JamesSlusher.com

Cupcakes

Originally uploaded by jaslusher.

After a bit of baking by Emily and Marilyn, Emily and I decided to decorate cupcakes. And, yes, that is an Africa on the top cupcake. When you have chocolate icing and only yellow, red and green decorative icing, I figured it was obligatory.

Tropical Storm Jonathan

Originally uploaded by jaslusher.

I call him a Tropical Storm because he isn’t quite big enough to be a hurricane. No matter, he destroys everything in his path.

In this day and age of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, I think most reasonable people can agree that raising the minimum wage was a good idea. I think $5.15 an hour is pathetic. At that rate and 40 hours per week, if you worked all 52 weeks per year, you would make $10,712 gross. That’s slightly more than my mortgage. I mean slightly, like less than $400. And it’s shameful.

The Republicans in Congress loaded down the minimum wage hike so much that it got “derailed”, as they put it here.

Then to top it off, 28 Republican Senators, including both of the doofuses (doofi?) that represent the great state of South Carolina, sponsored a bill to completely abolish the federal minimum wage. Because, you know, the working poor just aren’t poor enough.

The War on Workers is in full swing and the Republicans are staging yet another surge. The only difference between this war and all their others is that this is the only one that they are winning.

These people sicken me.

This just trips me out. I’m not sure why.

I make no effort to hide the fact that I love my Apple iBook G4. Great little laptop.

But that is not where the love affair ends. Apple (the company) itself is just plain competent and designed to make life easy, just like their products.

For tax purposes I need the invoice for my purchases this year. I have misplaced the originals. I give Apple a call and within 3 minutes I have copies of the invoices sitting in my email inbox. How much easier could that be? Other than just wishing it into existence, I can’t really think of how it could be.

Do yourself a favor, get a Mac.

There is a something a little surreal about my 4 year old daughter first requesting, then singing along with, Pop Life by Prince.
I find myself giggling every time .

I’m working nights this week, Tuesday thru Thursday. Through a confluence of events I don’t sleep during the day Tuesday. When I get home Wednesday morning I’ve been up for about 25 hours. But that’s not the stupid part. It’s a start, however.

As is my norm, I sit down for a $2 turbo poker tournament. The buy-in is small and the blinds go up fast so if I stink it’s no big deal and if I don’t stink, it’s over fairly quickly. I say it’s no big deal, but I mean that monetarily. Every tournament I ever play is a big deal for my over-competitive behind.

So I play one and, well, I stink. It’s over fast. It actually wasn’t a super bad play, but it wasn’t my best either and I was out in just a few minutes. I decide, why not, let’s play another one. This one starts out hot and heavy. I double up fast. Before I know it, I’ve got a massive chip lead and I am cruising. Everything I touch turns to gold.

We get down to four people and I’m thrilled. The tourney pays the top 3 players and I’m dominating this field. I play a few hands of questionable value trying to knock someone out. It doesn’t work. But I’m still in the lead and the blinds are getting big. I try again and again and again, I just can’t knock these jokers out. Sure, those starting hands weren’t that great, but man everything I touched turned to gold a minute ago.

A few minutes later I get knocked out in 4th place and I’m mad at myself. that was just plain stupid. I didn’t need to get so loose and get involved in all those pots. What a moron.

The tourney didn’t really take that long, so what the heck I’ve got time for one more. I come out the blocks blazing again. Get a massive chip lead going into 4 people again. Play too many hands again and get knocked out in 4th again.

Now I’m seriously pissed. 27 hours with no sleep and I’m livid, so what the hell, I’m gonna play another one and I’m GONNA MONEY FOR SURE THIS TIME.

I double up on the very first hand of the tourney. I end up with a massive chip lead. We get down to 4 players and I tell myself, this time I’m not gonna donk away all my chips.

You can guess where this is going, can’t you?

As the last card flipped and it dawned on me that this tourney was over for me I started to scream obscenities. At the top of my lungs. I cursed myself, I cursed this laptop, I cursed FullTiltPoker.com, I cursed myself some more, I cursed the internets, and I cursed myself yet again. If I didn’t have a sizeable investment in both my laptop and bedroom window, they both would have met an early demise yesterday.

The first loss was stupid. The second was stupider. But that third one, oh man, that deserves the superlative. It’s players like that, players like how I was playing, that make professional poker players so much money. Fish. Donkeys. Feebs, as Dan Harrington calls them.

That’s not gonna happen again. Ever.

I mean it this time.

Have I ever told y’all how much I love my job?

Yeah, well, there is a reason for that.

For 2007, “discipline” is going to be the overriding theme in my life. And no, I don’t mean that kind of discipline, you perv.

I’ve been very disciplined about select things in my life. During college I was extremely disciplined at working out. Going to class, studying, paying attention, not so much.

I’ve been disciplined about monitoring my blood sugar levels and taking the right amount of insulin, but I will let laundry pile up.

I’m not interested in New Year’s resolutions. Those just fall by the wayside eventually and then you get to wait until next year to address whatever problem you had this year. I’m interested in a lifestyle change.

I’m making a list of things that I want to do and I’m going to stick to them. Period. Whatever is going on, whether I want to or not, I’m going to do them. And this isn’t a “To Do” list either. This is a list of ways of living that I want to incorporate into my everyday routine.

Some examples of the things I will be telling myself:

• Put things away when you are done.
• Clean as you go.
• Exercise. Today.
• Do what you say you are going to do. Even if you only said it to yourself.
• Finish what you started.
• Don’t buy something you can do without.
• 2000 calories a day, dude, max. Now put the Twinkie down.
• Communicate with a loved one not living in your house. Phone call, blog post, something. If it’s verbal, tell them you love them.

That last one might be the most important.

I mean all of those in the broadest senses possible. I’m going to put things away when I’m at home, at work, at whatever.

Before I lay down for the night (or day), I better have exercised at some point. Even if it was a simple “drop and give me 20″. Anything is better than nothing.

Too many projects of mine get derailed (anyone seen an F100 lately?). When I say I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it. And I’m going to keep doing it until it is done or it kills me.

As far as purchasing things I don’t need, that’s a huge problem with me. I need to start asking myself if I really need this thing. If I do, maybe I already have something that I can use in it’s stead. If alterations need to be made, so be it.

The 2k calories speaks for itself. I’m a fatass.

Communication with friends and loved ones is key. Too many people out there haven’t heard “I love you” from me in some time. And that needs to change.

Those are my current overriding concerns about the way I handle my business. Now the key to the whole deal is having the discipline to make myself toe those lines. I know I can do it. Now I just have to actually do it.

By the way, I love you guys.

A few days ago I was giving Ken, longtime friend and frequent commenter, a hard time on his blog about using the archaic word “liniment”.

My shed has been a mess for quite some time and it being in desperate need of attention and me having a couple of days, I decided the time was right to straighten it up. This required the moving of many very heavy items.

Since Tuesday morning, I’ve been very sore. But get this, only in my, umm, shall we say “haunches”. Terribly, terribly sore. So sore I could use some liniment.

I can’t seem to bring myself to rub sportscreme on my butt though. So I’ve been taking some ibuprofen and being a little grouchy.

So I sincerely apologize to Ken, cause karma is a b***th.