Grumpy Old People


Sunday, December 17, 2006

Fuck.

I'm an old man!

I'm a fucking old man!!

Saturday morning I was not able to sleep in because I needed to drive about 330 miles from Hayward to Gridley to three Starbucks near Sacramento and then to San Francisco to meet a reporter who wanted to talk to me about tea of all things. Holiday traffic around Sacramento cost me so much time that I had to cancel the tea appointment. I was planning on driving into the city anyway for a concert, but by the time I drive the 120 miles from Sac and approached the Bay Bridge I was already feeling fatigued and a bit of a headache (the ginkgo biloba perhaps?). Knowing that Raekwon and Ghostface were not likely to hit the stage until well past 11:00, I decided that I didn't feel up to waiting two hours for the show to start and then staying up another two hours.

So just like an old man, I veered away from the bridge and back towards Hayward to rest. Pathetic.

When I reached the house, I soon came to regret my decision, because the landlady, her boyfriend, and her sister had decided to wait until I got home to go nuts. First is was Lilly and her boyfriend. I didn't hear what she said to him, but it set him off something awful, and he started yelling for her to leave him alone in a voice I could clearly hear above the TV in my room.

Lilly went back to her room, but it seems she had a real burr up her ass that night, because next she went to bitch to her sister about something. I don't know who owns the house, who bought it, or anything like that, but I do know that Lilly seems to think she's doing something great for her sister by letting her live there, despite the fact that she abuses her something awful, calling her a lesbian over and over and, most disturbingly, calling her a mongoloid and saying she wasn't even born right. I considered myself lucky that all that drama had erupted when I only had a week and a half left in the Bay Area, because had it happened earlier I would have had to find a new room to rent.

Lilly went back to her room again, and there were a few more minor eruptions, and then things appeared to quiet down. But then, almost unbelievably, at 4:45 in the AM hysterical screaming erupted and woke me up. The sister started yelling something like "Dejame tranquila! No te he hecho nada! Te voy ha matar!!!" The boyfriend Ray got up to find out what that explosion was about, and I overheard Lilly saying something about a stolen $200.

Now, all the while, when Lilly and Ray were getting into it, he kept alternating between asking what was the matter with her and telling her she was crazy. I did not think that Ray was being helpful with his comments, but for the better part of the four months I had been renting the room Lilly had seemed fairly pleasant. But I was starting to wonder, because really what kind of a person starts a fight at 4:45 in the morning in house full of sleeping people??? I was very much looking forward to getting away from that house as quickly as possible.

Later that morning, I heard the sister moving out, and I was pretty relieved about that.

Later still, I woke up and noticed the sky was dark. That was odd, because when Lilly's sister had moved out, it had been light out. Then I realized that the sister had never moved out at all! It had all be a dream.

Yet later still, I went to the bathroom, and the cock read 9:00 AM. Damn! I felt like crap. It was because of all that yapping that I wasn't able to get nearly enough sleep. I was really pissed at those people. Fortunately for me, when I returned to my room the clock on my VCR read 7:48--the one in the bathroom had been wrong. I felt relieved as I went back to sleep.

I finally got out of the crazy house shortly after 9:00 and headed to the new store near downtown Los Gatos. On the way I stopped at Noah's Bagels for a sandwich, but I never got to eat it. In an act prophetic of my impending senility, I somehow managed to mistake the sandwich for trash and dumped it into a garbage container. I grumbled when I realized my error, and I suddenly felt hungrier. I drove along downtown Los Gatos' main street seeking another bagel shop but spotted none. I did see a place that looking interesting, the Los Gatos Cafe, but it was around 10:00 AM and customers were milling about outside, indicating that a waiting list was in effect.

No time left to find food--I had to rush to Soquel and then Aptos, and when I reached Tomato Thyme I was famished. But I quickly forgot my irritation over my displaced bagel when Rick handed out the first-round pairings. Once again, John Karris. AARRGH!!! Sure enough, he did it again, and after suffering my umpteenth vicious outdrawn by the evil John Karris, I was exceedingly happy that I'd be leaving the Bay Area in a few days. If I never played the guy again, it would be too soon.

My jaw had dropped earlier when Sam Kantimathi walked in. I wondered what alignment of the moon and stars had motivated him to grace us with our presence. Unfortunately, despite the far better draw, I blew my chance to suck up his ratings points by playing a truly awful game. The quality and quantity of my mistakes is truly breathtaking. But the worst of it--the absolute worth of it? I played a sweet bingo, INACtIO(N) from the TWS, and somehow I only scored myself for 60! Not only that, but I didn't even catch the mistake during the recount! So the outcome ended up being a tie, when if there ever was a game I should have won, it should have been that one. I was little miffed at Sam, too, for not having caught my error. After all, I belive he's an engineer, and my way of remember his name is to sound it out as "Can Do Math, He". Well, apparently he couldn't.

