What's going on with me?

6-20-06 - I know it's been a while. Sorry, Daryl.

Today I saw a kid wearing a shirt that said, "Jesus died for Pedro." I laughed.

Last Wednesday, I entered a free poker tournament at the Comedy Zone. There were 15 people (including Roy Wood, Jr. who's a guy that's done some stuff on Crank Yankers, among other things). Somehow, I ended up winning. I kept getting lucky on top of figuring out how to play certain people. For winning, I was given the privilege of throwing a little party for up to 30 people on the night of my choice. Benefits include free appetizers and admission to the show, as well as happy hour drink prices for an hour and a half for all in attendance. The first thing I thought when the woman was telling me this was, "I don't know 30 people in Knoxville," but I'm sure people will be my friend for the night if there are freebies involved. Yay life.

I was visiting friends out of town for the weekend. Friday night lodging for Nick and me was to be at his friend Taylor's apartment. She showed up drunk to pick us up, but her friend Robyn was driving and her roommate Jenny was in the back. They decided, after they picked us up that they wanted Denny's. We drove for about 10 minutes and got really close to the Denny's.

We went through the intersection which had our turn immediately after it. As we're going through the intersection, though, this car almost hits us. Robyn honks the horn after slamming on her breaks. We then turned into the gas station which was right next to Denny's and Taylor said, "Watch them follow us." Sure enough, they turned in after us. This is where I should've grabbed my camera and started taking a video, but unfortunately nothing of this situation (other than a picture) exists. They chased us around the parking lot a couple times and then Robyn decided to give up. She parked so they couldn't get to her door and they flew up right next to us.

The skank driving rolled down her window and started off with, "We just got in a bar fight and we don't need none of you flippin' us off!" No one admitted to flipping them off and they pointed at me saying I did it. Nick later admitted that he did it, but not to them. They start yelling at us and acting like they wanted to get into another fight, when Taylor used her quick thinking and acted all sympathetic to them. Within 45 seconds of the beginning of the conversation, we were their best friends.

The one chick started talking about how they got attacked cuz they were hotter than the chicks that attacked them. Their assailants must've been pretty ugly, cuz her friend looked like Gollum, as Taylor later pointed out. As soon as Gollum poked her face to were we could see it, though, I asked Nick if that was Joan Rivers.

So the skank that was driving starts describing the fight and how she has bumps on her head from getting kicked in the head with a cowboy boot. Taylor's telling her that she needs to go to the hospital and Nick's telling her that I'm a doctor. Luckily, she ignored Nick. They both then got out of the car and started acting things out, saying how three of them were all on Gollum (who was tiny and walked away from the fight with a puffy, red eye). The driver said she grabbed her keys and started slashing their faces with them and that something lifted her up to make her stop. "I think it was god," she said.

So apparently they knew the chicks that were fighting them. They discussed grabbing their shotgun and going to their houses to shoot them. The driver then said something about her boyfriend cheating on her. Taylor asked how she knew and the chick said, "He told me he was. He's in jail!"

So then she said something about her bumpy head again and Nick once again told her I'm a doctor. She heard him this time. She opened my door and asked if I really was, so I said yes. She looked surprised and said, "How old are you?!" "Twenty...seven." "How can you be that young and be a doctor?" "You just have to start right out of school. It took eight years of school. I just graduated last month."

She grabbed my hand and put it on the side of her head and asked if I could feel her bump. I said yes and that she needed to go to the hospital (so they'd leave us alone). She then turned around and said, "Feel this one." She had matching bumps on her head. She then said, "My jaw hurts when I talk." I was about to prescribe her to shut up, but I didn't figure that would help the situation. I recommended going home and icing it down and told her she might hurt for a couple days.

Then they started to get back into their cars and they asked where we were going. We all pointed and said, "Denny's." She then asked if they had ice packs there, which made us all laugh. She chuckled and they hopped in and we watched as they drove off. They went to the intersection where this whole thing started and, once again, ran the red light while turning right. Luckily, no one was coming. I told everyone that we needed to watch the obituaries the next day.

6-3-06 - Yesterday was an interesting day. My plans were to balance my checkbook, get my laundry going, and then while that was happening, do some general cleaning around my apartment, go grocery shopping, maybe work out, and go to the bank if I needed to deposit more money into my checking account from my other account where my money is direct deposited from work.

