When Beanie asked me to blog for his site I thought sure, what the hell else do I have to keep me occupied, especially at this time of year? The WSOP is over, as are basketball and hockey, and football is more than a month away. What’s a gambler to do? While some seek out more poker tournaments or cash games, my solution is much more fun. Golf trips!

I just got back from Cape Cod, where my friend Kenny’s family owns two golf courses.  One’s a just completed Reese Jones-designed gem called The Golf Club of Cape Cod. Across the street is Ballymead, a beautiful, mature layout. The Golf Club is so hard that Kenny bet me I couldn’t shoot 87 from the back tees. I’m a pretty good player, but I hadn’t played a full round in almost a month due to the heat wave in Vegas and the WSOP. However, I thought 87 would be easy. I was wrong, as I shot 90 and never even lost a ball! The next day I took the same bet, lost a shitload of balls and missed again.

That night we went to a Red Sox game. I hadn’t been to Fenway since I was about eight, when my Dad took me to see them play the Yankees in a double-header. The place is so tiny compared to modern parks. I remember Mickey Mantle pulling one into the left field stands, sending everyone ducking for cover. I still hear the sound of that ball whizzing over my head. Boston is a really cool city and the scene at Red Sox games is something special. We bet KC and over, both of which came in, so it made it even better.

The next day a friend of Kenny’s had arranged a golf day at a place called Carnagie Abbey, a real old-money club near Newport, RI. We were to go there on his boat. Two of our guys, Greg Mascio and Jeff Freedman, don’t like boats, but they were assured that no one gets sick on this boat. I was expecting a serious yacht when we got there the next morning, but instead we boarded a super-serious racing boat. How long could it take to get there in that thing? It ended up taking over two hours because it was foggy on the ocean and our host forgot to cover his GPS system, couldn’t read it and get lost for a spell. Greg hung in there, but turned a little white after bouncing around on the ocean for a while. Jeff stood up the whole time and seemed to be fine, until we found the harbor. All of a sudden he was on the floor, which was too bad because he missed the best part—we were going over 95 MPH on really smooth water. Great ride!

Carnagie Abbey was a real treat, except they have a dumb policy of making anybody under 60 walk! If I had as much money as these people I wouldn’t walk to the bathroom!

The next day we were back at Kenny’s course. It was supposed to be really windy, so Kenny bet that Richard Dunberg and I couldn’t shoot 179 combined. I had to take that bet. I also index bet him on shooting 89,88,87, and 86. On the first hole, a par 4, I took an 8 and Richard a 6. However, we played better from then on and made it easily. I shot 87 and won a couple more individual bets. That night we caught another Red Sox game, spent a great night in Boston and came home the next day.

Next on the menu is the Mexico swing. We start out at Baja Mar, which is kind of like the Mexican Pebble Beach, then it’s on to Tijuana for the night and the Tijuana Country Club, a great course designed in the ‘20s by Alister McKenzie of Augusta fame, the next day. Also on the schedule are a trip to Myrtle Beach at the end of September, and possibly a quickie to Lake Tahoe to play a few great courses, including one of my all-times favorites, Coyote Moon.

I’m looking forward to blogging here. I was considering writing a book about all the things I’ve learned about the gambling business over the past 25 years, with lots of stories thrown in, but I really don’t want to do the work it takes to write another book, so I’ll do it here piecemeal. Next up, my take on the World Series of Poker.

I like being able to exploit situational play but lately I have been forced to nit it up to the tune of big profits. Playing against skilled opponents you need to be able to show down a weird hand occasionally so you can get paid off with your good hands. In games where 4 or more people are seeing a flop its all math and typically what seems like the best hand is normally.

I like the degenerate in the suburbs angle though I am not sure it really applies to me, mostly I am just a grinder, a Knish type. What we lack in culture in the suburbs we make up for in water parks. When I get so wealthy I can puke I will be getting one thing. A Lazy River! The local water park has one and my family has a membership so occasionally in the middle of the day I pop in for an hour or so of lazy river action. It’s actually somewhat annoying on most days because of the throngs of kids that apparently don’t know what lazy means. So throughout the hour you are constantly bumped by 9 year olds, which I can deal with I suppose. This has been a great summer thus far and I expect it to end great with Alaska coming up and the State Fair (yummy pork chop on a stick). I also have Labor Day weekend to myself, I am not completely sure what I am going to do yet, I may go to Vegas or LA. That following weekend I am taking my nephew to Tiger Stadium (that’s why I can’t go to Europe, life equity baby) to see LSU whip Virginia Tech. Occasionally my nephew shows up at my house with a Florida hat or Texas clothing on, I figure one night in Tiger Stadium should cure all of that.

