Great stories and even better writing style. Keep it up - lurking like a fiend . . .

Not even close to writing into the abyss. We are here. MOAR. On seat edge for what happens to Tim's game after Donnie's narcing.

I could be alone, but even plant business issues are interesting. You're a great writer. Give us MOAR.

TST,

Everyone is still here. They, like me, are probably feeling silly about saying "BEST STORY EVER, PLEASE MOAR" every week.

This is the only thread I check every day. You're the best, please keep going.

Can you start to ask 50% deposit up front?

I guess I was being a little bit "woe is me" when I mentioned possibly stopping the story. If anything, work going badly short term just makes we want to write more regardless if someone were reading. No worries, I will continue writing up the events.

About the deposit question - for large orders I usually require a deposit that can be anywhere from 25-100% depending on the size of the order and my history with the customer. This one in particular is German and he has been a big customer of mine since 2008. He is the one guy who I generally don't need to ask for a deposit. He was honest with me and told me he just couldn't afford them at the moment and had no room, so I am just going to hold them. I could tell a lot of plant related stories that are pretty good - a lot of people get burnt in the plant world, and a lot of these guys came from interesting beginnings. You'd be surprised how many plant nurseries started up from drug money in South Florida in the past 30 years.

This is the best thread I've ever read. Period.

Fantastic thread, I love the stories and check for updates 5+ times a week.

Been reading this since early on fantastic thread and writing tst

sometimes I simply read the responses in my email browser, so I'm here even if your page counts don't reflect it. If this was YT I'd sub so you can get paid.

If the writing is good for you, that's far more important than feeding us. Just cuz we always want more, a nation of binge-watchers, go at your own pace and we'll be fine.

This is one of my favourite threads on 2+2 and I (along with a whole bunch of others I am sure) will be gutted if it comes to an end.

There are times where I don't check for updates on a daily basis but that just gives me hope that when I do check in again I can 'binge read' more than one 'episode' lol

I am also sure you have ALOT more readers than posters so if you see a couple of days go by and very few posts its not because people want to read your work any less...

this is on my subscribed list and I look for new posts every time I log in to 2+2. Definitely hope to see you keep going with it.

Wonder how many subscribers there are - must be a lot of us.

That feel when 12 new posts but no new chapter.

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I should get the next chapter out by tomorrow at the latest. I'm just spinning wheels here - I didn't even leave the house today and have been addicted to Until Dawn on PS4. Has anyone else played this game?

Thanks for the reassurance as well. Normally I am a pretty confident guy, the past two weeks I got hit with some pretty horrific news in my personal life and I am not sure how to deal with it at the moment. Because I moved here recently, I only have business associates in the area and not any real friends to speak of. Having no support system socially can make you feel very alone.

Stay strong TST.

<3

TST, I exclusively come to 2+2 to do one thing: read the MF'ing odyssey that is "The Story of the Home Game." I'm pumped to see how your home game ends up doing.

On a side note, I know you're a big Hip Hop fan from recent posts I've seen you make in the past. What do you think of the current state of rap? Which rappers do you normally listen to these days?

As much as 2+2 has it's fair share of knobjockeys, something I learned a long time ago is that when you are a member of an online community (especially when you are held in high regard like yourself) you always have a support system of some kind. Its not always in the same way as 'real life' social circles but it is always there and accessible wherever (and at whatever time) in the world you are.

Top 5 thread on 2+2...

Moar plz TST

This thread is incredible, great stories and also learned some things I had no idea about, exotic plants, florida real estate and pill mills - always good to be highly entertained and actually gain new knowledge too. You are doing a great job sir, have read the whole thread over the last week or so and loved every minute.

911


In the 33 years of my life, I had dealt with a lot of difficult situations, but hearing this from my sister sent a chill down my spine unlike anything I had felt before. All of those years, my mother was around and we had been a mutual support group for one another. She was the only one that seemed to understand when I had to leave college, and I had to help her with her own drinking problem to explain that people did in fact care about her well being. She believed in my abilities, but she was also the only one that actively helped me when I needed it the most. I had seen her go through my parents' divorce, having to fight her sister over my grandparents estate, as well as work 12 hour days 5-6 days a week as a paralegal and other jobs. She had also been a smoker for 45 years, somewhat of a heavy drinker at times, and I hadn't seen her exercise since I was in middle school. At the age of 62, her heart finally decided to give out and I can't say it was a complete shock, she had been showing signs of reduced ability to walk and complained of chest pains. Call me a mama's boy, but this was the one person who had been in my life since the beginning.

