Birthday is OVER, off to the Holiday races!! (Wherein I officially start to celebrate Christmas, hit the road to see family and friends and try not to make an ass out of myself at any social function.)

For those of us born near Christmas (and I can't imagine the peril for folks born inside a week of - on ON - 'the big day') there is a bit of a double edged sword syndrome to your birthday celebrations. It is a problem about as old as the gift giving tradition has been attached to an otherwise perfectly good religious holiday I imagine. Parents split gift days, pretend to 'double up' on 'value', tell the kids its just a "tough spot" and all kinds of things. Personally, I think people make too big of a deal out of birthdays ANYWAY, so this is not the most awful of problems by a long shot. No, its merely an annoyance that needs a creative solution. The Piggy helps me out by celebrating a HALF birthday somewhere in July and that has been VERY successful over the past couple of years. Mostly due to the fact that the weather does not suck and we end up going out camping or to a ballgame or something. For all its worth, that time has past and I can officially start feeling the holiday spirit!

Piggy and I went out and got a tree and have spruced up the house with little bits here and there and even a wreath and some lights on our foggy front door step. It is a bit of a condensed gesture (I have to concede to decorating outside of my preset 'holiday boycott' to make it work) as we are hitting the road soon, but I think the place looks amazing! Hopefully one of us will put up pictures soon. We also had the staff Holiday Festivities here...they were a Mexican Fiesta theme! Ole'!! That, I do have a picture of!


Anyway, I am off to see the little otter and maybe a little bit of down home. I am hoping beyond hope that the weather tries to hold up for us this year and it has gotten all the really bad crap our of its system already. Getting stuck somewhere in an ice storm and staring at a hotel wall for hours on in would not make me a happy boy. I'll be seeing my lady's family in PA as well. I wish it was baseball season so we could see the newly formed Iron Pigs throw it around, but that probably won't happen. We tossed around the idea of seeing the Eagles play live but the expected weather is less than friendly, so we will look for other forms of entertainment. GAH! So much of this depends on the weather. Good thing card rooms stay open in inclement weather.

Speaking of which...I think I have come to terms with the fact that my tournament game has fallen off steeply. Either from lack of practice, lack of focus, wanting to get too fancy with things that just don't work with a typical local player...or just plain old running horrible. I am currently 2/12 on cashes with almost all but one of those being deep runs with death before the money...usually on bad beats. However, if I was playing better, I should have had the chips to combat that. Some retooling is in order. In the meanwhile, I have turned up the frequency and the profitability on my cash game. It might be that is my solution, but what are you going to do when you love tournament play so much? Ah well, maybe Santa will bring me a lucky streak for Christmas and I'll stop whining about things.