At about 2, or so, I started balancing my checkbook. Since I only do it once every few weeks, I sometimes takes a while. At around 2:30, I finished and saw that, unless I'd made a math error, I accidentally overdrew my account a couple times. Besides stupidity, I attributed it to some purchases I made that I don't normally make: a video game, new shoes, and a few shirts. They averaged about $45 apiece, so that's a decent amount I kinda didn't think about.

So I get ready and go to the bank really quickly to make a deposit. As I walk into the bank and stand in line, one of the tellers told me to wait a minute because the computers were changing days and that they're "slow as Moses." When she was ready, I handed the woman a check and she pulled me aside and said that since I was overdrawn, they'd have to wait until the check cleared before my account would be cleared for use. I asked how long that would be and she said 10 business day, which really worried me. I had $16 on me and if I couldn't use my account, I'd be screwed. After we walked back to her computer, she said, "Oh, no, it'll just be five business days." So I asked if that would be on Friday and she said a week from Monday, since the computers had just switched days.

Great. Then I braced myself to hear the overdraw fees: $31 per charge, and there were three with one pending. Awesome. Now all of this coming as a shock, I didn't really have the ability to think clearly and realize alternatives. I told this story to Julie yesterday and she said, "If you have two accounts, why didn't you just write a check and take it to a different bank?" I don't know. I'm dumb.

So I left the check there and I was freaking out the whole way home, wondering how I was gonna make it a week and a half on my $16 when I needed groceries, needed to get home on Thursday (which takes about a full tank of gas), and had a poker game that night. I had already seriously contemplated skipping it, because when I heard about it, I was told it would be either a $10 or $20 buy-in. I'm not crazy about $10 as it is, but I figured I'd go for it given the occasion (it was Dave's bachelor party). I almost cancelled my appearance there due to yesterday's event, though, since I didn't need to be spending money when I effectively had none, but since it was my friend Dave's bachelor party, I decided to go ahead and ask my friend Chris if he could spot me the buy-in. He said he would.

So I got home from the bank, after making the embarrassing call to Chris, and sat wondering what was gonna happen. I knew I wasn't up the creek completely, but I knew this wasn't gonna be fun. I'd already had great respect for people that were able to live paycheck to paycheck, because I don't know that I could do it. I've been fortunate. When the situation presented itself, I was right. I just freaked out.

I kept thinking about everything and then I realized I have two bills coming up: power and cell phone. I knew I needed to call my mom and ask for her credit acrd number so I could pay them and then I'd pay her back, but I knew I'd get yelled at and asked how I could be so stupid for overdrawing my account. I was right, and she just laughed at me. I got ribbed by her, my dad, and Liz. Oh, well. So my mom gave me her credit card number and at some point my dad said that if I needed money I could go to the planned parenting center and give a sample, but then my mom said they didn't need a bunch of little ones bouncing checks everywhere. Hilarious.

Then my mom asked how much the fees would be and I told her and she said to call a manager, since a teller told me that, and ask if I could get the charges dropped since I've been with the bank for 6 years and this has never happened before...and if they say no, "piss on 'em" and take my money out and go to a different bank. So I called the manager of the bank here and she said that I had to call the one in Columbia, since that's where the account was originated. I talked to the manager there and he said, "Yeah, we can drop the three charges." I then asked him about my account being frozen. I told him where the check was from and he saw that many from the same place had cleared before, so he said my account would be unfrozen by the next day (today). Woo-hoo, crisis averted!

So I called my mom back and told her the good news and that I probably wouldn't need to use her credit card. Just to be funny, I called her back about 20 minutes later and said I accidentally overcharged on her credit card.

So poker time comes around. Chris called and asked when I'd be meeting him at his apartment, since I didn't know how to get where we were going. I told him I was getting ready to leave and he said to wait, since he needed to get money, and then I realized I hadn't told him that I didn't need to borrow the money any more. So I showed up at his apartment, as did Blake, and I told them both all of what I've typed here so far. I figured that they were gonna kinda poke fun at me a couple times during the night for this, but it happened only once.

So we got to Rob's house for the poker game. We were there for about 15 minutes or so, waiting on everyone to show up. When we were about ready to start, Rob walked around with a coffee can and said, "Alright, everyone, $20." I was pissed off. I definitely wouldn't have shown up for that if I would've known ahead of time. I'm no good at poker. Of the many games I've played, most have been $3 buy-ins. I made my money back on one of them one time. I lost everything on the rest, I lost everything on all the $5 games (and I was pissed when the $3 games turned into $5 games since I knew I had no chance of winning). I've played one $10 game and I walked away with $4 or 5, though I would've been big winner if I was able to distinguish a drunk bet from a real one. So yeah, I knew I was just tossing my money out. Realizing I only had $16, I asked Chris to borrow $5 and he obliged.