I told Tim that I had to go, begged God that the truck would make it back to his driveway, and it stalled as we pulled up. He popped the hood to take a look even though he had no mechanical experience, and I got in my car and raced through the neighborhood, over the bridge and to the regional hospital. I did the whole sign in thing pretty fast, got her room number, but she wasn't there. I was told she was getting a stent? done and was on the bottom floor going toward the cardiovascular unit. As I was walking towards the waiting room I saw my mom rolled out of the double doors with a doctor and a nurse. I could tell my mom had been crying.

“Sir, your mother has severe arterial deterioration.” I nodded but I had no idea what that meant and if it were terminal. My sister also showed up upset, but I had inherited my dad's no crying policy and did not show much emotion other than anger/frustration/happiness. We walked along with her to her room upstairs and asked her some questions. She almost didn't want to go to the hospital that night but felt a lot of chest pain, and now it was early in the morning on September 11th. I had messaged Nicole and she was heading up here for the weekend after dropping her daughter off at school, it was a Friday. The doctors really gave us no guidance as to what was expected next from the situation, and then a surgeon walked in and explained that they were going to operate on Monday. It was going to be a triple heart bypass, and I began probing the doctor for what the chances were of recovery. I didn't know anything about surgery and for all I know this was a last ditch effort.

“Well, we have a success rate of 98%, but with your mother's age, it is most likely higher.” At this hospital, a 62 year old was young, and is actually under the median age for the city. They are used to working on people over 80. All I could remember was saying to myself “that's better than a one outer with one card to come, and someone thinking they may have folded the last out”. That was how I perceived her chances of survival. Still, I was very uneasy over the weekend, and I was told that her operation was to start at 7am on Monday morning. Although I attempted to go to sleep, I stayed up all night and went to go see her at 530 before they prepped her for surgery. My condo was only five blocks away from the house, and by Monday most of the people in the cardiovascular unit knew my first name. My mom was in surprisingly good spirits and just wanted to get this over with, so it lightened the mood. We said our goodbyes and they gave her something that made her totally out of it, and I went up to the waiting room. I was told it would take 4-5 hours, but I sat there with Nicole like it was going to be a simple visit and after two cups of coffee, an impending doom kicked in. No sleep, caffiene, anxiety both existing and newly generated snowballed into this massive attack on my senses. The wait became unbearable – imagine you are sitting in a nosebleed game with your whole bankroll on the table, 4 barrel bluffing with all your chips in the middle, and your opponent is in the tank staring at you. Not only is this your whole bankroll, but it is loaned money from organized crime and you know a call means you're probably getting kneecapped or worse. There also happens to be a tiger in the room on a rope. That is what the first 15 minutes felt like. I took a klonopin, which I had switched to, but it only made me dizzy and unable to walk. Nicole ended up getting me a wheelchair and wheeled me out of the hospital and drove me home to pass out in the condo.

I remember waking up with the blinds down but the light still shining bright, after living here for almost 6 months I knew it was sometime around 3pm. Nicole was also asleep, why didn't I get a call from the hospital? I was first on the call list as my sister had to work that day. I picked up my phone and it showed a call around 10am. I jumped to the worst conclusion – that was way too fast, something terrible must have happened! I called back and got a very calm older lady that told me to come to the hospital, that she was out of surgery – that was all she had told me. I woke up Nicole and we went to the hospital, and were directed to the ICU unit. I finally found her in one of the rooms there – the surgeon had forgotten to tell me that all heart patients recover in the ICU for the first day after surgery. He showed up on the floor as this was a small hospital and told me it went faster than planned. That was the first good news I had gotten since what felt like a month. She was pretty knocked out from the drugs, and my sister had already been there but she didn't even remember it. I spent a little bit of time with her and decided it might be better to see her once she had gotten out of the ICU tonight or tomorrow morning. I had just gotten into the parking garage when I got a call from Tim.

