Memorial Weekend Pt. 1

This weekend was made long by the generous offer to release us from the office on Monday, Memorial Day. It started late on Friday night, and thanks to a harsh Sunday night pretty much ended on...Sunday night.

On Friday night, John's last night out from New York, we chilled at my apartment and just hung out like we used to do. We hit up CPK at about 10 o'clock before John mentioned that he wanted to hit up Chumash for his last night out.

After dinner I gave him a brief blackjack refresher course as we waited for Mitchell to get out of Pirates 3, as he stated some interest. After waiting for a couple hours he ended up not wanting to go, so at around 1AM John and I took to the road. I wasn't planning on playing at all, but on the way up there I knew I couldn't just let him play by himself. I had to...it was the uhhh....brotherly thing to do.

I only put out $60, as my financial situation isn't what it should be. I ended up winning $100 after a couple shoes, and John finished up dead even. He dropped a little bit to some video slots while I watched and laughed. We left and he was happy with the trip. I came up $100 to help cover some of the $110 it cost me in gas for all the driving to LA and back and forth to Chumash, so that was nice.

Now I know that I keep complaining about being in financial disarray, but I'm finally starting to get back on my feet. I fell into a couple gambling-related relapses in the past year, which is obviously my fault. But I feel pretty good about the way my life's going at this point and shouldn't really get back to the point that I feel like I NEED to gamble in order to be happy. This time around it was a completely different reason for gambling, and it really was about hangin out with my brother on his birthday, as opposed to some uncontrollable urge.

On Sunday morning I took him to Bob Hope and off he went. Then I got lost in LA for half an hour thanks to some onramp construction they were doing on the 134. LA's always a fun place to get lost in anyways, so it didn't bother me.

On the way back to Santa Barbara I decided to stop and have lunch in Ventura. I met up with Mitch and we headed over to Fry's to check out TV's. After a brief look around the wonderful world of tech, I decided to keep my eye on the Samsung LN-T4042H to put in my bedroom.


While I was shopping around, I was deciding whether I wanted to go big, or go huge. I really didn't want to take the $3000 plunge to get a TV for the living room, since my roommates don't take care of my stuff that I've currently made communal, and I surely don't want them ruining a crazily awesome TV. I decided that a 36"-42" TV would be best for my bedroom, as I'll probably wall mount it. Plus, with a $1300 price tag, LCDs Plasmas and DLPs are all lookin pretty affordable nowadays. I figure I'll wait another couple months to finish paying off this laptop before I take on another monthly payment.

As Mitchell took to the DVD section, I decided to finally resume my DVD buying. There's quite a few things on my list, and quite a few things will still wait. I decided that buying one thing after a long break wasn't so bad, so I got my feet wet again by buying The Office, Season Two, which was well worth the purchase. If you haven't seen this show and you're lookin for something funny and catching to watch, I'd highly suggest this show. The first season was an almost direct takeoff of the original British series, however in the second season you really get the feel for the American take and the writers really put a lot into the second season. With the finale' of the third season having just recently aired, it looks like I'll have to wait until September to buy the latest DVD installment.

After leaving Fry's, we met a few more friends for lunch at this little Mexican place before Mitch convinced me to take on a Saturday night adventure. He had previously mentioned that he was going to a poker game/BBQ with a friend of his from work, who I had previously met at a poker game. I immediately noticed that he had no idea what he was doing when it came to hold'em, and was obviously used to playing house games with house rules on his own terms. In the one game that we had played together he did nothing but complain about having to double a bet when raised, betting at least the BB when first to bet, and a couple other standard rules of poker.

When Mitch had mentioned it earlier, he said it was this guy's brother, and not only was it a "tournament cash-game" (???), but it was two hours up north. It didn't sound appetizing to say the least, and I had already determined that I was definitely not going prior to arriving in Ventura. However, for no particular reason at the last minute I decided to go. My decision was mostly made because I really didn't want to return to my hellish roommates, and also I hadn't really done anything or gone anywhere since our last Vegas excursion.

I ended up saying yes, and an adventure was about to begin.