AimlesslyChasingAmy

When I was making my decision, now 14 years ago, to move to Austin, I rented the movie Slacker.  I wasn’t ready to embrace a lifestyle that was sustained by selling Madonna’s pap smear or where an inordinate amount of time was spent in the conspiracy section of Half Price Books - but I was ready to embrace the city that embraced the people who did.

I wanted to move to a town where high tech big corp wasn’t my only option.  And on my move, I gave myself three more years to work in Big Blue’s version of Tron; it was actually three and a half years later that I would quit and start to embrace the lifestyle that would have scared me to my rigid, security driven, core a decade earlier.  I’ve been a slacker now for over ten years.  I have hung out in the conspiracy section of Half Price Books.  Frugal by nature, and I suspect genetics, I have learned to eek out a living on next to nothing.  Goodwill and craigslist are my malls.  But sometimes even a slacker needs more.  After fourteen years (and three cats) in my house, my carpeting had given up the good fight (another good movie btw).

So as I spent seven weeks in Vegas this summer - the only place hotter than Austin - one of my motivations was flooring.  This week I was able to install a new floating cork floor in my music/dining room (that would be a living room and a dining room to most people).  I definitely didn’t want more carpet.  Stone or tile was acoustically all wrong for the space.  And while I like the warmth of hardwood, I wanted to be a little greener with my choice.  The travertine tile installation in the family room and kitchen will have to wait until I have more energy and time.

The poker boyz often shock, but never disappoint, me.  So I was a little taken aback when I realized wildbill, one of the more spontaneous and portable of the boyz, was temporarily unhinged by being unemployed and homeless for about six whole days.  It seems the wildone found a much better paying gig and decided to make the move.  In tendering his two week notice, the company that he had dedicated his life to for so long gave him the instantaneous boot.  Even with new contract in hand, wildbill was positively uneasy about not being in a continuous state of employment.  I had to actually talk him down for a couple of days.  And I felt like I had failed him as a friend.  Wildbill took me under his wing and taught me everything he knows about comp whoring.  How could I have not shared the secrets of the slacker lifestyle with bill?  I have vowed that by the time wildbill is ready for early retirement, I will have completed his slacking education.  On the plus side, wildbill’s cross country move took about 83 hours to execute; affirming, once again, his portability.

I’m happy to report that Pauly and Chane100 are finally taking a break from slacking and are working their fingers to the bone, reporting on the EPT in Barcelona.  Check out their coverage at PokerNews.

And I know that most of you, except my mother, aren’t into my investing content.  And my mother confessed she only likes it because ”at least I’m not writing about my boobs.”  But, like poker, there are winners and losers in the market.  One of the stocks that has performed nicely for me this month is Southern Company.  It seems like all that hot weather in G-Vegas paid off for me.  Sorry your loss was my gain Otis.