House story, the first.

Let me talk about this guy:



This guy, who I will refer to as TMF (this mother ****er), was/is an employee of the electricity installing company around the development where my house was built. My home sits on a street that runs north/south. On the northernmost and southernmost edges of the street are perpendicular streets. There are four houses to my left on my street, four houses to my right. And there are the same number of lots on the other side of the street, but at the time one lot was empty. The rest of the homes were complete and occupied at this point.

I was off work one day while the internet was being installed. I walk outside to talk to the cable guy, and as we're talking, I see TMF walk from one of the homes still under construction on the southernmost perpendicular street, up my street, to my house, and he walked right in the front door. I was shocked. When I saw TMF walking up the street towards my house, I figured he was going to talk to me about something, or was walking to one of the construction sites on the northernmost perpendicular street. I'm so shocked I don't move for a minute or two, then bolt off from the cable van to my front door. I see this guy walk out and I start screaming. "What the **** are you doing walking into my house?!?" Etc and so on. I get some head shakes and hand waves, like he's trying to brush me off. I grab my phone and start taking pictures.

I find the company website. I call them and tell them what happened and the person with whom I speak asks me to send the picture and a rough map so they can see what happened. I oblige. About a day later I get a call from someone claiming to be the owner of the company. He said he spoke to the employee and TMF said he was looking for an outlet where he could charge his drill. The electricity was out elsewhere and that was his only spot to charge. I said:

"Okay, that's bull****. I'll give you four reasons why that's a lie, then I'm going to hang up and call first the police then the building company that hired you for the electricity. First, the electricity in the neighborhood is on. Second, he passed four homes on my side of the street and three on the other, and didn't try any of those other homes. Third, I have an outlet in front of my front door, but he chose instead to walk in to the house. Four, he walked out of the house without plugging in his drill and before I could confront him. If he thought the inside of my house was the only spot where he could charge his drill, I would have found his drill inside my house. He didn't. He's lying. **** you for protecting him." Click.

(By the way, how unsatisfying is it to angrily hang up a cell phone? I'm going to sound like an old man ranting, but man I miss the days of being able to slam down the phone receiver in a fit of rage.)

So I hung up. I called the police but they were beyond useless. Without him stealing anything or assaulting anyone, they didn't seem to want to waste their time on an unlawful entry. The building company was more receptive, but I was never going to hear a resolution through them. Blah.

House story, the second.

There are walls that separate each house in the subdivision. The wall is about 6.5 feet high of stacked cinder blocks. Every wall is the same height throughout the neighborhood. The wife and I closed on our home on October 20, got the keys October 25, and moved in November 9 (we had some issues with like kitchen counters, plus it gave us time to get things delivered and installed before we moved in). These dates are important.

One day in mid-November, I go out in the backyard and notice the northern wall looks higher than before. I ask the wife to verify if I'm nuts or not, and she says that it's definitely higher than before. I also notice that what I now know to be the original wall has perfectly straight grout lines, but the newer blocks are slightly off. I also notice grout has been sprayed everywhere in our yard, which isn't so bad since it's just dirt at this point, but it's really annoying since it's shared property and all of a sudden it's taller, which means we now have uneven walls on either side of the property. Here's what I'm talking about:



A few days later, the wife and I are about to head out somewhere and we notice the husband/patriarch of the household in the driveway with his two young kids. We decide to ask him what's going on with the wall. He said his landscaper had it all squared away and that since we hadn't closed on the home by the time they submitted the paperwork for the wall, they didn't need our signatures. Bullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll****. I called the HOA. I didn't call to squeal on the neighbor. I called to scream at the HOA for allowing them to **** with a shared wall like that without our consent. Only it turns out I was squealing because the HOA had absolutely no knowledge of them raising the wall, and the landscaper was an idiot.

Said landscaper shows up at my door a day or so later. He tries to sweettalk his way into saying that it was just a formality at this point. That the work had already been done, and that I should sign something called a shared wall consent form because it would make life easier on everyone. And at this point, I had grown to like the raised wall. It was more privacy from a neighbor with two small kids, and they have a balcony that can overlook our backyard if they were so inclined (I'll post a pic of that in a bit). I tell him that my wife's an attorney and we're not signing anything without her giving it a once-over. Okay, he tells me. Take our time.

