mellow Friday - up 2 buy-ins

No home game tonight - decided to take a break since drinking will commence early on Saturday with Buckeyes/Wolverines kicking off at noon.

Played 2 $10 FullTilt 9 mans instead. Won the first - a crazy fishfest where we got to heads up so fast it was still 40/80 blinds. I folded my way to top 6, won two hands to get me to second place, then folded again into the money.

Heads up took forever, blinds were so low. Villain was weak but getting all the cards, I was missing every flop. Started off with typical aggression, but he started calling me light both preflop and on c-bets. Decided to change gears and get into flops cheaply with my crap cards and hope for big hands I could trap him with. Finally got in with Ace rag, paired the ace and bet some money, got a call. Turn put a third spade on the board, I had the ace of spades, bet my top pair again, got a call. River came the lovely fourth spade, and I took the win vs. the Jack high flush.

Second tourney I played at the same table as Tony - not much going on. Got to 9 BB and started ICM shoving, which worked fine. Then I hit JJ and shoved again - into AA. Oopsie. Out in 5th, not much I could do there. Tony ended up big stack and crushing the bubble with unending aggression - opponents were obviously not experienced in SNG endgame stuff and just let him drain their chips until they had nothing left to fight with.

More vacation coming after Thanksgiving - the plan is to multitable low buy-in tournies (or matrix tournies), and work my way up to multitable $10 tourneys by the end of the week. No funerals looming for this vacation (Lord willing), so I should have to whole week to stare at the Kings and Queens instead.

On the music front, I am still addicted to Opeth. I told my high school buddy that it feels good to find a band at my age that interested me enough to want to buy their CDs, read their lyrics, watch interviews and videos, etc. I haven't invested that level of dedication to a band in a long time. (probably 20 years or so, truth be told). After a quick lookup on the checking account this morning, to see that the family cash flow is adequate for the month, I logged into Amazon and one-click-purchased my way to 2 more of Opeth's CDs, due to arrive next week. Merry early Christmas to me!