Poker wise, I haven't had a lot going on. I had a small vacation and was away from my computer for a good week. I have just started answering hands in the forums, and things seem a lot clearer to me, so I am happy I had a break. The small stakes forum doesn't seem so hard as it seemed two months ago. I am actually surprised at how few hands get posted, and can't wait to get to 100nl so I can just light it on fire. I think a lot of how I am feeling analytically comes from an absence of the stress of playing. I am not saying anything genius in the forums, don't get me wrong, but answering hands is more like an exercise in analytics rather than a referendum on how good I am as a poker player (which is kind of what I turned it into for myself in the past, I just realized). I don't plan on playing much in July because:

a) I went on a fairly rapid 6 BI downswing while playing fairly well and I am starting to feel underrolled for 50nl, and
b) we have a French teenager staying with us for the next 3 weeks and we have to show him around and help him learn to speak English a little more proficiently.

As far as the downswing is concerned, I think i can chalk up a half a buy in to tilt. At first I thought that wasn't bad, but after thinking about it, if I am going to dump 1 BI for every 11 I lose while playing correctly, then poker just doesn't seem like a viable option for me financially. At work, when my manager and I do inventory and look at waste and how it affects our cost of sales percentage, we are dealing with fractions of percentage points, sometimes whole percentage points. I think most businesses are probably on the same level. Anywhere where you have ten percent waste you are just bleeding profits. So I just decided to cool off a little and gain some perspective, think more about the game and decision making process and not money. When I start playing again, I will let you know if it worked.

As far as the 14 year old is concerned, I met him when he was 6 in Paris, and I taught him English in exchange for a place to stay. He is very polite and understanding with my kids (who will not let him alone). He is a little bit shy, but less and less so. It is his first time leaving France or going anyplace without his family, so this is a big deal for him. Also, I have a free place to stay in Paris (I am dying to go back) and I plan on shipping my kids off to his family for a few weeks every year when they are old enough.

So I went camping with the family while everyone else was in Vegas. Camping was nice, but everything is so much more difficult with two little kids, it is really tempting just to stay at home where we are all set up to deal with their needs. My kids had a great time, though, and I guess that is why we went and will continue to go camping. I got a pretty nasty case of food poisoning.

My wife: "I don't think we should eat this salami, it doesn't look right."

Me: "The salami is fine."

The salami was not fine. I spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the night making sure I was not far from the bathrooms at the campsite. I spent a small amount of time reflecting on the act of puking. I have not done it a lot in my life. In fact, I have had a long dry spell since the fifth grade when I got a hold of some bad fried chicken and potato salad. Last weekend, mid-puke, it struck me that "blowing chunks" was fairly precise in terms of describing the act itself. Also, once I had made my mind up that puking was definitely in my future, once I had kind of accepted it, I pretty much just had to assume the position in front of the porcelain goddess and my body took care of the rest. It is one of those odd physiological functions that just seizes control of your body. Very visceral, almost primal. I think there are people out there who spend a lot of time trying to bring this condition onto themselves because they want to lose control or feel an emotional release. I wonder if anorexia has this type of dynamic, or if it is something else altogether. Anyway, those were my thoughts on puking.

I felt much better the next day, and resumed my normal eating habits, but the day after that, it was very clear that I had to take it easy for a while because I have been semi-nauseous to some degree ever since. I think I will be losing a ton of weight for the next few weeks as I can only really stomach plain bread and rice and salad. The idea of eating something richer makes me queasy. If you want to win some money on a weight loss challenge, food poisoning is the way to go, imo.

That's all for now.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