There are certain people in your life that you meet and feel so lucky to have happened to cross paths with because they're the masters of what they do and are willing to take the time to teach you.

That's how I felt when I met Jacob, feeling desperate to learn the guitar and he had the tools to teach me how to do it. I spent a half an hour each week with him and he'd give me as much information as possible to practice and process the following week. After doing this for months and months I finally got to the point I was able to teach myself new songs and didn't really need lessons anymore. But those ten months or so that I did put my all into-- writing down and following every detail of the lesson, practicing three hours a day, not letting anything discourage me... is what got me to where I am today on the guitar.

...Another random person that inspires me, "Deelishis", not only because she has a bodacious a** but because of her amazingly confident personality in Flavor of Love (I've been watching that since it's leaked onto Youtube recently, nostalgia crack much?)

So I will of course be eternally grateful to Jacob for getting me over that intial "hump" that gave me the tools to teach myself. It makes me shudder to think of what might have happened if I hadn't been at that music store that day and met Jake in the first place. I could have ended up with another dead end instructor that had no idea what kind of motivation I needed. It's luck.

And in the same sense I feel this way about Ed. Back when I was 19 or so and had Math 96 with him I could see he was a good person and he could see that I was intelligent. After that class we of course lost touch but I added him on facebook. About a year ago he'd randomly came up on my news feed when I saw he had his first daughter (which led me to checking out his facebook to see that he'd fallen in love with a pretty girl about a year back, was still managing at some casino, etc..) and I messaged him to congratulate him.

Maybe that's been why he's been willing to take me on as a dealer at Lucky Bridge Casino. Because I absolutely suck. The other night Ed had me come over to his Dad's bar and help them out but having a *very* mediocre knowledge of the motions of the game and what winning hands are made it a very slow (and stressful) process. On top of that I had these really nice dudes that wanted me to chill out buying me drinks which I happily accepted and ended up getting too drunk to drive home until I threw up in the bathroom.* Beautiful. 

So yeah. I've just been practicing poker online against the computer any chance I can. I've been working at Caesars a lot lately and started my accounting 305 class so I've been keeping pretty busy.

In other news my birthday is coming in three days. Two days in two hours. I get paid tomorrow so I'm considering planning a party but I've gotta figure out what my work schedule is for the next week. Having a party should really be at the bottom of my priority list when I've got so much at stake right now. Like tomorrow I've got my first accounting homework and quiz due at 9, I got invited to a birthday party at 4 pm and I might get asked to come in and job train more. I don't know. tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.


peace. 

Today was a hard day.

You guys know me, I'm a perfectionist. When it takes longer than I want to get things up to the standard I expect, I get frustrated. Today was kind of one of those days. It was my third day receiving poker dealing training at the casino and I grew anxious and frustrated when I felt like I wasn't getting things at the speed I should be.

Alright I need to back up. . .

My friend Ed invited me in for an interview a few days ago for a dealer position. My parents and I both assumed it was Blackjack so I did a lot of research on that before the interview. Ed then informed me that I would actually be auditioning for a position dealing poker. I have never played poker in my life. Or dealt with cards, really.

So everything was (and still for the most part is...) totally new to me and I'm trying to process a ton of information at once as well as use these little tricks required to deal in this game. I'm really lucky though because Ed is like... the coolest guy ever. He's someone I went to school with at CBC (nostalgia moment: we actually briefly hung out after class at some neat park in Kennewick and smoked a couple times. . . Back in like Spring 2012. At the time I was taking math 96 with Professor Zhang. Shawn sat next to Ed and in front of us sat the *probably* autistic guy that used to stick his hands down his pants in broad daylight. On my left was Josh F., who I now work with at Little Caesers-- small world. That's where I -also- met Cory B.... who led me to meet Guy S. which led to a *very* interesting summer.)

Anyway like I was saying about Ed, he's like this 30-some year old guy that recently got married and has two daughters. He's worked for a lot of different management because he's really good at what he does. He's also a good teacher. He's been really good at teaching me the game itself. Technique on some things he's been really helpful on, like this neat card fanning trick for aesthetic purposes. It's way harder than it looks.

So challenge #1, aside from being able to quickly shuffle the cards, organize the cards, and understand how to play the game when I'm still get confused on the terminology...

MAKE THIS PRETTY RAINBOW

From what I've seen all of the poker dealers are men but Ed brought me and this other girl Maria in to train for awhile. Maria has been messing around with cards since she was 9 so she knows how to properly pitch them, shuffle quickly, knows how to play etc etc... She's pretty and seems really intelligent.

Anyway I'm gonna hit it. Today was a shitty day at Caesers because I had to stay for 6 hours and didn't have much food in me so I got really cranky and down on myself. Now that I've eaten and talked to my mom I feel better. This is just another one of those things that if I really work at it I can achieve. 

peace.