YIkes...

Almost a month without a post...I'm being negligent.

Let's see, what's going on.

Birthday - I had one, I'm getting old. Sat in my favourite Brew Pub on Saturday night surrounded by friends and family and knocked back several pints of beer and mead, had some interesting conversations, accidentally punched my cousin in the nose and made him bleed. Let him have one free shot at me to make it even and we're good. Got some presents, including a Rubik's Cube, some books I'd been wanting to read, a pocket knife and a multitool and a DVD (more on that below). One more year until I hit the big 3-0.

Poker - Poker is continuing to kick my ass. I can't win lately, if there is one card in the deck that can save someone, that's the card that shows up on the river, every time. I know it will turn around and I'll get that money all back in the long run, but this month was one kick in the balls after another.

On the upside, the friendly people at Party Poker decided I hadn't played there in too long so they gave me $100. I've been using it to play some of their step tournaments in hopes of getting a big payday by winning a Step 5. For those not in the know, the party step tournaments are basically the pyramid scheme of poker. The tournaments are comprised of 5 steps and you can buy in at any level, the mini-steps I've been playing cost $6 to play and are a 10 person tournament, if you win one you get to move on the level 2 (or you can buy in to level 2 for $22), if you come in first or 2nd you get to move on to level 3 etc. and there are other consolation prizes at each of the levels that generally consist of free rolls at the same level or one of the lower levels. The big pay off comes at the top of the pyramid, 1st place in a mini-step 5 pays $2000. I've turned my free $100 into enough free rolls at various levels in the pyramid that I'll probably be playing them for the next few weeks, and hopefully I'll take down the big prize in one of the step 5's, and if I don't it was no biggie because it was free money anyway.

TV - I'm not going to do my standard TV reviews this time around because it would take to long to catch up on the last month. For me, the break out hit of the year is My Name is Earl and generally people seem to agree, it's getting excellent ratings for a new sitcom, the critics are very kind to it and NBC has enough confidence in it that in January they are going to move it to Thursday night, as they try and rebuild their Thursday night "Must See TV" comedy line up. I hope it sticks around for a good long time and that the writing stays as consistently excellent as it has been. I'm 3 episodes behind on watching Lost, I'm going to catch up this week. Note to ABC, give me back my Boston Legal right now you bastards.

Movies - For my Birthday, my wife bought me March of the Penguins on DVD and we watched it the other night. It is a documentary about the mating habits of the emperor penguins. I had wanted to see it in the theatre, but didn't get around to it. It was excellent. It's amazing the lengths that these birds go through to keep their species going. The males tend to the eggs and go for over 4 months without food in the harshest conditions on the planet to keep them safe and warm. It was very awe inspiring and I highly recommend it for all the documentary fans out there.

A lot of my time has been spent lately playing board games online. Spiel by Web has several games online that you can play for free. They are all turn based games, and the site alerts you by email when it is your turn to play. For the most part people tend to make 1 or 2 moves a day, and a game can take a week or two to play. I of course am crazy and have about 40 games on the go right now :P

Well that's enough of that, I promise to be more diligent with updates in the future.