Wha? December Already?

What a long, strange trip it's been...2009, that is.

A lot of you poker bloggers worth your weight in bytes, or in cheeseburgers, or even bananas, will be taking your own long, strange trip next weekend for the 2009 Winter Blogger Gathering, WPBT, what have you. Drunken wheelchair races, getting rolled by hookers at the Geisha Bar, collecting bounties at Caesar's...what a way to start a winter, no?

For what it's worth, I would have loved to join the Last Longer on a team with Waffles and $mokkee, just to watch the incendiary fireworks between my teammates.

For the umpteenth time in a row since starting this pathetique excuse for a poker blog, I shall not be taking part this year. Oh, that was not my intention, to sit out. Not at all. But the events of this year have taken their toll, and it is too important for me to take care of the Good Doctor Mondo, now that she's at home, to take a few days off out further west than here. I do wish to all of you much much merriment, and lots of Aleve-laced waters when you wake at 3pm each day. If there's another such gathering next year, I really do hope to be able to join. As it is, perhaps I can make a run for the Vega$ border shortly after next April (when I have to be in North Carolina for a trial, for several weeks).

So how is the Good Doctor Mondo doing? Better every single day. Her first week at home was sort of a transitional week, where her mom and I were getting used to managing all the various oxygen-giving appliances, learning and administering the various medical routines (which the Good Doctor actually does much of herself), cleaning her trach tubes, and the like. But for the last few days, she's actually been able to sleep upstairs (gasp!) in our own bed. We truly feel like we are somewhat returning to some sense of normalcy.

Normalcy is relative, as she's limited to one trip up and down the stairs each day, and each trip takes a good 8-10 minutes with several breaks to restore her O2 saturation. But being in her own bed carries other benefits...she can now use the hand-held shower I installed last week...no more sponge bathing in the downstairs foyer bathroom. And now that we're together, we're both sleeping much better.

As I suspected, the Good Doctor Mondo's return home has, naturally, put a crimp in the amount of poker I've been playing these days, but it's more than a fair tradeoff. Typically, I'm either too tired to play after working a full day, then coming home and taking care of her until her routines are finished around 9:30 or so...though once or twice I've jumped on to play a couple of low buy-in 180 man turbos, to pretty much little success. It's hard to get in a groove when you start late and force the action, and feels like you're playing just so you can remember where the click buttons on your mouse are located.

I do hope to have a nice session on Sunday, though, depending on the weather. We've had a pretty significant cold snap here, and even with all the supplemental oxygen, it's really not a good idea for the Good Doctor to go outside in low double digits. So maybe Sunday will be a pokering day, we'll see.

Oh yeah, in other tidbits, my band just sent our five song EP off for pressing, so our January 21st show will be a CD release of sorts. We were hoping our Holiday Hootenanny show next weekend would have worked out as a release show, but we spent too many sessions mixing and remixing to have pressing/manufacturing done in time in an economical fashion. Sweet!