Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis
I woke up in the middle of choking to death again; though to be accurate, it was towards the end of the process--woke up
I never went through the YA stuff. And that's unfortunate, as I missed some good titles. My parents bought me the baby stuff and Dr. Seuss, then they sort of turned over the reading material provisioning to my Aunt, who let me borrow any book I wanted from her extensive collection of grown-up bestsellers: Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Tom Clancy, Jonathan Kellerman (who was a real hack, but 15-year-old me enjoyed him), Piers Anthony, and J.R.R. Tolkien (who was lifechanging, as you might expect). being a few. She didn't like the women writers for whatever reason, so I grew up reading men.
Kudos to MGM Springfield for banning smart glasses at the poker table. It would suck having to play live against solvers, or in the future even more sophisticated programs that took player-type exploits into account.
I ran bad again today at poker: -$168, and I ragequit after showing down one too many very good second best hands. I played a little more than 3.5 hours. The slots, on the other hand, were very generous, and I made $488 on those over 4 hours, so overall the day was fine.
I will not be posting a monthly Dry Challenge Update tomorrow, as I have been drinking this month. I think it's gone well; I've stuck to some basic rules
- No drinking before 4pm.
- No purchasing more than one session's worth of alcohol at one time, i.e. no fifths (750ml bottles) of whiskey, no 12 packs of beer, no big boxes of wine, etc.
- Only one alcohol purchase per day.
- I can drink at the casino, but the limit is 2 drinks per visit, preferably free ones.
I'm going to stick with the seasonal scheme, and stop drinking on March 20th, which is the vernal equinox, picking it up again at the summer solstice.
As far as video games go: I haven't played any in January. But I've decided that I still want to play, as they're not as detrimental to my health as alcohol. They're just a massive but enjoyable waste of time. So here's the plan: If I make my nut for the month—which I have—then I can take the first 3 days of the next month as play days.
Right now I'm downloading Dragon Age Inquisition; seems like it might be fun, and it was only $10 on the PS store. I will be playing that—or something else if it sucks—for the first 3 days of February. Then the PlayStation gets turned off until the beginning of March.
So I fired up Dragon Age Inquisition, spent a half hour in the character creator crafting a reasonably good-looking ginger heroine, and without warning the game slapped enough pancake makeup on her to make a cheap whore blush.
Spoiler
2/10 so far for the character models.
When I was young, gasoline with lead added to it was called "regluar" gas. My first car had had the catalytic converter removed and the gas tank neck punched out by a previous owner so it could take leaded gas. I passed state emissions inspections several times with it in that state.
On Saturday, I went through my exercise routine, and instead of doing my current 42 pushups, I fell short at 39, and could do no more.
I had cleared 40 pushups weeks earlier, so my first thought was "Here it is, the beginning of the inevitable decline of old age." I had reached my max, and now the waves of time would slowly start to drag me back.
Then I remembered something: I was wearing a light jacket, one that I usually take off for pushups. How light of a jacket? Maybe 1.5 lbs (680g)? How could that affect anything? Well, after 39 reps, that meant that I'd toted an extra 58.5 lbs (26.5 kg) thanks to the jacket.
That happened on Saturday. Sundays and Wednesdays are my rest days. On Monday, despite the rest, I was more sore than usual. I've been sore for months, during which I've just about gone through a bottle of aspirin. I was loath to take another day off from exercise because every time I'd taken a second day off in previous routines, I'd ended up taking a third and a fourth, and more, and thus ending the routine.
This is the longest I've made it with a routine since high school; I really don't want to ruin it. Still, I took Monday off in spite of that. Today I came back to it. I took off the jacket, did my stretches, and I knocked out my 42 pushups, along with everything else.
So new rule: once every season, if I get really sore, I can take 2-3 days off, but no more days than that, and no more often than 4 times a year.
Rules, rules, rules. I don't know what I like more: making them or breaking them. It's a tossup.
The video game restriction of 3 days a month is not going to work. Here's my latest tender: If I'm taking the day off from work; no video games. This is designed to keep me from taking the day off because I want to play games. Simple and elegant.
No video games before work. After I get home from work, unlimited video games until bedtime. Mind you, I'm not required to play the entire time. Work first, then fun. These are the rules one gives to ones children. I am my own child.
Today I did a 2.5 hour slot run and made $87. After that, I joined the Pokémon Collector for bar trivia. We took 2nd place. He also brought a scale and we weighed my unopened Pokémon packs from '99-'02. Rare cards with holograms apparently weigh a few tenths of a gram more than standard cards, thus the weigh-in.
I let him open the packs that weighed a little more. I could tell that opening 25-year-old packs made him happy, and if you can make a decent person happy while expending almost no effort or cost, you do it. Every time. It's not even a sweat.
We only found one valuable card. A hologram Bulbasaur. It's worth about a hundo on the market. I told the collector he could have it for $75, and he bought it. He also bought us two rounds, and that pretty much made up the difference. Besides, I got all those packs on clearance for 25c each.
Cool guy; I may have a new friend.
Spoiler
One of these. I don't remember which.
They're not first editions, according to the collector, but came out soon afterwards.
So, if I see some guy walking down the street with a triple beam scale, what he's doing is, he's going to weigh some Pokemon packs. Cool. 
I always wondered why all my friends kept triple beam scales...
So, if I see some guy walking down the street with a triple beam scale, what he's doing is, he's going to weigh some Pokemon packs. Cool. I always wondered why all my friends kept triple beam scales...
It's funny because both times I met and sold Pokémon to The Collector he loudly announced to the bar that we were doing a drug deal.
