Secret Santa mischeif

As I mentioned before, I recently took on a new roll with a new sub-company at work. Well, a few days after I moved to my new desk, I overheard a few people talking about the Secret Santa gift exchange that would be taking place. It seems I had joined on after they had already drawn names so I was not on the hook to buy a $15 gift and conversely, I was not expecting to receive a gift… However, it would not be in my nature to just let an opportunity like this pass by…

The plan was to wrap an expensive gift, put my own name on it and sneak it in to the pile of Secret Santa gifts. Add a group of people who are all opening $15 and let the hilarity ensue.

Well, the morning of the gift exchanged arrived and when I got to work I realized that the plan I had constructed was screwed since I totally forgot to wrap, let alone bring the gift to work… No problem, a quick call to the wife and we were back on track. She wrapped and delivered the gift in time to set the plan back in motion…

When party time arrived, I acted surprised to be receiving a gift. I then held on to the gift while everybody else unwrapped their’s. Then, I found a decent sized group of people who were all standing around chatting and went and joined their group. They had all opened their gifts and were taking turns checking them out. As I stood there checking out their gifts, I began slowly opening mine. Then, gave a bit of an exaggerated rip to reveal the iPod Nano box. I throw in a few, “Oh Wow”s and gain pleasure in the shocked look on a few of the onlooker’s faces.

One person says, “Ahh man, you totally scored!”

Another says, “It was supposed to be a $15 limit.”

Finally somebody says, “You must have had Wayne!” (Wayne is an exec at our company)

After a minute or so, somebody suggests that I open it up. Ahh damn, I sorta forgot about that part. I paused for about 10 seconds and then looked up and said, “OK, I wrapped it for myself.”

I received several, “You Jerk” & “You’re an ass” comments but they all got a big laugh and nobody kicked me so it was all good.

There is a second part to this story, though. The part where I reveal that it is my wife who is the truly devious one. About 10 minutes before she was supposed to arrive with the wrapped gift I got a call from her. She’s laughing as she tells me she’s almost here. I ask what’s so funny. She then explains that she thought it would have been even funnier to not wrap the iPod box. Instead, while I’m standing in the middle of a large group of co-workers all set to play a prank on them, I would unwrap a tampon box.

Pure evil, I tell you. Pure evil.

Royale with cheese


I’ve been playing a LOT of online poker lately. And, tonight I had some really crazy things happen. Getting knocked out of a tourney after flopping a set, that’s always fun. Q/Q losing to J/J, no sweat. But then, there was this gem… Lately, A/J has been kicking my ass. I can flop top two pair and find a way to lose with it. So, playing A/J lately has been a slippery slope. I’ve been playing it EXTRA cautious. So, here’s how this one went down. I’m in first position and have A/J of diamonds. Flop comes with 3 diamonds giving me the nuts. It’s checked to me so I go ahead and check. The turn comes and gives me the absolute mother of all hands… Sadly, it also means I make basically zero cash from the hand.

Chip extraction

I was in early position and I raised with pocket 9s. The flop came out with 2 more 9s. I thought it would look fishy if I just checked the flop. So, I figured the best way to make some money was to make a small bet on the flop. I bet about half the pot. I only got one caller. On the turn, it was a small card so I decided I’d make it look like I was betting a hand like A/K on the flop and decided to check on the turn hoping he’d either catch some sort of card on the river or at least bluff at it… The river was a Queen. He bet out, I raised, he pushed all-in, I called instantly. He hit the queen on the river just like I had hoped.

Flopping the dead nuts is fun!

Work, Poker & general catching up

Wow, December already! I know we all say it every year around this time, but where the hell does the time go? I mean seriously! I remember the first couple of days of 110 degree weather like it was a week ago.

Last week I took over a new position at work. I’ve actually changed companies, but haven’t left the building… The main company I work for has about 15 sub-companies. I moved from one sub to another. The position I took basically takes me back full circle to a position I was in about 18 months ago. I’m the technical director for a new group that is going to be handling a lot of web development for our own company(ies) and for several 3rd parties. The pace of the new position is a bit quicker than where I was 2 weeks ago, so it’s going to take some getting used to in order to get back in the swing of things. I’m very excited about the new position and I foresee a lot of good things coming out of it.

Poker has been back on an upswing for me lately. The day after Thanksgiving we played in the Sahara tourney and it was absolutely huge. I made the final table and then talked all 10 players in to chopping the pot. Normally this isn’t something I’d do, but, I had an “average” size stack (60,000 chips) and the blinds were going to be 10,000 / 20,000. So it was going to be a crap-shoot to see who won. If we gave 10% to the dealers and then chopped 10 ways, we each took home $705. The only way to make more than $705 was to finish 3rd or better.

Chris had surgery on Thursday to remove a cyst from her hand. She has the entire month of December off from work, so it made sense to schedule the surgery for this month. The surgery went well and she’s back home resting up. The company Christmas party is tomorrow night so hopefully she’ll feel well enough to hand out for a few hours. She is supposed to be sitting and keeping her hand elevated with an ice pack. That’s going to be tough to do at the party. She does have a nice big bottle of pain killers, so maybe that’ll help.

I had requested Thursday and Friday off from work and scheduled some errands for Friday back when I was still with my previous company. Then, after switching companies, there are 4000 things going on and taking two days off seems a bit crazy. Just good timing is all. I have a good team that can handle things while I’m out so I’m not too worried!

Hey, here’s an interesting one… I found out last week that a couple we know and at one time were very good friends with, got married this summer. Both Chris and I are very happy for them and wish them all the best in the world. The crazy part is, we didn’t learn about their marriage from either of them, but through a mutual acquaintance. Obviously, there is no requirement for them to invite us to the wedding or to send a wedding announcement or anything like that, but, you would think that after being close friends with somebody for a few years that you might, oh, I dunno, MENTION it. If the 40 cents for a stamp is too much, last I heard, email is free.

Well, anyway, Congratulations you two. We would have sent a gift, had we known.

The views expressed in the previous paragraph are mine and mine alone. My lovely wife didn’t seem phased when I mentioned it to her. I hope she doesn’t read my blog.