No, really, I'm still alive...

Okay, my bad. Missed last weeks short takes blog, and then went the whole week without posting. Smack my hand with a ruler. Well, if you look like the really hot Church of Sk8in mascot/nun you can do it. ;) I do apologize, and promise a number of new blogs this week. So, without further ado, the weekly short takes...

Wow, I've been busy. Baseball starting back up; helping to run the Fetish Ball; AIPCO; organizing the WSOP satellite, and the sub-satellites; trying to squeeze in a social life of some kind; it's been hectic. But I do feel as though I'm at least starting to get on top of it again.

Baseball has been good so far. AAA is supposed to be primarily 10 year olds, with a few 11's and the occasional true STUD 9 year old. Well, that isn't really how things worked out for us. We've got like 7 10's, 4 9's, an 8 and a 7 year old. We're going to struggle a bit. On the bright side, I did find a couple of pitchers this week. So, as it stands right now, I'll actually have a 6 man staff, which is what I need to survive. Now, getting them all to throw strikes, that might be another problem, but one day (and problem) at a time.

The Fetish Ball was a mixed bag. Good crowd. Loved working with Gwen for the first time. We have a very good connection, and seem to be on the same page with pretty much everything. The downside is that we ended up spending as much time barbacking as we did running the fetish side of things. Neither one of us will last long if that becomes part of the regular expectation. Joey is a good bartender, and works his ass off. But he desperately needs an actual barback, and doesn't need to be grasping at whoever happens to be around to help him out. Not what I signed up for, and not what I'll do in the future. But, other than that, it was a pretty good night. I think that we have an opportunity to expand it and make it a much better event on a regular basis. But there are plenty of things to do. We'll see how it all plays out.

Bubbled at AIPCO. Fucking hate that. Would rather go out at 9pm than play all night and miss it by one spot. Super frustrating. However, I am on a 5-week cashing streak at "The Rob" and am doing quite well online for the first two months of the year. So I can't complain too much. But it would be nice to get a big cash at AIPCO out of the way early, so that I don't have to dwell on points, standings, etc. for the second half of the year. Haven't been able to lock up my spot in the Top-30 in the first half of the year since 2006. Hopefully will turn it around next month. I really am playing great poker right now. Just seeing it all.

Looks like I'm on the path to get the TSA job out at the airport. Thought for sure I had bombed the test, but they gave me the conditional offer of employment. I'll keep looking at other stuff too, as that process will likely take at least a month to get everything lined up with TSA. Just nice to know that I'll have something lined up when I'm ready.

Made Napoleons for the first time this week. Cooking with the beautiful and amazingly pleasant Val, with Unna as our taster/overseer. They were considerably easier to make than I had thought in the past. Did four flavors, vanilla, chocolate, and then vanilla-orange, and chocolate-orange. The orange ones were amazing. Looking forward to branching out and doing a bunch more flavors in the future. Will have to hit Randy up for some more of his strawberry jam, which would go really well in them.

Olympics are over now. Lost interest about halfway through for the most part. The whole NBC showing stuff on massive delay just doesn't work for me. I know I can go to ESPN.com, and find out who wins everything 6 hours before it is on TV. If it's someone that I like, or a U.S. person wins gold, I might watch. But we only won 9 golds, so there wasn't a whole lot of that. Was bummed that hockey lost in the final match, but Canada really should have won. They had the best team, and it is their national sport, so I'm happy for them. But Ryan Miller is just a stud in goal for us. And at least if we were going to lose, it was Sidney Crosby who scored the goal. Okay, now back to my regular TV schedule...

What's with the earthquakes? You know, it'll be interesting to see what the reaction is like for Chile. It's like when your friends have their first kid, and they take like, 10,000 photos. Then the second kid comes along the next year, and it's about one-tenth of that. I get the feeling that will be the outpouring of support for Chile. Yeah, you know, we feel bad for you, but we already gave money for Haiti. Sorry bro'. Just the bad luck of coming a couple of weeks late. And did anyone else completely miss that Japan got hit by a 7.0 earthquake like two days before the Chile quake? I mean, that's three major earthquakes in only a few weeks time. The planet is not happy.

Saw a tremendously scary story online the other day. The FDIC was billions in the red last year. And they are projecting losses of up to $50 billion over the next few years. I mean, holy crap. So you're telling me that not only might my bank go under (oh wait, I banked with WAMU, it already did), but that the government agency that insures my bank might go under? How great is that? I realize that they would never let the FDIC actually fail, but still, it gives you pause, doesn't it? The most telling statistic from the story: Number of bank failures by year: 2007-3; 2008-25; 2009-140. Wow. That's just freaky bad. The story said that the FDIC expects failures to continue at that pace for the next three years. And we're coming out of the recession.... Riiiiiiiiiight.

So funny. As I sit here typing, both cats are right behind me, sleeping in exactly the same pose. Tried to get a picture, but couldn't angle the webcam just right.

Watched the Stones documentary/concert film, Shine a Light this week. Was a little weird. I've seen the Stones three times live, so the concert part of the film didn't hold nearly the allure for me that it might for some. I really wanted more of the documentary side of the film. The first 15-20 minutes are just this jumbled, back and forth, hectic thing, with Scorsese in it. But that was actually the part that I loved. Would have enjoyed more of Scorsese behind the scenes, showing how it was coming together. But the actual concert footage was beautiful to look at.

Okay, I can think of nothing else to ramble on about. So I will wrap this up with a promise to blog at least a couple of times this week.

Love you all.