The Simpson’s movie was consistently OK. It’s not that it was bad it’s just that the show has established a bar that is tough to beat. As it turns out 30 minutes works, an hour and 30 minutes is a bit much. I went to the midnight show with all of the die hards. I usually do because there aren’t a lot of things to do on Thursday at midnight. There were a lot of high people in that auditorium. As I was walking out of one door some idiot teenager opened the other door and nailed my left arm, like the kind of thing you can’t ignore. When I heard him snicker I turned around like “WTF!?!”, he then realized he owed me an apology. I probably would have been cool if he hadn’t snickered but once I looked back I could see he was very high.

On a recommendation from a friend I started reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So far it’s a bit hokey but I find myself combing through the pages. I just eat this type of stuff up. Up to this point I haven’t really heard anything new but it is usually nice to reinforce what I am already doing. I also picked up the biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, all this self help and financial stuff is going to have to start taking a back seat to one of my original loves, History.

Cake Poker 100% match up to $500

After being at my beach house in Connecticut for almost two weeks and a couple day stopovers in New York, I’m finally heading back to Florida for my wedding.  At the beach house Anita and I went sailing, played tennis, went wakeboarding, played online poker and hung out at the beach.  I had a nice time visiting my aunt, uncle, cousin and grandmother. After that, we left the beach cottage and went over to NYC. My intent was to play the cash games there in the private clubs but they ended up being too crowded with locals who get first priority because everyone is amped up to play poker since returning from the World Series.  So instead, I played some online poker and gaucho2121 showed me around the city.  We got a massage from this hidden Asian massage place that was pretty good and went shopping in a couple stores.  One of the nights whitelime, Ezra, ansky, krantz, a lady friend of krantz’s and I went out to a nice Italian restaurant in the city. It was one of the best Italian dishes I’ve ever had, but the service was sub par to average.  I’ve met ansky and whitelime before, but this was my first time meeting the other two.  Maybe now that I’ve had dinner with the two sickos who are up more than $3M over the past month and a half they can pass some run-good to me.

Lately Anita and I have been picking out wedding songs and finalizing the guest list, as well as planning for our bachelor/bachelorette parties and other miscellaneous wedding stuff.  That’s been keeping us very occupied.  The wedding will obviously have a good number of poker people at it. I am very excited and looking forward to it.

Poker has been a hassle lately.  My main problem has been getting all in on the turn with a set against an overpair, and each time they seem to spike their 2 outer on the river.  It seems like every time I’m in that situation and the river card appears, I end up blinking repeatedly in disbelief that the same thing could happen so many times in a row.  I also just can’t seem to find hands to extract quality value from, even though the games seem to have been good lately.  I do plan to be playing in some very big live games in the near future in Miami and Europe.  More details to come.

I went to a coffee shop cafe with a few friends today. It was a really nice place. They had high def big screens all over the walls, their own wireless internet, and tons of models wearing skimpy clothes walking around. This was a nice change of pace for environment for me to play in. Usually, I am couped up at my house grinding the hours away. However, I felt a lot more relaxed and calm.

The day ended up really well. I put in an hour session there and ended up $25k. I enjoyed putting on a little show for my friends who grind lower stakes. I don’t know for sure if it was the relaxed atmosphere, my weak opponents, or just standard variance. I think I will be going back a few times at least to find out.

FTOPS and WCOOP are right around the corner and I am busy getting ready for them. It should be a great time for online poker.

I’ve been in FL since Tues morning. I’ve been organizing my life a bit and playing poker/watching the markets. The markets have been entertaining this week. I’m going to start trading actively with my friend Bob Bright at www.stocktrading.com. It’s kind of a pain to get set-up (you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork and take the Series7) but it has huge benefits over a standard account (namely, the possibility of up to 30X leverage). Another benefit is that you become classified as a professional trader (allowing you to deduct all trading-related expenses and, most importantly, allowing you to list a net gain/loss number on your tax forms rather than individually listing a huge number of transactions).

