One Small Window

So I played my first real game of poker last night, real world after a few months online. I’d played with this lot before, a couple of years ago, but everything was new back then, I didn’t know what I was doing, one of the guys had printed out a cheat sheet for me detailing the hands in descending order – yeah that time didn’t count.

I’d had an opportunity once before, a couple of months ago but I didn’t take it. This time I was bored enough and pissed off enough with the hand of cards life was dealing me to go out and see whether I could actually hold my own against a roomful of guys who had played together before, for years. I expected it to be the kind of bummer that really pissed me off beyond the sucky string of days I’ve been having. Why would I go tempting fate like that? That’s for me to (think I) know and a therapist to figure out.

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A few days ago, one of our friends asked us if we wanted to go check out the Comedy Store gig at Blue Frog on Thursday. Now, the Frog isn’t exactly our favourite place to go and spend money (I’d offer that there really are few places we’d like to go spend our meagre earnings in but of the lot, Blue Frog is definitely low, low down on the list). Don’t know what it is about the place but it always manages to piss us off. I’m not being royal as I say us, I’m simply speaking for the missus and me.

Plus there was the added joy of having to shell out a thousand are-you-pee-to-the-double-ee-ess (each!) to essentially go stand around and watch people with questionable senses of humour hold forth about this, that and the other thing. As far as I’m concerned that’s our average night out, and my friends are funnier. Still, a flurry of phone calls later we had agreed to let our actor friend book tickets on our behalf and it was decided (because it is better to have a bad experience than no experience at all – one of our life’s mottos in the recent past) that we would go.
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