Yeah, like I said, I haven't played in a year, so I don't know exactly what's going on. Haven't even been following the venues and communities forum.
From what I last heard on V&C, It's uncertain if Encore Boston will bring back poker. Supposedly they don't think it profitable enough. And that's just crazy when you stop and think that they opened the poker room with something like 80 tables. From what I know, Mohegan has been running poker for a while and Foxwoods should be back and running, or at least soon. NH poker rooms have been running for a while, but I'm not a big fan. Action is good but the rooms are just too spartan for me. Played once in Springfield. Small but good poker room, with good loose action. Just too far a drive for me. I'm actually a bit closer to the Conn. casinos.

ok. according to Mod Venice, Encore poker room will open back up after Mass capacity restrictions are lifted. I'm guessing smaller but at some capacity at least.

Speaking of addiction, have you ever mulled over gambling addiction sj?

I had been to Reno a few times, and I liked the city, the vibe, and the climate seemed to be pretty moderate. Also, I hate to bring up dreams again, but when I was younger I had a recurring dream that I lived happily in a Western city with a mountain vista on the horizon that looked very similar to Reno's.

I don't really like gambling unless I'm +EV. My only -EV play was nickel video poker, which was a very cheap form of entertainment, and I stopped playing altogether when the payouts got slightly worse, couldn't bring myself to play an inferior machine.

Levelling and Addiction, an Exploration. Part III

I attended just one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, so my impressions could be flawed, but it seems that part of the deal involves people getting up and speaking, without notes or preparation, about their experiences with alcohol, drugs and whatnot.

This extemporaneous type of speech is Level One thinking. The speakers are in storytelling mode in front of an audience, and they are experiencing the events and the emotional outcomes of their stories almost directly, with little time or space for analysis.

It's probably no coincidence that Level One thought is the format for talk psychotherapy as well, where people pay a professional to listen to their raw thoughts, emotions and recollections.

Venting is yet another type of Level One thought turned into speech, and along with therapy and recovery speech, it seems to provide people with a cathartic release of their problematic emotional content.

Theories as to why Level One thought is an effective therapy tool are varied, and beyond the scope of this post--it just seems to work; however, much like our dreams and exercise routines, most people don't want to listen to other people's Level One rants.

To find a listener, we need to either talk to a therapist, who's being well paid, or to talk to a member of the clergy, who might have our soul's salvation as their primary motive, or we can join a group wherein everyone agrees to take turns between speaking and listening, or we'll need to be blessed with an empathetic friend or life partner, often with an unspoken agreement between the two of us to take turns between venting and listening.

I've never been one for venting Level One content at people. It could be due to my typical USA male upbringing: how we've been taught to feel embarrassed that we might be imposing on other people's hard-earned chill with our frivolous emotions.

That's not to say that I never do it; my meeting with the fatal drunk driver in Part II of this post being one exception.

Whatever the case, Level One stuff doesn't interest me nearly as much as Level Two and higher thinking. For example: I want a drink, right now; that's Level One, but really that sort of mindless craving is boring to me.

I want to know why it is that I think I want a drink.

What if I don't actually want a drink? What if I only believe that I want one because, given my history, I think that I'm supposed to want one?

This sort of thinking is much more interesting to me, and I analyze it in the same way that I tried to explore how to think about approaching our dreams and exercise routines, rather than just posting my raw dreams and exercise routine.

Earlier today, I thought about how I was going to present this information in this post, and that brought me right up to Level Four: thinking about writing about how to think about addictive thoughts, and I was in meta heaven, and that is my problem.

I find it interesting, spinning up the levels, and therefore out of interest I can't stop thinking about a given subject, and in that manner I am constantly thinking about drinking, however many levels removed it may be.

It's not healthy. It leads me to conclude that multi-level thinking is obsessive thinking, at least it is for me. Not to mention that as poker players, we know that levelling ourselves too much is a form of thinking which leads to making bad decisions.

The last time I quit drinking, I made it 14 months, but for the entire time I thought about drinking, on several levels, every day, and the volume of thought did not die down over the months, as it had done when I was quitting meth, and when I was quitting cigarettes, but this time around I think that I may have found an effective weapon for the renewed battle: and that is to stop levelling myself.

While it's often difficult to deliberately stop thinking about something, I've found recently that it's been easier for me to cut myself off at the point when I've tried to jump to the next level of thought on drinking, as my active participation seems to be required more so for higher level thoughts than for lower level ones, and that means it's easier to put a stop to the higher level ones. So then I'm just stuck with Level One thoughts on drinking, which tend to bore me to the point where I move on to another subject.

The biggest obstacle recently, however, has been this post, this last post, right here, this prime exemplar of multilevel thinking about drinking. So if the end of this post here seems more abrupt and disorganized than usual, it's because I've needed to get it done and get it behind me, and thus to bring an end to the levelling.

Yeah ok I get that, I love the city as well. Perfect size, my type of preferred weather and landscape. Just rough enough around the edges with enough bad connotations around it that it for the most part keeps out the hipster types. Small college town also a nice touch. Yeah I’d move there if I could.

Not much to report: I'm packing up for my move on Monday. I've scouted out the local library branch and they have an outside return box that ought to be the perfect venue to pull off a reverse-heist on my long-overdue books. I'm going to hit that spot very late tonight, and then I'll finally have those books off my conscience.

My flight leaves on Monday morning, and I don't want to be dragging my heavy bed frame out of my room and to the curb at the crack of dawn on Monday, so I'll do that on Sunday instead and stay the night at Excalibur, where I plan on staying up in my room, knocking back a pint of whiskey and watching whatever reality job marathon Discovery might be running.

