Here’s a summary of what has been going on with me for the past week.

On Wednesday, I played in a $300 tournament at the Taj.  It drew about 150 players and paid 18 spots.  With 21 players left, I had the chip lead.  On the bubble, I still had the chip lead.  And with 14 players left, I was gone.  I decided to go on a bubble rampage and win the tournament right there.  Instead I self destructed.

The next day I busted from the Taj’s $500 event very quickly when I made a stand against a maniac and got outflopped.  The tourney had drawn only 95 players, and it was obvious that the $1000 the next day would bring even fewer, so I split and drove home on Thursday afternoon.  There would be better action for Sugar D online.  Up the Garden State Parkway I went.

Back in NYC, I was in a foul mood as I circled the streets of the Upper East Side looking for a parking spot.  I wanted an alternate-side spot that would allow me to leave my car for the entire weekend, but I was having no luck finding one.  Then finally, after over a half an hour of trolling, I saw it:  right on the corner across the way there was a spot.  I pulled across the street.  Upon closer inspection, it was actually two back-to-back parking spaces!  Nice.  And someone was pulling into the first one.  I prepared to pull behind this person and take the second spot.  But then the person stopped their car directly in the center of the two spaces, leaving roughly six feet in front of them and roughly six feet behind them.  Not enough room on either side for me to parallel park.

I pulled up to the side of the vehicle, lowered my window and got the attention of the woman behind the wheel.

“Excuse me, would you mind pulling forward so that I can park behind you?”

This polite inquiry did not sit well with the middle-aged black woman who had just finished turning two parking spaces into one.

“There isn’t enough room for both of us!  Find another spot, this one is mine!”  She said in a Jamaican accent.

“Ma’am, there absolutely is enough space for both of us.  You are taking up two parking spots.  Please move forward.”

“I will do no such ting!  Be on your way!” 

I was not in the mood for this woman’s bullshit, so I proceeded to put my car into reverse, swerved behind her, and then slowly pulled forward until my front bumper was nestled up against her back bumper.   She did not like this one bit.  She flew from her car, slammed the door and stalked toward my open window.

“What da hell do you tink you’re doing!?”

“I’m parking my car,” I replied as I opened my door and got out and instructed her to follow me as I walked to the back of my car, which was sticking maybe two feet into the crosswalk behind me. 

“My car is two feet into the crosswalk and you have left six feet of space in front of you,” I continued.  “Is this still one spot?”  She was now totally infuriated.

“What da hell is your problem?  Dis is one spot!  Are you on crack?!  You are!  You look like a fuckin’ crackhead!”

She was screaming and making wild hand gestures in my face, but I was the crackhead?  I remained calm.

“Ma’am, if you think this is one spot, you have not driven your car in Manhattan before.  Now please pull your car forward two feet.”

“I been working at dis hospital forty years!” she screamed as she pointed eastward, “and dis is one spot!  If I move foward, I never get out of here!”

“You’re not being very neighborly.  Please, just move foward.” I sighed and I rolled my eyes.  Now she stalked back to her car, put it in drive and moved it foward about a foot and a half.  Then she quickly put it in back in park, leaped out and scrambled behind it so that she was standing between our cars.  I was now beyond frustrated.  I got into my car and pulled forward about six inches.

“You’re hitting me!” she bellowed.  My car was not in contact with her.  Then she unleashed an incredible string of expletives that was truly shocking, even to me.

“Excuse me?” I said as I got out of my car and approached her.  “Care to repeat that?”

“You ‘erd me, motherfucker!”  Jesus.  There was now absolutely no way that I was conceding in this ridiculous dispute.

I proceeded to show her that I was still parked illegally by about a foot, while the empty space in front of her was about four feet long.  So we repeated the process two more times, with her standing between our cars and belligerantly swearing at me each time.  In the end, I finally was parked legally, and she looked like she wanted to punch me. 

I sarcastically said “have a good night, ma’am” as I gathered my belongings from the back seat, then surreptitiously wrote her license plate number on a scrap of paper.  She was lurking there with a murderous look on her face, and I had a feeling that a violent crime could be visited upon me any second.  Also, some form of criminal mischief seemed vaguely possible once I left the scene, which I managed to do unharmed. 

I walked the few blocks to my apartment.  My blood was boiling.  The trip to AC had been a washout because I had played undisciplined, stupid poker.  Then a long drive home was punctuated by a ridiculous dispute over a parking spot with a psychotic Jamaican orderly. 

Now I was finally back home, and I decided to spend the rest of the day playing poker online.  But first I checked my email.  I had a few messages, but as I opened the third one, I realized that something was wrong with my computer.  It was frozen.  No cursor pointy thing, no ctrl+alt+delete, no nothing.  Just frozen.  I turned it off using the power button, waiting the requisite ten seconds and turned it back on.  Then a few beeps, then a black screen with an error message that may as well have been written in a foreign language.  I repeated the process and got the same result.  Ummm, this was not good.

And indeed it was not.  Somehow my Microsoft Windows had been corrupted.  I spent most of my Columbus Day weekend talking to Hewlett Packard’s inept technical support staff, along with other computer-knowledgable people on the phone, trying various methods to restore my computer to its prior state.  It turned into an all-encompassing, life comsuming time drain.  In the end, nothing worked and I had some recovery discs fedexed to me.  Over $400 and four days later, I managed to save most of my files, but my computer still does not function properly.  It needs to be reformatted from scratch, and I need to transfer all the stuff I managed to save onto CD’s, then reload it onto the computer once it’s been reformatted.  I am writing this blog entry from my archaic laptop. 

Poker?  My job that I’m supposed to be refocusing on?  I haven’t played a single hand in almost a week.

Yesterday I needed to move my car to a new parking spot, in compliance with alternate-side parking rules.  I walked a few blocks to the car, which reminded me of my unpleasant confrontation on Thursday.  Despite my shitty mood, I chuckled to myself as I pictured my bug-eyed rabid parking nemesis.  But when I reached the car, my laugther ceased.  There was something white on my hood.  I walked and took a closer look.  Some kind of string?  Bird poop?  No…

Carved into my hood with key, in clearly legible, large lettering was a lovely parting gift:  “FUCK U.”

Life tilt.