks for literally 3-4 minutes before finally folding. ARGGGGH! He was either on his Kings, Queens or Jacks, or maybe a flush draw. Later he tries to tell me he had pocket 2s, meaning he folded twos full of sevens. I don't believe that for a second. I lose a little on a couple speculative hands and finish the night up $430, up over two buy-ins. I like this poker room!

As an aside, the place also features 2 Poker Tek tables, which basically is an automated poker table, meaning no dealers, no chips, etc. It's basically playing computerized poker but you're playing against other people that are sitting at the table. The advantages of this are quicker games, no tipping the dealer required and lower rake taken from the hands. The disadvantage is primarily that there are no real cards, chips, etc. I'll try it out next time I'm there.



Q and I also checked out dinner. The line to the buffet was unbelievably long so we headed for a little Asian noodle shop. It was ok, they had a few dim sum dishes that I am especially fond of. So I snagged some of that and scarfed down dinner. This place could use more smaller restaurants besides the buffet and definitely could use more seating. Next up, The Venue, for Pumpkin-time!

The room was interesting, it was a gigantic theater. I'm sure that the set-up varies from show to show. The night before the Pumpkins played, Bette Midler opened the room. I'm pretty sure the general admittance area didn't exist for her show, hard to see all the boomers moshing it up to Wind Beneath My Wings. I digress.

For the Pumpkins, the entire downstairs was standing room, GA. It probably could have held somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand people in the downstairs alone. Pumpkins didn't come close to filling it though. In the upstairs, there was a balcony area with what looked like fairly limited seating, although to be honest I didn't really take a good look. The balcony was quite a long ways back from the stage, those seats would not have been good for this show. Interestingly, the floor itself was concrete but during the show when everyone was jumping around you could feel the floor bouncing, almost like it was made of rubber. I kept envisioning the pulsing mass of people collapsing through the floor and landing one story down in the middle of a roulette game or something!

Pumpkins put on an interesting show. They were on stage for 2 1/2 hours and played a few of the hits. They also played a couple of really long songs that literally lasted about 50 minutes or so between the 2 of them. Here is a review of a similar show done the night before that seems like it had a very similar setlist. Highlights of the show for me included classic Mayonnaise, the previously mentioned long rock out to America, and from way back Rhinoceros. Unfortunately, there were some lowlights. First, the sound really sucked. I don't know if it was the room or the band, but at many points you couldn't hear Corgan's guitar and often couldn't hear his vocals. Huh? Second, I wasn't very into the lengthy Floyd cover they did. The acoustic set in the middle of the show was fairly average and the final encore, when the entire band stood front stage and played kazoos was sublime and a little too much for me. Overall, I'm glad I saw the band but it left a bit to be desired.

On the other hand, Q has been a big Pumpkins fan for a long time. He's been a little grouchy the band hasn't played Chicago once since their reunion last year. I don't think this show really helped the cause. I really don't want to be to blame for his dissocation with his favorite band but I think it may be too late for that. Bummer!

Song lyric of the day: "The world is a vampire / set to drain" Smashing Pumpkins

Until next time.

Ace

For the married amongst us

Joke of the day from ComedyCentral.com

Q: What's the difference between an in-law and an outlaw?

A: Outlaws are wanted.

Song lyric of the day: "Ghost riders in the sky" Johnny Cash

Until next time.

Ace

Only missing the sex

One thing I've done a good job of during this portion of summer break is doing a LOT of reading. That includes the epic biography of Neil Young called Shakey. This sucker was 738 pages of rock and roll history all surrounding the strange and always changing world of Neil Young.

Now I'm not a huge Neil Young fan or anything but I thought this would be a good book to read. He's a very intriguing character and mesmerizing enough to help me through the long read. By the end, I wondered how the book might have continued. The story essentially wraps up in 1998, presumably because that's when the book was published. But Young has continued to write and record in the ensuing decade. Not sure I'm asking for a sequel but it would be interesting to read. The thing is filled with all the drugs and rock and roll you could imagine, only leaving out one leg of the stool in the cliched world of music.

