I have an addictive personality - I mean borderline OCD-addictive personality - it's really interesting what I will overdose on given half a chance.

My two big drugs of choice the last month have been gumballs and melodies.

I get on a gumball kick where I will start chewing 4 or 5 - spit them out as soon as the flavor goes south, and get 4 or 5 more - I can go thru a pound or two in 48 hrs - with red, yellow, and pink going the quickest, but blue, green, and orange are tasty too - wish I could get more grape -

the melodies are the usual - find a song that kills me, put it on repeat, and overplay by about 200 times till I have every nuance down pat - that has been Jay Farrar/Kelly Willis singing "Rex's Blues" - it's on the Son Volt retrospective, but you can find a live youtube video here - it's even better on the recording - with violins and just a nice easy base line - I've probably posted the lyrics to the 2nd verse about 30 times on this blog.

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The other night I put that song on repeat and went out to play my first live poker since Vegas - I chose to jump a limit to 6/12 for a number of reasons - I've come into a slight influx of cash due to a loan payback, I've been plugging holes by playing the 0.02/0.04, and 6/12 is probably the best game out there at Canterbury - where everyone can be presumed to be a donk, even the ones doing fancy chip tricks - I wore my rock and roll jacket and left the glasses at home - I looked like a bad 80's Brit-Pop relic - good look for me, and I only knew one other guy at the game.

I took a bad beat early - raised 5th hand in - (first raise I saw) with AK vs K8 and the guy flopped two pair to my one, and another hand and I was already down 100 - I rebought and started thinking of all these degenerate gamblers I admire - but more then that my head went into a different place - I just didn't care about the money or winning.

I think I started thinking about all the stuff I admire about these degenerates, and how if they lost everything on one roll of the dice, it's be "ah well" and the next week, same 50/50 coin flip with a new bankroll - this, of course, is terrible for poker, but my competitiveness has always made the game less enjoyable for me. And the money, quite frankly, wasn't that important to me anymore.

So I loosened up a bit - drew to the river on a flush draw with 2/7 suited (would have loved that crack - needed another club or 7 or 2) - called with TT when a T was exposed before I made the play - (heck, if I hit, I'm getting seriously paid and as it turns out, I took it with a boat 7's full of T's) - I just decided to play and lose with the best hands without concern for the money, cause I didn't need it. Laid down 9's to a raise and re-raise and saw an AK9 board where I would have flopped 2nd best :) - nice feeling to get out of that one

Of course, I started down, finally won a couple pots when I twice flopped sets, and ended up looking at my stack and suddenly realizing I was ahead. Couple more hands and I was up $75 - Woulda stuck around for the kids a bit longer but after 6am Rush Hr. becomes murder.

one of those moments where my game seemed to move ever so slightly forward - good time -

RB