But then he starts emailing me and calling me and stopping by asking if we had signed it. After feeling pestered one too many times, I tell him we're not signing it as it was written. The shared wall consent form said that we agree to the wall being raised (yeah fine whatever), and if it is determined by the HOA that the wall needs to come down to its original height, we'd have to split the cost with the neighbor (abso****inglutely not).

We let this go on for a few more weeks before I finally cornered the landscaper and asked how this mess could have happened. He said that, because his company and the neighbor agreed to a landscaping plan prior to my wife and I closing on the home, that he did not need (or at least he assumed he didn't need) our signatures. After all, if there's no one in the home, who could sign such a document? I told him that it absolutely doesn't work that way. Even though we hadn't closed on the home, we put six figures down on that lot back in like April. Closing was a formality. These builders don't even flatten the earth on the lot without someone putting down a massive deposit.

I'm furious, my wife is furious and overworked, so we're on the same page. **** these people.

A couple of weeks later, the neighbor comes over and asks if we've signed. We tell him we're not happy with how this was handled, that we don't want this to be a common occurrence where they change **** first then ask for our permission, and that we don't want to be financially responsible for something we had no say in. We would have to draw up some other kind of document that protects us from this kind of obligation. He said he understood and walked away.

About a week after that, the neighbor comes over again. And this time, we hear it. Turns out, the landscaper he was dealing with was a salesman for a landscaping company. He wrote up a plan that included a small pool/spa area, a bbq pit, raising the wall, putting in a walkway, plants, irrigation, etc. He then wrote a budget attached to these plans, but it only covered about 1/3 of the actual work and materials they were planning on using. So the landscape scammer would tell the homeowner "Okay, we're going to start on steps A and B tomorrow". They'd do steps A and B, then go to the homeowner and tell him "Oh that wasn't in the original budget. We need $7,000 more." "Okay we're doing steps C and D." "Oh yeah those weren't in the budget either. Give us another $10,000." The third time they tried this, the homeowner called the owner of the landscape company to fire them.

Turns out, the owner of the company had no idea his salesman was pulling this. He went over the original plans and quote and basically said that the quote should have been three times as high. The salesman was cutting every possible corner and bilking homeowners like crazy. He was fired immediately, with my neighbor on the phone listening in. The company owner agreed to finish the work as promised for the budget that was originally quoted, at a personal loss of over $50,000 in materials and labor. And the company owner agreed to take the wall down to the original height if needed. All this was promised, but I could never get my neighbor to give this to me in writing.

Finally, I said enough is enough. I had the wife draw up something that says "This supersedes any document relating to the wall between properties X and Y. If the wall is deemed unfit and must be reduced down in size, all costs of this procedure will be paid for by the homeowner at property Y." Etc and so on, legalese blah blah.

Months later, the HOA tells the homeowner to get an architect to say that the work on the wall was sound. Certify it, in a way. And no firm in town would dare stamp their seal of approval on a wall that was already built. So it had to come down. Except no one ****ing told us it was happening, so one day the wife and I are woken up by power saws and hammers at 7am. I went out back to look and these guys are standing over the neighbor's side of the wall, hammering debris and bits of cinder block into my yard. I start screaming, they promise they'll clean up if I leave my back gate unlocked. And now, once again, I have to play catchup with my neighbor who decided to go ahead with work without telling us. And I have to chase down this company to clean the yard after their first two piss-poor attempts left all sorts of crap in our yard. Even now, months later, it still looks terrible. They didn't take away all of the erroneous blocks. There's a ton of mortar left behind. And the wall looks terrible. All because a con artist couldn't be bothered to wait a couple of weeks to do some work.

When it finally came time to do our work, we made sure to verify that all work quoted would be included in the budget. We kept things simple to avoid any chance of confusion or complication. And we turned that barren nothingness of a backyard into something kind of peaceful and nice without needing too much maintenance.

Very cool update.

seen TMF around anymore?

what a mess with that wall; so did your neighbor got all that work done for 50k less than he should have? how does it look?

I've only recently found this thread, and it's been a nice read thanks, but you sound a little unhinged recently. Never play the "my XYZ is a lawyer" card. Nobody cares. I am a lawyer. Anybody that might have cared no longer does.

