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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.

Funky internet

Apparently there is something causing interference with the phone line at our new house which makes my dsl disconnect a lot. Hopefully, someone is coming out tomorrow to fix it, because without internet, it is hard for me to play poker, which means I can't work.

Still Moving

After one long day and lots of help from my family who drove up from L.A., we are finally all moved in. Internet is now on, and tomorrow we get cable... All that is left to do now is clean the place we were renting, and buy a sofa and maybe a buffet for our new house. But it already feels like home, and it's a nice feeling.

Moving

Today we got a house. My wife's and my biggest purchase prior to this had been a dining room table and chairs. We have never bought a car, never bought a huge tv or stereo system, never boguth much of anything. And today we have a house. We might be the only ones in America buying a house right now, but it's ours. Let the tax write offs begin!!

I've never downloaded a picture onto this thing before so it kinda got screwed up, but the top picture is the backyard/deck and the bottom one is the front of the house. I would have taken photos of the inside except that it's just a bunch of boxes right now.

I'm back

So it's been two years and a lot has changed.

I no longer work as an Assistant Attorney General in Wisconsin. In fact, I am no longer living in Wisconsin or working as an attorney at all.

My wife finished her medical school education at UW in May and we moved to Sacramento, CA in June for her to start her residency program in OB/Gyn here at UC-Davis. I took the bar exam here in June, but don't get the results back until November and I don't think that I passed because I did not give myself enough time to study (if I do fail I will retake the exam in February and should pass with 3 months of study time). In the meantime we decided that I would take this time as an opportunity to play poker fulltime which has been a dream of mine for the past couple of years. The agreement that my wife and I made is that I must withdraw a certain amount each month from my poker bankroll and if I ever lose all of my poker bankroll than I have to quit and find a "real job."

Luckily, I have been able to keep my end of the agreement and more. A couple of months ago I came in 3rd place in a very large tournament and won more than I would have made in 3 years as an Assistant AG. We have used that money as a down payment on a house and we close tomorrow and are hoping to be all moved in by Saturday.

So that's the background... now let's let the blogging begin (again).

p.s. I am not planning on using this blog to go over hand histories and whatnot because I do enough of that already on flopturnriver.com.

Yikes!

Well, since we have not yet determined how much a chopped off finger in custard is worth. I figured we might debate how much having your genitals glued to your abdomen would be worth. $46,000 worth it?

Ole Ole Ole Ole Gauchos Gauchos!

My alma mater is in the news.

Run Forrestina Run!!

If only she was here she never woulda been caught.

When Nature Goes Wild - Next on Fox!

I do like my animal posts that's for sure.

Good Week

Well it was a good week for me last week:

1) I won my first trial as a lawyer (I tried juvenile criminal cases last summer as an intern and won, but those don't count). It was a small claims case and the pro se plaintiff inmate appeared by phone - but hey, a win is a win.

2) I became an uncle. To a niece named Elliot. Now I get to enjoy giving this new child an E.T. phone home complex for the rest of her life (one E.T. plush doll is already in the mail).

3) I won enough money in an online poker tournament last night that I can pay off the rest of my law school loans. Only downside is that I am still on a sort of high and have accomplished little to nothing at work today.

I'm an uncle!

My sister just popped yesterday. I have a niece named Elliot. Ellliiiooottt - looking for an E.T. doll right now to send as a b-day gift.

So this is where those fingers come from

I think I'm going to ask this guy to send me his finger so I can put it in some custard and then sue somebody with nice big deep pockets.

Going Postal

This is just nasty.

I'm an old fart

My freshman year at UCSB I basically just decided that the sun was much more important then school. So I basically just stopped going to class. I did, however, start playing a lot of basketball. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon there was a group of these guys from one of the local engineering firms who came to the outdoor courts on campus to play some ball for an hour. Since I was no longer going to class, I too was often out shooting hoops and soaking up the rays, and eventually I became the one college kid who was allowed to play in their game. As an 18 year old, I of course called this thrice weekly game my "Old Fart" game since I was playing with a bunch of guys who were in their 30's, 40's and even 50's.

Well as of yesterday, I am now officially an old fart. That's right the big 3 0. Last year I was still in school, having fun, farting around. Now I'm a working man, who still farts around a lot, but damn I just feel OLD.

Bitch Dog

Of course you never get the real story from the news. So let me tell you how this really went.

Crabby lady has nothing better to do than repeatedly call cable company to bitch them out. After her umpteenth call, the 19 year old receptionists get sick of transferring her to the person who has been picked to deal with her that day, so they come up with the novel idea of adressing her bill to "Bitch Dog." Unfortunately "Bitch Dog" knows how to read and notices her bill, so surprise, surprise she complains again and the geniuses who came up with the idea are fired.

Now comes the fun part: It is up to you my two dear readers to come up with a story as to why Jeffrey's bill was addressed to Jeffrey "Scrotum Bag" Barnes.