Frantic Friday's.... The Peb's edition....

So honey....

I was thinking that your Birthday is coming up next Thursday and with everything that has been going on around us of late, well..... I was thinking that you could really use a little break. You know, just to shut everything down, have some fun and re-charge for the battle ahead of us.

Maybe I could persuade you to have a Beer or two?


I know a great little spot where we can get you some really nice Rum!
I hear they make some killer Cuba Libres!


Maybe you could let me find you a spot.... where the toughest decision you'll need to make is, should you sit in the Sun, or sit in the Shade today?


Oh I know what you need for a break! How about you and I take some time to play a little Pool together?


We will have to make sure that we set aside a little special time though. I know it will be tough to make plans and stick to them. But I can't help but remember how big the smile on your face was, the last time you and I spent some quality time with the kids!



I need you to rest and relax my love! I need you to take a break.
Some Sun, some Fun, some Salsa, some Merengue, some Booze and a Beach. Oh and of course the Largest Disco in Cuba! A girl's gotta' dance right!!!

Yeah, I think you need a break just like that!
So pack your things up! I booked the flight and we leave on Sunday.
We're heading back to Rafael Freyre, Cuba. Only this time, we're staying at The Playa Pesquero

I love you, with all that I am !


For all my friends that drop in here from time to time, I've...


SO



For now....

Usted tiene mis muchas gracias por venir aquí....

Bring it on....

Another kick in the ass this week as things just continue to pile up, one on top of the other.

After outright beating Prostrate Cancer and then just starting to get through this recent bout of Rectal Cancer, we were told earlier on in the week that Fred now has to contend with Bowel Cancer. Not exactly what we were hoping to hear! So once more, the strength and determination of our family will be put to the test.

Why we're being challenged in this manner, will never be fully understood by yours truly. Just know that we will continue on as one of the strongest family units ever imaginable, and fight our way through this next challenge. Just as we have all the others before it.

With a man.... NO!... REAL genuine and caring human being such as Fred leading the way, we'll learn, grow and become stronger and better as we kick Cancers ass one more time. It's what we do, and how we go about our day-to-day business of late. Life lessons learned from such an amazing human, have well prepared us to come together as one. And we shall!

Learning what's truly important in life may have come slow to this simple minded dolt of a kid, but at least it eventually did make an appearance. It came to me before I could wither away, as nothing more than a dark and morbid stain on this Earth.

When I was lucky enough to become part of this family, the black hole that sat not so deep within me, was removed. The place that caused pain upon others on purpose, or created jealousy within myself and among others. The place where hatred raged on un-bridled, waiting for the next opportunity to rear it's ugly head. The place where laughing for the shear joy of life, was replaced by laughter at another's expense. It replaced a black hole that was destroying my soul and everything I was.

When I became a part of this family, the Cancer within me, actually to be brutally honest with myself the Cancer that was me, had been kicked in the ass.

What's truly important in life has come to me with a clarity of 20/20.

I wish nothing but the same for each of you out there, as that's just how I roll. How I was taught to roll actually, by one of the greatest and strongest families imaginable. All lead by examples in life and it's lessons. All lessons well learned, as much as well earned.

Consider your words and actions for certain, but never fear judgement. For those that are the loneliest and blackest of all, eventually fall out of even judgements favour. Left to become nothing but fodder for the rest of the Cancers within this world. By being a better or bigger person one step at a time, perhaps all of the Cancers in our World could be cured as I was.

Who knows? But I do like to think that there's hope.

Finally, I'd say be strong Fred, but that just seems so redundant.
So I say Good Luck instead.


My sincerest thanks for dropping by....

Just call me..... Quadzilla....

I made mention of a few monster hands I'd been dealt of late and I have to tell you, they just keep on coming! My chubby little digits are actually a little tender from all the work involved in getting screen captures from the last few days. I've got enough material right now I think, to cover this little corner of the Blogoshpere for the rest of the year.

Today I thought I'd go with your opinions regarding Omahahaha starting hands. Of course this is open to anyone and everyone, but as I know a few of you personally and I know what kind of Omahaulics you can be, I'd really like to hear from YOU, YOU, YOU and YOU.