TMF walks into my house and I'm at home, the dogs will have him by his groin area then I go all Hanibal Lechter on his ass.

If they took down the wall, why does it look to be the same height in the before and after pix?

My wife went to that as well. Like a chump, I volunteered to stay home with the kids. Next time it's in LA I'm going to ask to leave the kids with her parents so I can tag along and pull a Spike McAwesome.

Thanks! Good to be semi-back. I'm actually using this thread as taking a break from a paper I'm writing (that's now overdue - first time in my grad school career I'm late on a paper). I'm having the worst case of writer's block and this is helping loosen up the fingers, so to speak.

I haven't seen TMF but nearly all of the construction in the neighborhood (save for the one lot across the street from me) was done elsewhere in the community. We got here kind of late. There weren't many lots left and most of them were on the other end of the community. But we found this one lot that borders the street (so no neighbors behind us) with a giant wall so we don't have to worry about any new development being able to spy on the back yard.

Yeah the neighbor got all that work done for $50k less. Well he told me it was $50k less. I honestly don't know. And it looks fan-****ing-tastic. It's the kind of yard you'd expect to see in the model home of a high-end community when they want to impress the muckity mucks into buying a new home. Spa with RGB LEDs, a metric ****ton of trees and bushes, a walkway to get from the front of the house to the back, a separate storage area for the trash cans, some fake grass, rock mulch, built in BBQ and fireplace, and all on a multi-level design. Really impressive stuff. I went in his house once when we were signing the agreement to get us off the financial hook. Holy ****. Everything that could be upgraded was upgraded, and they even brought in contractors after the house was built to do more work inside. Their model home probably had a base price of $420k, give or take, when they bought it. He said it appraised for $680k because of all the upgrades and the backyard.

Of course I'm unhinged. I'm taking time to voluntarily talk to poker players on an internet message board. I have to be ****ing nuts.

We didn't have the dog then, but the wife and I did go gun shopping almost immediately afterwards.

I think I used the wrong before pic. I was just trying to show the barren back yard we got with our house. The front yard landscaping came with the property. The rear was on us, and we had six months to get plans in to the HOA for approval.

2019 is in Nashville, 2020 in Austin. And no I didn't know that off the top of my head. I had to look it up. But there could/should be regional ones floating around. We went to a small one at Red Rock not too long ago, and most of the vendors were from out of state, traveling along with the convention tour stops. It's actually an interesting walk-through, and the vendor room is worth a look. But if she gets a full weekend pass, just get like a one day or a vendor room only pass. No reason to pay for multiple days and never use them like I did.

I'm kind of going out of order here but I wanted to give two semi-quick updates from a session I played over the weekend.

First was the Flamingo midnight tournament on Thanksgiving (well, I guess technically black Friday). Nothing too exciting. I lose a couple of medium-size pots when I get two pair beaten by higher two pair twice. Then this hand happens:

Semi-aggro woman who just re-bought min raises (I think blinds were 3/600? Maybe 4/8?). Folds to me on the btn and I decide to flat with 98dd. All other players fold.

Flop KT6 one diamond. She same-bets and I decide to float once to see if I can improve.

Turn is 3d. She checks and I bet 3/4 pot. She doesn't think for too long and calls.

River is an off-suit T. So the draws brick out but it's a nice scare card. She checks, I grab a 5k chip and say "3000" loud and clear. The guy on my right says "Ah he doesn't have anything, he just needs change!" And the woman, who had already taken off her chip protector, brought the cards up and made every indication that she was going to fold says "Yeah you're probably right. I call!" I quickly muck and both me and the dealer tear into this player. I did feel a little bad about it because, while I didn't raise my voice, I probably unloaded a few too many unnecessary f-bombs.

It was all moot when I tripled up a few hands later jamming all in pre with AA and getting called by KQ and QQ and holding, then losing my entire stack with AThh on an A92hhx flop, getting called by AJ and 22, and bricking out.

Two nights later I run the Harrah's 10pm. This is becoming my favorite <$100 tournament in town. I wish they'd get more players on a more consistent basis, but it's almost (but not quite) a good enough structure that I forget we're still playing a semi-turbo. I bust pretty quickly and take a seat at 1/2, because why not chase good money after bad?

