Well, this was the longest period I had gone without doing a blog entry; more then a month and a half. Truly bizarre, I have no reasonable explanation, since I've been possibly my "free-est" during this period. I've played a total of 2 (mebbe 3?) poker sessions during this mental vacation. I've had a litany of subjects that I've liked to blog about the past 7 weeks - various rants and rumblings, you could say - but unexpectedly I feel a bit out of the habit of online blogging, and therefore, my rambling man tendencies are a little repressed at the moment. I'm not sure I can let them out this instant!

A few topics...
-Liberalism, and how I am far more liberal then I really knew
-How smart people are actually really not smart at all
-The ability to understand there are people "better" then you at various things just around the corner... Not such a bad thing*
-Rust, and how poker is a game of discipline; it's overly hubristic of me to assume I'm still at the apex in the (poker)world.
-It's amazing to me how many middlemen there are in life. People with lofty-sounding jobs are merely excel pushers who do little creative thinking; could be replaced by robots
-I dropped my computer onto a wooden floor (it was balancing precariously on the edge of a couch) and it shattered the screen. Was a disaster. Had to buy a new laptop, and transferred my HD from the old to the new. Basically, an overall gripe @ Best Buy, since I had to make multiple trips. (And it took them 2 days to do this) Ugh.
-As usual, I'm owed money. I hate this. I guess being in the position to collect money is better then owing money, but not when you are totally unsure if/when you'll ever get paid. The amount isn't staggering - a bit under 5k total - but the fact that I'm owed money and haven't been paid (and in one case, for nearly a year) just really bothers me.

But those are for another day! I'm sure I have more. Actually, I know I do, but those things are what popped into my head in terms of things I wanted to discuss. As far as the 3 updates:

#1. Since I've been back from Vegas, I've been in pursuit of a house. (Well, a condo, to be precise!) At first the process was a lot of fun. I'm going to emphasize the "at first" part. Maybe I didn't blog because this whole shebang has been a bit arduous, with random interferences popping up often, so I wanted to just BUY the house and MOVE IN before writing a blog. In any event, I *should* be closing on the condo I really wanted next week; will obviously post the FULL writeup about this (and the process) when it actually comes to fruition. I had a similar experience as Seabeast, I think, and it was cool to see everything through since it was the first time I've done this. This has taken up most of my time; in the meantime I've been living in a very nice place in Medford. The pros is that the place is beautiful, my cats seem to love it (the ceilings are ~15 ft high and I have an outdoor patio that they play on; they also love all the plants scattered in this house). The cons are basically it's further from the places I want to be (Cambridge + basketball) then what I'd like. And, I have a housemate. Heh. I've been living w/ JCMoussa's mom, Claudette. (I adore her, but to be frank, I'd much rather prefer to just be on my own!!!)

#2. I have an new girlfriend! Didn't want to blog about this stuff either, of course, especially really early in the relationship. Will just keep this shortish, since well, I still don't really want to blog about it, lol. But, her name is Eva, we went apple picking this weekend, she's great, and I hope it (keeps) going great. We've been spending lots of time together, which works pretty nicely since she's still a student and well, I am free about 162 hours/week. Hah.

#3. The reason about ~6hrs a week are taken (and the only true commitment I have) is I'm in 3 rec leagues. 2 of them are fairly competitive, 1 of them is not. Unfortunately, the two teams that are in the more competitive brackets are getting SQUASHED, whereas the 1 that is not (which is a co-ed league) is actually poised to make a pretty deep run. I thought that 1 of the competitive teams would be good, but so far we haven't been. I've kept a lot of stats (they record a box score, so naturally I've applied all the apbrmetrics I know to churn out a million advanced stats of myself and friends, lol) and may release a little stat stuff, but aside from me/a few friends, no idea if that will interest ANYONE.

Oh, I guess technically #4, Assani Fisher and I are starting a video podcast for the upcoming NBA season. We're hosting it ON Leggopoker, so, be excited. It should be great - we don't have a name yet, (I suggested "The Rob & Assani Super Basketball Video Blogcast Hour", but for whatever reason just hasn't stuck...) but we'll probably release our seasonal previews at the end of the week. We'll bring on guests periodically, too. Later fellas, sorry I've been so delinquent in my blogging! I'll leave you all with a picture of my cat, Belle. (I rolled her up in a blanket so she'd look like a burrito)