Stuck in Albuquerque...

The left front wheel started making funny noises as I tooled down highway 537 yesterday afternoon, and by the time I hit highway 550 going south, I knew there was something definitely wrong. When I parked at the airport, smoke started pouring out from under the wheel well.

I picked up Galina and we limped to our Motel 6, the number of which now resides on my cell, as we've begun to stay there quite often.

I limped to a Ford dealership this morning soon after 7 am and the results are not terribly exciting: a repair bill in excess of $1500 and a day's wait while some parts get here from Denver.

Somehow, I managed to leave the house with my computer, but without my power supply, so I hiked from the dealership to the Kinko's that I had so much trouble finding in May to get on line.

I could write more, but Kinko's charges 20 cents a minute for access ($12 per hour, which even exceeds some rates at airports in Europe!), so I better cut this short.

Cheers...

Back home....

I got back to the motel just short of when we were supposed to give up the room. We were faced with staying in Albuquerque with no transportation until the morrow, which also put Drew in a bind as typically one of either me or Galina helps out in the store on Saturday.

After worrying the problem a little bit, we found an Enterprise car rental that could supply us with a car at their "weekend special" rate, but not for a few hours, so we decided to call the shuttle from the Sandia casino (soon to be "casino & resort"), eat there, see what there was to see, and have the Enterprise folks pick us up from there when the car was ready.

The buffet at the casino was strictly casino quality, which basically means "filling and cheap." Then I took off to play a little hold'em and Galina settled down to learn the intricasies of playing the slots.

In the end, I lost $17, a goodly chunk of which I bet in the blind positions (meaning they were mandatory bets); I only recall making $8 worth of what I'm beginning to call "why did I do that?" bets. In the end, the cards fell poorly for me and only one hand came my way.

If I had tried to remain in every pot, I would have lost a lot more money, as by my count, only two other hands among the hands I was dealt would have won the pot. Oh, well. Frankly, I sat down to get a taste of RL poker among strangers in a casino, and it was pretty educational, on several levels: observing how tightly/loosly individuals played, how people behaved, trying to figure out the logic behind the house's percentage (the "rake," of between $1 and $3 per hand), and trying to guess what people have in their hand.

I actually did pretty well in this last area, as the guy two seats to my left was a "calling station," who seemed to pretty much call any bet in any pot he was involved in (and not win too often), so we all got to see a lot of cards. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a good half dozen "guesses" of mine were pretty accurate.

We finally got the rental car around 5 pm and I took the same route going back home as coming down, getting home a little after 8:30 pm. Monday, Galina will drive the car back to Albuquerque, pick up our car, and then pick up some inventory from one of our suppliers down there. It's good to be home. There's work to be done.

Cheers...