Weekend Ramble

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was pretty good. It is nice when spring arrives in New England and you can start to forget the long, cold winter. Saturday morning was the coaches clinic for our baseball league in town. Basically everyone shows up and the commissioner of each of the divisions goes over rules etc. with the coaches. This year, they decided to have the meeting at the field, so everyone could help get the fields ready for the season. They usually have the meeting at one of the schools but the fields needed extra work, plus dugouts are being built on 2 of the fields so the more people they got down to the field, the more help they would have.

Well, early April weekends here are not very predictable. It would have been nice to have a nice day for everyone. Unfortunately, mother nature didn’t cooperate. It was a driving rain and in the mid-30’s. The fields didn’t get any help, but 2 of the dugout roofs were framed out. We only have 3 weeks until opening day weekend so the clock is ticking.

My oldest had his first practice Sunday morning. I have been coaching, or at least assisting with his team since t-ball when he was 5. I finally get to actually coach this year! With kids from 9-12, you can really teach them how to play the game, correct their mistakes, and expect them to pay attention. What a difference. It was another cold morning, but at least it was dry. The head coach really has it together and we spent the hour and a half on stretching, throwing and infield practice. The next practice is tonight where we are going to work on outfield and see which kids want to give pitching a try. We may get to batting today also. It is a lot of fun and should be a fun year. My son seems to fit right in, talent wise, with all the others, so it will be great for him to play with the bigger kids. We practice 3 times a week until the season starts, which is another big difference over the previous levels he has played, and I have coached.

After practice yesterday, we hung out for the early afternoon, watched a little of the Sox game (man, they are off to a hot start), until we had to leave for the Celtics game. The Celtics are pretty awful, as they showed by losing to the Knicks yesterday, but my oldest loves them so I got tickets to 4 games at the beginning of the season. This was the last one we had tickets for and I bought an extra ticket so my 5 year old could go too. Since the game was at 4pm, I figured it was a good time for him to go and this was his first game. He loved it. Every time the piped in crowd noise started the chant for “De-fense, De-fense” he was yelling it out loud. It was fun.

My wife had decided to go over her brother’s house for the afternoon with my youngest. My niece is his age so they could play for the afternoon and my wife could visit. When my cell rang just 5 minutes into the game, I figured my wife was calling to check and see how my 5 year old was liking the game. She wasn’t.

“Hey, how are you?”
“Hi, well not so great. Don’t worry, he is ok but I am on my way to the ER”
“What do you mean? What happened??”
“Well, he is ok, but I think I need to bring him. He was jumping off the stairs and hit his head on the bricks.”

Apparently, my almost 3 year old maniac was being himself by jumping off the stairs or something. He like s to jump from like the 5th or 6th step in our house, so it doesn’t surprise me. Unfortunately, this time, he smashed the back of his head on the front of the brick stairs outside their house.

She said the blood was everywhere instantly and she was freaking out. Luckily, my sister in law is a pediatric nurse. She said that once he stopped crying, he blood would stop too. She held a towel over the wound and it did, but he had a nasty cut so my wife went to the ER. After a lovely 3 hour wait, the stuck 2 staples into my kids head. Staples, wtf? We are talking like metal staples here. Apparently, the head doesn’t like that glue stuff, or stitches when the cut is like an inch and a half across or so. They had to staple his head back together. Wonderful. The doctor said he was the bravest boy she had ever seen. They put some type of numbing agent on but he could still feel it. The put the stuff on and said it had to sit for 20 minutes. An hour and 20 minutes later, my wife gently touched his head while he was looking the other way and he said, “oww”. When the doctor finally came in, my wife told her that, but she said that it was still a little bit numb, and to make it moreso, she would have to give him 2 needles, which would hurt more than the staples going in anyway. With that, she stuck the staples in. My wife said he looked at her and gave her the big bottom lip, but that was it.

I knew he was fine when he got home, 2 hours after his bedtime, after finally getting something to eat on the way home, and proudly announced to me, “look at my nice new tissues!”. The nurse had distracted him by giving him a small box of tissues in the office. Hey whatever works I guess. My oldest, being very concerned when he heard the news, bought his brother a little Celtics ball at the game. My 5 year old also got some gold colored ball at the game. The second thing he said was, “wow, that’s a nice magic ball you have!”. We all cracked up (no pun intended) knowing that he was back to himself.

He has to go back to the doctor in 5-7 days and get the staples removed. Wonder if they use those claw staple remover things to get them out?

The funniest thing that happened this weekend also came from my youngest. We went out to lunch on Saturday at a local restaurant on the water that gets really busy during the tourist summer months. It was pretty quiet other than us. There were a few older couples in there also but we were seated next to a window. My little one is standing on his seat and looking closely at the bottom edge of the window and I see a little gnat swooping around, which is fascinating him.

Boy: “There’s a mosquito right there”
Me: “Ok, sit down, you are going to fall.”
Boy: pfft
Boy: “I just blew him”
Wife: “That’s something daddy never wanted to hear.”

Doh, not that there is anything wrong with that or anything. Anyway…

As far as poker goes, not a great weekend. I didn’t play a lot, and when I did, I played pretty poorly. My bankroll on Full Tilt has been taking a beating while I donk it up in my SNG challenge. I think I have only cashed in 3 of 11 so far and I am down about $20. I have also been playing some NL. I have been having a nasty time getting up about half a buy-in, then giving it back and half of my own buy-in. I have had some bad suckouts against me, but for the most part, I am not playing very solid. I may need to give it a break for a while and only play the SNGs to see what happens. I still have the money I took from Paradise to put to something useful. I may even give Kent’s new place a try. Not really sure. The FT bonus has been ridiculously slow to clear so I think I am going to abandon that one. I was also thinking that another run at UB may be worth it, since I am playing NL now and I have a huge bonus to clear there. Just not sure how much quicker that will be either.

I am hoping to get to the bar tonight after baseball practice because I want to make sure my live play isn’t rusty when I head to St. Louis at the end of the month for the Amateur Poker League national championship. I haven’t been able to get there lately for one reason or another. They sent out my invite the other day and apparently Moneymaker will be at the tourney. Not sure what else is going on during the tourney but hopefully I will have some fun in St. Louis. If anyone is in that area, let me know. I am planning to play at either the Ameristar or Harrah’s the weekend of April 29th and 30th.