I lose a few spots, some with bluffs, some chasing stupid hands, then this happens. I'm UTG and decide to limp (see? told you I was playing bad) 76dd. UTG +1 makes it $12 and there are six (!!!) callers before it gets back to me, so I obviously call. Flop Q9ss2d. Somehow, this checks around. Turn is the 5d. So now I have flush and straight draws and decide I'm getting the rest of my stack in right here. SB bets $15, BB raises to $45, I declare all in. The dealer counts it and says "69!" and I couldn't help but let out my best Bill and Ted "Yaaaah dude!" Got a decent chuckle out of that one. Folds back to the SB who calls, as does the BB. I say "Watch, the river is going to be something stupid like the 8h." And BINK. 8h on the river. SB bets $100, BB calls, and they both turn over two pair for the side pot (Q9 v 98). I show the straight and I'm good, and SB is pisssssssssssssed. I try to calm him down by saying I knew I was behind on the turn, and the guy on my left said "What?!? You knew 7 high was no good? You're so good at this game." I said "I must be cheating somehow."

I do like good table banter. Nearly as much as I like winning $300 in cash games.

Back to work on my paper.

sounds like your neighbor has a pretty awesome back yard; if you decide to upgrade yours (not saying it needs it; it looks great from the pictures), at least you can see how his ages (quality of work and quality of materials) and then maybe decide to use the same company (albeit without the discount).

holy sh*t that was a lot of parentheses

This is highly annoying. I bet it doesn't happen if it wasn't a woman. Did you ask for any help from the floor or dealer? One person per hand, right? Is there a recourse? At least put the guy on your right into a one-orbit penalty?

Spike,

The f-bombs were neither unnecessary nor too many. Guy on your right deserved much more than just words.

Thanks for sharing both the negative and positive though. Glad to hear the yard situation got resolved.

Ha. We actually wanted something that looked nice but was simple thinking that we'd upgrade it in the future. But truth be told, we kind of love it. We have a covered patio in the back that we're going to screen in, and I desperately want a hot tub. But aside from that I think we're done with the back. There are more pressing issues within the house we want to fix, like I want to build a desk and re-do my office since it was kind of thrown together, and we still don't have window coverings in the living and dining rooms. But ya know, baby steps.

The neighbors do have a good pupper that likes to say hello every so often, using the multi levels to pop her head over the wall. Meet Luna.



Other people at the table had been warned previously, but I don't think anyone was taking it seriously until this happened. Dealer warned the table and warned it would be a one-round penalty from here on out.

There was a spot earlier in the tournament where the floor should have laid the hammer down. Actually it was the second hand. Very first hand of the tournament, blinds 1/200 and everyone has 20k. UTG raises to 1200. Folds around, he wins the blinds. Second hand, a couple of limps to the now-BB, and he again raises to 1200. Two callers. Flop comes J high BB leads for 3k, one caller. Turn is a brick. BB bets 3k, someone jams, BB calls. Person who jammed all in turns his hand over and BB sees that he is behind AJ. And he won't expose his hand. Just refuses. Doesn't realize that in a tournament all all-in hands have to be exposed. When he finally succumbs he shows J4 off. He starts ranting about how there's no rule about showing all-ins, he's becoming sarcastic and kind of belligerent, and just being a dick to staff. Floor overhears this but doesn't step in because the player left. But I wish the floor had done more to say rules are rules and go over some of the more important ones, like one person to a hand.

It's resolved, but it left a sour taste in our mouths. The wife and I now refer to them as "**** neighbors", and the people on the other side are the "good neighbors".

I mentioned my paper in the last post. I'm actually using poker tournaments as a topic. The class is about qualitative research, so I'm listening at the low-level tournaments and listening to "poker lingo" being used, and seeing if I can explain archetypes of players, or if there's at least a relationship between use of language and skill. So I'm kind of taking notes like this:



Wrote the second part for this week. Final part is due in two weeks and I think it's going to kill me. Thus far, there's a slight relationship in that people who use the language properly are typically better players than those who don;t use the language at all, but people who use poker terms incorrectly are terrible (ie., people who are facing no action at all who say "raise" before making a bet).