Isaac Apindi. Lost only 29.1 equity points. Still lost by 1 (2, actually). Major suckage.



I finally picked up a win, against Jerry Lerman of all people. The game was neither easy nor perfectly played, but I really needed the win.



Fifth round, and I lost another very well-played game. Two major mistakes, missing F(E)TAtION and O(C)REAE (thought it was OCHREAE), and one questionable one, MODS instead of MOODS, but the game was still well within my grasp when Robin Levin opened up the board and held the BDEILRS that my 6-tile exchange had yielded. With a blank unseen and just 25 tiles in the bag, I of course considered the possibility of the triple-triple, but I don't think a single high expert would pass up 74 points for the bingo to take 39 for (J)IBE. So Robin got the triple-triple, PER(S)ONaL, for 140, and there was nothing I could do.



Once more I was in the soul-sucking position of facing a lower-rated player in the final round, and once more I hardly care. Once more I went through the motions as quickly as possible, but it was hard to push Karris on time when he had the advantage of bingoing with the blank first, and then scored 40 with the Q, 33 with th Q, 52 with the X, and 46 with the Z on successive turns. I had to blurt out "Oh, come on, man!" Despite all this, I still could have won, but Karris drew one more accursed power tile, the other blank, and won by six!

With no more tournaments until the new year, I left pissed off and disgusted, stuck in the low 1700s for the rest of the year. Bah.



Analysis



#1    
--    
0.3 MOD  
0 ATONIES  
0 LOX  
0.4 URD  
1.6 (J)EFE  
0 BLIP  
1.1 HAULIER  
0 PA(R)IAH  
6.8 WR(U)NG  
19.8 (PA)CY  
24.7 (RE)V (RE)VERBS
13 VER(T)U  
8 B(URD)  
     
     
#2    
--    
0    
17.4 WRInGE(R)S WEIGh(E)RS
0 B(E)RTH  
3.4 OES NOES
6.7 (T)OQUE  
0 INACtIO(N)  
1.8 F(E)MS  
9.5 DAY  
38.3 lose turn  
0 (P)EW  
14.8 (B)UNTS  
11.3 (D)OZE  
2 NEED  
10 (N)O(N)E  
     
     
#3    
--    
0 WYE  
1.4 MANTID  
6.6 DURR  
4.5 (E)WE  
3.1 -JOOQU  
0 (N)OVAE  
0.5 TOUGHI(E)s  
0 E(V)ILNESS  
13 AX  
0 QuA(S)H  
0 RERIG  
0 VASE  
0 BU(T)  
     
     
#4    
--    
0 JAMBE  
36.7 N(O)DDY (FLAVOR)Y hook,(JAMBE)D hook
14.2 PIANO (Y)AUPON,BOU(D)IN
19 BUTT(E) TUBIsTS,TUrBITS,TUBaIST,BUTTIeS (unsure),BUShTIT
0 (P)OEtISES  
7.5 OGI(V)E CI(V)IE
0 AZOIC  
1.3 HAH  
18.6 ERE UREtERI(C),REUnI(T)ER,REqUI(T)ER,U(N)REtIRE
0 RETIcUL(E)  
31.5 Q(I)  
0 WR(E)AK  
     
     
#5    
--    
11.4 TOFT F(E)TAtION
0 NAH  
1.3 NINnIES  
1.2 ROARI(N)G O(N)AGRI
8.6 MODS MOODS (chose wrong)
0.2 XU  
0 ION  
11.3 -AEEORU O(C)REAE (unsure)
0 BRIDLES  
0 (J)AVA  
4 QIS SILVE (I can't see why)
0 D(R)AV(E)  
0 (UN)CUT  
     
     
#6    
--    
0 GO  
7.7 JA(G)  
2.4 HIE  
9.6 HATS  
7.3 (T)OLING  
0 WAW  
0 TOUSLIN(G)  
0 F(I)REPAN  
5.7 AB  
7.7 I(ZA)R  
24.1 SELF  
0 KAS  
0 TAV  
2 ONCE  


Average Equity Loss Per Turn (using Quackle 0.93)

1 - L - 5.8 (75.7)
2 - T - 8.2 (115.2)
3 - L - 2.2 (29.1)
4 - W - 10.7 (128.8)
5 - L - 2.9 (38)
6 - L - 4.8 (66.5)


Avg: 5.7


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