According to the BBC weather page, we're looking at sunshine all week, maximum of 4 degrees Celsius. It never mentioned any more snow. Currently it's blizzarding once again. I imagine that every other country in the world is looking at the UK and thinking "pffft, that's pathetic", but I love it! The prospect of actually having a white Christmas is just overwhelming, now that we're so close, it can't melt! Thinking about it, this is the first time I've mentioned Christmas on this blog, so I might as well mention what it means to me: I love the social aspect of it. The fact that arguments are dropped, if only for a few days, it's almost magical.Anyway, what I'm here to post about today isn't Christmas, it's actually birthday related. My weekend's been very eventful, so I'm going to split it into three very exciting sections, the first is named:
Day one:
Friday the 18th of December, it meant many things, last day of term, panto day, but most importantly, Eleanor's birthday. I've always found it strange that my two best friends' birthdays are within one day of each other, but I kinda like it that way too. Unfortunately, I woke up late, so had to figure out a quick route to Eleanor's house. I tried the number 6 bus, found it, got on it, asked to go to asda (a perfectly reasonable destination), but the bus driver told me the closest he could get me was the bypass. In other words, they'd changed the route due to the snow. So yeah, I trekked the rest of the way to Eleanor's.
As I reached the park next to her house, I found before me a rather epic snowball fight. It consisted of a number of teams that slowly fell apart before my eyes. I started stockpiling, I knew this was the kind of war you had to be prepared for. So, we fought for a while, then my stockpiling plans started to overwhelm the others, sides were taken, I had two willing fighters by my side and they had five or so cowards. We ran into combat, mercilessly tearing apart the opposition. Then they decided to turn, and I lost a man. Soon after our two factioned joined together to mourn the loss of this once great warrior, then all of them went home for tea and slippers and other warm things. I headed back to Eleanors to present her with presents and to play some scrabble.
In my defence, I'd only ever played Scrabble once before, against my Grandma (she tore me apart). It was intense. there was a time where I had a Z, a K and a W. Another moment had me looking at "zookeeper" as a word. In the end, I came third in the first game and second in the second (beating the birthday girl both times). A pretty decent day if I don't say so myself.
Day Two:This was intended to be my "resting day" of the weekend. It was James' birthday, but his plans weren't going down until the Sunday, so I had pretty much nothing to do. I sent a couple of texts around, all with different intentions: one to James to wish him a happy birthday, and one to Nat (she'd offered for me to go to hers the day before, so I was checking to see if the offer was still open). One thing led to another, and I found myself walking to the bus stop for the second day in a row. I missed the bus by like 10 seconds, and the bus stop was practically an ice rink, so I decided to not wait for the next one and play one of my favourite games:
Beat the bus!
Rules: the aim of the game is to get as far as you can before the next bus comes after missing the previous one. This includes many risks, the biggest of which being that the bus could pass you while you're between bus stops, the big upside of the game is that you could significantly reduce your bus fare.
My destination was somewhere on the other side of the bypass, so I got walking. I don't remember it snowing the previous night, and due to all the busy, busy pedestrians the ground had become really icy. The sound of ice cracking beneath your feet is a really sinister sound, even when you know there's only concrete underneath it. I think I can safely say that I beat my bus, I got to the bypass and had seen no bus at all. Eventually, I got to Nat's and met a guy called Owen, who was pretty cool. We just sat and talked for a couple of hours, it was nice to just sit around in a comfortable social environment and "chillax" for however long (3-4 hours).
Day Three:Today was the day I was probably the most psyched about, so much so that I'd set 10 alarms the night before. Poker day. I had no idea how many people were coming, or how long the game would last, all I knew was that today would be a game that was properly finished. I made this clear at the table, I was perfectly aware that people would have to leave early, their chips would either be scrapped from the game or split between the remaining players. All I knew was that I wasn't really due home at a specific time and it was James' house, so there would be at least two players left to finish.
As predicted, two players had to leave before the game really kicked off (a mere hour and forty minutes in). Leaving the three most experienced players (Eleanor, James and myself) to it. Only a couple of hands later, my run of bad luck ended with this hand:
For the people out there who don't play poker, it's a royal flush, the best hand you can get in poker. More importantly, there's a good chance I'll never get one again. The queen of hearts was my card, the cards above are James', he had a mere straight. To be fair, I didn't win many chips from the hand, it was the pride to have such an amazing hand that got me going. I was ready to get my poker face on, and to remove any predictability from my playing style. It worked. Eleanor received a phone call telling her she was leaving in 15 minutes, I took her out about 2 minutes before she left. She wasn't really playing properly because she knew she'd be going, and I know it. But hey, winning's winning (at least, it is when it comes to poker). James and myself soldiered on, and blinds (minimum bets) continued to raise.I dropped my playing style soon after blinds hit 100/200, I wasn't prepared to shovel out bets worth 200 for the sake of a poker face, because it wasn't working so well anymore. I split my technique into two techniques, to disguise my predictability a bit. My luck had changed a while back. I was getting quite a few high hands, especially straights. It was getting tense and I was beginning to lose more chips than I was winning. I started placing higher bets than normal when I knew I was onto something, and won myself chips worth 2500 twice, eventually swinging the game back in my favour. In the end I won it on a pair of 10s, he had one too, so really I won it on a high card. Either way, I was just happy to have finished a game properly (we hadn't done that since the summer). After that, we played out our normal tradition of watching BBC3 until about 11pm, and then I made the short but Ice walk home.
Overall, I think the weekend was 90% success, obviously missing Eleanor's birthday plans was a bit of a downer, but I made up for it, Kind of. A good start to the holiday, I sense many happy times a' comin'!
(all pictures taken by me.)
The blinds (minimum bet before cards are put on the table for those who don't know) were at 30/60 now and Tom looked like he was in trouble. Chris and myself had made almost full recoveries (I had to go all in twice) and were ready to make the kill, I can't remember who actually finished him off...
The blinds hit 50/100 and things really started to speed up. James, who until then was in the money, started to lose a lot of hands and took a huge loss to me, leaving him with only three chips. Suddenly the splits struck, and a win by him took only 12 chips from the huge pot. The rest came to me, he was taken out in the next hand.
After poker, we all settled down for a few 
