Valentine's Day

I spent the first part of the morning with Debbie, catching up with her after my having gone for the week before at Esalen. I told her Esalen stories, and also about how things are developing with my new sweetie Lynn, whom I had visited on my drive home the afternoon before.

We went out to breakfast, and then drove in two cars to return the car I had rented for my trip down the coast. From there, I dropped Deb off at the BART station so she could be Girl Editor at a writer's conference in the city.

Genuinely on my own for the first time in a week, I headed to the Oaks Club, and sat down in a brand-new 15-30 hold'em game. (It was old enough, though, that I had to post behind the button to get a hand.) I started out with mediocre luck, having my QQ cracked by AK (I got cute and checkraised the flop when an ace flopped, silly me). But then Lynda Ebner sat down in the box to deal, and my luck turned. The deck ran over me like a Mack truck while she dealt.

I had been chatting with her, asking if she had gotten any valentines. She answered that Wayne, the shift manager, had brought a large box of chocolates and the staff had decimated it in just a few minutes. She dealt me a winning hand: suited AK flopped top pair. Then, in the big blind, I caught the king and queen of spades, with five limpers – in the 15-30 game! – so naturally I raised. The flop came low and rainbow, with one card of my suit, and I figured that overcards plus a backdoor flush draw was enough for checking and calling one bet. The nine of spades fell on the turn, so I was committed to see the river, which obliged me by also being a spade. Dennis Dahlgren paid me off. I said to Lynda, "What sort of chocolates do you like?" "See's," she said without missing a beat.

I kept winning, sometimes outrageously, such as when pocket eights beat 5-3 when the board was 4 5 6 7, as well as more than my fair share of hands like AK, AQ, and AJ that flopped top pair and held up. By the time Lynda's push came along, my stack had grown from $400 to $1200.

At two o'clock, I picked up my chips, now more than $1300 worth, even though one of the local live ones (who had won the Oaks' tournament the previous Wednesday) sat down. Juicy though the prospect was of playing with him, I had more errands to run.

Off to the Berkeley Farmer's Market to get ingredients for dinner: Andouille sausage, garlic, and crimini mushrooms for a spaghetti sauce; some mixed greens for a salad, and a dozen roses as a Valentine's offering for D. Potter. I took a side trip to See's Candy, on Shattuck, to get boxes of chocolate: one each for Debbie and for Lynda Ebner. Hey, an $800 down on Valentine's Day is worth a box of chocolates.

I went back to the Oaks, only to find that Lynda had left early. The dealer captain said that he could make sure she got her box of chocolates. From there I went to D.'s apartment, to deliver the roses. D was not home, so I left the flowers on her bed, next to her iBook, and went home.

I went home, and began the long, slow process of getting caught up with my LiveJournal friends list. The process was all the slower because Lynn showed up on IM and we chatted through the afternoon, until it was time for each of us to start dinner. Somewhere along the line, D. crept in through the front door and up the stairs, leaving a bouquet of flowers on the newell post. I didn't find this out until she told me when I called her later. The sneak.

I fixed, as I said, a spaghetti sauce with Andouille sausage, onions, and mushrooms. Debbie came home shortly after seven, and we ate at about 8:00. afterwards, my lack of sleep from the previous week caught up with me, and I fell over.

All in all, a whole lot of love in the day. And a juicy win at the poker table. A person can't ask for much more than that.