Oh I'm 23 now, cool!

So I went back home for the 23rd birthday, and had a pretty decent week.  I played a whopping 2 hours of poker the whole week which was a nice break (even though I've been pretty lazy this year so far) .  Luckily I got a bit of a boost from Poker Stars for playing the Main Event last year so I'm still well ahead of SNE pace.  Hopefully I can get some hands in now that I'm back to Tahoeville and maybe finish the month with 200k vpp's which would be about 2 weeks ahead of pace.

But I can't write about poker since I didn't really play any poker.  I don't remember doing much actually, besides a few nights of drinking.  I do remember it being ridiculously cold, however.  Someone had told me it was 70 and sunny the weekend before I flew back, so I only packed some t-shirts and shorts.  I'm pretty sure the high was 40 for the whole week I was home so I ended up having to go out and buy some clothes, as I left all the warm stuff back at the mountain house.

I went out with the parents the night I got into town and we went to some wild place called Wahoo which served, you guessed it, wahoo.  Don't worry, I didn't know what it was either.  Apparently it's a type of fish, that tastes quite good, especially in fish taco form.

I also had some seared tuna which was pretty awesome, so I'll definitely be back.  My parents couldn't wait to tell the waitress it was my birthday and demanded that she sing to me, however it didn't happen.  Most unfortunate, as I was really looking forward to being serenaded in front of a bunch of random people two days before my actual b-day.

The birthday started out pretty poorly actually.  I went to the bank to cash some checks (I can't pay for everything with Poker Stars dollars) and waited in line at the ATM for about 30 minutes while a young mexican couple played with all of the funny buttons.  I've used a lot of Bank of America ATM's in my life, and whenever you mess up it beeps at you repeatedly until you make the correct choice.  Well this couple clearly couldn't get something right as the machine just constantly beeped at them while I waited outside in the cold (in a t-shirt and shorts because I'm awesome).  Eventually I gave up and went inside and got to wait in another line for a half hour, all for a whopping 38 second transaction.  Upon leaving the bank, I saw a steady line growing behind the young couple, and the machine was still singing along.  Here's something to aid in that mental picture that's clearly forming.

Things only got better from there as I headed to the DMV to renew my license.  I was asked to fill out a big form, without a pen.  C'mon what guy carries a pen with him.  I asked the lady at the front desk if I could borrow one of her 5 pens lying around.  I was told that it was against policy.  I'm fairly certain it was because I was white.  And Jewish.  They don't like our kind apparently.  If the people running the DMV weren't just completely incompetent, it'd be a much more pleasant place.

An hour later I was staring at the blue dot and getting my picture taken.  I asked the lady if she could ship the ID to Nevada even though my address was in Georgia.  The following conversation ensued.

Her: Oh, so you wrote down the wrong address
Me: No, I live here but will be in NV for the next 2 months
Her: Oh, so you want to change your address
Me: No, I still want it to be listed with a GA address
Her: Oh, so we'll just ship it to the address listed here, ok?
Me: No, please ship it to Nevada
Her: Oh, so you want to change your address on here to NV?
Me: Do you have any sharp objects?
Her: No, that's against policy

The best part is, you now get a paper license instead of a plastic laminated one like everyone else.  And then they ship you the real one.  Well the ATL airport apparently knows about this and let me through no problem, but LAX wasn't as nice.  I was detained for a bit, while they called someone over the radio who had the position of Super Elite.  I kid you not that's what they called him.  When he arrived I showed him my Supernova Elite card in hopes we'd hit it off, but that didn't do me very much good.  I got to stand in the awesome radiation thing that my buddy Rob told me is bad for you.  And I listen to Rob because he's a nuclear engineer and probably has experience with these things.  Luckily I didn't get cavity searched, but I think Rob may have experience in that area as well, so I'll ask him about the details at a later date and report back.

On the night of my b-day a big group of us went out to this bar in Atlanta that serves fishbowls full of liquor.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  After a couple of them, it didn't seem like the greatest idea in the world.  I'm lucky we didn't go for the tequila one, or I'd have broken my 1 week long streak of not praying to the porcelain god.  At one point I stole a fancy hat and took a picture with Sydnee.  I think we look spectacular, mostly because of my hat, but she looks quite amazing as well!

Sorry, it was dark, and it's an iphone picture, and a small asian woman took it, so we didn't do too well with the quality photography.  After some fishbowls and beers, the two of us and Becca and Zack headed over to Famous Pub near Emory.  They were having karaoke, I'm fairly certain it was all part of Becca's plan to get me hammered and watch me make a fool of myself in front of tons of people.  I dodged that one though as I just ordered tons of drinks and refused to sing.  Zack sang some rap song, he did well for a white person.  My stepbrother Jerel ended up meeting us there as well.  We ordered some Goombay smashes for old times sake and called it a night.  I'm sure other things happened, but given it was my birthday I have the god-given right not to remember them.

More things happened, but this is getting long so I will make a list.

1) We saw an Imax film on Earth's greatest places.  It was excellent.  I now have to go to Madagascar and the Amazon and a desert in Africa of which I'm forgetting the name.

2) I tried longboarding.  It looked like a snowboard so I thought I'd be a natural.  Unfortunately there's no snow so I fell a lot.

3) Luke, Yohe, and I went out for oysters.  We ate more oysters than I thought was humanly possible.  Then we ate clams, then we did oyster shooters, then we had some goombay smashes (I think you're starting to see the theme of this blog by now).  Jacker ended up showing up which was great as I hadn't seen him in close to a year.  Everyone seemed intrigued by my life, I told them it's not all the great.  I don't think they believed me.  Here's some pictures of that night though...

Yep, that's a pepper vodka shot with an oyster at the bottom.  After 3 rounds of those, and 2 rounds of goombays and a ton of oysters, we ended up playing credit card roulette for the bill.  Naturally I lost and paid.  Your welcome guys, I agree it was a good meal.

4) The Packers and Steelers played a football game.  The Packers won.  By more than 3.  So I won some money.  But I lost about 4x that on squares pools so I no longer am a football fan.  Chris won a lot, and will likely now have enough ammo to buy April a few more purses.

Yesterday I was on planes and buses for about 13 hours, so now I'm sore and tired and just want to get some sleep.  So I'm going to stop writing now as I'm sure you're all getting sick of reading anyway.  Oh, but I do remember getting in last night and have Speedle beg me for about an hour to take him to the bunny ranch. This will likely happen soon and I will report back with a hopefully epic trip report.

Goodbye for now,
- Weinman