Blah blah blah

Let me apologize in advance for this drivel that you may choose to continue reading. I am writing this after I have finished the post, since I didn’t really realize this was the direction I would be taking today. I guess that is the beauty of a ghey online journal. A random soul dump every once in a while. Ok, on to the drivel…

I have been playing very little poker lately. Not sure exactly why but it mostly revolves around time and trying to get my life in order in other areas that are distracting me. I have a feeling that I won’t be playing nearly as much over the next few months for a number of reasons.

First off, I need to get in shape and lose a few lbs. Just before our little vacation to NH I stepped on the scale for the first time in a while. I haven’t been feeling great and knew I had put on a couple pounds since my pants and shorts were a little snug. Anyway, to make a long story short, I need to lose about 15 pounds so I can start feeling a little better and recapture some energy. Staying up until 1am playing cards isn’t going to cut it if I need to be up early every morning.

I was getting up at about 6am for work each day. That has now been moved back to 5am. The reason is because I need to get to work a little earlier in the morning because I am leaving every day at 4pm so I can coach my son’s football team. I am actually pretty clueless when it comes to the details of football so I have a lot to learn. I have been a huge fan since I was a kid, but I never played the game. Last year, my son played his first year and he had to learn everything about gaps, leverage, angle of attack, etc. from the coaches. He had a great group of coaches and he improved steadily throughout the year. I did notice though, that a lot of times, he would make the same mistakes in drills and there weren’t enough coaches to watch everything and correct the mistakes. They had 5 or 6 coaches at every practice, but at that young of an age, they need a lot of personal attention to learn the details of the game.

This year, a couple of the coaches he had last year stayed down at the youngest level, while my son had to move up because of his age and weight. His head coach from last year is still his coach, but they only have 2 other coaches. The head coach, who I had coached baseball with in the past, asked me if I could join him, but working in Boston, with an hour and a half commute, I couldn’t commit. After going to the first practice, I noticed they needed more sets of eyes to help them. I talked to my boss about it, and he was fine with me coming in a little earlier to leave earlier each day, as long as I took care of things if they came up late in the day. With that, I am now on a new commuting schedule, but really happy that I will be helping out with the team. I am at every practice anyway, and privately criticize the way some of the drills are run. Now I can put in the work and try to help the kids as I think we should. It should be a lot of fun.

With the football thing, we practice every night from 5:30-7:30 or 8:00. Once September comes, and school starts, that cuts down to 3 nights a week. The problem I am going to have now is trying to keep up with my running, biking and swimming to prep for this damn sprint triathlon that I am registered for. I did have the bike tuned up and put new street slicks on. I have ridden the route I planned out a couple times and my running is steadily increasing, but I still haven’t gotten to swim. That is going to be the toughest part for me in the sprint too, so I need to find time to get that going. I am glad I registered though, because my sister is pushing me to train since she is doing it also. Like I said before, I need to lose some poundage anyway and this will surely do the trick.

All of this is contributing to me not being able to play as much poker. It is also causing me to post a lot less because of the limited time I have lately, and the infrequence of poker content. I am pretty sure that no one wants to read about football practice or my wimpy run each day.

I still haven’t written up my NH trip from last weekend because work has really been busy and because of everything else. I came across the Shitter Spitter again yesterday and realized I needed to get a post up.

Work is another issue I am dealing with. When I talked to my boss about coaching, he said he was fine with it, but he also needed to see some more energy from me. I am sure he had been trying to find the right time to say that to me and I gave him the perfect opportunity. My boss is a good guy and a straight shooter. I didn’t need to give him the opportunity, because if it was a real problem, he would have already sat me down. Still though, I couldn’t agree more with him and told him so.

My work problem is that I came to this company for an opportunity to move into some sort of client service role. My current role is to manage the requirements and analysis team for our online information delivery product for institutional clients. It is a role that I mostly interact with internal business and development folks. I have a team of analysts that I assign work to so that we can document business requirements and then they work with the developers to make them understand what needs to be built. Basically, I feel like my strength is more geared to working with people, so that has been my goal. To transition to that type of role.

Well, nothing has really come along that has fit internally. I do want to stay at this company because they have basically bribed me to stay with some great restricted stock awards that I don’t want to walk away from. I have been just plain lazy in my current job because of this. I don’t love it and have had it in my head that what I want is a client service role. I have pretty much neglected my current job because I have been thinking I would be moving on soon anyway. The problem is that I think if I do find something, I may not like that as much as I think. I like to get out of the office and interact with people. I like to travel and visit new places. What I don’t like is missing my kids’ activities. Like I said, I was at every practice last year for football. Every night for 2-3 hours. I love it and I love to see how they improve and learn. After giving it a lot more thought over the last few days, I think I need to get my head out of my ass and focus on the role that I am in now. My boss and I get along great and he has positioned me as a senior part of his team. Our development team is about 200 people and I have a key role. He also knows my future goals of client service and thinks that my current role will evolve into that somewhat anyway. I need to be patient, and get re-energized in this job, that allows me great flexibility to be there with my family regularly, and pays me plenty of dough. Overall, the team is a mess after many reorgs and that bothers plenty of people, but when you really look at it, it ain’t so bad.

My reading and posting will definitely suffer, but I am hoping that my contentment will be much greater. Over the last few months, I would say I have probably spend at least half of my day either posting, reading bloglines, checking sitemeter, or checking for comments. It has been pretty insane actually and I need to focus on the value that I can bring to this role that I am in, build a strong team, and enjoy the flexibility I have in it.

Ok, a little poker, er, gambling content. I got an email from William Hill Casinos yesterday about their August recurring bonus. WH was one of the casinos that I did some blackjack bonus whoring at last month. They have a monthly $40 bonus. All you have to do is deposit $40 and they give you $40 to play with immediately. You need to clear the bonus by placing $800 worth of bets. I think I finished it off in about 2 hours while I watched the Sox game (the injuries are taking their toll, but we are hanging in there) and was actually up another $20 from blackjack winnings. I finished it up just before the Mookie was ready to kick off and cashed out my $100 total. Not a bad $30/hour rate.

I was already to just into the Mookie but as I was debating it, since I needed to get up so early, the wifey had a twinkle in her eye and I decided to pass on the Mookie and get to bed instead; for once. Again, gotta make sure I am appreciating what I have all around. Hope everyone had a great time at the Mookie and I will be checking out his post about the winner when I do get into the office.

I need to get a few more 45 SNGs in pretty soon too. There are currently 3 people above me on the leader board, so I have some work to do. Hopefully I can get one in tonight.

Ok, well that was pretty pointless for you to read I am sure. Feel free to let me have it in the comments and tell me to stick to the poker talk. I can take it. I have thick skin. Go check out some of the great WSOP coverage from CC, Pauly, and go congratulate CMitch on his nice little run in the ME. Later.