Not Exactly the Playboy Mansion...

… but I had a fun time this weekend

In Cloquet’s own Southgate lanes held the annual Black Bear no-tap bowling tourney. For those who don’t know their Dick Weber from their Pete Weber, a no-tap tourney consist of a regular game of bowling but you only need to knock down 9 of the 10 pins on your first ball to get a strike. It would stand to reason that someone who averages 175 would do fairly well with this set up.

You’d be wrong.

I got the worst score out of my group consisting of my family, including pregnant-type wife, and my brother and sister-in-law. For some reason bowling badly can set me on a tilt that would make Mike Matusow look temporally sane after a bad beat. No idea what sets off such a stupid reaction since its bowling, and bowling for fun at that (well, 1st thru 20th place do get $1,000). Since I wasn’t anywhere near the scores needed for the cash, I decided to drink like a college freshman during Rush Week. Beers were slammed, I drank something putrid called a Mexican Snowshoe, add in a few Cap’n Cokes and you have one skinny, drunk Minnesotan with his live bankroll in his pocket and 5 minutes away from a casino.

Foreshadowing to total loss? Naw.

Unless my parents gave me money, I ended up winning. I took some cell phone shots of the slots but have no idea how to download/email them (the phone is a Motorola, any help is appreciated). I thank my friend Burnsie for hauling my drunk ass away from a scary looking 5 handed game of spread limit and the blackjack tables, I’m certain I would have blew my meager live roll on a few hands of blackjack or a suited connector. So no live poker for this mountain of paleness unfortunately, since the poker room there doesn’t really kick into gear until later at night, and we weren’t staying overnight due to a wedding reception the next day. I spent the remainder of Saturday trying to convince myself I didn’t drink that much, though the wife reminded me 15 million and one times about how loud I snored on the ride home from the casino.

Thank god for free food the next day.

Axel’s Bonfire in Savage (one of four in the state) served as my cousin’s wedding reception spot. It’s an upper scale restaurant (in my cheeseburger and fries dining book at least) that showed a Tex-Mex motif and sported several tight t-shirt wearing female servers (not that I looked at them… much). Their “uniform” was a strange contrast to the be-suited piano player playing some light melodies that threatened to rock my hungover ass to sleep.

Killed:
Three big scoops of mozzarella cheese infused hash browns
Three big scoops of cheedar cheese coated scrambled eggs
One half rotisserie chicken
Five strips of bacon
Three sausage links
Side of Caesar salad
Three lemon poppy seed muffins
A slice of Oreo cookie cheesecake
Two mimosas
A glass of water

I didn’t even eat dinner last night due to the gluttony performed yesterday afternoon by my mouth. Those hash browns were just evil, just the right amount of crispiness and gooey cheesiness to keep my lips begging for more even after my stomach stopped processing the load of food I was shoveling down my gullet. That brunch is definitely in my top five meals of all-time, and I’d give Axel a courtesy reach-around after adding several pounds to my meager frame. Well done sir.

I did manage a little poker this weekend, despite missing the WPBT event at Full Tilt by a few minutes. Not happy about missing the double stack event, but Full Tilt wasn’t on my good side per some nasty back to back beats in a $5/$10 LO8 game that almost set me on bankroll destroying tilt. One deep breath, one click of withdrawn funds and I saved myself 15% of my bankroll by not pissing it away. Sure, the funds will go back in later this week, because I enjoy Full Tilt to the hilt, but precautionary measures need to be taken when playing two levels above your normal game suddenly looks like fun through bloodshot tilt-eyes.

To the crew that stormed the Playboy Mansion this weekend:

\m/

You guys rock. And Al, I hope my message was clear enough, I was a tad tipsy while handling the phone at the time.

Thanks for dropping by, now go read about their adventure into the land of silicone, Hef, and the girls next door. (See previous post for links)