It's funny because both times I met and sold Pokémon to The Collector he loudly announced to the bar that we were doing a drug deal.
It's mid 1970s Austin. The phone rings. It's a friend who says, I'm at the airport getting ready to fly out of here. I was just in the men's room by the gate. Somebody left a triple beam scale sitting on the paper towel dispenser. Those things are worth some money -- you ought to come get it!
So I get in my car, I drive up to the curb in front of the gates (this is the 70s), I leave the car running, I leave the passenger door open so people will know I will be right back, I walk into the airport, I walk into the men's room, I grab the scale and put it under my arm and walk out. I put the scale on the front seat, close the door and drive off.
About a week later my friend calls. Hey, I saw you pick up the scale! Your not gonna believe this, but the airport was full of cops. About 3 minutes after you left, one of them walked in there and saw the scale was missing. He yelled, It's gone! and a dozen of them started running around looking for it. I don't know how they didn't see you!
It's mid 1970s Austin. The phone rings. It's a friend who says, I'm at the airport getting ready to fly out of here. I was just in the men's room by the gate. Somebody left a triple beam scale sitting on the paper towel dispenser. Those things are worth some money -- you ought to come get it!So I get in my car, I drive up to the curb in front of the gates (this is the 70s), I l
I may have told this one before. Spring 2001: I'm flying from Las Vegas to Boston, with a layover at O'Hare in Chicago. I stroll out of the gate there to have a smoke. On my way back in, I set off the metal detector. I pull a case cutter (a razor blade box opener used later by the 9/11 terrorists) out of my pocket—I'd forgotten that I'd left it in there from the bookstore—and I announce "case cutter."
The security guy waves me through without a secondary inspection and I get to keep the razor. I had walked through the Las Vegas metal detector without setting it off.
I will always retain a nagging worry that one of the 9/11 planners was at O'Hare that day and witnessed that exchange.
Three More Short 9/11 Anecdotes:
(1) I used the same Internet cafe that the 9/11 terrrorists frequented for the few weeks that some of them were in Las Vegas. A lot of regs at the cafe played a LAN game; I believe it was Counterstrike. They played on two teams, the terrorists vs the counter-terrorists, and every few minutes the cafe would resonate with a booming voice stating either THE TERRORISTS WIN! or THE COUNTER-TERRORISTS WIN! While also in that room were the real terrorists conducting their business and reading their emails to these thunderous refrains.
(2) One night at the Western, my barrio blackjack casino on the seediest part of Fremont street—now sadly defunct—I found myself sitting next to a Saudi player. This was a rare find, as Islam strictly forbids gambling in any form. He may have been drinking too, which is also verboten.
I don't remember because I myself was particularly drunk, and once I found out where the Saudi was from, I thought it might be a fun idea to needle him a little about how they treat their women. He countered that women were given to men by God to serve as trusted helpmates. I told him that here in the good ol' US of A they were equals, and not to be trussed up in all-concealing burkas and treated like property. The Saudi got really angry and yelled a bunch of stuff at me—I'm not sure if in English or Arabic—and then he grabbed his chips and stalked off.
After 9/11 I read in the local paper that some of the terrorists had been in town, using my Internet cafe, gambling, drinking and getting lap dances. I remember looking at their pictures and trying to match up one of the Saudis with my guy at the Western, but I was too drunk at the time to remember what he looked like.
(3) On Sept 11, 2001 I had no Internet, no phone, no TV and no radio. It was a Day 3 after a meth bender, the very worst of the recovery days. I had what felt like a terrible hangover along with crippling depression. Nevertheless, I dragged myself out to the bus that took me to work at the bookstore.
People on the bus were talking about planes being flown into the Twin Towers, into the Pentagon, into the White House. I had heard my share of freakish, paranoid crap like that before on the bus, so I completely ignored it.
When we got to the mall it was closed "In the light of today's tragic events." Sears was open, so I wandered over to their TV section and finally found out what had happened. I was an assistant manager at the time; wouldn't be a manager for a few months. I got on a payphone and called my boss, and he told me to come over, since I now had the day off. We spent the rest of the day glued to the TV, drinking and ripping bong hits.
Lots of good remixes on Moreno J's channel. This is one of my favorites:
Oh yay I’m so happy you’re off the crippling gaming addiction. We now get way better updates including stories of running into 9/11 hijackers at the Western. Between the stories of running into Whitey Bulger at The Gold Spike and 9/11 hijackers at The Western.
Now just need some stories of you running into a drug cartel leader at The Opera House and shooting craps with the leader of the Rollin 60s at Jerry’s Nugget.
Better than the original, and the video also reminds me that I've never seen the Drew Barrymore Charlie's Angels movie. I've liked her for a long time; she's a real Gen-X kid.
She had a bit of a scandal a while back, scabbing her show through the Writer's Guild strike, but pobody's nerfect.
Oh yay I’m so happy you’re off the crippling gaming addiction. We now get way better updates including stories of running into 9/11 hijackers at the Western. Between the stories of running into Whitey Bulger at The Gold Spike and 9/11 hijackers at The Western. Now just need some stories of you running into a drug cartel leader at The Opera House and shooting cra
Thanks Da_Nit! Whitey was at the Gold Spike, another downtown old-school Jackie Gaughan mob-adjacent property. Those are the only two possible Big Baddie encounters in my lifetime so far. And both of them will always remain questionable barring the emergence of new evidence.
My favorite remix of all time I think. Heard it for the first time in a skate video (Emerica’s “This is Skateboarding”) and it’s what got me into The Cure.