Did I mention the Knights are popular? There used to be a months-long waiting list for Knights fabric, and a strict 4 yard per person limit. Now places are stocked, but still have trouble keeping product in stock:



One Saturday in October is Lobsterfest at a local church. It's their annual fundraiser where they sell lobsters, homemade crafts, wares, other food products, etc. Some REALLY good sourdough bread every year. And they're in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood so they have some traditional dancing, etc.



It's colorful and fun and I get lobster. Win win win.

My wife has an unhealthy obsession with Nate Schmidt.



She actually gave some of these up to one of the Vegas Squares' hosts' girlfriend, who is also obsessed with Schmidty.

We didn't do much decorating for Halloween, but our neighbors did. We didn't want to be left out, however:



Our neighborhood went all out this year, and we loved it. We actually ran out of good candy, we ran out of backup candy, so we were handing out like year-old Hershey Kisses, bags of plain potato chips, etc. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel. But now we know that with 75 kids who came by this year, we'll buy 100 boxes next year. And we did the big movie theater-size boxes so hopefully word gets out that we're the good house to visit.

Some homes were really decked out with all sorts of lights and blow-up creatures. Christmas decorations are starting to go up and the place looks really nice. Not gonna lie, we're really happy with this neighborhood.

Schmidt looks comfortable, eh?



C'mon Harrah's, get your **** together.

just read the story about DENNY the roommate after reading about your ex wife the hooker. and yet people on my twitter always wonder why im afraid to ever rent a place with roommates and insist on always rooms out of the el cortez cheaper casinos a week at a time or an extended stay america a week to a month at a time to feel safe. yes im wasting a ton of money to do this, but its saving me what little sanity i stilll have

Tony thanks for posting.

Absolutely LOVE your thread and writing style. One thing does bug me though.

*You* don't run a tournament; the floorman, TD or casino does. You *play* in a tournament. My inner grammar nit goes crazy everytime you write that. I'll forgive you because you are such an awesome writer though.

-BD

Poker tournaments are frequently referred to as having “120 runners”, meaning entrants or players, so Spike saying he “ran” a tournament is perfectly appropriate.

And your issue is with word choice, not grammar. He replaced your choice of verb (play) with his choice of verb (run), which is grammatically correct.

If you’re gonna nit, nit properly. And remember, someone will always out-nit you.

Nice hand sir, well played.

I reserve the right to cringe sligthly inwardly every time I read it.

-BD

Glad I'm not the only one. I stared at the before and after trying to spot any difference and couldn't.

I don't think they necessarily had to "change" it. Just had to be permitted to be architecturally sound so they had to tear it down and build it again. I'll save my unpleasantries for needless bureaucracy and waste as I'm not 100% sure this is what happened, but I'd be willing to bet it's the case.

Yeah HOA bureaucracy is probably the worst on the planet. Small amounts of power people can hold over their neighbors and it goes straight to their heads. I'm sick of them but there are no new fee-simple homes being built unless we want to spend millions of dollars. I take that back - unless we are ABLE to spend millions of dollars. "Want" has very little to do with it.

The fact that a grammar nit-off occurred in this thread just made me extremely happy. To be fair, anyone who has seen my fat ass knows I'm not running anywhere.

Speaking of (skip the part surrounded by ****** if you don't want to hear OMC-level medical talk)...

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For some reason the wife decided she wants to keep me around for a while. That's a problem when you're morbidly obese like me. At 5'4 and 285ish, it was only a matter of time before **** got bad really quick. So I had to do something about it. Just this past Thursday, I had gastric sleeve surgery. It's been an interesting few days to say the least.

I actually thought about doing this back when I was with Jamie. She was a bigger girl and apparently had her own issues with weight, telling me that if I got the surgery she'd leave me. I eventually got a quote that said, with my insurance, I'd still have to pay $15k out-of-pocket. This is after I spend one year under care of their dietitian, shrink, and etc. And here's the catch. If I went through the process, I'd have to show that even with the strict diet there are still health problems, and that my BMI would still be above a certain threshold. If the BMI comes down below that number, I would not be approved for surgery and would be left to my own devices, almost certainly putting the weight back on. All those factors combined killed that idea off pretty quick. That was about a decade ago.

