From the file of "case in point"

A male friend of mine started the conversation by telling me how men are stupid, and I should stay away from them if I value my sanity.  And then he proceeded to hit on me. 

I can feel the hamster running in my head

What do I want?  This is a very good question.  Someone asked me this recently and I have no idea (well, I have a macro idea, but not a micro idea...that is, I know what I want, big-picture wise, but on the specifics, ya got me).  I know what I feel that I want, but then I wonder if the reason I want that is due to a current lack of security, feeling of rejection, sense of total loneliness.  I wonder if the reason I want that is the nostalgia trap, and remembering the good without the bad. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder...myself into circles.

To late to turn back now, regardless of what I want, so, might as well look forward. 

Ani DiFranco says it so well

squint your eyes and look closer

I'm not between you and your ambition

I am a poster girl with no poster

I am thirty-two flavors and then some

and I'm beyond your peripheral vision

so you might want to turn your head

cause someday you're going to get hungry

and eat most of the words you just said

both my parents taught me about good will

and I have done well by their names

just the kindness I've lavished on strangers

is more than I can explain

still there's many who've turned out their porch lights

just so I would think they were not home

and hid in the dark of their windows

til I'd passed and left them alone

and god help you if you are an ugly girl

course too pretty is also your doom

cause everyone harbors a secret hatred

for the prettiest girl in the room

and god help you if you are a pheonix

and you dare to rise up from the ash

a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy

while you are just flying back

I'm not trying to give my life meaning

by demeaning you

and I would like to state for the record

I did everything that I could do

I'm not saying that I'm a saint

I just don't want to live that way

no, I will never be a saint

but I will always say

squint your eyes and look closer

I'm not between you and your ambition

I am a poster girl with no poster

I am thirty-two flavors and then some

And I'm beyond your peripheral vision

So you might want to turn your head

Cause someday you might find you're starving

and eating all of the words you said

Trying to explain a technical passion to others

How do you do it? Is it even possible?  The things that make our passion exciting to us are hard to translate to people who haven't felt the things we feel.  Among poker players, for example, it is hard to explain the soul-sucking defeat of having two outs or the absolute elation of playing a hand such that you get your opponent to put in their stack with only two outs.  The non-technical translation ("That's a really good thing!") or even the somewhat technical translation ("Mathwise, I am a 90+% favorite.") really doesn't cut it.  It's just one of those things that's hard to explain to others who haven't been in the trenches.

Travis recently tried to explain such a situation on his blog, and to be honest, even as someone who would like to think that she gets the game, I found his post rather boring to read (apologies, Trav).  I think that has something to do with the passion.  It's hard to translate that to people who don't love the game. 

I manage to still have some people in my life that don't "get" poker.  Even if they inquire about my play, I have learned to KISS (keep it simple, stupid) cause otherwise they get a glazed over look on their faces.  Similar, I imagine, to how I felt the first time I tried to read Sklansky's "Theory of Poker."

I wish there was a way to translate the passion to people.  If someone figures it out, let me know. 

Things I have lost

teeth
my Star Wars action figures
sleep
temper
my favorite little black dress i bought when we went to boca
money
my eyebrow
toenail(s)
moles
the contents of my stomach
hands of poker with the best hand
hands of poker with the worst hand
pets
grandparents
a husband
friends
innocence
sanity