Conversation with a Marine

I spent yesterday afternoon visiting with a friend who recently returned from Iraq...........for the second time. His first deployment was to Bagdad. The second deployment was to Ramadi. He said that his experience in Ramadi was much worse than his Bagdad stint. This young man turned 21 during his second deployment. His enlistment lasts for 16 more months and unbelievably, he thinks that he will be going, one again, to the Middle East. Probably to Afghanistan. I gave him a bottle of Jack and bought dinner. Both inadequate offerings in my opinion. Regardless of your political ideals, please keep him and his brothers-in-arms in your thoughts.

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I awoke around 8AM yesterday and decided to jump right in and tackle my taxes. My first calculation indicated that I owed $2500. Once I cleaned up the mess, I took a step back and started thinking about what I had obviously missed. As it turns out, I figured the COGS wrong. WHEW! 6 hours later I wrote a check for a few hundred, signed on the dotted line, jumped in the shower and then headed for the post office. My package was postmarked and I sighed the sigh of relief. Next year I'll have the taxes complete by the end of February. Yeah, right. Not my style.

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I missed the Big Deuce game this week. I learned to play this game while on the poker cruise in the Carribbean this past February. Since then I have been playing on an almost weekly basis with two Bellagio dealers. We usually play on Wednesday nights after I get off of work or on Thursday afternoons. This week they were busy with the tournament and I opted to work an extra day for a dealer who wanted the day off.
Tonight is the weekly Pan game. It is an enjoyable couple of hours spent with friends, food and spirits. We play Pan for very low stakes, but that doesn't mean we don't try hard to win. This game has bounced around from Sunday nights to Saturday nights and we are experimenting with an earlier start time. Four of the usual participants are poker dealers and two of them have schedules that find them working on most Pan nights. Sometimes they can stop by before or after work.
If you are interested in either of these two card games, you can play for free at Superior poker. I'm sure a few other sites have these games, but this is where I play.