A Pumpkin, a New Computer, and a Dream

If you’ve read my PokerStars “Anatomy of a Sunday Grind” column over the last few months, you will have noticed one particularly spooky villain haunting me over and over: my computer.  Probably months after I should have, I finally accepted that I needed a new gaming machine.

However, shipping to Mexico is a complex and somewhat unreliable process, so I decided to take a short vacation with Collin to San Diego to get a computer.

When I got to San Diego, my new computer had arrived at my hotel!  I ended up getting an upgraded Valkyrie from iBuyPower, which is a company a lot like Alienware—minus the out of this world logo. It was love at first click!

Playing with a solid state drive and great graphics card makes a huge difference.  I had been a little bit nervous about having an expensive laptop shipped to my hotel, but that was crazy of me.  The US Grant is my favorite hotel, and I always stay there when I take a little trip to San Diego.

To put it in poker terms, their hospitality is almost as good as PokerStars’ customer service!  Once I lost my wallet at the the US Grant, and before I’d even notified them, someone on the staff came to my room to give it to me—and refused a tip despite there being enough cash in their to bankroll an entire Sunday!

Rosarito is fun and relaxing, but isn’t exactly a shopping destination— well except for tequila and piñatas.  When I lived in the US, I was always the kind of shopper that made a list, picked up the things I need, and left.  Now though, I could spend hours reveling in the many colorful displays of things I don’t actually need at a Target. Aisles of glittery stickers! Bath towels in every shade of the rainbow!  Knee socks in more patterns than I knew existed!

Another thing I appreciate about going to the US are the bath tubs.  Don’t get me wrong, I stop playing poker long enough to bathe here—our shower could fit about half the grinders in Rosarito in it—but it’s a common phenomenon to not have baths in the complexes on the beach here.

While in San Diego, I took advantage of the awesome bathtub in my hotel room, throwing in two neon bath bombs and a leftover ½ bottle of champagne. It was like being inside of a fizzy orange!

Besides splurging on a salted caramel sundae at the Ghirardelli store in Gaslamp, my favorite thing to do in San Diego is go to the zoo.  This time, I got to pet a pony that was also named Katie…I wonder if she plays poker under a “jenny” alias as well!

After a massive shopping trip to stock up on things that the US has better versions of (ranging from paper towels that actually absorb spilled liquid to arugula) my short trip was over.

When we got back to Mexico, Collin got a mass email for Supernovas from PokerStars about how they are taking applications until November 3^rd for people that meet a few requirements.  The only one of those that I don’t meet is being a Supernova—since I still have about 10k VPPs to go.

Initially I’d planned on hitting Supernova in time for the November 16^th freeroll, but becoming a member of Team Online is my biggest dream in poker.  It would be a great opportunity to help me continue on the big goal I started working on this summer: trying to help poker become a nicer place and getting rid of the negativity that that still sometimes haunts the game.

In order to get to apply, I’ll have to play more tournaments in the next week than there were calories in that giant salted caramel Sundae I ate back in San Diego!  But considering that it is my number one dream in poker to have a shot at getting Team Online, the decision to Grindette to oblivion for the next week is one of the easiest I will ever make. And now that I have a computer that (fingers crossed) can handle 35-tabling as well as I can, hopefully I have a shot!

Happy Halloween!