Memorial Weekend Pt. 2

We ended up driving for a little over two hours, to where I'm still not sure. We ended up in the middle of nowhere after driving past hours of fields as we pulled up to a smallish country town. We passed through a winding neighborhood before finally pulling up to our destination, where we found out that there would 16 players, none of whom were under 35 years of age.

I didn't know what to expect going in to this thing, but I found out that these folks had a game three out of four weekends a month, so although they were no doubt going to be bad players, at least the game seemed like it was going to run smoothly. The payout was kind of lopsided; with a $25 buy-in, a player would receive $5 every time he knocked someone out, while the placed payouts were 1st-$25o 2nd-$50 and 3rd-$20.

The people were nice enough, and as I suspected the play was supremely weak. I ended up taking an early chiplead before plateauing and riding the shortstack from seven players down to the final three, where Mitchell and myself tangoed with one of the game's regulars. With the blinds and stacks allowing a lot of play, I was able to edge my way back into the game, eventually capturing the chiplead and overtaking the shortstacked third player. Despite having the chiplead and having Mitch outskilled, he and I chopped for $155 each, and the two "kids" took the majority of the loot.

After we helped clean up the table and chips, we took off into the darkness of the night without clear direction of where we were going. We ended up getting lost in the country town for about half an hour before we finally found a lit road and a building. From there we got a map online using Mitch's phone, and we were eventually able to find our way back to the highway.

I didn't end up getting back into Santa Barbara until about 5:30AM on Sunday morning. Sunday I took my usual Sunday Taco Bell trip, and had some stuff to take care of around the apartment, as I had plans to hang out with a friend later that night. We went to dinner, and there ended up being a few of us back at our apartment. Monday was Memorial Day, therefore Sunday was Alcohol Night.

I drank a bit too much, and a bit of the wrong mixture of alcohol, and ended up having a rough morning. I found out early Monday morning that my phone was no longer working, and as it turned out it was because it had been dropped into a deep glass of a vodka drink hours before. I was pretty pissed, as the phone was the best cell phone I had yet to own.

Considering the Verizon store was closed, I decided to have a "Hangover Monday" and laid in bed most of the day, finishing the second season of The Office on DVD. I took a quick trip out to get food, but didn't leave my bed for most of the day aside from two showers.

For the entire day and night of Tuesday, I was in deep mental debate about what to do about my phone. Verizon has been dicking me on my bills lately, and honestly I've never truly been happy with their service. VCAST is a pain in the ass, and everything that Verizon says you can do with their plans, I haven't witnessed personally.

Being in a state of anger due to my past six months (out of six years) with my current plan, I put heavy thought into switching over to Cingular and getting the Samsung Blackjack, Cingular's prided PDA/Smart Phone. I would end up getting a discount on the phone for signing a contract with Cingular, however I'd have to pay a cancellation fee in the amount of $175 to cancel my remaining year in contract with Verizon.

I asked around a lot about service/phones/billing for Cingular, and was almost convinced I going to switch over before I went out and made an impulse this morning. I walked into the Verizon store and almost immediately ended up buying the black Motorola Q. I was able to talk over the added features as well as my current plan with the sales guy there, and actually ended up with a plan modification that pleased me, as well as allowed me to use all of the features on my new smart phone.

My new setup allows me to access the internet directly, manage my stuff using the Windows Mobile system, and bypass all the horribly annoying VCAST programming. Although it does cost me considerably more per billing cycle to be able to have all of the new bells and whistles, I'm positive that it will make me a happier consumer. Go consumer America!

Until next time.