But is Kari okay?

I hope so. She's kinda hot. Read the story

Holding my own at Party Poker

I got a free bankroll at Party from Instant Bankroll. I've cleared the raked hands a couple of days ago. If any of y'all want to help a brother out, sign up for the free money and list me as a referral. My user names are cutcard4 at IB and PSO, and zzzBigPhish at Party. The whole process seems a bit convoluted, but was pretty painless after the initial jumping through of hoops.

Anyhow, I'm about even, but really, I'm up quite a bit considering that I didn't deposit a single penny. :-) Running a couple of .15/.30 LHE tables clears that raked hand requirement pretty quick, and you can withdraw as soon as the bonus is cleared (raked hands).

Back to the grind...

Cool MTT experience

(MTT = Multi Table Tournament)

Yeah, it was a freeroll, and yeah, it wasn't at a competetive site, but it rocked anyhow. I beat out 1500+ people to take 1st in one of the Celebrity Poker Showdown sattelites, winning an entry into the final where the top 5 win a trip for 2 to Vegas. Woohoo!

Key points (just a list of things for me to remember):
Aggression when short handed (6 or less) pays off.
Hand selection is more important than position when playing early.
Blinds can be profitably stolen relatively early due to the crazy fast blind structure.
Being a big stack bully is g00t!

Brown did well

The surgery went well. The surgeon thinks he got a clear field cut out (no cancer left behind), and now Brown is just chillin' at their office hooked up to fluids and meds. I'm somewhat optimistic about his chances of not needing any further treatment. I don't really want to have him sedated every other day for 5 weeks so they can do the radiation thing.

Anyhow, it's all positive right now.

Brown is under the knife

Well, he's at the vet and scheduled to have the surgery today. He should be able to come home tomorrow. They're keeping him overnight so they can give him IV pain meds. He'll be on antibiotics afterwards, and is all but guaranteed to get some sort of post-op infection due to the location. Shit + surgical wound = infection. The vets are not concerned about being able to manage that.

I'll post updates. Maybe even a pic.

Sick dog

My big brown dog is sick. He has cancer in one of his anal glands. Sounds fun, doesn't it? He just had some imaging tests done today to see if it had metastasized, and it appears to be in just that spot. His blood work was also good. The vet is fairly optimistic about his treatment and thinks that his quality of life will be about the same as it has ever been.

I know that Brown is getting old (almost 10), but I think he's got another 4 or 5 years in him where his quality of life is good (okay, 3 or 4, he's big). His treatment is expensive, but we'll deal with it. I would be pushing back pretty hard if he was going to be miserable or if he could only reasonably be expected to live a healthy year to 18 months, but I feel like he's got more in him than that. He still acts young, and doesn't display any "old dog" symptoms (arthritis, impaired vision or hearing, a lot like old humans). Okay, his sense of smell isn't what it used to be, but I think that's it!