In my only Omaha game ever on line, (PLO/8) I ended up in the cash with a third place finish. Considering my lack of knowledge for the game and the fact that this leads me to play like an anal retentive nit, I'll take the result. But I constantly found myself crushed by the flops that came down, a large portion of the times that I'd folded. So here's a few hands and what I was tinking when I folded them. Please feel free to critique at will.

So here's the first one. It's the 29th. hand into the game and I'm in MP. We're 6 handed and there have been two limpers ahead of me. I look down at 9d-10d-Jh-4s and although I guess there is straight potential in the hand, I see no low potential at all and let it go. We'll never know if my Quad's were good here, but I woudn't have gone anywhere after that flop.


Next on the 43 hand of the game and in the SB, we're down to 5 handed. Again there have been two limpers ahead of me and I look down at Qh-2h-3s-3c. I personally don't like that Queen sitting out there all by herself, and I let the hand go. Had I limped in, I think the flop might have kept me interested for sure. The turn would've sealed two players fate, IMHO.


Around the 10th. hand of the final table, we'd gotten down to 8 handed poker. I'm on the button and have had a limper and a pot sized bet ahead of me. I hold Ah-Ad-As-9s. Now call me crazy perhaps, but I actually took some time to consider making a call here for three reasons. The player that potted has been really ultra-aggresive with his stack. I can fairly safely say his low draw is only to the 2 and if the flop comes low, maybe I can yank it in. Lastly, I think I can also eliminate his high hand outs because of all of my Aces as well. My gut told me to forget the call as it was really a weak play. That meant fold or pot and I took one more look at my hand. I decided on fold and immediately felt gratification from doing so, as both players behind decided to stay in and check out the flop.

Down to 5 handed at final table now and I'm UTG. The blinds had escalated and I was sitting on about 20 to 25 BB's. I am dealt 2s-3s-2c-Jd. I still don't love that one misfit card and I let the same type of hand as earlier in the game go into the muck. It is down to 5-handed, is this a leak or strength? I'm lost!


So there you have it! Quad Quad's in one game and I didn't play any of the four of them. Talk about messing with your head, when it comes to starting hand selection the entire game!

Now in typical Bam-Bam'ion fashion, I'd like to leave you with one of the hands that I personally thought I played very well. Just to give you a chance to tell me what a real donk I am at this game! For certainly if I thought I played it OK, I must have made many, many mistakes along the way.

It was way back in the 35 hand of the game. I was UTG at the 6-handed table and see that I hold 3s-4d-5c-6s. Now for me, this is a hand that I see some potential in. There is also potential for a few callers based on the play so far, if I make a pot sized bet. The blinds are obviously not that big as of yet and if I actualy hit the potential of this hand on the flop, I will be getting paid a much larger pot in the end. Only the BB was interested in the hand and off we go. A damn near perfect flop hits me for the 3-7 straight. In my mind, I currently have Bingo! More chips go into the pot and we see the 3c on the turn. this dissapoints me just a tick, as it opens up a second flush possibility and of course, the wheel is there as well. Once again the chips just slide into the pot with absoloutely no effort. As soon as I saw the way that it played out on that turn, I figured a split pot for certain. When what I considered to be the miracle 5d came on the River to improve my straight to a boat, I figured since the chop was a strong possibility, I might as well get a few more chips into the middle. As it turns out after the call, I was actually ahead the entire time. I ended up scooping the fairly hefty pot.


So considering that I thought I was sitting down to play in our regular Monday night HORSE game, I think I'll take a small amount of pride in finishing third.

It was after all, not just a surprise to me that the game had changed. But my first ever PLO/8 tournament.

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....

I'm dreaming of a White Bedrock....

A lot can happen in 48 hrs. around Bedrock. Take the Weather for example!

Late Saturday night, the all day rain turned into some very serious freezing rain. Meaning that the ice build up became quite an issue for Trees, Roads and of course, roof tops. It kind of starts off slow like this.


The weight of the ice and snow, eventually becomes far too much for almost anything trying to support itself against it. As an example, this is the 55 foot Colorado Blue Spruce that is the center piece of our entrance to the cave. Again, it's 55 feet tall and usually has a width of a little over 35 feet. In the Summer, I ride the lawn tractor underneath the bottom branches, with barely any ducking required!


