It would be nice to get Kevin Nealon of Saturday Night Live to do a weekend wrap-up, but I suppose I’ll have to do it myself. Some good stories.

On Friday night, I went uptown to The Urban League’s open play volleyball. Anthony, Liz, Steve, and Elbert came and I saw friends I’ve made through volleyball too. For some reason, the volleyball wasn’t too satisfying that night. Didn’t break much of a sweat.

I caught a cab across town to a poker game that Ilio was having. His girlfriend is out of town visiting her folks, so poker and beer was the order of the night. I hadn’t played in a few years (last time was with Dad and that side of my family at a family reunion a few years back) but got the hang of it again fairly quickly.

There were four of us playing most of the time I was there and Ilio had set house rules of a twenty-five cent ante and maximum raise of a dollar. The idea was to keep the stakes low and have a fun time. I cashed in about $25 and was down and then up as the night was drawing to a close.

The last game of the night was a game called “boo-yah”. Here’s how it works: everyone antes up and gets five cards. A dummy hand is also dealt. You look at your hand and everyone holds their cards in one hand face-down over the table. The dealer counts to three, and you either drop the cards, or hold them. If you drop them, you’re out, and you’re out of the rest of the hands for that game. If you stay in, you trade in cards as in regular five-card draw. If more than one person has stayed in, you play against them. The winner takes the pot. The losers have to match what was in it. If you’re the only person that stayed in, you have to beat the dummy hand, which doesn’t get to trade any cards. If you do, you win and the game is over. If you don’t, you have to match the pot and the same people play again. To make a long story short, Ilio got into trouble having to match a pot of $54, he got out of it in a hand that I lost to him. I gulped and put a $108 I.O.U. into the pot. The stress was latent around the table. This wasn’t what anybody had intended. We pondered what to do, and decided we’d best play it out. I was dealt an excellent hand, Ilio dropped out, and my hand beat the dummy hand. I triumphantly chewed up the I.O.U., put it in my pocket and reminded myself of another reason that I generally hate the whole idea of gambling…

Saturday, I worked a 14-hour day to get my project on track to meet a deadline early this week. I haven’t had such uninterrupted time at work to code in a while and it was really productive.

Sunday, I slept through breakfast time, work up, made some lunch, did some chores around the house (I like the American Heritage definition of “chores”: Daily or routine domestic tasks, especially a farmer’s routine morning and evening tasks, such as feeding livestock), and went across the street to play in a volleyball tournament.

The tournament was run by the local gay and lesbian volleyball league, Gotham Volleyball, and needless to say the people were really nice and friendly. I’d organized a team for the tournament which is probably the best team I’ve played with yet: Anthony, Liz, Matt, Celinda, Jeanhee and me. We played very well for our first time playing together and won seven out of eight games. It was a blast, especially watching some of the all-male teams blow kisses at each other and shout, “Let’s go girls!”

A delicious dinner at Spice afterwards with most of the team. A bath at home to relax my tightening leg muscles. Finished the Feynman book I’m reading in the bath with some incense and a candle. Caught up by phone with Brad in Palo Alto. Played some guitar. Experimenting with melody a little.

I feel like ending with a quote. Here’s one I found browsing through random quotes:

“Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment.” -Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, ‘A Woman of Independent Means’