July 16th, 2009

Quick update:

1) I moved to Boulder, Colorado in mid-May. I can't stand to live with my parents more than about a week and so exactly 7 days after moving out of my apartment, I packed up my gear with what meager possions I have and took off for Colorado. It took 23 hours of solid driving with a few breaks to let Sam out.

2) I love Boulder. I tell everybody it is my slice of heaven. I moved into a house with 4 other people. Two are assholes and hate me for no reason that I know of. And they don't clean up after themselves AT ALL. I'm talking just getting food and dishes out and not even making the attempt. I also would like to know whats going through their mind. Obviously I don't like them much. But the house itself is cool, albeit dirty. Sammy has two doggy friends and a huge backyard to play. Trails abound only a 5 minute walk from my house and I consequently take Sammy on a lot of walks.

3) There is also good rock climbing. Really good. Really close. A 5 minute drive and a two minute walk takes you to world class granite, sandstone and volcanic cliffs that tower 500-1000 feet in the air. And I've climbed a lot of them. All I do here is climb. I had a 13 day stretch where I climbed at least 6 hours everyday, without a break. It was super intense and needless to say, I slept well. It's hard to express how amazing the rock climbing is here.

4) I guess this is sort of a poker blog so I should at the veery least mention it. Umm....when I first got here I played a couple days of tournies because I didn't have any friends and finally swept a 1st place for like $5k. And I think I FT'd 5 or 6 in a pretty short period as well and ended up making quite a bit of cash. I logged on for the first time in about a month and swept some dude for $900 in about 15 mins. It was nice cause it paid for my sister's two week stay here where I paid for the 6 days a week we ate out. Coming off two years in a poor country like Moldova, my sister can spend a lot of money.

5) I finally made the trip to Seattle to visit Becky and climb Mt. Baker. We succesful summitted without any big set backs. We did get lost on the way back and ended up hiking about 18 hours in one day, like ~15 miles and about 13,000 vertical feet. But it was really good. Really good. So good I asked her if she could go anywhere in the world, where would she go. She said NZ. So we talked about it a bit more, for maybe 5 minutes, and bought two tickets to New Zealand. We leave Sept 26th and our return date is Feb 28th, 2010 but that very well might get pushed back a couple months if we need more time.

The plan is to rock climb, surf, climb mountains (20 mountains over 10,000 feet; our goal being Mt. Cook at 12,300 and pretty technical), tramping (backpacking), ice climbing and learn to base jump/sky dive. Also caving and kayacking. And other extreme sports like bungee jumping. Snowboarding, cross-country sking and probably snow shoeing. Everything! It's going to be such a sick trip. I'm so excited-- I want to leave right now.

I think that's about it for updates. Sam is doing good. My sister was kicked out of the peace corps for taking a two day trip to the beach. It's pretty shitty but now she is back in the US and was just accepted to University of Colorado, Denver. I'm super excited because it gives me a good excuse to return to CO.

Rocking in a $10r PLO and $50r right now. 52/70 in PLO and 91/119 in the $50. Guess not so rocking, better actually focus and pay attention now.