Category — poker

Lately, I seemed to have gotten my training routine back together and have successfully woken up early enough to get in morning workouts. I’ve been getting up early enough so that after they are finished, I can still wake my family up and sit down to breakfast with them. With everyone just waking up, it’s like the workouts never happened. What proof do I have of accomplishing them except for the data on my Polar Heart Rate Monitor. This is the second time I’ve felt like that this week. Maybe I am just dreaming I am working out.

Anyway, so I had a nice run yesterday and I was planning on a swim in the evening and then heading home for a relaxing evening with my family. That’s when my schedule for the next 6 weeks became suddenly complicated. As one of my job requirements I am to take the Real Estate Salesperson licensing course and exam. A coworker of mine told me that a course has just began and that she was going this evening. This was at 4pm in the afternoon and then by 6pm I found myself sitting in an extremely boring 3 hour real estate course. I’ll be doing this for three nights per week (T,W,Th) for four more weeks over the next 5 weeks.

I was kind of freaking out that I somehow committed myself to this course of action with so little time to contemplate it. Being in this course was the last thing I expected to happen when I woke up this morning. While not nearly as extreme it was like I was suddenly taken from home and sent to the war in Iraq. Yes, I should probably be ashamed of myself for comparing going to a real estate course to going to Iraq, but it will serve for the purposes of letting you know how suddenly out of sorts I felt.

The course is deadly boring. Three hours of pure torture. New York State requires that every student must spend 45 hours in class. Actually 40.5 as you are allowed to miss up to 4.5 hours. Since I missed the first day I only have a 1.5 hour cushion. The material that is covered in 3 hours could easily have been covered in about an hour. The instructor fills the remainder of the time with stupid jokes, comments about student’s clothes and stories of him golfing and playing the guitar. We spent at least 15 minutes on one student’s shoes and a shopping mall where the student could have purchased them for half of what he paid. I spent most of the time playing online poker on my computer (thank goodness for WiFi Internet access) and chatting with friends over IM.

Fortunately, the instructor decided to let us out of class about 30 minutes early. That was until he had the bright idea of offering to the class the opportunity to watch a video of him playing a guitar solo of Freebird on stage with a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band on my computer. So instead of going home I had about 10 other students gathered around my computer watching a grainy video of him playing the guitar. I thought I would puke right then and there. Only 39 more hours.

So I’ve got a new thing going for my training routine. Whenever my workout calls for a bike ride, I setup my computer right next to my bicycle so I can play online poker at www.fulltiltpoker.com while I ride. It is really working out for me. I’ve been able to achieve a higher heart rate while doing this than while ever watching a movie on TV. I guess the excitement of it is a constant thing unlike a movie which inevitably has slow and dull moments. I am not playing for real money, so no worries about me becoming a degenerate gambler. Playing for points is satisfying enough; but damn is it addictive. So now I am fueling two additions at the same time – training and gambling. Maybe I could somehow work sex into this equation and really reach nirvana.

Yesterday I blew off my 3 mile active recovery run and instead substitute about 90 minutes of ice skating with my kids at night. It was my son’s first grade school outing, so I took him and my daughter to the rink and skated amongst a bunch of 6 years old. It was a lot of fun. The night was cold and crisp with a light breeze. The air was sparkling clear and the lights in Prospect Park were twinkling beautifully. It was very heart warming to see a bunch of little kids all skating, sliding and falling with a rosy glow on their cheeks. My kids had a great time and didn’t want to leave the ice. My son is really starting to get the hang of ice skating and was off on his own for almost all of the night. Moments like last night serve as a reminder of how lucky I am.