Mean Gene

Wish Me Luck!!

At 3PM today my whole company goes outside to the parking lot across the street for a little ceremony. We had this morale-building program where if you did something above-and-beyond you got a little pennant to put on your desk. I'm sure your company has dome some similar. What's a bit different is that one person who won a pennant is going to win a brand-new Jaguar. And that person could very well be ME.

Every day on our company Intraweb they've had little clues as to who the already-selected winner might be. For example, the person's work number has a 4 in the area code (both Pittsburgh and San Fran have 4's). They work east of the Mississippi. They work in Pittsburgh. They work in the new building, etc etc. The gist of it is I'm still in the running. Along with, oh, 500 other people.

But hey, 500-1 isn't that long of odds. The car just arrived out front, it's not one of Jaguars uber-luxurious models, but it'd do. Black, four door, nice. If I win I think I'll drive straight to a dealership and sell it. And then buy myself something I've always wanted...a mink Stetson.

I was going through the catalog of my library, looking for stuff to order, and I looked up "poker", see what's out there. When I started playing a few years back the entire library system had 25 items regarding poker. When I checked this morning, they had 98. When I checked back at lunch to actually order a few things, it was up to 99. Wowzers. They used to only have 1 copy of Super/System for the entire Pittsburgh area. They have 10 copies of Super/System 2. Progress is being made.

Because I'm Pittsburgh's Most Decorated Poker Blogger, I get emails from various organizations with info on charity tournaments, and I also get the odd email about clubs that have cash games and tournaments where, shall we say, charity begins at home. My home, hopefully. Anyway, one of the places that contacted me said that they offer "two-card, three-card, and four-card Texas Hold-Em." Three- and four-card Texas Hold-Em? Isn't four-card Texas Hold-Em called Omaha? I think there is a three-card game called Juarez, but I think the folks running these games know that "Texas Hold-'Em" is likely to get folks hearts pumpin' while "Omaha" is likely to elicit frowns and shaking of the head. Pretty soon Seven Card Stud will be known as "Individually Boarded Multi-Street Texas Hold-Em!!!" At which time I'll take up macrame.

Two hours till the Jag. To paraphrase Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride, "I hope I win."

UPDATE: I didn't win.

Now, I don't mean to bitch about what was a $35K Freeroll. But. We all had to stand out there on the 100-degree asphalt as they made the announcment. And what they did was have one of our VP's give additional clues to winnow down the field. The winner works on this floor, the winner has this number in their Social Security number, etc, etc, etc. It finally, FINALLY got down to three people (it was BRUTALLY HOT out there) and they opened the envelope and announced who won. I have two problems with this. One, the two people who didn't win got their hopes up, had to stand up there in front of the whole company...and got nothing. Seems more than a bit cruel to raise someone's hopes and then dash them like that during what should be a happy-happy morale-building exercise. Two, there are 2 people on my team who took half-days today, and my boss is off. What if someone who was off won the car? They go through all this rigamarole to narrow it down to just a handful of people, they open the envelope, announce the name...and it's no one who's standing by the car. Easily could've happened as the name was drawn weeks ago. How embarrassing would THAT have been? No one thought of this?

I'm not ticked off because I didn't win. I'm ticked off because I'm hot. Because I felt for the people who came so close. And I'm ticked because I didn't win. Forget what I said earlier.

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