Not as emo lately

Poker has been going better lately. I was stuck $7K for the month around the time of the last entry, and decided to finally take it easy for a few days. I began playing again recently, and as of right now I'm only stuck $1K. This month is most frustrating because I'm killing 2/4, but getting murdered at 3/6 and 5/10. I remember Dodgyken blogged about the same problem months ago, but couldn't relate to him at the time. It sucks. I can't even imagine what it's like to be OMGClayAiken and kill 25/50 (which is a very difficult game), but then run bad at 200/400.

I have been watching the presidential election pretty closely for the past year. I consider myself a Libertarian because I generally advocate having smaller government and more individual responsibility, but don't affiliate with any political party. While my views differ quite drastically from both of the two main candidates, I generally have sympathized more with Barack Obama. I feel like he is much more of an intellectual, and more charismatic than John McCain. However, lately Obama has really begun to turn me off. He has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and always seems to believe government intervention is the best policy with any issue. Lately I've gotten the impression he is basically a soft socialist, which really scares the shit out of me. On the other hand, I'm not exactly an advocate of McCain's foreign policy. I'll probably be voting for a 3rd party candidate in November.

Tomorrow I begin piano lessons. My life needs more balance, and doing something musical definitely seems like a step in the right direction. I played alto saxophone for about 4 years during adolescence, and would say that overall I love music, but haven't played anything since. I decided not to take up guitar because it seems so cliche. If the lessons go well, I'll probably purchase a keyboard in order to practice at my apartment. One more activity that is definitely missing in my life is organized sports. About two months ago I talked about playing tennis regularly, but have been lazy about doing so since returning to Pittsburgh. I should set a goal to be able to play intramural tennis (or something similar) by next year so I start getting out and playing much more often.