Considering the incredible number of trees down all around our place, I'm just thrilled that the old Girl did so well through all of this.

Oh and as you can see, a little snow also fell after the rain. About a foot or so. But then to compound all the issues from the earlier freezing rain, the temperature warmed up to a few degrees above Zero. That foot of snow became compacted into about 6" of sloppy mess. Naturally, the temperature immediately dropped well below freezing and created a solid 6" block of ice. What would happen next you wonder? How about another 8" of snow! Instantly, the roof becomes a priority! Now I know I don't have my Daughter's incredible talent with a camera, but hopefully this will give you some idea of what I was up against. The top fluffy 8" just fell off the roof with a push or pull. Getting that solid 6" underneath, well that was another story!


Someone asked me yesterday, "Why didn't you do all this as it was coming down? You know, just to try and keep up." Well I'll tell you what. If you use your logic and your basic math skills here, here's the 4" wide hand rail leading up to the front door. It's obviously on a standard step angle and made of 2" x 4" wood.


Yep! That's about 10" or so, even at that angle. That's what came down in about 2 1/2 hours! Now despite my obvious lack of skill with a camera, I think the background in that shot gives you some idea of how much there was on the flat ground.

All the fallen Trees and branches have been cleaned up and all of the snow was taken off the roof. Now I only had one small concern. I needed to figure out how to help this poor bugger.


As I was on the roof and shortly after getting safely back down on the ground, the Spruce in the middle there was creakin' and crackin' for all it was worth. Something had to be done, or I would be losing one of the trees that has been blocking the sight of the road for years.

It was really too bad there was no one else around. I think everyone would've got a kick out of seeing the carnage, as my only real option was to get underneath it and slam into it a couple of times. (Remember the Horse in the Bud commercial?) Note to those of you that may someday find yourselves in a similar position. Looking up is just plain stupid!

And so, the snow has made everything white and beautiful, and all crisis' from the ice has been averted. All I had to do was get my aching old self up and head out to work this morning.


Uh-Huh! That's what the roof looked like at 5:00am. Now that my friends, that's a cooler!

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....

Weird things on the go....

Only have time for a quicky today, as the cave is under more than a foot of snow and ice. I'll need to do some diggin' out and get some of that weight off the roof in a hurry.

So we'll go with a couple of quick questions for you and the promised screen capture from the charity game last week. As well as one that proves muhctim's reads, are right on the money!

The first question I have is regarding the latest run of monster hands over on FullTilt. Besides myself and TwoBlackAces, has anyone else been running exceptionally well with hands like Quads, Straight flushes etc.? I only ask because of the 9 or 10 games I played over the weekend, this was the 8th. time I hit Quads.


Loved the help from the rail by the way Doc! If I had more time, I'd also put a couple of the 3, (YES THREE!) Straight Flushes that I also hit. One being so close to a Royal it hurt, as I was only good to the King.

The next question is, has anyone else noticed these crazy word verifications of late? Usually, I can figure the poor dolt having to enter some form of type, is just biding their time with simple repeat letters within a hands reach. You know what I mean, the typical zzqrtq or vxzxcv and the like. Has anyone else noticed the switch to some fairly comical ones? Over the last week or two, I've been asked to type in a few like braoff, imanut, betucant, inerpnts, nizgunz and twice, I've run across felasheo and felateo. Something tells me that our friends have a little something-something on their minds of late!

When I jumped into a RAZZ game to kill a little time yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to find my Monday Night pal, muhctim sitting down at the table. Always my pleasure good Sir! On one hand in particular, his read was right smack dab on the money! Thankfully, my opponent had absoloutely no clue what-so-ever, and let me get away with RAZZ murder!



The last shot here is from the Bad Beat on Kidney Failure charity event last week. This was the hand that got several comments from around the table, as I showed the complete bluff with air that took a nice pot from Mr. B.. I wouldn't normally consider showing the move to be honest, but you know how it goes! A little ego when you actually think you're making the correct play and it works out that you're right, can make you do something as silly as showing a Pro that you caught him with his hand in the cookie jar again.


Ok then, I'd better get my butt in gear now. Something tells me it's going to be a pretty long day of moving snow. It may be that the expectations are for another foot of the stuff by Dinner time!

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....