I’m up 50k on my recent online poker stint. I lost 100k on FT and went up 150k on Stars (mostly against TheRealAndyBeal). I’ll try to get some decent hand histories up soon.

Brandon

I posted an article with a link the other day to Bill Simmons’ excellent analysis of the Tim Donaghy situation on ESPN.com (it’s here if you haven’t read it yet). The bottom line, in Simmons’ eyes, is that this really isn’t surprising, and in some ways, expected.

I was speaking with a friend a couple of days ago, and asked him “What are the chances that Donaghy’s really the only one, as David Stern is trying to paint him to be?” My friend paused on the other end of the phone for about 15 seconds, and said, “Remote.” I’m pretty sure he was thinking of the same circumstance I’m about to tell you, because I think he was the one who told me the story in the first place.

Close to 20 years ago, the radio play-by-play guy for an NBA team was let go without warning. I won’t name the team or the announcer, because I don’t want to implicate the wrong guy (I’m 99% sure I remember who he is…it’s the 1% that doesn’t want to look like a libelous prick). This announcer was let go for placing wagers on NBA games, including the ones involving his employer. He obviously had a lot of inside information at his disposal…being a member of the media, he had access to the locker rooms, team trainers, etc. But he spent much of his time snooping around the one place he had no reason to be…the officials’ locker room.

Now tell me…what OTHER information might the officials know that NOBODY else knows…?

Like I said, this was quite a few years back…anyone think that circumstances have changed? In the age of communication, it’s easier than ever to place money on a game with a strong degree of anonymity. Tim Donaghy’s anonymity would have been kept if he wasn’t stupid enough to piss off a mob-backed bookie. What’s more likely: he was the only one, or the others are just smarter about how they do their business?

I was doing a little research for the site and decided to Google the term “poker” one of my friends runs a site called www.poker-seo.com and he is fascinated by the results and how and why they change. I am a huge fan of Google but I think they are making a mistake caving in to the US government as it relates to pay per click ads related to gambling. It’s not that they shouldn’t be able to run their business any way they please; it’s more that they are being forced to censor speech. You see not all businesses that relate to poker promote online gambling. So if you want to buy clicks for the term “poker” and you sell poker tables, you are out of luck. That is not how a free market economy should work. That is not what America should be about.

Now I knew that Google was putting a stop to Gambling ads but the extent that they went seems extreme. How extreme? Here are some Google results for Poker:

http://tinyurl.com/39prhl

Here is Roulette:

http://tinyurl.com/2ss95

What you should be noticing is that on the right there are no ads. Not even for sites or products that don’t advertise online poker. None. Now in contrast here are just a couple of terms that Google does allow advertising buys for.

Fisting:

http://tinyurl.com/2t9ske

Anal Rape:

http://tinyurl.com/34jdkb

I apologize about the graphic nature of this post but the post is not as effective without contrast. Google is scared shitless that the government is going to come down on the biggest entity to benefit if anything ever went down with the DOJ. What a shame, Google’s slogan of “don’t be evil” should be replaced with “kowtowing to evil”.

I wasn’t always a winning player and early on I gave a lot of action when I was losing. I read a lot of books and such but that all went out the window when I was down, I would start chasing and I would lose. No amount of good days offset those dramatic bad days; I was also young and ill tempered when I lost. Which was Okay; even though I should have behaved better the loser gets to whine a little, every hustler knows this so they let it happen. It always helps the loser (or Mark) to feel better about themselves as they take that long ride home.

It wasn’t long before I learned to be more disciplined and began to eek out small profits. While I wasn’t 1/10^th of the player I am now the players were bad and just a little hand selection coupled with some discipline made me a slight winner. Slight meant I still whined. No one likes to lose but I often felt guilty about my behavior no matter how it may have been perceived (people always said it wasn’t as bad as I thought). Now though, it changed, you see winners can’t whine, winners also can’t taunt if you are a winner you should shut the fuck up and count your money at the end of the year. The guys who ran the game made sure I knew this, otherwise, I wouldn’t be invited. That was almost 15 years ago.

I have talked about this a lot and I don’t think I will ever stop. This site is for everyone, winners and losers alike. Too often poker websites become all about winning and actually, in my opinion, shame losers into leaving the game. In my world I know a lot of very successful people that don’t need to win at poker and so it isn’t as important to them. Even in my case I gamble on things I don’t have an edge in and I don’t think that makes me a bad person and certainly I wouldn’t like to be taunted as I was doing it. Really, do you ever see that? After someone deals a Blackjack against your 20 you might rip their fuckin throat out if they did a rain dance afterwards.

