Tag: New England Patriots

A Long Birthday Weekend

My birthday weekends get a little more low-key over time. Having a big to-do of a party seems less appealing than it used to. Maybe for my 50th.

This weekend I decided what I mainly wanted to do as play poker, so Friday night I had five friends over for an evening of our low-stakes game. Rooting around for the new deck of cards I knew I’d bought, I looked at my order history on Amazon, and found that it had been over two and a half years since I’d hosted a game. Probably almost that long since I’d last played no-limit, too. But it was a successful evening for me, more than doubling my buy-in. I was particularly pleased with a hand where I turned two pair with a 4-straight on the board, and realized no one had the straight when they didn’t bet the turn, so I was able to make a little more money on the turn and river.

(I’ve been listening to the Thinking Poker podcast, and find it’s maybe even more instructive to learn about hand-reading by listening to it than by reading a book about it.)

Saturday was my actual birthday, and I’d thought of going to the Magic Oath of the Gatewatch prerelease, but decided that poker was probably enough gaming for the weekend. Instead I opened presents, talked to my Dad on the phone for a while, and then watched the Patriots beat the Chiefs in the playoffs.

In the evening we went to Amber India with some friends for dinner. They moved a few months ago (I think their old strip mall is going to be redeveloped soon), and their new spot has a nice outdoor patio (not suitable for this rainy weather, but should be great in the summer). The inside feels a little cramped and warm, but possibly they just have a few kinks to work out. The good news is, the food is still awesome!

Sunday was had a relatively quiet day, though in the afternoon we drove over to Half Moon Bay hoping to catch some of the rain showers we were supposed to be getting. We stopped for lunch at Cameron’s British Pub, whose English pastie was exactly what I was craving. Then we drove down the side street the pub is on and ended up at the Wavecrest open space preserve, where we hiked around for about an hour, getting our sneakers muddy and (in Debbi’s case) soaked. But it was a pretty – if blustery – day, and we had a good time. We then drove up to Point Montara Lighthouse where we sat in the car and watched the waves crash on. Alas, we never got more than some drizzle on the whole trip, which was a bit disappointing.

In the evening we started watching Person of Interest, which I’d been curious about for a while, but it never aired at good time for us. (Now that’s a concern we won’t have in the future now that we own a TiVo.) It’s good stuff, a little over-the-top, but at least as good as other police procedurals, and I understand it gets more sophisticated over time.

Oh yeah: And my company’s “gift” to me for my birthday was that we have Martin Luther King day off for the first time. So today we took care of a bunch of chores in the morning, including having a plumber over to fix two of our toilets whose gaskets were having problems. In the afternoon we had some other friends over, who hadn’t been able to join us for cupcakes on Saturday, and I played with the kids for a bit, and they chased the cats and Debbi’s BB-8 robot around for a while. We wrapped up the weekend with dinner, some more chores, and some more Person of Interest.

A pretty busy weekend in a lot of ways, but also some nice quiet time. And we did get that rain I was hoping for, but it came in last night. Wish we could get a good solid day of rain during the daytime on a weekend. But for now it looks like I’ll have to be satisfied with another shower tomorrow.

Quiet Birthday Weekend

I took last Friday off for my birthday, and decided to do… nothing. The last few months have been stressful, so I really wanted to spend a day just hanging around at home not worrying about things I needed to do.

So I got up, got sausage biscuits from McDonald’s for breakfast, then did my one chore for the day, which was getting my hair cut. I went downtown to get a falafel sandwich for lunch, and otherwise I spent the day sitting in our library reading graphic novels. Other than a blip in some e-mails that I had to handle, it went pretty much as I hoped. In the evening Debbi took me out for dinner to Sundance the Steakhouse, as I was craving their prime rib and of course their mixed drinks.

Saturday was busier, as we ran errands all over town, from Costco to OSH to Bed Bath and Beyond. And then at PetSmart we found a new cat tree to replace our ten-year-old one which has been just about shredded on top. Amazingly we were able to get it into my car and get it home, too! The cats seem to have all accepted it, even Roulette, who has been snoozing at the top of it on a regular basis, after having mostly avoided the old tree since we got the kittens.

