Just a student again

Well sheeeeeeeeeeeit... Christmas and New Years have come and gone, and still my life is in a constant state of flux. First off, there was New Year's Eve. With the exception of playing some board games with family, it sucked. It is way overrated, but then again maybe it would have meant something if you could have been with who you wanted it to be with. I've done enough lamenting, however, to fill a lamenting pool, so I'm done; I won a $180 candle/fountain for $25, so WHATEVER. Somehow, over the holidays, I have racked up another $1k+ AmEx bill, and had barely $1k in my account to pay it. Therefore, the logical thing to do is obviously gamble it at poker, right? NO! But I did anyway, and put myself in a very tough position after losing $650 in 3 separate nights combined. I haven't been so dumb with poker in a while, and it startled me. More on that later, but first: my New Year's resolutions -

1) Be less than $30k in debt by the end of the next year (currently $41,485 in the hole).
2) Get at LEAST an 80% in my Chem. class that I previously failed.
3) Finish off my shower, sink, toilet idea for my basement.

Those are three sweet goals, and if I can accomplish all three, I am awesome. These next few cold months are going to be filled with fulfilling number 2. May and June will be working hard on number 1, and soft on number 2. Then July and August will be nothing but number 3. Then Sept-Dec will be nothing but number 1. Which will be somewhat difficult, because I still hope to be saving for Australia as well. But we'll see. I don't want to go, and I was thisclose to having a reason to stay. Bah.

Bought my textbooks and parking pass... Ugh. There's another $250. I applied with the city to work as a typist while going to school. Not bad, $15 to type all day. I don't think they could give me enough stuff to type to keep me busy all day, I really don't. I do need a job though. So badly, I am considering working at a place like Wal-Mart. The wage isn't the greatest, but that 10% discount would save me so much money! Och, no, I could never stoop that low. I can just scrape by until May when I can TEACH! (oh man that's scary).

Lately, I've also got addicted to this sweet game, Settler's of Catan. Apparently it's wildly popular everywhere but here. It is really just the awesomest game ever... nothing compares to it, yet. The funny thing is that it uses some of the same skills poker does! There's a lot of luck, of course, just like poker, but there's also manipulation, reading people, playing the odds, set-ups (aka. check raises in poker vs. shady trades and monopolizations in Settlers). Anyway... I think that is why I like it so much. I compared it to a Jehova's Witness... I just feel compelled to spread the word of the Settler's to everyone. Regardless if it is 10am on a Saturday.

Speaking of which, a couple of Jehova's Witnesses came to my house Saturday morning. I was cleaning the kitchen, and hadn't slept in about 20 hours, so I was a little weird, I thought it was the postman. It was a funny encounter with them... first of all, I was playing poker on my laptop, so I folded my hand, and ran down to get the door. Then, I see it's them... *sigh*... I am so comfortable and secure in my beliefs, it is not funny. She starts to talk, and then Sami, my cat almost runs outside. Swear to ... well... "God" that she says "Oh my, what a lovely pussy...............................cat". I nearly started laughing because it reminded me of Austin Powers. Anyhizzow... she starts talking again about why she's at my door, and I say, "Look, I'm really sorry, but I'm playing online poker, I have to go" (meanwhile in the background I hear the beep telling me I have 10 seconds left to play my hand). She says "ohh poker... well would you like to read our material (as the door is closing in her face), and I'm like, "No, sorry, bye! :D" I get back to the computer and I have pocket Jacks, and I end up winning the hand, but it was just altogether a funny experience.

Oh, that was the tail end of probably about one of the craziest nights in my poker history. Oh yes, and this December marked my three year anniversary with poker. Thank you poker. We've been so up and down over the last three years, but you've been there for me when I needed you the most. So far, you've given me about $29,000 and I feel like I've given you so little. You were a harsh mistress at times, but we've been through the worst, and the best is certainly yet to come. On that note, I started this Friday night down $650 from poker, and that was $650 that I never should have gambled. So, logically, the only thing to do is gamble more to win it back! Haha... Not since my first year of poker have I chased losses like that, but if I lost, I was certainly putting myself inbetween a rock and a hard place. I deposited $600 and played at a big No Limit cash table, where you can buy in with $600 and bet any amount at any time. It was kind of scary at first, because you know that if you have a big hand, but someone has one hand better than you, you can end up losing a lot just on one hand. Instead, I lost it very slowly, and over the course of 4 hours, I lost it all. Ending with my QQ losing to KK. I am about to leave, but there has been this guy at the table who has just started going on tilt (playing very erratically, giving away his money essentially). So I put another $400 in there, and win $100 at blackjack, and then sit down with $500 to start again. A few hands in, I win a big pot off of the guy playing crazy, and he puts another $300 in there (yessss). All told, that guy dropped almost $3000 in 6 hours of playing with us. And me, over the course of the next 4 hours, I went from 500 up to 800, down to 150, up to 500, up to 800, up to 1100, down to 800, up to 1300, and then hit the biggest hand I have in modern history... dragged in a $1900 pot with three of a kind, and I was up to $2400. I played for another couple hours while I cleaned the kitchen... by this time, everyone else was lethargic, playing terrible poker, so I cleaned up them, too! Haha... all told, I left the table with about $2600, and cashed out 2200 of it. That way, I made all my money back for the month, plus an extra $700 or so for myself. Now I will pay my bills, and NEVER be so STUPID again! Seriously, one of the first rules of poker is don't play with the rent money. Well, I have no rent, but I certainly played with money that I couldn't afford to lose. I even had a crazy poker dream last night... I had K6, and the flop came KK4, and this guy bets, and I raise, and he calls. The turn is a 6, he bets out huge again, and I raise huge, and he goes all in and I call. I think he has a better King than I do, so I am scared, but he turns over 57... all he has is a straight draw, so I win a $2200 pot because he was bluffing. Too bad it was just a dream.

