The Streetcar Chronicles

S and I hosted our first poker night last night. It wasn’t a game for serious players though, as we wanted to have a casual, social evening mixed in with some poker fun. We also wanted it to be ladies only. The idea came about the last time Christine and T were over for dinner. We somehow got to talking about poker and I (or S) mentioned that we’d love to host a night and now that we have the space, we think we can do it.

A few weeks ago, T e-mailed asking if we were still interested in hosting a game. We said that we were and that got the ball rolling. After all of the invites had gone out, we found ourselves with 11 players ready to come out for some poker fun. I guessed that our dining room table could seat 10 people around it (snuggly, that is) so making room for one more person wouldn’t be too hard to do.

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I had a few post ideas that I was going to pursue for the this here blog tonight. All of those ideas have become overshadowed with the news of the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

Charlie’s Angels (the original) was before my time so I was never a big fan of Fawcett’s work. I knew who she was from catching stories about her on Entertainment Tonight or online. I don’t think I ever saw a movie that she was in; at least I don’t remember watching anything she starred in. Not being a big fan didn’t mean I wasn’t saddened by the news of her death this morning. Fighting cancer is horrendous and her three year fight was no doubt filled with immense pain and fear.

I was at my parents’ tonight when my dad told us Michael Jackson had died today. He (my dad) was on the phone with his brother who had heard it on the radio. I immediately turned on the local news and caught the headline in the channel’s scrolling news ticker.

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I had a really strange encounter while walking the gal pal this morning. I’ve lived in the city my entire life; there isn’t much I haven’t seen or heard.  It’s not often that I’m left rattled. People who talk to themselves on the streetcar? Easily ignored by turning up the volume on my ipod. People on street corners announcing the second coming of Jesus? A quick walk across the street and they’re forgotten about. This morning’s incident was odd because I felt like I couldn’t shake the woman.

The pup’s and my walk started off well enough; it wasn’t until we were on our way back home that we came across a woman walking her dog too. At first, she was very apprehensive about our two dogs making contact. She said that her dog gets excited easily and asked that I get the gal pal to sit to show her dog that it was okay to approach. Fine, no big deal, I think that sniffing other dogs while out is part of the fun of a walk.

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Remember last week’s post about Kimberley Vlaminck, the girl who got 56 stars tattooed on her face? You’ll recall that she claimed that she had only asked for three stars, fell asleep and awoke to the 56 tattoos covering half of her face.

It seems Vlaminck has decided to come clean. She’s now admitting that she never fell asleep, she was awake for the entire inking and woke up to see the horrible mistake the tattoo artist had made. The artist, Rouslan Toumaniantz had maintained throughout that he gave her the tattoo that she requested.

Like I had guessed previously, Vlaminck was quite happy with getting her face covered with the different sized stars. She left the tattoo shop happy as could be with her cool looking ink. That happiness dissipated rather quickly when she got home and her dad freaked out over what she’d done. As a way to get out of it, she made up the story about having fallen asleep and then decided to sue Toumaniantz.

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S and I are hot stuff. No, I’m not being a smart ass; I mean it in the most literal sense. It’s currently 24 degrees but it feels closer to 30 degrees with the humidity factored in. Our new air conditioning unit will be installed Wednesday; as in the day after tomorrow.

The main floor of the house doesn’t feel so bad and the basement is quite cool. The upstairs? It’s a fucking sauna. We have a fan running in the bedroom and the furnace fan working to try to cool the house. Curtains are also drawn and lights are kept off or on low. I made bbq for dinner tonight because I didn’t want to create any heat by using the stove, veggie steamer or any other kitchen appliance.

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