We had two tables of six, for a total pot of $240. If everyone had shown up, there would've been six people that won money, but since only 12 did, they knocked it down to four or five, which would be decided later. There were a couple good guys playing: one named Troy at the other table and one named Russ at our table. I, of course, was upset that both didn't land at the other table (seats were randomized). We had extra seats set with chip stacks present for people who might show up late, one at each table. They threw in blinds when it was their turn, but that's it. Since I rarely play poker because I hate it simply cuz so many other people are obsessed with it, I was unsure how it would work when it came time for the empty seat to deal. I asked about it and Russ looked at me like I was dumb. I told him I don't play enough to know those things.

During the very next hand, it was between me and Russ. I was bluffing and he raised and I called. He flipped his cards and I saw that he beat me, so I said you won and went to throw my cards into the discard pile. He said, "You have to show me your cards." I looked at him and said, "No I don't. You were the last aggressor." Everyone kinda went, "Oooh!" and he acknowledged with body language and said, "Good point. I thought you said you didn't know anything about poker," but I clarified and restated that I just didn't know how to handle the empty chair. I think that's when he realized he didn't know what to think of me as an opponent.

After three round of blinds (about an hour and a half) we took a break, and I was left with $1150 worth of chips ($20 bought $1260 worth of chips). I figured I was doing pretty well. During the next three rounds of blinds, Elijah and Dale got put out at our table, and two from the other table went out. During that break we combined tables. I was at $4400 worth of chips and was the chip leader at our table. I was close to overall chip leader, if I wasn't him.

Before we started playing, we figured it was time to determine whether there would be four or five pay out slots. Four people voted for each. I normally would've voted five, but since I was feeling good, I voted four. Someone then said, "Since it's even, it goes to Dave, since it's his night." He said," Five!" which kinda made me mad. A few people then went, "No! You have to draw for it. Call the color of the top card." He called black and flipped up the five of hearts. That meant there were four places, though he tried to argue that it was five since the card was the five.

I think, in the first four hands at the new table, two people were put out. I can't remember for sure, but I think it was Troy and Russ, the two good guys. Dave, still trying to argue for five positions, said, "There went half of the guys that voted for four! It's five now!" No one agreed.

Blinds were at 200/400 and it was Blake's deal. I was big blind. Rob folded, Dave folded, Chris called, Blake called, Jason (small blind) folded, I think, and I saw a lot of chips out there. I had ace and jack of spades and decided I wanted to get at least one person out of that hand, so I threw in 400 more on my option and said, "There are too many people playing this one." Chris and Blake both called. Luckily I ended up winning that one, putting Chris out. It left Blake with few chips. I think he went out on the next hand, leaving four people. I was guaranteed my buy-in. I was chip leader by far. I think Rob went out pretty quickly after that, as well, giving him $20. The next lowest prize was $40, and I was far in the lead. Chris decided to make himself the dedicated dealer, which really helped to speed things up. Dave went out within a few hands, taking $40. At some point before Dave went out, Chris said, "Well, it looks like you won't have to worry about that check clearing after all." Blake and I laughed and I said, "I was wondering how long it would take for that to get mentioned."

That left me and Jason. He had $400 worth of chips, and big blind was up to $600. I had probably around $16000 in chips. I don't remember what I had on the next hand, but it wasn't good. I think I had two/nine off-suit. I went ahead and put Jason all in. We flipped up our cards and he had something good, but I don't remember what it was. I hit the two on the flop and the nine on the next card and ended up winning. This is very similar to how it played out on Dave's last hand.

Jason later said he was really glad I showed up. He should've gotten 5th or 6th place, cuz he rode fewer than $1000 chips for a LONG time while I was putting people out in a rapid-fire manner. He walked away with $60 and I left with $120.

I was ready to leave, so I told everyone I was gonna head home and someone laughed and said, "Yeah, you'd better leave quick before you get knifed!" We all laughed. I retorted with, "I was gonna ask for an escort to my car, but I don't think I trust anyone here." Chuckles.

As soon as I left, I called my mom and told her and my add my good fortune. They laughed and couldn't believe how lucky I'd gotten after my day started out so crappy.

For the 4 hours I was there, I made $25/hour. I'd say that's not too shabby.

I still hate poker.

I called the bank this morning to make sure my account was unfrozen and it is. The one pending overdraw charge sneaked its way into my account, but I'm gonna call back Monday when the manager is there and see if he'll get rid of that one for me.