Walking on the Double, Flirting with the Bubble, and Punch-Buggy Trouble

I am sitting downstairs on my couch, exhausted from having spent the better part of two days at Foxwoods with Very Josie. She took Monday off and we had grand plans of getting the better of the Mother's Day crowd of amateurs and running roughshod over, you know, everyone.

The field trip started when I had to leave my Mother's house earlier than I normally would to go pick up Josie, who was also at her mother's. Hey, I didn't say that there wasn't a benefit to all this! Jo's sister Cricket just came back from Rome and she was full of stories and little Italian candies and cookies that were ferociously yummy. It's always a pleasure seeing (H)Anna, Jo's mother, who just loves me, despite her obvious disapproval of my ponytail. I greeted her with a kiss and a "you're already staring at my ponytail. Do I have to worry about you sneaking up behind me and cutting it off?" Laughs all around except for her; she just said, "no, of course not" and smiled a Sicilian smile that did not reach her eyes.

Discretion being the better part of valor, we made our exit and headed south. A quick stop at my house to drop off Tootsie, who was not coming with us, and we were on our way. We took Toots's car because it had less squalor in it than mine. Not for long! Driving down the road, Jos did me the "favor" of re-closing my soda bottle and proceeded to spill it all over the car. It was one of those weird new Mountain Dew flavors, the blue one, and it smelled (and tasted) like "a melted popsicle" (VJ). After some frenzied clean-up she was paranoid that Toots would say something about the sticky and the smelly, but she did neither. But it provided us with a lot of laughs on the way down.

Something that provided less laughter was Josie's curious habit of yelling "Punch-Buggy" and whacking me one good in the arm whenever she saw a Volkswagen Beetle. I'll tell you what: you gain an appreciation for how many VW bugs there are in the world when you get punched in the arm every time one rolls the fuck by.

Anyway, despite some mild bruising we made it to Foxwoods more or less without incident. We had to be there in time for an 8:00 "turbo" tournament that we especially wanted to play. A non-present employee at the make-a-card station made it a close thing but we were there with a few minutes to spare, she at one table and I at another, and started playing.

I'll let Josie tell you what happened with her, but she was out before me. As for me, I have to say, I played fucking awesome. The combination of solid, conservative play, coupled with the fact that both times when I looked down to find AA, someone shoved in front of me, chipped me up right proper and it carried me to the final table.

The normal payout was 6 people. When it got down to 8 we all decided to split it 8 ways and everybody quite reasonably walked away with 3rd place money, some 400 bucks. No, wait: that DIDN'T happen because one fucking asshat in seat 7 decides that he doesn't want to chop. No amount of cajoling would change his mind. So on we played.

And the blinds went up.

And the blinds went up again.

And the antes were huge and before I knew it I found myself with less than 4 big blinds and a lot of deep frigging stacks around me. It was time to gamble. Fortunately (or otherwise) the next hand out of the chute was 77. I shoved, got called with AJ to my right (so I sweated out the whole table folding to me until this guy calls), gets his ace, and that was the story of me. Le bulle. Die lufltblase. La bolla. The fucking god damned bubble. I'm still so mad I could spit.

Part 2 tomorrow. It's 2AM and Sue Jacobs' little boy is out of steam.

Until next time, please remember that if you see a convertible Beetle, you have to say "punch buggy rag-top-style" and slap someone three times in addition to the punch.