Foxwoods on Tgiving

I spent most of Thanksgiving Day eating, sleeping, and watching football.  My sister and her boyfriend left around 9pm, and I hopped in the shower, grabbed my Mom's keys, and headed out to the mecca of Ledyard, CT: Foxwoods.  I started to get a little worried once I got of I-95 and there was absolutely no traffic on Rt. 2, a two lane country road that leads right to said mecca.  Usually there is a line of cars headed to gamboool.  No problems parking either (also not a good sign).  "Maybe there won't be any fish in the poker room tonight," I thought.

Fortunately, I thought wrong.

I get seated almost immediately at a $1/2 that makes me very happy.  Big stack in the four seat playing table captain and not doing a very good job at it.  Lots of calling stations who think they are awesome but have no clue (e.g., do not understand when the guy with ATo gets the pot on a 8866x board against pocket fours).  OK, give me a freaking hand and let me do something here.  In the first hour I get JJ, QQ, and KK.  Every single time there is an Ace on the flop and every single time I KNOW someone in the hand has it.  They even get taken down to show down (fortunately not by me), so I can see they have it.  OK, please let me hit a flop. 

I take a bathroom break, pray for a hand, and end up flopping a straight the very first hand back at the table...and get paid.  An hour later and my $200 buy in looks like a meatball sandwich.  Sadly, the aforementioned table captain wannabe busts a few players when the nine seat's KK and six seat's QQ run into his AA and the table breaks around me when said "table captain" gets a couple empty racks and hits and runs immediately after that hand.  Boo.  I decide that I'm too tired to go to a new table and figure out what's what, so I take my sandwich and cash out.

Hopefully tomorrow I can lather, rinse, repeat.

Overheard in the Gradlab

Overheard Conversation 1:

Person A: "So, do you feel smarter now that you are in grad school?"

Melissa: "Actually, I've never felt dumber in my whole life.  They break you down here.  You can't have any kind of self-esteem in grad school."

Overheard Conversation 2:

Jim: "Did someone just print the 'Walker' article?"

Steve: "Johnny Walker?"

Me: "I could use some Johnny Walker." (followed by general laughter from the rest of the lab.)

It's official...got my Spring assignment

I'm going to be TA-ing GVPT 170 (Intro to American Government) again, but with a different Prof.  It's also going to be a huge class.  More than 400 kids and 5 TA's.  Plus, one of the other TA's is Melissa.  :)

In poker news, it's deadly to be running bad when you're playing good and playing bad when you're card dead.  Boo.  Hopefully I can turn some of this past week around at Foxwoods later this week.  I have class tonight til 6:30, then Jeff and I are getting on Amtrak tomorrow at 5:30 am.  Won't be back til late Sunday, so I hope to get out to the tables at least a few times.

Spring 2008 Schedule

I'm officially registered for all but one class, and hopefully that will be taken care of soon.  Still waiting to hear what my funding assignment is going to be next semester, but I'm guessing I'll be TA-ing 170 again - hopefully on Thursday instead of Friday this year.

So far, Monday looks like it's gonna be my busy day.

Monday: 11:00am-11:50am Calculus (Yes, I'm taking a calculus class.  No, I'm not majoring in math.)
12:30pm- 3:15pm Participation and Voting Behavior
3:30pm- 6:15pm Religion and Politics

Tuesday: 9:30am-10:45am Calculus

Wednesday: day off

Thursday: 9:30am-10:45am Calculus
hopefully TA 170 from 2pm-5pm

Friday: hopefully another day off - if I can get out of TA-ing on Friday and do it on Thursday instead.

I'm really looking forward to the Voting class - that is what I am most interested in and I'm hoping to get a dissertation topic out of it. 

Across the Universe

I saw Julie Taymor's film, Across the Universe, a little while back and I never wrote a review.  I had been eagerly anticipating this movie, but was a little wary too.  Last year, Jeff and I went to go see Love, the Cirque du Soleil Beatles show in Vegas.  It was OK, but I had built it up in my head so much that I ended up being rather disappointed.  I cringed when I read early reviews of the film that mentioned they had some pretty cheesy references like a girl coming through the bathroom window.

Some parts of it definitely were cheesy and cringe-inducing, but I really liked some of their covers of songs (though I certainly would not include Flying or Blue Jay Way in my list of 30 must have Beatles songs), and overall it wasn't as bad as it could have been (ringing endorsement, there).  Guess the key is to go into it with low expectations.  I will note that several of the plot points seemed directly ripped from the mini series on the 60s with Julia Stiles that was on tv back in the late 90's.  Overall, I was glad I saw it, but it certainly won't end up in my personal list of top movie musicals.  I'm still waiting for a "modern" movie musical to match up to some of the classics, like West Side Story, Sound of Music, Guys and Dolls, etc.  The more time that passes with continued movie musical flops (like the movie version of Rent), the more I wonder if the day of the good movie musical is just over.

"Try this on for size"

I like to do work in the grad lab at school.  Inevitably there's also other people working on the same assignment and it's also the de facto meeting place for GVPT grad students.  Frequently this doesn't really contribute to productivity, but it's always a good time and there's always bound to be some interesting conversation.

This morning I was printing stuff in the lab before I ran off to a meeting with the prof I'm TA-ing for.  Someone was commenting that next week was Thanksgiving (really already?!?) and there was the inevitable chorus of "woe is me, I still have to do (fill in the blank)."  Then Alex, our resident optimist, says to me: "Try this one on for size...the end of the semester is only four weeks away."  Thanks, Alex.  As excited as I am to have a month off for winter break, I still have a million things to finish before the semester ends.  Tempus fugit...and not in a good way.  Silver lining: at least I don't have any exams this semester, just lots and lots of papers.  I hope I can get through the next few weeks with my sanity as in tact as possible.

Morton's and Bowling

Went out for Keenan's birthday last night: dinner at Morton's and bowling at Strike Bethesda.  Dinner was great although the service was bad.  I had oysters to start, filet Oskar (filet mignon with asparagus, hollandaise, and crab meat) and we got the standard sides (potatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, green beans...).  We were too stuffed for dessert, but they brought out a chocolate lava cake for Keenan's birthday anyways.  I've actually never been to Morton's before, but although the food was really good, I don't know that I'd be back.  Things were, imho, overpriced and we got really bad service.

Bowling at Strike Bethesda was, as always, entertaining.  Sadly, my bowling skills sucked and the highest round I bowled was a 92.  Still had a good time though.