Truckin'

If you don't read Truckin' every month, you're missing out on some fantastic stories. I told my dad over Christmas that the story he told me about driving home drunk as a skunk from Indiana on leave from the Army in the 50s had been published on the internet, and he was tickled pink. I think he'd approve of all of this month's stories. Go check 'em out.

On a related note, the Good Dr. and Change100 are down under as part of the PokerNews coverage team for the Aussie Millions. You can find their live updates here, along with my daily recaps, which means that my little writing vacation is now officially over. I'll also be doing recaps of the events for PokerWorks, so check out Linda's space as well. I've been on a writing for hire hiatus for a couple of weeks, but it looks like January is getting busy. Which is good, since I did just buy a car and all. It's great having their live updates to pull from as I write my recaps, they make my life easier.

Alrighty, spent all morning redoing my wireless network at home, so now I'm going to do some really exciting shopping. I need a shelf for my office and some drawers to organize cables. Yep, life of excitement, that's me. But really, I've bought pretty much every cool new toy I could want, so now I just need to clean up my house so I can find and use them all! So in answer to StB's question - I'm sure there is a toy I don't have, but only because I haven't decided I really want it yet.

I made a list of all the travel and home improvement stuff I want to do this year, then balanced it all against my typical household income. Looking at that, I really hope there continue to be lots of big poker tournaments all over the world, because Johnny needs the mobneys. Here's a partial list -

1) New Stove - our stove took a shit about 3 years ago. Obviously I'm no BG or Astin in the culinary department, but that might be a little long to cook everything in a toaster oven, hot plate and microwave oven. Problem is, our stove is a drop-in style, which is a 27" surface. Stoves nowadays are 30". That means I need to tear out part of my kitchen cabinets to make this happen. I've done the measurements, and I think it can be accomplished without any major structural modifications, just a wrecking bar, jigsaw and circular saw. I have all of those. I don't however, have the modicum of carpentry skill required. So friends o' mine, beware - the call will be coming soon to help Johnny put in a new stove. You know who you are.

2) New sofa - the one in the den was on a set for a show we did a long time ago. It sucks ass and must go away. This will eventually lead to a full-scale renovation of the den, including flat-screen TV, new back door, new windows (hopefully), and new flooring. That's not happening in '08 unless I hit the PowerBall. So for this year, a new sofa and new area rugs for the den are about as good as it gets.

3) New bed - we got the mattress and box springs, and a cheap-ass frame. Now we need a bed to go with the plan Suzy has for the room. I'm sure that's going to cost a couple of buy-ins, but it would be a nice change to have a headboard. Maybe something with posts, or at least rings to put the shackles through. That may need to move higher on the list.

There's a bunch of other shit on the list, but you care less about that than you do about my needing a new sofa, unless of course you've been on my sofa, in which case you pretty much agree that I need a new sofa. Whatever, I'm going to by storage drawers for my office. Later.