EARLY OCTOBER

We spent the weekend in Delaware celebrating the wedding of one of my wife's sisters Welcome to the family, Tom Buckley, good guy and sports fan from Boston. It was a Catholic wedding which offered me more exercise than I get at home with all the standing and sitting.

My kids served a small function in the ceremony and they performed flawlessly. It was fun to see the kids dressed to the nines and busting the dance floor at the reception. It was a battle to get the kids invited to the reception but I'm sure sister Tricia is pleased with her decision in the end. They had a blast and now they will always remember when Tom became Uncle Tom.

I teased Tom that I got married in August '94 during the players strike so I didn't miss any baseball. As a Red Sox fan, it was a great idea to schedule his ceremony for October so he would be sure not to miss any Sox games. I had a great time chatting with Tom's dad, Big Tom, who is a dead ringer for Tom Poston from the Newhart era. He has four other kids, all daughters, and the last wedding was scheduled for what would have been Game Five of the 2004 World Series. The whole family was sweating game four which made the sweep all the more magical.

I didn't get to watch as much LDS action as I would have liked, but I spent a lot of time in bars and got to see highlights and snippets. Boston-accented cheers went up when the Yankees were eliminated. I did get to watch the final game of the NLDS on the night before my departure. It's strange to stay up late watching baseball. I have definitely gotten used to Pacific Standard Time. I also watched the DAL/PHI game since it was big local news that Terrell Owens was returning to town. I rarely watch football anymore so that was a nice Sunday treat.

As for poker, I didn't play a lick of it during my trip, but everybody and their brother wanted to talk about it since this was my first appearance at a family event since Monte Carlo last year. I was in Vegas during the WSOP when everybody got together at the New Jersey shore in early August. Everyone wanted to know how I fared and I had to admit that it was a horrible week for me poker-wise although I've made up for it since. It's neat that my wife's family is so close. There are a lot of cousins spread about the country which gives us contacts everywhere. Besides the annual beach gathering, the past few family functions have been funerals so it was nice to get everyone together for a happier cause.

As for poker, I've played just a little since returning home. My daughter changed schools yesterday and it has been hectic getting ready for that. We found this great school system tucked away in Oak Park which is about 15 miles west of here. It's a great community so nobody moves away and now they have extra room in their schools as the population ages. We decided to get our kids in there as it is literally one of the best public school systems in the country. It is like getting a private school education for the price of a little gas. Compounding the transition is that we are keeping Mason in the local school thru this year which means a lot of driving for DadSeeg.

Yesterday after catching up on some Tivo Poker, I jumped into a couple 2/4 NL games on Full Tilt. I was down about $700 but resolved to gut it out. I turned things around and actually finished about $100 up. I have crazy swings playing cash games. I love those six-handed NL tables. I am an action junkie at the ring games. Tournaments are all about folding so the rings give me a chance to mix it up and work on my reading ability.

I've also been playing mostly SNGs the past couple of days. Today I played three concurrent $50 NLHE tables on Stars. I haven't played three tourneys at once for awhile so I'm always looking to shake things up a bit. I made one horrible call as the chip leader in one game which ultimately lead to a non-money finish. The others, I finished 1st and 2nd, so it was profitable overall. Just now, I won a $20 heads-up Stud H/L battle. It's good to practice the other games without risking too much of the bankroll. I want to become a good HORSE player.

I finally added a picture to my empty yellow circle at Stars. It's a cool pic that I found by Googling "Men in Black" and weeding through all the Wil Smith pix. I wanted something a bit mysterious and I love what I wound up with.

In other news, I cashed out $9k from my online poker accounts - most of it from my $6k win at Full Tilt last week. I took all my money out of Full Contact and I will probably empty my Party account as well. I could be content playing only Stars and Tilt with the occasional PokerRoom. I still have about $16k spread over those three accounts. I really don't like playing through FCP. I just think the cashier account/ poker account business is needlessly convoluted and sometimes it is like pulling teeth getting it to work on my Mac. FCP is just a skin for PokerRoom and the only reason I play there is to play the PokerRoom games incognito. Well, Bill Frist made me a little nervous last week so I thought I would consolidate a little bit until things shake out.