Phoenix - last night in town

Friday, February 11, 2005...

Friday began as a lazy day. I got up early, hiked down the road for breakfast and provisions...then came back and worked on email (work and personal), the family's kennel website, and my birthchart for most of the morning and early afternoon. I even did some laundry for Becky - lots and lots o' towels - and washed dishes. It's the least I could do after moving in for 10 days and using up everyone's gas while driving me around.

Becky got home around 2:00 from work and we shortly departed to return our movie rentals, stopped by Kinko's to print out our birthcharts (I may have to boycott Kinko's in the future...I'll save that for a ranting post though), stopped to see Glen at work & then headed downtown to pick up Italian take-out for the evening's poker festivities. While driving, we decided we needed soda and booze to go with our Italian so we made an emergency stop by a grocery store. We were now prepared!

I know the basics of poker. After all, does anyone really lose the basics? But, because I rarely ever have an opportunity to play, I don't always recall the rules to games and other than basic 5-card stud, 7-card stud, etc...I always have to be reminded of the rules. Poor Mikey, being a routine poker player, had to teach us all the rules to new games. I probably won't remember them all, but we played 31, Screw Your Neighbor, Baseball, Dimestore, Acey-Deucy (Hi-Lo), 7-card No Peek, Follow the Queen, 5-card stud, Texas Holdem, Omaha Holdem and Blackjack. It was a good time! Mike was winning until towards the end. I won the last few games. Amber made a killing on the 7-card No Peek before withdrawing from playing. Ben finally went broke and I kept borrowing or buying pennies from everyone else. I wasn't doing so well. lol I usually don't do that bad! Oh well...at least we were playing with pennies and I did manage to leave the table with half of my silver coins still in my possession. We shut down at about 11:00 pm, and Mikey and Ben got ready to head out. I managed to get a hug out of both of them before they escaped. It was so nice being able to meet the Top 7 in its entirety! Now everyone is moving, following their life's paths and I have to wonder if the Top 7 will ever come together again in one place at the same time. Oh wait...duh! At Becky's wedding!!

I stayed awake awhile longer, talking to Becky, Dave and Armani. I didn't want the night to end.