Get. The. Fuck. Out.

 "I'll take 'Things I never thought would happen' for $1400, please, Alex."

"It's Ken, but that's ok. The answer there: the other Daily Double! (Ken pauses for the applause break) What do you think, Crafty? You can really make a move here."

"True Daily Double please, Alex."

"Ken. For a doubling of your score, then, here is your clue: 'The Red Sox winning four championships in 14 years. Boston's third album. And this improbable thing that no one would ever thought would happen.'"

"That's a tough one, Alex."

"Ken."

"Sure. Um...what is, 'Crafty makes a blog entry for the first time in eight years?'"

"Correct! That moves you all the way up to $800."

*   *   *

Yes! It's true. Something has happened that, at long last, is blogworthy. But first, let me tell you what's been happening with your ol' buddy Crafty since I last checked in, in 2017. I was, in just about every way, a different man than I am today.

In broad strokes:

• In 2019, I got a great job that once again paid me at a level commensurate with my talent, such as it is.

    After the stroke, I switched careers from being a cog in the corporate wheel, chasing a quota monthly, quarterly, yearly, and pivoted to hard IT. I became a help desk technician, then a server guy, then an IT Manager. This last change had me doing what I wanted to be doing, for people who appreciated what I brought to the table, and who paid me handsomely for it.

• In 2021, my mother died.

    Not only was this a bummer, to employ an epic understatement, but I found myself having to navigate every aspect of her post-sickness care, her placement in hospice, her passing, her burial, the cleaning out of her apartment (for this last task I enjoyed the assistance of my Aunt and Uncle, the only members of my family to actually help me, including my no-account brother who had been sponging off my mother for years and who refused to come see her in long-term care until she had a stroke two weeks before she died, but I'm not bitter or anything). 

Partly because of the incredibly long list of to-dos, and partly because I learned from my father's passing 13 years previous, I was able to emotionally process my mom's passing with a great deal more success than that of my dad, which admittedly was a low bar to clear, but one takes victories where one finds them.

• On May 15, 2023, I announced to the world that I had retired. A quote from that announcement:

"I won't be one of those poor bastards who has a heart attack at their desk and gets rolled out on a stretcher with a shirt and tie on. However much time I have left will be spent in the company of precisely whom I choose, doing precisely what I want to do, forevermore. I've made it."

• Three days later, on May 18, 2023, I had a heart attack of some intensity and, a few days after that, endured triple-bypass surgery.

       Before you ask: it sucked. Dear Lord, did it suck. It was eight solid weeks of misery, horrible pain while coughing, sneezing, or indeed moving, and about another two months of low-grade discomfort, a return trip to the hospital, and general all-around suckitude. And largely because of this,

• I've lost a significant amount of weight.

      Fueled by the abject terror of a cardiac brush with death, I actually listened to my doctors and changed everything about the way I eat and the place of food in my life. I found a diet that would satisfy me on 2000 calories a day and the weight flew off.  

At my most rotund I weighed about 325 pounds, wore size 46 pants, a 3XL shirt, an 18" neck, and a 56 coat. The night of my heart attack, the bed in the trauma ward where they brought me had a scale that weighed me at 265 pounds, with clothes but no shoes. I stand before you today a man of 200 pounds, more or less exactly. I wear size 34 pants, L/XL shirts, a 15 1/2" neck, and a 44 coat. 

And sure, I now have an unsettlingly large surplus of skin that sloshes to and fro as I move about - I look kinda like a melted ice cream sandwich, but I'd much rather my skin be empty than full of the blubber it used to hold.

A lovely little side effect of losing all this weight has been that all of the small aches and pains that plagued my body - every last one of them - they're all gone. At one point or another, everything hurt. A good week was one where only one thing hurt at a time. Neck, shoulders, hips, knees, feet, wrists, fingers - if it moved on my body, it had a spot in "the big wheel of pain," as I called it. You spin the wheel and see what's gonna hurt for the next few days. That's gone too, for the most part. Sure, every so often, something bothers me - I'm 57, after all - but for the most part, and it still astounds me to say it, but I'm in the best shape of my adult life, which is also an incredibly low bar to clear.

So that should provide you enough backstory on my last seven years to at least get you up to date. And now I feel at last that I can reveal the reason for this post:

Trip Report: Chasers Poker Room, 12-15-2025

           

 Josie - remember her? - and I had fallen into the unfortunate habit of seeing each other at funerals - two of the last three times we clapped eyes on each other were funerals for a mutual friend and the mother of a mutual friend, respectively. And it had been forever since we saw each other purely socially, so once the suggestion was made that we should buck this doleful trend and go play poker somewhere, there was enthusiastic agreement, plans were made, and off we went.

