Okay, Seriously.

[Not a lot of content in this post. I wouldn't blame you for skipping it. But if you're interested in what I'm up to, this is probably the post you should read.]

Since apparently there are people who read this blog and (to me, somewhat surprisingly) seem to want to know what I've been up to - at least pokerwise - here's the deal:

I'm playing 200NL at Party. Typically 6-8 tables. I try to play about 5-7k hands a week, although it varies a bit how much I play. I've been running like a roller coaster for the past month, with my biggest losing day so far happening a week and a half ago, dropping 12 buy-ins in a surprisingly short period of time. Still, I'm showing a profit for the month - let's hope that doesn't change. I took a day off from poker after the Bloody Sunday but got back in the saddle and worked my way back up.

My plan, before January happened, was to grind up my bankroll enough this month to be able to take a first shot at 2/4 in February. Unless I run ridiculously hot for the rest of the month, this is not all that likely to happen, and will probably be postponed a few weeks. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I'm of course disappointed. My overall goal for the year is to try to move up 2/4 shortly, then probably start playing 3/6 when I find soft spots sometime later on in the spring or this summer. Looking at game selection at Party, however, it seems that there's very few 3/6 games running, but a lot of 5/10. I'm not sure how to interpret that. Perhaps I'll stick with 2/4 for most of the year and start looking for soft spots at 5/10 instead.

So there you have it. My grand plan.

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I've also spent a lot of time reading. And I mean a lot. This year, I've read:

"Röde Orm" ("Red Orm") by Frans G Bengtsson, a two-part book about the adventures of the viking Orm.

"The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho which I heard great things about but didn't do much if anything for me at all, to be honest - thankfully it was short

"The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins which explains the theory of evolution and how we understand it today

"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card, a sci-fi story that I thought was pretty good

"The Wintersmith" by Terry Pratchett, the third book in the series about young witch Tiffany Aching - the whole series is just plain great

"Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz, a... Well, I suppose you might call it a horror book. I haven't read much by Koontz, but I liked this one. I think I'm going to have to pick up the rest of his Odd Thomas books.

... and I re-read Tommy Angelo's book "Elements of Poker." His writing on quitting is awesome and is perhaps the single most useful text on poker ever written.

And now I've started the book that's been sitting in my "to read" pile for almost a year, a brick of a book called "Mao - The Unknown Story," a 750 page monster that will probably last me for quite awhile. I've lately developed quite an interest in history, but I haven't specialized in anything; I just buy and read books about topics that spike my curiousity. I realized that I know very little about Mao Zedong and decided that should change - so I bought the book. I suppose that someday a specific historical topic might crystallize that I want to delve deeper into, but right now I'm happy to just piece together various parts of it here and there.

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Between work, books, poker and all the various appointments and meetings that come with late pregnancies, you might think there isn't much time left for anything else, and you'd be right. Still, we've managed (in great part thanks to Lori organizing and making sure it gets done) to buy stuff for the baby: a crib, a changing table, a baby seat for the car, etc. We've also cleared out the baby's room (used to be the guest room/library), but now the guest room/library has moved to the room that used to be the workroom, and the workroom has moved to the room that used to contain the closets, and the closets have moved into our bedroom.

Now all we need is a baby.