Hello,

I know I've been absent in this time of tremendous activity, and for that, I apologize.

I hope they believe my faux-sincerity. I never was a good liar.

Since returning from Vegas a week ago, I've played zero hands of poker. Nil. Zip. That sort of thing happens when Time Warner revokes your internetting priveleges after someone asshole hijacks a computer for use as a spammer.

Motherfucker. The genius that invented spam email needs to die. And if they've already succumbed to a horrible, painful disease--oh how I hope that's the case--they need to be reborn as a dung beetle so I can step on them with my point heel.

As it is, there's no way to tell which computer out of our 5 has the virus. Well, there technically is, but neither I, nor my roommates, are smart enough to figure it out in a timely manner. And it's impossible to Google any kind of knowledge base on the subject, without an internet connection. We aren't allowed an internet connection because of the security breach, and unless we reformat all the hard drives and start with completely clean machines, there's no way to figure out a solution without that internets connection. Damned if you do, fucked if you don't. Something like that.

I haven't played any poker in the last 9 days, and while that's fine, and I don't miss it terribly, I am having trouble trying to find ways to fill those off hours; the hours that would usually be filled by sitting on the couch, laptop bringing me closer to infertility, a stack of $5 chips from various Vegas poker rooms riffling through the fingers on my left hand.

Breaking news: There seems to be a development in the Poker Champ Debaucle of '06. It's confusing, and I don't like it one fucking bit. Eh, I'm just bitter. Bitter and clueless. Well, bitter because I'm clueless. Fuckers. And apparently 1:35pm is the predetermined mindfuck hour. Am I the only one not in on this? Christ.

Anyhow, I have far too much free time right now, especially considering it's not quite nice enough to run down Lake St. naked. In the past 4 days, I've done 5 loads of laundry, even though I only own 2 loads per week, max. I've cleaned my room twice, rearranged it once. I've taken 3 bags of garbage out the dumpster, even though 1 of those bags was half full, and garbage day was still 3 days away. I just needed something to do.

It's amazing how much of a time-suck poker was for me, and I didn't even realize how much it consumed me until this past week. It became even clearer after looking at my, uh, numbers of the past few months. They clearly show that I've been no better than break-even since the beginning of the year, and it's to the point where I need to re-tool before entering back into this foray again, or it's just not worth it. At all. I'm not leaving--I could never leave you people, even if you do backhand me for leaving the toilet seat up--but it's clear I need a new strategy.

So, until we I (like my roommates are going to fix it) fix this problem, all I can say is "See ya around".