Tucson: Day 1

As always, day 1 is typically just known as "traveling day". When you get up at 4am and don't really stop moving until like two in the afternoon, it tends to wear you out. And it doesn't help when yours truly isn't exactly a huge fan of traveling; my 5-second attention span tends to hinder such things. However, this time wasn't so bad since Denise brought her portable DVD player. So we watched Office Space and played some card game that I just learned and don't know the name of.

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At the rental car place, what was described on Expedia as a "midsize, Toyota Corolla or similar" somehow turned into a PT Cruiser... yeah, no thanks. So after 10 minutes of the saleswoman trying desperately yet fruitlessly to talk me into upgrading to a Dodge Charger, I paid for a small upgrade to a Chrysler Sebring.

The rest of the afternoon was spent having lunch with my mom at the Quail Creek Grill and checking in at the hotel. Later on, we met up with my dad, my brother Ryan and his wife Kate at a pizza place called Sauce up in Tucson.

That was all the excitement we could handle for one day!

Way too early to be awake!

Always a shocker when the alarm goes off at 4am. Ugh. But fortunately, it's for a good reason. Denise and I will be leaving shortly to head to the airport en route to sunny Green Valley, AZ!

Another good night at poker

I hosted Mark's monthly poker game at my place last night. We had a pretty good turnout (not quite as good as the last couple) of somewhere around 20-25 people with 7 rebuys. This time, Mark and I had the foresight to put out a cup for a $1 donation to help me defray the $25 room rental fee. Although everyone must not have felt the need to help out since there was only $16 in the cup at the end of the night.

Anyway, I had a pretty solid night. I was pretty much middle of the road stack-wise all night until the final table. Fortunately, I got some pretty good hands at just the right times to get me into heads-up with Joey Vandermark. On the final hands, we each had pretty mediocre hands. But fortunately, it was an equally mediocre flop of 9-8-4(?). I had a 9 and Joey had an 8. He went all in, I called and my 9s held up.

With a few shootout tokens, I ended up taking home over $330. Not bad!

Pan's Labyrinth

So I went and saw Pan's Labyrinth on opening night last Friday night with Denise, Molly and Adam at the Uptown theater. If you haven't heard of it yet, it's actually a Spanish film that's been getting incredible reviews. On Metacritic's all-time list, it's currently #4.

I've never seen so many people at the Uptown before. The line of freezing movie-goers stretched around the block. Even the movie itself started about an hour late because of the difficulties of getting so many people out of the previous showing and getting all of us in. It was also due to the fact that Doug Jones himself (who played Pan in the film) was there and spoke to the crowd beforehand.

The movie itself was quite excellent. The acting and cinematography were amazing. The only thing that ruined it for me was the ridiculously tall guy sitting directly in front of me. I had to lean way to one side just to try to see the screen (not to mention the subtitles)!

A Little Hockey and Moonlight Bowling

Last night I made use of one of my Christmas presents from my wonderful folks, club-level tickets to the Wild/Stars game. Even better, I took a certain cute little chick by the name of Denise. Despite being a pretty exciting game, the Wild unfortunately ended up losing in the shootout after like 8 rounds.

Afterwards, we met up with some friends in Cottage Grove for a little moonlight bowling where I proceeded to win 2 out of the 3 games. Yeah, wassup? I also won $2 from 2 separate money shots (for those of you who aren't in the know, that's getting a strike when the head pin is a colored pin) and another $1 by getting 4 strikes in a row. The best part is, those 4 strikes in a row were to close out a game, sealing my come-from-behind win against Nick which won me the $5 we had riding on it!

Not a bad night at poker

Last night, Scooter, Nicky, Molly and I drove out to Eden Prairie for Mark Kantor's monthly poker game. All in all, it was a pretty impressive turnout. The original sign-up sheet had 33 people on it when the tournament started with several more people coming in late. Because of the large turnout and to keep the game from lasting until 4 in the morning, Mark limited rebuys at 9. Even better, because of the large number of players, Mark announced that he'd be paying out to the top 6 players.

In an odd coincidence, despite Mark having 4 tables set up, I managed to get seated at the same table as Scooter and Molly. In fact, I was immediately to the right of Scooter. I wasn't especially crazy about this turn of events since I'd rather not sit at the same table as people I know. Or more importantly, people who know me and know how I play. But oh well.

Anyway, I managed to take a few key pots and survive to take 4th place before getting mowed down by Jay who took out like 3 or 4 people right before me and went on to take 2nd place. For taking 4th place, I got $132. I also had 3 shootout tokens which got me another $15.

So not a bad night, all things considered!

It's that time of year again

For the second year in a row, Shaun Cooper and Kevin Dotzenrod had themselves a little wager on the college football national championship game. And for the second year in a row, Rotzen (who actually wants to shave his head) took the underdog. But just like last year, the underdog came through. This year, that happened in the form of Florida clobbering Ohio State by a score of 41-14.

So once again, I got to shave Cooper's head (with help from special guest barbers, Molly Peterson and Kevin Dotzenrod). Better luck next year, Rotzen!

Click here to see the pics.