Regarding the recent drinking history: I had a few beers on March 17th, then I had a few more on April 16th and 17th, and now I plan on having some whiskey and a few free first class (courtesy of the old/new employer) airline drinks on May 16th and 17th. This two days-a-month pattern may hold...if I don't dwell on it too much.

Speaking of dwelling on things to ones detriment, once I'm back in New England, I plan on covering Hamlet, as I know how much you guys love and miss my Shakespeare stuff

Hamlet levelled himself something fierce, so that's of a piece with what I've been writing about recently; in addition to that, while packing up I ran into a book I have on Hamlet by Harold Bloom, the recently deceased Yale Sterling Professor of Humanities, and I remember him writing about how Hamlet is smarter than us: i.e. smarter than Harold Bloom: Yale professor and one of the most famous literary critics of all time.

So that's interesting, because Hamlet seems to do some pretty dumb things after the ghost of his father orders him to avenge his murder. I'd like to go through the play with that in mind and see what we can find regarding signs of Hamlet's purportedly vast intellect.

I can't find the clip to give you library advice.

Remember in Breaking Bad, when they used the magnet to destroy Fring's laptop in the ABQ PD?

Just before that, there was a shot where mike sprays silly string over the security cameras so they won't see Jesse & Walt roll in, in the UHaul.

Obtain silly string before library, just in case.

Seriously, best of luck with the move back to NE.

Thanks golddog!

Silly string is a fine idea, but after some consideration I've decided to take the nit line and just wear a mask, and hope for the best. I'm heading out now; if you don't hear from me again then the Library Police have gotten their talons into me.

Good luck on the book return, doing the right thing.

Your last night at the Excalibur, you’re not going to have at least one drink down at the VP bar?

Thanks Da_Nit!

Operation successful. I doublechecked the books just before I dropped them off and found and removed an old business card with my name on it which I'd been using as a bookmark.

As far as the bar goes, I'm currently only half-vaxxed, and I prefer to wait until I'm fully vaxxed before I sit down at the bar.

Can understand that didn’t realize you only had the first dose.

GL Mr. suited and happy hotel room drinking. Excalibur sounds a bit depressing but going back to a jorb that pays for first class flights can't be that bad. Hope things work out

Thanks Cocaethylene! I found a pint of Bulleit bourbon for $15 USD, decent hooch for the price, and I'm watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the first time, one of those movies that I should have watched long ago but somehow missed. Halfway through I'm guessing that the German lady is a secret baddie; prolly don't have to be a Sherlock to figure that out.

Oops, she's Austrian, my bad.

Not a bad deal and decent hooch indeed. Can’t believe you’ve never seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. One of my favorites as a kid, saw it at the movie like 5 times.

Funny as we watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark last night.

It was the 1st time in a while that I was watching an Indiana Jones movie and 1st time ever for my son. He enjoyed it while my girlfriend fell asleep for the last 30-40 min, lol.

Was that the one where Sean Connery played Indiana's father? I think they were like 11 years apart irl. LOL!

I have opted out of basic cable for the last 20 years or so, for a pretty substantial total savings; however, that means I've missed stations like TNT and AMC playing all the 10-30 year-old blockbusters on repeat for the last two decades, so my overall movie acquaintance is poorer than the average American's.

Damn it, I fell asleep as well. I know about the grail choosing scene from just being on the Internet, and I wanted to see it as a scene instead of a meme, but I just couldn't stay up for it. All the physical toil and mental work of moving and the addition of bourbon took me down.

I woke up again in time for Back to the Future III--another blockbuster that passed me by---only to find myself sipping away the last of the bourbon and falling asleep again halfway through it.

Yes! I looked it up and Harrison was 47 when the movie came out, and he looked like he was in his early 30's.

Conversely, I have just recently passed the age that Wilfred Brimley was when he played the old man with the walrus mustache in Cocoon. He was 50 at the time.

Mask compliance on the Strip and in the casinos looks to be around 20%. Yes, the CDC says that you don't have to wear one if you're fully vaccinated, but that's on the honor system, and I'll venture that somewhere around 100% of Las Vegas tourists who haven't gotten themselves vaccinated yet are not wearing masks anywhere--think about it.

The First Class line for security was around 1/35th the size of the general line, and the young dude in front of me was pacing back and forth. "Why are they going so slow?" He griped.

Agreed on the masks the type that are anti vaccinations are the ones most likely to not wear a mask.

^^ Sadly this is true.
I'm getting my 1st shot today.

Tomorrow I'll be starting work again at the office.

Things have changed for the worse: thanks to the current housing boom, rents in the area are 50% higher than they were 3 years ago. And my company has informed me that due to a downturn in sales from the pandemic, they can't afford health insurance or a company car for me. These were perks they had provided during my last stint.

On one hand, my new/old bosses know that they have me by the short hairs; on the other hand, I've been in the office recently and looked at their sales, and they're not lying about the downturn.

I'll be moving into my new place in two weeks, a pretty small studio that's 5 minutes from work. My elderly parents have been putting me up these last two weeks. My folks have always been very generous to my brother and me--to the point of spoiling us--and they bought me a 2005 Jeep at an auction. Runs well.

It's embarrassingly infantilizing for a middle-aged man to have his parents buy him a car after his failed gambling enterprise, but it beats walking every day in a climate that furnishes rain and snow on a regular basis.

I've been in their house long enough now that we have throroughly gotten on each other's cases. By nature I'm a procrastinator, and they are...whatever the opposite of procrastinators are: overschedulers and overpreparers.

I have a tendency to overplan and overprepare as well, but then I wait until the last minute to execute. My folks like to execute early and often, and they've been on my ass to do the same. For me, coming off 3 years of having absolutely no one on my ass about anything, it's a big pill to swallow.

Although a little sad to read, I always appreciate the brutal honesty.

Cool, a Jeep!