Thursday, March 05, 2020

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

This has been a rather calm week at home. After my surgery on Thursday last week, I thought that I would be back on my feet in a day or so. Wrong. I spent an awful lot of the past week sleeping - certainly much more than I usually do. I stockpiled a huge number of sick days over the years and planned to take the entire week (plus one day) off after my surgery to recover. One week had been the recommended time. I certainly didn't feel in any great hurry to return to work.

So I was wondering if all the fatigue was caused by my regular constant fatigue, the knockout juice that had flowed in my system, or just my body's response to it being invaded with a knife. I am not sure, but I didn't start really feeling like myself until yesterday - Wednesday - six days after surgery. I decided to say goodbye to cabin fever and go out in the afternoon to my closest poker joint, the Par-A-Dice Casino in East Peoria, IL. I was able to log in a 4-5 hour session. The bad beat jackpot at "The Dice" is $159K, so that was not bad incentive to play. The bad beat jackpots at other area casinos are about $325K and $202K, so there are dreams at several places!

The poker session was unremarkable. I didn't flop one set, and my best starting hand was A-Q. My initial $200 stack started dwindling down as I missed flops or was raised out of pots with middling hands. I was felted when I had top two vs a guy who caught his flush. After rebuying, I did finally have a short good streak. I had been hoping to get into a hand with a loose aggro guy, and it finally happened when I raised with K-Q unsooted. The aggro guy was the only caller. The flop: 9-10-J with two hearts. We got it all in and I was hoping my flopped straight would hold. It did as the turn and river were bricks. A short while later, I limped in on the button with 10s-7s. The flop was 6-8-9 rainbow! A short stack pushed all in and I, of course, called. Fortunately for me, his hand didn't improve (I think he flopped a set of 9s) and I added to my stack.

I won a few more hands here and there, but overall was pretty card dead. I finally decided to stop the session with an acceptable profit of +$207. I played around on some slots, ate a free snack bar meal, then headed home.

While off work this week, I found out that, surprisingly, the dean over my area had apparently been fired. Dang - there is nothing more frustrating than hearing that a major story broke out at work and you are out of the loop! I texted some co-workers, but don't really know what happened. I'll do some detective work next week.

And for my final act of waiting this week: the delivery of a new dishwasher. My son, who works for Best Buy, had a dishwasher sent to us. It was supposed to be delivered and installed two days ago. It wasn't. There was apparently some mix up, and the "estimated arrival" time was supposed to be 8:30-10:30 this morning. It is now 12:30pm. I am still waiting. The story of my life this week.

My ENT doctor will be checking my progress on Saturday morning, leaving me some time for poker this weekend. I'd say it is way past time for the poker gods to get me at least some share (preferably the lion's share) of one of the bad beat jackpots. I have waited patiently. Time for them to deliver!

Thanks for reading!