About six months ago I found a place in the southeast part of town who found a good way to get around the system. Instead of making people jump through hoops, they do a quick scope to see if the person has a hiatal hernia (which is present in like 85-90% of overweight people). If it does exist, they bill the insurance for out-of-network surgery for the hernia operation, and throw in the gastric sleeve for free. My out-of-pocket costs were dropped to about $5k with no quirky insurance hoops to go through. I did have to go on a strict two-week diet of:

- Protein shake for breakfast
- Protein shake for lunch
- Small real food dinner: 6oz of meat/protein and about a cup of non-starchy veggies

This wasn't for any kind of requirement, but it was to shrink and heal the liver to make the hernia procedure easier. And now that I've had the surgery it's even worse/less appetizing for the next two weeks.

- Half a protein shake for breakfast
- Half a protein shake for lunch
- Half a protein shake for dinner
- And if I want a treat, I can have baby food. No, seriously. ****ing baby food. The strawberry banana wasn't all bad.

Once these two weeks are up, then I go back to the meals laid out in the previous two-week diet. And twice a month, I can do whatever I want. No restrictions except for what my body can handle. I know there's a long road ahead and I have to put in the work to make sure that the weight continues to drop and to keep it off. But I'm more committed than ever before.

I'll spare you most of the details of the surgery but there was one thing that had lasting effects - they shaved me, from nips to hips. My torso looks like it has a hair bra. It is chilling to look at myself in the mirror lately. And the ladies shaving me went at it for what seemed like 10 minutes. I asked "Done?" One of them said "Well, with that half we are."

But hey, I'm down 30 pounds so far. So maybe it'll be worth it.


************************************************** ****************

Aside from the surgery things have been relatively quiet. I try to hit tournaments as much as I can but it's not always easy to find the time. Found this sign outside of the Las Vegas Country Club:



When Schmidt gets tired he crashes HARD:



The wife's firm's holiday party moved from Lakeside at the Wynn to Joe's Stone Crab at Caesars this year. Typically after dinner, everyone would go up into the casino and start gambling. This year, about 3/4 of the people in the party got lost between the Forum Shops and the casino floor, and they ended up going home. It was pretty funny that a team of attorneys couldn't navigate a shopping mall. My wife, the most risk-averse person on the planet, decided she wanted to play roulette. She took a $25 chip, said "I'm going to put this on 33", walked over to the table, and chickened out. And sure as ****, 33 hits.

I've been pretty bad about taking pics lately so I'm going to get back on that and have a better photo dump for everyone soon. Cheers.

Went through sleeve 2 years ago. Saved my life. Down 110lbs. Pm me if you want chat about anything...

Best of luck with your weight loss. I can imagine it is difficult, genetics, habits, etc. However, just think of the morbid obesity as a death trap; because it is. It is arguably akin to someone with a regular BMI smoking a pack of cigarettes and drinking 12 beers a day. I am not judging at all; we all have our vices. Rather, you sound like a good guy from all your posts and I wish you longevity!

Spike,

Good luck with the post-surgery recovery and process. Best wishes.

Fantastic loophole. How are you?

A funny thing happened on my way to make a huge update...

I have a few stories to tell and a bunch of pictures to post. I hit my first live royal against a player who has ran about as bad as you can possibly run in a tournament:

(yes, he has kings full)

I berated a guy at an MGM tournament (significantly worse and more personally than the guy from Flamingo, and bleeding into the next hand which I NEVER, EVER do). My wife went to something called Ladies Rock Camp and learned the drums (my former instrument), so we now have a drum set in the house. I agreed to a horrible chop at an Aria tournament just so I could get an added entry to my Hendon Mob profile. All of these and much more about tournaments, cash games, and other shenanigans around Vegas. I was going to post all of this over the weekend...

... but then I made day ****ing 3 of the Big 50 with over a million in chips:



So a real update will have to wait. At least for now.

The sleeve is the best decision I've ever made, aside from marrying my wife. I'm currently down over 80 pounds and hit one-derland this past weekend. I had been wearing size 44 pants, and now I'm starting to think my size 36 may be too loose. I was wearing XL or XXL shirts. I just bought a medium button down from Old Navy. I have more energy. I'm more focused. I even started getting up super early so I can be at the gym by 6 when it opens. If any of you are on the fence, or if you had never considered it but you want information, drop me a PM and I'll send you the info of where I got this done. I couldn't be happier.