Yet in poker it happens all the time. I am not referring to Humberto Brenes or many of the other people who are trying to capitalize on their fame. I am talking about the nit that plays straight up and only shows the nuts, meanwhile he occasionally jabs the bad players, in poker parlance we refer to that as “tapping the glass”.

Today I was playing and one of the guys that likes to gamble up and left the table after he was tired of being put down by a regular for playing bad. Which surprised me a little so I opened chat to see what happened, sure enough the gambler was chased away by the nit. I then saw that the gambler was sitting at another table so I stopped by and asked what was up. He confirmed that he will not play in a game with the nit. Which is certainly cool by me, the nit often says stupid shit to me that is annoying but I would crush him in almost any scenario. Only thing is, there isn’t a lot of profit in beating nits. So I played this other guy and he beat me out of about a dime before the phone took me away from the game. I have kept chat closed lately but I let him know not to bother with the nit, the nit is just an angry old man with nothing better to do than snap at people on the internet.

Another thing is that when you play short handed a gambler actually is playing pretty close to right. Not a lot of nits want to play against a gambler in this situation. But hustlers will. Next time you talk shit to a fish think about what that makes you and maybe you will never do it again.

This will be my last update giving bankroll figures. Today I left at a high water mark of 15k, couple that with the 5k I started with and you have yourself more than 300 big bets, what most pros consider an acceptable bankroll. I only began to mention the bankroll figures as context to my story about running good. Now that the context is gone I will just focus on the circumstances around the play unless the amounts become a part of the story again. It is somewhat emasculating being a mid limit grinder in a blog with some big ballers but I hope it helps to get lots of different points of view. While it’s great to hear that Brandon has won 500k I would imagine more people can relate to what my situation and games are.

The online poker scene, for better or worse, is full of people who severely lacking the social graces that would allow them to succeed in many professions. They’re smart and creative enough to do anything, but they can’t or won’t bring those skills out of the living room. The lifestyle of an online pro fosters a daily routine where you have face-to-face interactions with almost no one. You can verbalize any thoughts, react however you want, without fear of retribution or comeuppance. Adding to the twist on reality is that someone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars before their 21st birthday. It’s surreal and bizarre.

Now, take the person who never has to think about speaking or behaving to anyone’s approval at their chosen profession…and change the scene. They’re playing the same game, with the same thought processes…only now, EVERYONE is judging their speech and behavior. Not only are they scrutinized on a hand-by-hand basis (i.e. “How does he play?”), but for the future (i.e. “Would I want to play with him again?”). Online players tend to worry a great deal about the former. The truth is that the latter is a LOT more important.

James Acquaintance told me that the most important aspect of gambling is controlling your image. If you want to craft a look or carriage to try and generate action, fine. But at the very least, you want to be someone that others want to be around - if you’re not outwardly inviting them, at least you’re not repelling them and their money. If you scream when you win a pot, if you’re obnoxious, if you haven’t showered in awhile…you’re driving people away.

So what would James Acquaintance tell Hevad “Rain” Khan or any of the online pros who put some players around them on edge? Act like you’re playing poker at your grandmother’s house, surrounded by breakable things. You can still say something insightful, even a little controversial. You can react and let your emotions run a little free. But get too loud, and she’ll shush you. Get too rude, and you’ll get a bar of Ivory in your mouth. And jump up and run around, and you’ll break her collection of crystal teddy bears…and then not even the Good Lord can protect you.

I have maintained about 13k up since I got my money on Bodog last Tuesday.  What a struggle though for the last few days.  Certainly over 6 days I would be very happy with my result but the extremes are well EXTREME.  As I mentioned I started off up 5k on the first day and got to 13k in the next 3 days, my lowest downswing was about $3,500 from my peek.  One of the things I do really well is I play a lot when I have some momentum.  I certainly have had a lot of evidence that my momentum is gone.  So let me tell you something I heard a long time ago and I repeat often.  Roy Cooke once wrote an article about his very first lesson in poker, basically when he was playing and made a bad call one of the players berated him asking “what were you thinking?” and right then he got his first lesson in poker, that he should be thinking.  I rely on that when I get frustrated because its not a given that everyone is thinking and if that is indeed the case that is a good thing.