The author is a guy named Jimmy McDonough, who apparently has a reputation for these long biographies. I'll tell you another thing the guy has, that's a long lensed view of rock and roll. He is constantly displaying this knowledge as he discusses influences on Young and other artists. But, at times, he comes off sounding like an old fogey, lamenting the end of rock and roll - while he doesn't give an exact date, I would guess he thinks rock essentially ended around 1978 or so. That's a little distracting.

But Young's life is a crazy one. He's a lot more than Heart of Gold and Rockin' in the Free World. His story is one of being in the right place at the right time in a lot of ways. His love for music blossomed right as the world opened up to rock and roll and his experiences led him right into the heart of hippiedom. From there, Young would make many interesting, bizarre and sometimes career-threatening transformations into different types of music and different types of characters. One aside you would never guess is that Young has become the sole owner of Lionel, the toy train manufacturer. How unusual!

The book does a good job of avoiding the hero-worship that often comes with these types of tomes and really gives a great insight into Young's mind through interviews with the artist himself and exhaustive research on those around him. It's well written and sparked in me a keen interest in tracking down some of Young's music. If you're a music lover, you'll find the book interesting, even if you aren't a huge Neil Young fan.

Next up on the reading list is Moby Dick for the lit class I'm taking this fall. Talk about a change of pace!

Song lyric of the day: "Old King sure meant a lot to me / But that hound dog is history" Neil Young

Until next time.

Ace

Trip Report: Pomme grande

The big trip is over! Here's my recollection of the affair.

We started out on Friday night, headed from the midwest to the Big Apple. The plan was to drive out overnight to minimize the "are we there yet" factor. So, we got in the car and off we went. 7 minutes into the trip, we made our first stop, a turnaround to head home and retrieve our forgotten camera. Not bad! So, eight minutes later, we were seriously on the road, right around 8 pm.

The kiddies were entertained with a movie for a while, which helped, finally dozing off as we crossed into Indiana. The great part about this trip was that we primarily only had to take one interstate virtually the entire way, the toll-infested I-80. We got about 2 1/2 hours in before our first pit stop. From there, we were in business, getting a long ways and deep into early morning hours before our next stop. The driving overnight plan was a good one but had a few drawbacks. One, I should have gotten more sleep the night before - I was up quite late due to some work stuff. Two, it really threw our sleep patterns off on the day of our arrival. I made it through most of Ohio before needing some relief at the wheel, turning it over to the better half.

We ran into a Noah laughing his butt off in the Ark rainstorm in Eastern PA as what eventually turned into dawn approached. It was hair-raising, going up and down the mountains (the very beautiful Poconos) in this stuff. I took over at the wheel shortly into the deluge. We cruised into New Jersey and were on our way to our hotel, getting into the area by about 9:30 in the morning. Crazily, this was nearly to the minute the amount of time MapQuest told us it would take.

Our hotel was quite nice, it seemed like it was pretty new and the room we got was very big, with plenty of room for all of us and a separate room area for our youngest to sleep without worry of being bothered by us. Unfortunately, my head nearly exploded trying to find the place. It was securely nestled on the backhalf of a frontage road on a non-existent highway that you had to know a secret password to enter. Ugh! So, instead of finding the hotel, we headed over instead to check out the Statue of Liberty.

I've seen Lady Liberty while crossing a bridge or two in NY and was suprised at how small she looked from that vantage point. So when we took the ferry over to Liberty Island, I was dutifully impressed by the size of the statue. It was a very cool, but brief, experience. Unfortunately, it started pouring so it was a little soggy making our way back to the ferry. But once on board, we were fine inside the boat.

