Yesterday was __________

I started yesterday with a 'run' that ended with me walking. At this point, I've run the same route between ten and twenty times, and yesterday I noticed horses grazing in a field across the street from the cemetery. I was a little worried. Either the neighborhood was about to be overrun by an onslaught of horses, or these horses had been there all along, and I just wasn't observant enough to see them. Some writer I'm going to be. Takes me ten passes to notice a field full of domesticated mammal. . . Later on, my brother-in-law assured me that the horses have always been there, but they aren't always out. For the sake of my own self-esteem, I'm going to believe that yesterday was the first time the horses have been out when I've run by there. . . A bit farther down the street, on the same run, I passed a car with what appeared to be a freshly cut Christmas tree strapped to the roof. The needles were all still green, so it wasn't a really old Christmas tree that was finally getting discarded. The roots had been cut off the trunk, so it wasn't a pine tree to be planted in someones yard. I don't really know what was going on. But I'm pretty sure it's a sign of this neighborhood's decline. Horses across from cemeteries. Christmas trees in April. I don't even want to think about what's coming next.

We went to dinner at a restaurant in the area of my old apartment. It was fun looking around to see what had changed and what hadn't. There's my old grocery store. The Chinese place has changed to some other restaurant. The McDonald's has turned into some other Chinese place. There's my library. There's the Wal-Mart that the community was aggressively trying to prevent the construction of. Of all the things that had changed, I was pretty happy to see that one thing hadn't. The old man that used to walk up and down the streets, waving little American flags on sticks and smiling at cars as they passed, was still at it. I never could tell if he was some kind of crazy or just really patriotic (sometimes he wore stars and stripes shorts to go with the flags he carried), but he always seemed so happy to be doing such a thing that I feel happy just seeing him. Does that mean that I'm some kind of crazy? Or just really patriotic?

Last night I played in a poker tournament at the local American Legion. Things did not go well for me. Normally in a poker tournament, the payout is determined by figuring out a certain percentage of the prize pool for certain placements (i.e., 1st pays 50% of the prize pool, 2nd pays 30%, 3rd pays 20%, or some other payment structure). But because this tournament was for charity, they had decided that first through fifth places would receive a fixed sum and the rest of the money would go to the charity, in this case, the high school wrestling team. Well, because not as many people showed up as they had hoped, just before the tournament started, they announced that all the prizes would be chopped in half, thereby making the payout nowhere near enough to be worth the entry fee. But I was already seated so I figured I may as well play.

Here's a little side story: Before the tournament started but after it was supposed to start, a probablystonedmuscleydude showed up and paid his entry fee. When they handed him his cup full of chips, he said, "Oh, this is a poker tournament?" The lady taking the entry fees spoke in a fairly condescending voice, "Why honey, what did you think you were signing up for?" "Oh, I thought we were going to wrestle." A moment of silence. "Well honey, how would we do that here? We don't have any mats or anything. People would get hurt trying to wrestle with all these tables on this hard floor." "Well, I just thought it was a wrestling tournament." "Do you know how to play Texas Hold 'Em? Would you like your money back?" "I um. . . Yeah, I know how to play hold 'em, but I always lose. I thought we were going to wrestle. Maybe I shouldn't do this." And so on for about twenty minutes.

Back to the poker. I lost. Miserably. I was at a table full of people (all but one of my opponents) who didn't realize the importance of folding and raising in poker. Call. Call. Call. Call. Calling lots of chips on ace high. Calling lots of chips on a pair of twos. Just calling with monster hands. A table full of calling stations. And I couldn't beat any of them. Frustrating. I wasn't the first person to bust out, but I was the first person to actually leave because I wasn't willing to rebuy because I wasn't about to invest even more money toward winning such a small payout. So, yeah. That's that.

I'm grateful for flagwavingsmileyoldguy (20).