Sunday went back to being a lazy day, as we watched the two football conference championship games. It was pretty sad to see the Seahawks win, meaning we’ll have one more week of The Worst Fans in Football, but watching the Patriots stomp the Colts was fun. (I actually like the Colts, but they’re not there yet.) Since then we’ve had “deflate-gate” over allegations of the Patriots deflating the ball when they were on offense. This left me agog that teams apparently provide their own balls when they’re on offense in an NFL game. Haven’t all sports leagues learned from baseball’s steroid controversy that any aspect of the game which isn’t closely overseen by the league will be exploited? How in the world could the league have not realized sometime in the last ten years that this was a bad idea?

Well, regardless of whether or not the Patriots cheated, hopefully the NFL will learn from this. The last couple of years have shown that they have a lot of learning to do.

Anyway.

Sunday evening we went to meet our friend Paul for drinks. After a brief bit of confusion over where we were meeting, we had a nice couple of hours with him and a friend of his at Shiva’s. A pleasant wrap-up to the weekend.

Once again, it’s hard to believe another year has passed. It feels like I’m in that stage of my life where the days, the weeks, the years are starting to fly by. That’s a little scary, if I think too much about it. On the other hand, I think back to where I was 20 years ago, how much has happened since then, and think that 20 years from now I might be nearing retirement, but by today’s standards I won’t really be old.

So, it’s not time to worry about the passage of time yet.

The Answer

Today marks another orbit around the sun for me, and this year I’ve turned the age of The Answer – a frivolous connection, but one I was happy to play up when talking about it.

I threw my annual birthday party last night. I’ve been doing less well as the years roll on at planning my party in advance, I think because I get back into the swing of work after New Year’s, then get distracted by things like my book discussion group, and then worry about inviting too many people, or too few, or something. Anyway, this year I didn’t send the invitation until last Wednesday night. On the other hand, a late invite does tend to polarize the responses – people are either available or not, and probably not going to have something else come up. Anyway, maybe I’ll do a little better next year.

We got a pretty good turnout this year, spread out over more than 8 hours: My cow-orker Joar and his wife arrived earlier with their infant daughter E. E was very well behaved, and was fascinated by the cats once she saw them. (The cats, of course, took one look at her and said, “Oh hell no.”) And our friends Lisa and Michel came by with their daughter I, who is now three, and who loves when she visits to spend the whole time playing with me. So I had to tell her every so often that I was going to go talk to other people for a while. She was very well behaved about it, too. She was full of energy, so I did play with her for a while.

We broke out the cake (from the Prolific Oven) and ice cream (from Rick’s) before the folks with young kids left. An eclectic group of folks from in and out of work showed up, which was nice since for a little while I wasn’t sure many would show up. But the usual fun time was had by all, and I’m grateful to everyone who came.

Today was my actual birthday, and I threw the party yesterday so that I could pretty much sit on my ass all day. Other than the Patriots utterly collapsing against the Jets (reminiscent of their “barely showed up to play” Super Bowl performance against the Giants a few years ago), it turned out to be a pretty good plan. Debbi took me out for brunch, we took a little walk to Starbucks, and otherwise just stayed home. I cooked dinner, did some reading, petted the cats, and hung out with Debbi.

I also did a Scars of Mirrodin draft on Magic Online, and my birthday gift to myself was that I won the draft, after never advancing past the second match in previous tries! It wasn’t even particularly close, as I had a decent bit of luck but also felt like I was generally playing better than my opponents, playing patiently much of the time and pressing my advantage when I had the chance. I only lost one game of the seven I played. Definitely a nice outcome – maybe I’m generally getting better.

Seems like the weekend has just flown by. Unlike some folks, I don’t have tomorrow off from work. Still, despite my worry about lining things up for my birthday each year, I always do enjoy celebrating it. It’s been a good time.