Garhhhh... Well, obviously I missed a couple of days. So much for back to everyday posting. (It's really Wednesday night right now... we've had this discussion before.) I'll probably rarely post on Mondays or Tuesdays, unless something really interesting happens at the kennel. Those are my two work-intensive days, where I need to get as much rest as possible when I'm home. Monday starts at 4:45 AM, until we get done around 10:30 AM. Then I have to be back at 3:15 PM, and I'm there and at the track until 11:30 PM. Tuesday starts at 5:45 AM, until 10:30 or so, then back at 4:00 PM until 11:30 again. Then Wednesday morning is 5:45 til 10:30, but I spend another hour to 1½ hours over at the office (aka my parents' house) doing paperwork on Wednesdays. But after that... I can breathe a big sigh of relief, because the hard part of the week is over. And besides, Wednesday night is karaoke night.

Karaoke is SUPPOSED to start at 9:00. We got there at 9:20, but the pool players hadn't left yet, and apparently they don't take kindly to singers. Well, that's cool... judging by the amount of empty bottles sitting around, it looks like they pay the bills pretty much, as our group rarely spends more than $10 TOTAL on sodas and whatnot.

One of the three pool tables was open, though, and we asked a gentleman standing near it if it was taken. He said no, the game everyone was concerned with was on the middle table. So we went ahead and got a game going while we waited for the place to clear out. An older guy sitting at the bar started giving Kristy pointers during our game, then offered to help me, too. I figured, well, what the heck... I don't know what I'm doing anyway. So we played out our game, and I beat her (for the first time, I might add).

There's a display case on the wall by the stick rack, and in it are six handmade cues. Their prices range from $250 to $600. Well, you know who makes them? The guy who was giving us tips. He had let Kristy use his cue. I didn't hear him, but when she asked how much it was worth, he told her, and her eyes widened in shock. She mentioned later that it was solid oak.

So, anyway, we've established the guy's pretty much a pro. Then, while Jenn and I are playing a couple of games later, he calls winner. Well, she ends up knocking in the 8-ball a few balls early, so I win. Great. I figure I'm roadkill.

After 15 minutes of some of the most stressful pool I've played in my life, though, we were down to just the 8-ball. I make no claims as to being good at this game, mind you; luck had a lot to do with it. I drained five straight at one point. Anyway, after I sunk the 2-ball, it was my shot on the 8, and I had a tricky lie to hit. I figured that with the position it was in, I had to make it or break it as I was going to leave a wide-open shot for him if I didn't make it somehow.

If there were a compass on the pool table, the 8-ball was sitting about 4 inches from the north edge of the table and 6 inches from the northeast hole. The cue ball was about 5 inches from the south edge of the table, sitting south of the 8-ball and about one ball's-width to the west. At the angle it was at, I thought I might have a shot at sideswiping the 8-ball into the northeast pocket, but the more I looked at it, the more it looked like I would probably knock it into the edge first. The cue ball was too far south of the 8 to get the right angle on it. So I decided to bank the cue ball off the north edge of the table and knock the 8-ball into the southeast pocket, the one I was standing over. I pointed at the pocket (as loud as the jukebox was blaring, it would have done no good to try and yell it out); the gentleman raised his eyebrows but nodded. I lined it up, figured "Here goes," and let it fly.

It was perfect. The cue ball ricocheted off the north edge and drilled the 8-ball dead center. It flew to the pocket and did that thing where it hits the hole, hops up in the air, and drops straight down. As I started to exhale, I saw the cue ball spinning wildly towards the west end of the table. It was heading... straight for the northwest pocket!

PLUNK!

"Sonofabitch!"

Well... oh well. I shook his hand. Them's the breaks. Karaoke fired up not long after, but the three of us were pretty worn out anyway; we'd originally planned to leave at 11:00. However, there was literally no one else besides the two DJ's singing, so I got five songs done in about 40 minutes and we lit a shuck at 11:20.

Sometime tomorrow, I'm going to spam everyone else's blogs with invitations to my dinner. I'll email anyone I can think of, too. It's going to be a "Borderless Cuisine" meal, inspired by Rokusaburo Michiba's approach to cooking on Iron Chef. All your favorites will return from last time, along with a few new ideas. Yes, okra -- oddly enough, my Tivo taped an episode of Sara's Secrets today where she was working with okra as a side dish, so now I have some insight on how to work with it. All I need now is a good recipe.

In the next few days, I'll tell you all about my Tivo, too. THIS THING IS FRICKIN' AWESOME. You know how they say "It'll change the way you watch TV... forever!™"? They're right.