Every summer my wife and I are religious about the show Big Brother, it’s not as good as the England version because basically no one has sex, or if they do they don’t show too much of it.  I usually think I can win show if I ever got on but in reality I don’t think I could make it past week 2.  My wife on the other hand would be a shoe in to win.  Basically anyone who avoids conflict typically does well yet every season people come in ready to battle.  Meanwhile some person that you don’t even know is even on the show wins the thing.  Thus far it hasn’t been that entertaining and Dick seems to be making the same mistakes everyone always makes.  He will be gone within weeks.  My early vote is on Jessica since I barely have seen her on the show.  They did have a cool twist; there is a secret player that does “America’s” dirty work.  That is a lot better than the recent twists they have had.

As you can tell from Brandon’s blog when the WSOP ends it’s not really over, especially when you are not from Las Vegas because everyone back home wants to know how things went.  I clearly don’t have the kinds of regrets Brandon has because I didn’t go very far but you think about hands a lot.  Being an early chip leader people keep asking how I lost all of those chips and if you have never played a big chip tourney you might not completely get it.  One or two bad things going the wrong way and your tournament can be over. 

I leave for Alaska to go whale watching next Friday.  It has become a small tradition to do a family vacation after the WSOP is over and I can not wait.

Here’s a hand that sticks with me…..

Background…. coming back from a break, I talk for five minutes with a nice Danish guy from my table who convinces me that his primary concern is climbing up in the money (at this point there are about 140 players left and the money jumps are significant).

An hour later, he raises and I call from the BB with KsJs. The flop comes Kd6h8h. I check, he bets just over the pot, I call. The turn is a 3s. I check, he bets about the size of the pot. I have a fairly strong sense that he’s bluffing. I’m not sure enough to move in or to check with the intention of calling almost any river, but I’m pretty sure he’s weak. I call. The turn is a 9s. I check and he moves all-in for about the size of the pot. A call would leave me with 90,000 or so. I think his bet was 310,000.

So here’s the thing… I’m pretty sure he’s bluffing. That should have been overwhelmingly the most important decision variable. But…. I just couldn’t see this guy bluffing off his tournament after our conversation (and based on what I had seen from his play). My mind was fighting itself….. “surely this guy is bluffing. just look at him. but would this guy really bluff himself out of the tournament?” Ultimately I decided that the answer to that last question was “no”. I folded and he showed A9. Kenny says that after my conversation with the guy during the break, I should have leaned strongly towards a call.

Brandon

It’s time to go home. I played in the Venetian game from 2pm Sat until 2pm Sun (won big), and then I slept from 3.30pm until 8am Monday. I’m taking off at 11pm tonight. Vegas has been great but I think I’m a bit worn down at the moment. I came down with a cold last week that’s getting progressively worse. We didn’t keep to the drinking game thing. Bob and I had a couple of glasses early but then everyone else kind of bailed on it. -BA

In an ESPN.com chat the day before the Main Event, PPV commentator Ali Nejad said the following in response to a question about online pro Hevad “Rain” Khan:

“He definitely is way over the top with respect to table etiquette…and not in the Hellmuth sort of way. My feeling is that he isn’t pandering to the camera but genuinely passionate and emotional. That said, there has to be a limit to what the tournament directors will put up with. I’d heard that many of the younger players were also being disrespectful during the series, saying things like “ship it” after winning pots. It is really important that in a competitive endeavor like poker that for so long was viewed as attractive only to shady and questionable characters we maintain a semblance of protocol and respect. Do your part!”

I think, overall, I agree with Nejad…but there’s several key points to make:

1) Nejad implying that Phil Hellmuth denigration and embarassment of other players at the table is somehow MORE acceptable than Nejad’s high-volume exuberance is just wrong. Words cannot express how much I disagree with that sentiment. There is NO greater sin we can make, as a poker community, than to allow hurtful and disrespectful speech. If a terrible player with a lot of money decides not to play another big buy-in event because Phil Hellmuth ragged on them for six hours, it wasn’t fun for them, so they’re taking their disposable income somewhere else…that’s an atrocity.