We stopped for breakfast at a place called the Hammersmith, which I'm pleased to report is a much grander name than the restaurant has earned. It's a fairly typical breakfast joint, blissfully free of the pretense that its name might suggest.   God help me, I love a good breakfast joint. We were joined by Josie's sister Cricket, and the three of us had a great breakfast, made even tastier still by the fact that Josie picked up the check.

After that we dropped Cricket off and headed up to Rockingham, NH, to the Chasers poker room. Jo found a seat in 2/5 and I took my seat with the fishies at the 1/2 table.

I hadn't played poker competitively in the better part of a year, and the last two times I played, I busted out, most recently in front of, and at the hands of, our very own Lightning36 when I went out to Phoenix for a visit this past Spring. I didn't have high hopes for my play, I privately thought if I limit my losses to $100 bucks that would be considered a win.

But they say the good Lord protects children and fools, and that's really the only way I can explain the outcome: I finished the day up about $160. Better yet I did it without a surfeit of good cards, lucky suck-outs, or any other of the usual excuses.

For the most part I played premium hands, medium suited connectors, most pairs, and to sort of randomize my game I played non-traditional starting hands that have some emotional value - I played 10-2 a couple times, played the Grump (2-4) a couple times and won once with them, that sort of thing. One of those types of hands that I don't play generally is J10 - Josie's favorite hand - not simply because it's her favorite hand, but because more often than not I get absolutely walloped when I try to play them.

I took great care to cultivate a cautious, nitty reputation, then after I felt I had done so, I played against that reputation, and because of that I was able to steal a giant pot with absolutely nothing - not even a promise to respect them in the morning.

So yes, though it could indeed have been caused by the hand of divine Providence protecting fools as I posited before, it's probably just decent play and good decision-making that carried the day. I'm actually pretty pleased with the way I played, and with my end result.

How did Josie do during all this? Glad you asked. She was down several hundred almost immediately - I saw her get up and take the walk of shame to the cage to reload - but of course she remembered exactly who the fuck she was and earned her money back and more. She finished the day up $446.

How do I remember her take so exactly? Well, I did something nice for her (which really was in repayment of her doing something SUPER nice for me, but no matter, no matter), and before the afternoon's festivities began, she promised me a 10% stake in her profits. True to her word, before we left the parking lot, she crossed my palm with $45.

And look, I'm not going into the details of the nice things that were done, or any of the circumstances around them, but suffice to say that living one's life valuing friendship and connections above material concerns carries with it its own sets of rewards, and some of those rewards might very well turn out, over time, to be material in nature.

Josie and I were put in a set of circumstances where we both unthinkingly put our friendship above any other consideration, and Sunday it profited me to the tune of $45 and raised my daily profit to $200. It also verified, for my part, exactly the type of person Josie is, and why I'm so pleased to be her friend. 

Usually when we spend a weekend day playing poker, there are two meals involved, because what could possibly be better after a greasy spoon breakfast and five hours of poker but a cheeseburger, of course. American cheese, extra onion, if you're interested. But today's post-poker meal was a reunion of sorts of Josie's friend group, who call themselves "The Goddesses." I was invited but demurred, as I didn't want to run the risk of having five middle-aged women take one look at my now svelte body and devastating good looks and fall helplessly in love with me. So home I toddled, now with most of my Christmas holiday financed.

I built a fire in the hearth and soon its familiar crackle filled the room. There's nothing quite like a fire in the evening, And I'm not the only one in the house that thinks so: Dory, our British shorthaired cat that prefers her own company to that of anyone else in the house, loves the fire. She'll stare at the flames for minutes at a time, like she lost a buddy in the war. It's a source of endless fascination for her, and for me as well.  

Like Dory, I found myself staring at the flames. Unlike Dory, I was reflecting on a great day out, which was profitable on many fronts. Also unlike Dory, I can write about it, because my typing skills kick her sad ass no-opposable-thumb weak sauce typing skills all over the playground.

So that's my trip report. Hope you enjoyed it. Will I update this blog more regularly? How about this: I promise I will update it sooner than seven years from now - which, for the third time this post, is a pretty goddamn low bar to clear.

cat not included