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We had somewhat of a hellish time getting home. Our flight from Dallas to Santa Barbara was delayed for hours because of mechanical problems, then we faced traffic driving home the next day making what is normally a 6-7 hour drive into a 9-10 hour one. And to top it all off, I have caught my yearly cold, which makes the idea of studying even less appealing than it already was.

Meh.

vacation bummer

Well I looked on-line and found out what I already knew was coming but still sucks anyways - I failed the Bar exam that I took in July. I was like 98% sure I had failed because I just didn't give myself enough time to study and CA's exam is one of the if not the toughest exam in the states (only about 50% pass), but that 2% hope still makes the fact that I failed a little gutwrenching.

The good thing is that poker has given me the opportunity to take the next three months to really crack down and put in enough hours to study seriously this time and hopefully pass it when I take it again in February.

My goal is to make 6 figures again next year playing poker so that I don't even need to look for a "real job" again, but, in case poker doesn't pan out I want to have my bar privileges in my back pocket so I'm probably going to continue to play sporadically from now until February when I take the exam to make sure that I actually put in the number of hours I need to study effectively so that I pass it this time...

Other than this minor setback, this year has actually been very very fortuitous so I am actually quite thankful during this Thanksgiving season. My wife graduated med school and got into the residency program she wanted, I have won enough money playing poker that we were able to buy our first home that we are still loving, our dog (who we treat like a baby) should have died when she ran away from a relative's home in a busy area of a L.A. suburb but somehow got scooped up by an animal control person, my sister is about to have another baby, and even after 8 years of marriage I still think my wife is my best-friend and enjoy spending every free minute I have with her (even if those minutes are harder to come by). So, in the big scheme of things, I am willing to take the rejection of being a failure considering everything else that I have going for me.

Last full night for a while

So I played a pretty full schedule last night and played well but the cards didn't hold up. Oh well. My wife's last day of work before starting her vacation is today, so I probably won't be playing or posting much, if at all, the next two weeks.

First full night for a while

So tonight I played my first "full" session for quite some time. I only made the money in one tourney out of 8 but I got about 6 hours of play in, which for me is about as much as I generally play unless I make a final table. I wasn't real happy with my play tonight as I let myself get tilted a bit, which I really haven't done lately. But now that the night is over I am just mulling over how ludicrous my life really is right now. And it really is rediculous. Poker has made me lose some of my "common sense" when it comes to money and "real life" but when I take the time to really think about what I am doing and how I am surviving it makes me laugh.

When I started this little foray into becoming a professional I agreed with my wife that I would play no more than 40 hours a week since that is how much I worked as an attorney, and I really thought I would be playing that much each week. But so far stuff has kept coming up. I took a break after I made all that money in the FTOPs tourney, and then family has come to visit, and we have gone down to Santa Barbara to visit family, and then there was a lot of work dealing with buying the house and moving in, and now next week my wife goes on vacation so I won't be playing for those two weeks either.

So what it comes down to is that since August 23 I have only "worked" a total of just over 150 hours or about a whopping 15 hours a week. And that work is doing something I love to do, which is play poker. And here's the kicker... so far this little foray into playing professionally is actually working!! Even with only an average of 15 hours a week my bankroll is actually increasing. It's not drastically increasing, but it is not decreasing (which is all I really care about) and that includes the monthly withdrawals I am making (i.e. I am netting more than I am withdrawing). And when you really think about it, that's CRAZY!! I sit in front of a computer, get dealt two cards over and over and because I make better decisions about what to do with those 2 cards then the average person does, I win money.... and I like it so far.

Easing back in to playing

Well I took the MPRE this morning (a professional responisbilities test that you have to take to get bar privileges) and I have no idea how I did.

I also broke down and ordered cable internet last night because I don't want to have to deal with my dsl cutting out anymore. But of course as soon as I did that my dsl seems to work fine... so I played for the first time in a long time tonight.

Nothing huge, I only played 5 tourneys. Bubbled 2 and lost races in the other 3 but it felt good to be playing again even if I didn't get any good results. I am hoping that I play a pretty normal schedule this next week, because after that my wife goes on vacation and I will (once again) be playing very infrequently for the following 2 weeks.

7-UP Tree

I always thought that 7-UPs lemon/lime slogan was funny, but I guess that was because I had never seen a lemon/lime tree before. Well, our new house has one, and the lemon/lime-ade it provides is pretty tasty. Even tastier when you add some vodka.

I am not sure if the phone guys came yesterday when I was cleaning the carpets at our rental (we want our security deposit back!!) because although I now have a constant strong green dsl light on my modem, the internet is still slowwwwwwww here. I am a little worried it might be because we have it hooked up in our converted garage through 50 feet of standard phone cable rather than through the grey dsl cable that came with the modem. But I don't know anything about computers, so I don't know if that would slow things down or not.

I am hoping that it at least works for playing poker, because I plan on playing tonight and don't want to be getting disconnected.