I Love Me Some Poker, Golf, and Jacob!

Things are going very well right now.  I feel like I am playing well and learning all the time.  I am focusing so much more on the ranges of players during hands and much more importantly, going, with my reads.  I feel like I made good reads in the past, but lacked the cahunas to pull the trigger.  This sometimes leads to spew, but this is how I learn.  You cannot help but spew some when learning, because mistakes are inevitable.  And these are okay – in fact, good! – so long as the mistakes teach you something.  Making mistakes and not learning is criminal.  I am also actively keeping the positive mindset.  What I mean is that in the past, it has been so easy for me to get too high when results are good, but I won’t let this happen again.  The results of poker can be very cyclical and it does seem that whatever goes up must come down.  The ugly side of variance will rear its head again, and I will be prepared that this is to be expected and that I just need to focus on improving my game.  This makes me pretty happy in the sense that my mentality feels at an all-time good state!  I have been playing a mix of 100nl and 200nl, game selecting well.  I hope soon enough that I will just be playing exclusively 200nl, but I will play what I feel is optimum for me, given the mental state I am in when I am about to play.  Sometimes I just feel like playing 100nl, lol.

I got in some golf Friday with two friends, John and Jung.  This is almost certainly the last time I play with Jung as he is leaving in two weeks for Cornell University to pursue a Masters in Computer Science.  I wish him all the best.  John actually met him at the golf course when they met up, kinda cool how things work out like that.  I played like complete dog shit on the front nine, where I just forgot to how to swing my driver.  I had been doing well the previous 4-5 rounds, hitting about 40% of fairways, but being just off the fairway another 40% of the time or so.  Around here, the rough is often not devastating, so hitting about 80% of my tee shots well was pretty awesome.  On the range before the round, I was striking the ball well again, which was nice, but once on the first tee, I just kept hooking the ball.  It was quite frustrating and I lost 3 balls on the front 9 alone.  I started to regain my swing on the back 9, finally culminating in playing the last 4 holes at even, including a monster drive on 18, that lead to a birdie after hitting the par 5 in two.  I am gonna hit up the range and the chipping green once this week, as we have a scrambles tournament for my division at work on Friday.  We should decimate the field though imo, as we have 3 of the top golfers in the division on the same team.  I think we only have one group to give us cause for concern, but we should be okay.  Also, John feels that bathrooms are just optional.

I am looking forward to a trip we are planning.  In 18 days, we leave for Knoxville.  John and a coworker/gof buddy of ours Greg, are going to play 5 rounds in 3 days in Knoxville, which has some great courses due solely to the terrain and are very low cost.  We are looking to play River Islands and Ruggles Ferry on Friday.  River Islands is a gorgeous course, rated very high by Golf Digest, yet somehow remains pretty inexpensive.  We will use a coupon from a site called EZLinks and play for $30.  Many of the holes are on the French Broad River and hole 3 actually requires a tee shot on the par 3 to go over the river.  Tell me it isn’t worth it!  Ruggles Ferry is a nice course too, but I don’t think there is a website for it yet.  It is a pretty nice course though and one we played often in graduate school when I was at UT.  Saturday we are going to hit up Centennial Golf Club in the morning, which is in Oak Ridge, just outside of Knoxville.  If you are interested in history, do some reseach on Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project, lots of history in that town.  Centennial is a course that somehow John has never played (Greg has played none of these courses), but it is a very pretty course and quite a challenge.  In the afternoon, we are thinking about playing Rarity Bay, which is about 75 minutes from Centennial, which might make it a bit difficult.  None of us have ever played this course and it has received some good reviews.  Pictures are difficult to find however, but here is one that looks nice.  Sunday we are debating either playing at a course called Lambert Acres, which is a cake walk course and just all around fun times, or just randomly stopping off somewhere on the way back to Charlotte.  It should be a great trip and should be relatively inexpensive.  I estaimte greens fees to be somewhere in the $175 range for all 5 courses, maybe $200.  Seriously it is amazing how good these courses are for the money.  These same course, if they were in Charlotte for example, would easily cost us $275 or more.  Lodging should be cheap if we split a hotel and even cheaper if Greg feels okay about staying with some people we know in Knoxville – free!  I think the trip with golf, lodging, food, and drinks should run about $400-$500.  And that is if I am very liberal with my food and drinks and we have to stay in a hotel.  It could be as cheap as $250. 

Also, Jacob has been so awesome.  He has grown considerably.  He was 7 lbs 7 oz and 19.5 inches at birth and he is now 22.5 inches and 8 lbs 9 oz.  He doesn’t even really look the same to me.  He is still just being aware when awake and sleeping, pooping, peeing, and eating a bunch, but I guess within a month or two, he should be smiling and interacting with us more, which is very exciting.  I have always wanted to have a family, but never did I think I would love being a daddy so much.  I guess it doesn’t hurt that I have the cutest baby ever!