“You want to deal tonight? I'm going to run a Monday night game. You would have to share it with Mike though.” As shot as I had been earlier in the day, a sense of relief that my mom had gotten through surgery made me feel like I had just dodged a huge bullet. I knew sitting at the condo wouldn't help me out and I would just twiddle my thumbs, so I took him up on the offer and it got my mind off the game. It ran remarkably well for a Monday in September, so well that my game barely ran the next day. This was something I would have to talk about with Tim, but during this time I was getting a lot of support from everyone about my mom, many people had told me their experiences with family and friends having heart attacks too. The stress level of the games was at its lowest since before the German had vanished, and I began to realize that maybe I create my own stress much of the time. Still, the game situation had changed drastically in the past few weeks. Adding a partner to Tim's game as well as a new night, which was their way of making more money that they had to split, caused a problem. There were now four opinions in the game instead of three, and Paulie was becoming more vocal every growing week. He hated Mike, didn't approve of the way that Tim went about loaning out money, and really had focused more on his main job – this was just fun for him.

After a week in the hospital, with my mom getting progressively better, she was released and we drove her to my sister's house. Thanks to our lovely healthcare system, there was no continuing care on her health insurance policy. My sister worked a regular 9-5 and so I basically was my mom's caretaker for the next month or two. She recovered quite fast and even went to New York in late October to visit her cousin. I couldn't say the same for the games. Just like any Keynesian self-regulating economy, the underground poker economy was hurting for cash players in our neck of the woods. Adding to that, Tim had another partner, and the credit limit of the game was reaching its critical mass. People were owing a lot of money to Tim and Rhett, and they in turn owed money to some of the players that would go on the books. It was one big revolving slushy mess. I had to reconsider the nature of the business and possible alternatives for the future with my birthday approaching, my anxiety/dizziness at an all time high, and money not flowing like it once did in the glory days at the German and Vito's house.

I honestly couldn't tell you who was #1 on the hip hop Billboard charts right now - I think I might have capped my range of hip hop from 1985-2005. One of the harder classes I took at University of South Florida was African-American History, and I did a 20 page essay on the evolution of hip-hop, so for a white guy from the suburbs, I actually know more than one would think.

Growing up in the Northeast, mainly Long Island and Westchester, I am a die hard Nas, Biggie and Big Pun fan. I also listen to a lot of "word specialists" like Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Big L, and Wordsworth. I still like West Coast rap like NWA, Ice Cube, and I have respect Tupac as a lyricist, but I'm just not a big fan. Old Jay-Z is good but anything after Vol.3 is too mainstream IMO. I remember driving through Brooklyn in my old diesel Mercedes on my way to Virginia back in 1999, listening to Funkmaster Flex and Angie Martinez on Hot 97 mentioning Big Pun's death and feeling very depressed.

As far as newer stuff, I actually like T.I. and more gritty, raw material. I think autotuning destroyed the essence of what hip hop is - a poem spoken with a beat, not sung with a tune like rock and roll.

This is probably a longer answer than you were looking for, but I tend to overdo things. I am just as critical of rock and roll and other forms of music. One thing I never mentioned in any of these stories is I used to DJ on Technics 1200 tables back in college and in 2013 I started messing around with pure digital with a Pioneer DDJ-SX. I worked with a lot of trap and progressive house but I didn't have an audience for the music where I lived. I might still have a video of that somewhere of me in my apartment messing around, its definitely not good because I wasn't used to digital at the time!

What a vivid picture you just painted lol. As far as hip hop what about Wu Tang? i am a huge Ghost & Raekwon fan. Only built for cuban linx is one of my favorite records till this day

Hi TST !

i really enjoyed your stories on home games and your life experience !
its really unqiue that you started business in plants !

anyway pls keep writing

Thanks !

all that and no mention of Wu-Tang?

Gang Star
Bone Thugs
Typical Cats (only their first album)
AZ



company flow
cannibal ox
Deltron 3030
Hieroglyphics
Del tha funky homosapien

this is taking me back now...

Was at a bone show a few weeks ago and they walked off the stage bc too many fights broke out in he audience



Sort of standard based on my experiences at their other shows

They went hard for the 7 songs I did hear though

Surprised anyone else on earth even knows who Can Ox is!?! Big ups


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6lV2X00KeI

Hopefully I am not too noob and linked this correctly. This kid has his own LP's but his remixes are getting a lot of attention. If you like the "harder stuff" He's a lot like Vinnie Paz. Cool part he's dating my Daughter and he is a genuinely cool and humble kid


Thank you for the stories TST!