boringexcitingstory

Alright people – I’m back and better than ever. Why am I so great? Because work is just about over and we’ve moved out of our flat and gotten ALL our money back. We each had to pay $500 for bond and a cleaning fee when we first moved in to the place. After living at 597 New South Head Road for 4 months or so, we’d more or less forgotten about the money. Then as we prepared to move out, we realized as long as we cleaned up well, we were all going to get some cash money. It’s almost like getting a 100% tax rebate or something… great stuff. Anyway, yesterday I woke up at 5am with Erin for some final cleaning. She was heading off to Canberra (the capital of Australia) with her friend Diana. Lindy was in Cairns with his mom (where he is now) and Taylor and his sister were also heading to Cairns later that afternoon. Long story short, Steve (our landlord) is pretty much a jerk and made it harder than it should have been to get our money back… but we got it.

Ok so besides getting money… what’s been happening here? Well honestly not that much. I will be writing a blog in the next couple of days about an awesome track meet Erin and I went to the other day. It was the coolest thing ever, but I’m not going to write about it until I get Erin’s pictures because it won’t be nearly as good without them. Instead I’ll be writing about a rather mundane evening in hopefully a quite exciting way. If you don’t like poker - skip the boring poker description paragraphs.

Alright so the night started like any other Wednesday night. Erin, Taylor and Lindberg were all working (ok Brian was with his mom, sue me) and I decided to go play in a poker tournament at a hotel nearby. The buy-in was $22 and I figured it was not that expensive and would be a lot of fun, so why not. So I head outside to catch a bus that will get me there 15-20 minutes before I actually need to get there, but of course it came 10 minutes too early so I missed that one. Then I walked to a different bus stop to catch another bus (which I also missed) and so eventually I got there at 7:50pm. I wanted to get there at 7:30pm at the latest. Everyone had started playing already but they said I could join because they were only a couple hands in.

The first hand I sat down for really set the tone for how the night was going to go. The game was texas hold’em and the community cards ended up being 7, 8, 9, 10 and a King or something. I had folded pre-flop but two dudes stayed and both ended up having a Jack and thus a straight, but the one guy for some reason pulled all the chips towards himself. The other guy flipped out and yelled “It’s a split pot” and the other guy said something along the lines of “No duh” (with a bunch of extra expletives). The other guy returned some more cuss words and I thought a fight was going to break out until each of them had their chips. I’m pretty sure nobody said a word the rest of the time I was there.

Anyway, there were 8 people (including me) at the table and the first hand I actually played was the 7th hand when I was the big blind. I was dealt pocket Kings and only the guy to my left had stayed in so I raised. He raised me back and I gave him a little look and raised him again. He raised back and I said enough of this and went all in. I hadn’t used any chips yet so that meant everything I was given was in there. We flipped our cards and he had pocket 9s to my pocket Kings… so I was basically a 95% favorite. Of course a 9 came on the turn… so I lost. BUT – he had less money than me so I was still in.

The very next hand I was small blind and had King-Queen so I figured I’d play again. The same guy that took me out the previous hand wanted to play again so it was just us two. I scored a queen on the flop and bet big and he called. After going all in on the turn when a King came out (thus giving me the top two-pait), I felt confident I’d get some of my chips back. Unfortunately, he had 9-5 and had three trip 9s again (the third of which he scored on the final card). So this time I was out for real. $22 and ten minutes of poker and I was gone. I know Skinner can totally appreciate this because that one time in Vegas he got gypped by that woman playing in the poker rooms. Turns out it’s more luck than skill.

Needless to say, I wasn’t happy about my night so far. I went over to Erin’s work because the hotel I had been playing poker at was really close. She wasn’t too busy so she took a break and we hung out for 5-10 mins. Then I went home (or so I thought) and on my way I realized I had forgotten my stupid keys. I’d been living in the same place for 4 months and had never forgotten them until the week before moving out… what an idiot. I called Brian to see when he might be getting home and he said maybe within an hour but maybe not. I knew Taylor and Erin wouldn’t be home forever, but I figured I’d take my chances with Lindberg.

I went across the street to feed some fisheys in the bay. It was mildly exciting because I say a couple different kinds of tiny little fish and even a plate-sized Ray (manta ray or whatever). Bats the size of dogs were flying overhead and scared the crap outta me so I went for a walk. It started raining on my little walk (it just kept getting better and better). When I got back to the flat… Lindberg was nowhere in sight, so I decided to head back to Erin’s work to grab her key. The bus took forever to come and then the train took equally as long and by the time I got to Erin’s work, she only had about 30 minutes before she was done.

I ended up just waiting for her and thus my night’s adventure was over. 5 hours, $22, and more sitting than you can shake a stick at. Be careful when you say that last phrase in your head.

Alright so this blog was quite boring, but I wanted to blog about something and that was literally the only eventful thing that has happened in the past couple weeks (besides the track meet) so I laid it out there for you. Sorry if you are super bored – you’ll get over it.

Keep an eye out for some great pics coming up soon and some even better blogs. I know Lindberg will have lots of great stuff from up in Cairns and I’ve got some firepower to work with already here.

Love you all and miss you and can’t wait to have loads of exciting things to talk about. There are so many fun things coming up soon. Be excited.

- Jesse “Bored but Excited” Meredith