What a weekend!

Let'see... a quick re-cap.

Friday night, we went to Baditudes house and watched Shanghai Knights. A fun movie, and fun to hang out with everyone.

Saturday morning, Diana hung out with a friend who was in town. I took the opportunity to work on part of her birthday pressie, which was a treasure-hunt type deal. In the afternoon, we went over to my parents house for dinner, and went to see "Much Ado About Nothing". It was good... not great, but still a lot of fun.

Sunday morning, I gave Diana a little note which was a clue to the first hiding spot, and watched her solve the clues. All the hiding spots were locations of signifiagance, like her wedding bouquet, the first curtains we put up, the place were the crow died, etc. Once she collected all the clues, they went together and formed a little puzzle, on the back of which was a coded message. The final clue also had the key to the code (Norm: I stole the idea from the web thing you sent me). Solving that gave the location of her present (which was one of those murder-mystery jigsaw puzzles... a little anti-climatic, I know, but we had one before that we had a lot of fun with, and gave us good couple-bonding time, so I think it isn't sub-par. I'm not a very good gift-giver.)

So, after all that, we went to my parents house for lunch (more birthday celebration for Diana and my mom), and then met up with Iwan and Sara and went to the races.

The races were a blast. We all made crazy bets. At one point, Iwan and agreed on our betting strategy, and put down two sets of identical bets. We won $56 each. Much of that was lost on subsequent races, but Diana and I walked out with $15 more than we came in with. So, that's a good day. We were all tuckered out, so we got some pizza and went back to our place and watched "Noises Off", which I think is hilarious. I'm not sure how they liked it, but oh well. Early to bed, because we had a big poker tournament the next morning!

Yeah, that's right. Monday morning we got up early (well, not too early, but earlier than normal for a holiday), and picked up Iwan, and headed to Viejas to participate in one of it's daily poker tournaments. The buying was $12, which bought us $1500 in tournament chips and a seat at the No-Limit Hold'Em tournament.

Long story short: Half an hour later, I was out. 15 minutes after that, Diana was out. 15 minutes after that, Iwan went out.
Long story medium: It was crazy to sit down at your seat, and see 10 chips in front of you. 2 x $500, 4 x $100, 4 x $25. Blinds start out at $25/$50, and doubled every 15 minutes. With that few chips, and with blinds increasing so fast, there's really not a lot of time to play tight and sit around waiting for good hands (which is what the three of us did). I also screwed up majorly: I thought there was one player behind me with a bet of $200. I said "raise 300", and threw out a pink ($500) chip, thinking I could scare him away. I didn't realize (or forgot) that there was a player between me and him who had ALREADY raised it to $500. So, when I said "raise $300", that meant I owed $300 on top of the $500 to call. The guy I wanted to fold orginially did so, leaving just me and the raiser (who was an old guy who seemed to know what he was doing).

I was on a semi-bluff with an open ended straight draw, so it wasn't a total catastrophe. The turn came up, making 3 to the flush on the board, and not helping my straight. I checked. The guy who had raised before looked me dead in the eye and said "I'm all in", and pushed his healthy stack out. I had to assume he made his flush, and I had zilch. I'm not sure if I should have called at that point or not, but I folded. That was the beginning of the end.

It seemed the more successful players played pretty crazy, seeing lots of flops and getting lucky with crap cards. Diana threw away what would have been 6 winning hands if she'd stayed in. She had a great hand where she had queen-ace and the board showed Q-3-9. Turn came another Q. She checked, the other guy bet, and she raised all-in over the top! The guy called, showing his Q-J. The river came a 9, giving them BOTH a full house, queens over 9's, so they ended up splitting the pot. A great hand, and really well played by D, but a heartbreak of a result. (Props to anyone who checks and then goes all in).

All in all, we all had a great time. It was a great $12 spent on entertainment (that's what we're calling it), and a very humbling experience. For those who like to worry about me, rest assured I have no plans to lose (or win, for that matter) any serious money via gambling. But $12 for an hour or two of fun, with the potential to win a lot more sounds like a good deal to me.

Afterwards, we stopped by Diana's parents for some more birthday celebration. Then I went to the beach with Iwan and Eryn and Heather, while Diana went home and got some work done. The group of us (minus Heather, plus Sara) ended up back at our place to BBQ and hang out. Iwan and I decided we needed steaks. So we bought 3 pounds of marinated tri-tip from Seaside Martketplace in Cardiff. This came highly reccomended to us from Papa Rosten, and when we were there, a woman said that it was the best thing she'd ever had in her life. So, we were all kinds of fired up. We got the grill going, and managed to not completely ruin the steaks. They were a little well done, but we considered it a dry-run for a future Monday Night Football extravaganza. Even though they were not perfect, the steaks were REALLY good. We all just kind of crashed out on the couch after that and hung out.

There you have it. A busy, fun weekend. Diana's back to school today (her birthday, by the way! Happy Birthday!), and starts her classes to night, so she's not going to be home until 10pm. :(

Hope everyone out there had a great weekend as well!