Relaxed...

I really needed a weekend away and I feel much better now. I spent the weekend playing poker in Mississippi. I didn't come home rich, but I had a great time and managed to win enough to cover all my gas, food, & pampered resort lodging. I even won my buy-in to the Sunday no-limit holdem' tournament, but busted out 21st out of 70 (oh well). The best part was just locking in on playing poker for a couple of days so that I could forget all the stress back at the office. I also had a great time meeting interesting new people and taking the occasional break to stuff myself with free crab legs & prime rib.

You learn a great deal about people watching them play poker and I am always amazed at the difference in culture between people from the south and the north. Since most of the people I meet there are southerners it is always a pleasant experience. I don't know if it is the lack of Christian culture up north or just the faster pace of life they lead, but you can always spot the occasional Yankee. They stick out like a sore thumb. For about 4 hours the last night I was sitting next to a Yankee that was loosing his shirt. There is nothing worst than a pissed off Yankee bitching and moaning about how he is so much better than all these amateur players and criticizing every move that we all made. The whole time he is pulling more and more money out of his pocket and watching it move from his stack to our stacks. It was sad at first, but it became like entertainment for the rest of us at the table. At one point I even said "Don't they have poker rooms up north?" He got more irate and changed seats so he could have better positional advantage on me (after which I took 2 more big pots off of him. LOL!).

Poker rooms are pretty interesting and they are usually filled with people that are very different but we have a common bond that seems to supercede our vast difference in backgrounds. The retired locals are my favorite because they all seem to have interesting stories and jokes. There is something special about an old southern lady that just makes you want to be nice to them and I always come away from there with a deeper admiration people that are different than me. Poker has in many ways become a breeding ground for the very small but growing "social" side of my personality.

stress at work...

I've been working like crazy the last couple of months and the stress has been at a very high level. I think my wife has had enough of me being an asshole at home as a result. The main issue is that our business has grown and I'm trying to take on too many things at once. Sometimes I miss the times when I worked for someone else and I could just leave at 5pm everyday. But that feeling doesn't last long. Today I solved a big problem that I had been trying to solve for the last 3 weeks. That satisfaction is worth the effort.

I am officially taking the weekend off.