 Vegas November 2012 |
| Day 1 - Context, Aria |
| Last Updated: 2012-11-04 03:06:02 |
| My Vegas trip this year needs a little context first...
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| The first back-story is that a few weeks ago we started to have some of our wood floor in the kitchen start to pop up a little. The spot is directly over a beam and we were assuming that the house was settling. We were getting close to calling up the company that installed it to ask about our options.
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| The second back-story is that we have had problem tenants who had asked to be let out of their lease. The good news is that in just a couple of weeks we got a family that lives in another one of our houses to take over that house and found a tenant for the house those folks are moving out of. The bad news is that we have to get the problem tenants out, move the good tenants house to house and get the new tenant into the second house within a span of just over two weeks that starts Monday...and I'm not going to be there for the first week...
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| The third and final back-story is that most of you probably know the program myself and all of the Boeing people that play poker with us is on a contract that ends on December 31st of this year. The process of us bidding for the next contract (which should last at least 4-6 years) began early this year and the contract award, which we are very confident of winning, was supposed to occur last week.
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| Well...it didn't. So to make a long story short, due to the fact Boeing has to give us 60 days notice to lay us off and our contract was to end in 60 days Boeing gave layoff notices to everyone on the program. I'm very confident that we are going to win the contract, and even more confident that if we win the contract my job will be safe. But getting a layoff notice, no matter how expected it was, never makes for a good day.
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| I go home Friday after the fun meeting with my boss and start setting up for poker night. Joann was down in the basement with me watching some stuff we had on the DVR while I was starting to get things ready when Joann noticed that the paper along one of the sheetrock seams in the basement was all bubbled up almost the entire length of the seam. WTF?
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| So I get out a stool, reach up and sure enough the seam feels DAMP. This seam is about 10+ feet away from the outside wall, directly under the area of our kitchen sink. So we run upstairs to look under the sink, there's no water or water stains in the cabinet underneath. We happen to have a heating duct so that heat blows out from under the cabinet directly under the sink, which conveniently allows us to see under the cabinet and it's bone dry underneath as well. I take the panel off the bottom of the dishwasher, lots of dust and stuff but bone dry as well, although the wood floor under there is buckling a little as well.
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| Well the basement ceiling is going to have to be repaired anyway so I cut a hole just big enough for me to see up into the ceiling to figure out where the water is coming from. As luck would have it I cut a piece out on either side of the joint and hit the jackpot in that I cut directly under the drain pipe on one side of the beam and the water supplies directly on the other side. But I feel around and look around and there is no evidence whatsoever that water was running down into that area aside from the fact that I have damp sheetrock with no apparent explanation.
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| So we go upstairs and do what we can to run water in the kitchen for a while to try to induce the water to flow where it shouldn't. We fill and drain the dishwasher a few times, nothing. Check all the piping in the kitchen and in the basement while stuff is filling and draining. Nothing. Nothing under the dishwasher, nothing in the space under the cabinet under the sink, no leaky pipes in the basement.
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| Quite honestly I'm befuddled at this point. So I go and look one more time in the basement and I realize that even tho nothing is wet, the copper hot water pipe clearly had evidence that water had been running down it. But nothing was leaking!
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| I don't remember if it was myself or Joann that noticed it, but finally we solved the mystery. Once we had just left the dishwasher alone for a few minutes it finally started to leak. Not while we were filling, running or draining it, but a little while after the activity stopped it started to leak. A lot.
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| So here I am, now about 4 hrs after getting a layoff notice, 2 hrs before I have people coming to my house to play poker and the night before I'm supposed to get on a plane for Las Vegas finding out that I have a dishwasher that is leaking and has ruined our hardwood floor. And, understand, this is a CONTINUOUS hardwood floor that encompasses kitchen, eating area, living room, dining room and bathroom.
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| Oh, and we haven't eaten dinner yet, getting down to 90 minutes before poker people start arriving! Sounds like an excuse for dinner out to me!
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| And poor Joann is now stuck with all this, on top of having to work on the rental properties without me next week to get our tenants moved out and in (she has to get one house cleaned and ready within a few days), on top of having to deal with getting kids to and from school, and of course my mother-in-law is also out of town while I'm away. AND she can't even use the damn dishwasher...
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| At least we get an extra hour of sleep tonight! Oh and yeah I had a good night at the home game to send me off a winner after my otherwise very crappy day.
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| So it's in that context that I left for Las Vegas Saturday afternoon.
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| Flight was quick and easy. Took me 2 hrs from the time I got on the ground until I got checked in at IP. IP is a mess these days but this entry is already long so I'll talk about that another day. Practically ran down to Aria to try and get into the 7:00 tournament thinking registration closed at 8:00. I got there at about 7:58, but as it turned out registration was open until 9:00. I started out as the 12th alternate (actually 35th but they had seated up to 23 at that point). It took almost another hour before I got seated, but just as I was next in line to get sat down a whole table opened up and they put me and the 7 people who signed up after me at that new table.
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| I had a great run of cards. Aces 3 times (cracked once by Jacks but I had enough chips to withstand it), Kings once and Queens once and got paid for all but the one I lost. From 72 down to 14 things were going great and 7 were going to get paid. I was just below average stack but I had over 20 big blinds and was in pretty good tho not great shape.
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| Then the beginning of the end...
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| Blinds 1000/2000 with a 300 ante. I am second to act at a 7 handed table and look down at A-Q off. I raise to my standard 5500, next player to act calls (he was a weak-tight player), short stack decides to shove for just 10,500, fold around to the button who was another weak-tight player and he calls. So I have to call another 5K as does the guy between me and the short stack. Flop J-10-X rainbow. Check around, turn another blank, check around, river a 6. Check around one more time. I show my A-Q, the two weak-tight players show A-K and K-Q...and the short stack flips over 6-5 offsuit and quadruples up. 1/4 of my stack gone, bigger percentage for the other two.
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| Then a couple of quick bustouts and we're down to 12.
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| Guy to my right (between me and weak-tight A-K from before) has had a propensity to make all-in overbets a little too often. He had plenty of chips, one of the bigger stacks, no reason he couldn't make more standard raises so I could only assume he was NOT hoping for callers when he made the move.
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| Well he's 2nd or 3rd to act and does it again, and I look down at A-K off. I instantly call with my now 15 big blind stack, it folds around and he turns over A-J off. Well the board runs out four clubs, he has the Jc and I'm done 5 from the money.
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| Oh well. Sucks finally catching cards left and right and still busting out like that, but what can you do.
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| Tomorrow it will be the Bellagio buffet for brunch followed by hopefully the Packers at the sports book at Aria followed by the 1:00 tournament. After that, who knows. They got 187 for the 1:00 today, hopefully a similar number tomorrow! |
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