It's 7am now. I have school at 6:30pm tonight, but what am I going to do with myself all day? Apparently, I am going to blog. About how I am so excited to be going back to school, and how exciting it is to take my last Chem lab ever, and my last 4 classes ever. Today is the first day of the last semester of my life.

Now, the last things in my life that are really pissing me off lately are religion and girls. Separately, I love them both. Together, apparently, they make an unattainable, lethal combination. I wanted to make some quote like "Religion was invented 8000 years ago by societies that knew nothing about the world and needed to explain why things happened, instead of being confused by life every day. So they invented the idea of God, and said: "Well, each day, God gets in his chariot and pulls the sun across the sky every day. And people believed it because there were no better explanations. And life was good." Then one day, society got smart and we started answering questions to which we had no answers to. Like evolution... it's NOT a theory! It's provable! And like how the heavenly bodies move about our sky. And even, almost, about the creation of the Universe! I have been raised in such a greatly educational society, that, even though I had a very religious family, and Catholic schooling for 13 years, I still ended up rejecting all that Catholicism for the scientific proof that was given me. So many people argue that God is provable. But I beg to differ. My dad says, while driving through the valley "Are you really going to tell me that God did not create this beautiful valley? Look at the winding river, the fields, the rocks, the beauty of it all." Just because something is beautiful means it was created by God?? I disagree. I say "Sorry Dad, it's much less magical to think it was simply created by a receding glacier stemming back to our ice age, but that's the truth". People wonder about me, and wonder what life is like with no faith. I HAVE FAITH! I place my faith in things like the good of people, friends, and family. Things that are tangible. Therefore, I am often let down more, because I can't just read from a book to renew my faith, it actually has to be challenged every day. If I have friends over, and money goes missing from my wallet, that would certainly shatter my faith. If my tenant ditches out and doesn't pay her rent, that would hurt my faith in the good of all people. As a whole, I believe the majority of the world are good people. I know I am but one single person (very single :( ), but every major decision I make in life is a)To make the world a better place to be, and b)To better my situation, without hurting anyone else. I absolutely LOVE having to answer to nobody but myself. Having complete control of your life is a very freeing feeling. Knowing that when you die, you simple cease to be is sometimes a depressing thought, but to me it is MOTIVATING! Do ALL you can while you are alive because all you have is 100 years, max, really. Don't fret a little money, it means nothing in the grand scheme of life! Just live. Work where you want, buy what you want, love who you want... Ah, it's so easy for me, I know that's what you're thinking. On a side note, I find it funny/sad that loving God and loving me are two events that are mutually exclusive. Heh... anyway, I started mentioning a quote earlier, about "Religion was invented, when...". My point was I didn't know when religion was invented, so I searched Yahoo for "when was religion invented". The 6th hit seemed to catch my eye... lol... "Religion...invented by a hermit". I read it, and this guy was saying these things to be sort of controversial, but he makes a lot of good points. I still hate how people pick and choose what facets of religion to believe (and act on in life) and what not to believe (and act on in life). That is where I think I fell off the religion wagon early on. I felt like I had to believe it all and live it all to make God happy. Knowing that I could never do that, I gave up right away. Now, I see that a heck of a lot of people just decided they'd stick with it, and live some of the right life, but break many commandments without even a prayer for forgiveness. That is what our society has come to. It's completely different from 2000 years ago. Are people going to pick up books written today in the year 4000 and hold them as truths? I hope not.

Now, I've been broken up with for various reasons in my life... "I'm moving away", "You're a lazy boyfriend" (later recanted), "I can't handle this right now, wah wah wah" (later recanted), "You don't have a car" (okay, I was 14, give me a break). But I really think this one hurts the most: "You don't have a good enough relationship with God for me to spend the rest of my life with you". Yargh. If I knew this was going to happen, and if I had the capability, I would rewind my life 18 years, and pay attention in Church and school and talk to God more, just so that this day would be the first day of the rest of my life. And maybe it is, still... I just can't believe that God has a plan for my life. I'm sorry, but every decision I make is based on me and my goals, and my morals, and my dreams, and my desires. If some higher power created me to be this way, I thank them for it, because I love who I am. And I believe loving yourself and seizing every day as if it were your last is what life is all about. Peace.

Danny

PS. I'm sorry Jehova's ladies. I could have been more polite, but money makes the world go round. Next time, I'll invite you in and offer you a coffee, and you can watch me play poker :)

PPS. I'm sorry I ever made you for one second, one millisecond, consider "letting go of it all". Unfortunately, I will just never comprehend why it has to be him OR me :S