2) Many of the players that we hold near and dear were also some of the most abusive…Johnny Moss, John Bonetti, Stu Ungar, Puggy Pearson and many others are famous for crucifying dealers, floormen, other players. Stu Ungar was almost unable to repeat as champion in 1981 when Benny Binion kicked him out of the Horseshoe for spitting in a dealer’s face. It took a great deal of persuasion from Jack Binion, convincing his father’s of the PR fiasco if Ungar couldn’t defend, to get Stuey back in the building. So I find it really interesting that it takes an online player to get people considering a wholesale change in table talk…prejudice?

3) Any changes have to come from within the tournament directors’ ranks. Drafting fair legislation to balance out the psychology of table talk v. what should be intolerable is important, and should be a #1 priority of a group like Jesse Jones’ WPA.

4) The online world is going to have to make some adjustments when it comes to the world of live poker. I understand that the socially maladjusted or downright weird are drawn to the online universe, and many of them have the focus and drive to succeed at poker. It takes a special gift to play 24+ tables at a time. But you’re killing your action if you’re annoying, obnoxious, or oblivious to what is expected of you as a player in a live setting. I wonder what Professor James Acquaintance would have said if he met some of the “characters” that are populating today’s poker world…maybe we’ll take a guess at that another time.

One of the reasons for this site was to be an example to newer players that the poker and gambling lifestyle should be fun.  It’s way too easy to get caught up in the negativity involved with winning and losing, mostly the losing, the winning is typically the fun part.  And poker players are sometimes the worst hosts for new players.  Well last night I was chatting with a friend and had the typical “Hey Beanie, stick around, I need to pay my mortgage this month”, something silly like that.  Eventually we all laughed it off and had a good time but it is funny the things people will say protected by a computer.  I don’t mean to insinuate that I am intimidating enough that you wouldn’t in real life, it would just be common courtesy to be civil.

So today was another example.  The details are annoyingly unimportant, needless to say if I don’t know you I likely want be responding to your chat.  Nothing personal, I am just tired of a lot of nonsense and it is negative life EV to have chat open while I am playing.

Today was my first loss this week.  I lost $2500, so I am back to 11k.  Bodog pretty much runs like that.  Either you are going to win 3k or loss 3k.  Rarely is anything else part of the equation.

Often people will look at pot size to determine whether or not a game is good but if the pots are being built by one or 2 people raising and reraising I would argue that isn’t the best game. The BEST games are passive games where no one is raising and you take the lead. If you play low limit you likely recognize these games. You don’t often see that type of behavior at the higher limits (15-30 and above for limit and 5-10 or above for no limit) but when you do the game is great. That won’t be the case most often however, the majority of the time a good to great game involves one or 2 crazies. Crazies, might actually be winning players because a lot of guys don’t know how to play them and are scared to gamble. The difference between Crazies and good players is not that different, Crazies reraise a lot and so do good players. You’ll often see novices call reraises from Crazies with hands like KK or QQ when they should be pushing back at them. If you are in a game with a crazy make a point to three bet them a lot, most often you will have the best hand and at the very least the crazy player might begin to give you a pass. Also don’t be afraid to “walk the dog” (call) with a crazy when they want to take the lead, their hand is typically worse than yours so you don’t want to lose their action.

I am up 11k (edit $13,500) for the last 5 days on Bodog. I just saw something funny; some internet wunderkind began to berate a frequent player. Instead of countering his taunts the guy just bought in for his whole Bodog bankroll, 32k. It didn’t shut up the kid but it was at least a little funny. That is actually one of the great things about Bodog, because the games are so soft a lot of losers from other sites win on Bodog. So their ego gets big. Under normal circumstances that player is a loser and may even lack some life skills. I don’t think I have ever seen a site with more taunting than Bodog and for a good player that is usually a good sign.

Today is splurge day (for my diet), actually the last few days I haven’t been able to stick to my diet the way that I would like (we had reservations for about 3 months at a swanky restaurant for date night and last night we ate at Ruth’s Chris before the Michael Buble’ concert). It’s ironic that I used to think eating was one of the most pleasurable things you can do for yourself. After a few days of eating bad I am looking forward to getting back on track. Thursday I go in for my physical and I am excited about the status report from all of my hard work. I have been exercising a bit more but I am waiting until I get back from Alaska to begin working on my shoulder. I am going to have the doctor take a look at it before I move forward.

Some time this week I plan on doing a vblog about the site and the direction moving forward. We are getting a lot of daily hits and the site isn’t 20% of what it will be, so I think it will be fun to clue people in on what our plans are.