We finally did find our way to the hotel and were happy to have a resting place. We took the kids swimming in the "heated" indoor pool, which felt like it was not heated at all. This would be the case through the remainder of the trip but the kids didn't seem to mind much, except the littlest, who shrieked a little when entering but quickly numbed to the pain. Thankfully, there was a sufficiently heated spa to make up for the trouble. So, Saturday was essentially spent at the Statue of Liberty and hanging out at the hotel, having dinner delivered in.

Sunday was game #1 on our doubleheader trip, a trip to Yankee Stadium to see the Bronx Bombers battle the Angels. The plan was to leave super early and get to the stadium in time to visit Monument Park, an area beyond centerfield where there are tributes to many of the great Yankees to play at the stadium (think Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, giants in baseball history). Unfortunately, horrid traffic, children's appetites and a food court lunatic conspired to delay us beyond the time limits that would allow us to visit this portion of the ballpark. I was disappointed but it wasn't the end of the world. BTW, the Bronx was really not a very nice place.

Now for Yankee Stadium The place is very old but felt really comfortable. Our seats were in the right-centerfield bleacher area, a non-alcholic seating section. And even though we were in one of the furthest rows back, we felt very close to the field and action. There was history dripping from the place, it was really awe-inspiring to think of how many bombs the Mick hit into our area back in the day. It was also fun that in our section, the fans chanted for each player in the top of the 1st innning, earning an appreciative wave or nod of the hat from each player while the game was in progress - cool little tradition. Alas, the #2 & #3 were getting feisty and wound up bumping heads and leading to a bloody nose for one and an early departure for the rest of us. Oh well, at least we got to see the park. We finished the day with some more swimming and a trip to the drugstore to get some ointment for a heat rash #3 had picked up.

Monday was a hole in our schedule so we decided to go check out Central Park. Now I generally am not too concerned about driving in lots of traffic, even if I am not familiar with the area I'm in. But I have to say, driving around NYC was pretty damn stressful and there is not a lot of parking in the whole Central Park area, at least not easily found for us. But we did manage to find a garage and spent a few hours checking out CP. It was okay but I wasn't overly impressed. One of the highlights of the trip was dinner Monday night, where we checked out a neighborhood Portugese restaurant we happened across during our stay. Very authentic, very good, and fun to try something new and different.

Tuesday was check out day and the second half of our doubleheader, although the game wasn't until 7:05. So we slept in a little, packed up and headed to the ballpark area, figuring we'd find something to do near there. We managed to find a movie theater and took the monkeys to see Wall-E, an interesting Pixar/Disney flic. It was a pretty depressing vision of the future but well-written, very imaginative and the kids seemed to like it. Afterwards, we headed over to the stadium early and got there right about the time the park opened.

Shea Stadium was about what I expected. The place has a reputation for being a dump. I don't know if I'd call it a dump but it doesn't really stand out. Built in 1962, it is in the same concept as many of the cookie cutter flying saucer designs that many stadiums of that era were. But since we were there so early, we got to hang out down near the field for a while and walk around a little bit. We spent a little time up in our seats, which were in the upper deck, which made Mount Kilimanjaro look like an anthill. Crikey! The better half couldn't even move once we got up there. We hung out for a bit and decided to head for the road. I would listen to the game on the way back home that night.

The ride home was pretty uneventful, save for some more torrential downpour for the better half to navigate as we came back. I gratefully slept through much of the deep night hours - I would have never made it without dozing off. We got home around 8:30 am on Wednesday morning, where we all proceeded to pass out for several hours (or at least I did, not sure about everyone else).

All in all, I was glad to see both stadiums, being much more impressed with Yankee Stadium, primarily due to the history. I was not impressed in the least with NYC, finding the areas we were in to be mostly rundown and dirty, unremarkable otherwise. We probably just weren't in the right areas but I doubt I'll make much of an effort to get back anytime soon. And the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, as usual marking swimming as the highlight of the affair!

Song lyric of the day: "I'm in a New York state of mind" Billy Joel

Until next time.

Ace