Homecoming and More....

Every year the city of Dearborn holds our summer festival, dubbed "Homecoming" over the first weekend of August. When I was younger I never missed it, but I hadn't been in a few years so I was excited to see how it is now. I was not impressed. Maybe it was just that Friday evening isn't the best time to visit the festival, but there weren't many people at the park and there really wasn't that much to do. After an hour or so we headed over to Cheli's Chili Bar to check out the tent party there which included a set by the Killer Flamingos.

Six of us ended up hanging out at Cheli's until about 1:30 when we all piled into my new Grand Cherokee and headed to Jen's for a sleep over. We sat around and BSed for a while and I, being the only completely sober one, was even more amused by everyone's drunken hijinks.

Saturday

Saturday morning came too soon and I got going later than I had hoped. I had planned to be up early and take my suit coat into the tailor and have a couple repairs made since the coat didn't quite hold up to the rigors of my last Vegas trip. Well, I got up with enough time to eat breakfast and get ready for the wedding, but I was going to have to go without the coat. In hindsight it wasn't so bad since my vest made it look like I brought the coat, just never wore it....

Got to the church just in time for the ceremony, although the sculpture depicting two Native Americans handing their child over to a catholic priest nearly made me mad enough to not even go into the church. After briefly expressing my disbelief at the scene welcoming "one and all" to the church, we went in to be seated. The ceremony was pretty standard, but the priest found just enough time toward the end to bash Muslims and Jews.

After all that I needed a little comic relief and we had almost three hours to kill until the reception. I figured the proper way to spend that time was in the movie theater watching, obviously, Wedding Crashers.

The reception was nice, even though the food left a little to be desired. Hey, I'm gonna complain about something right? This time it just happens to be the food. I was happy to take many pictures throughout the night, but the lighting was really hard to adjust to and I didn't get nearly as many good shots as I had hoped. Maybe I just need to buy a better camera....

Sunday:

Sunday was another poker day. Our first game started a little later than expected due to some traffic problems caused by weekend construction. Ah, the joys of driving in Michigan. Using a new blind structure and increasing levels every 15 minutes instead of 20 seemed to work pretty well, but I think I am going to tweak it once more so the blinds aren't 20-40 halfway through the first orbit.

After a couple hours we pared it down to Rob and Hope. Truthfully I didn't watch too much at that point because I was eating pizza and setting up the chips for the next game, but I am sure Hope played textbook poker en route to knocking off Rob for the win. This made her the 7th person to sign my table and earn an invitation into the upcoming tournament of champions.

The second game was only a 7 person affair as Jeremy and Rob both had to leave, and Katie decided not to play. It wasn't too long before Matt and Stephanie were heads up, and Matt prevailed shortly thereafter earning him a signature spot on the table and the final invitation into the tournament of champions. Now that the field is set, I just have to figure out a date and send out the invites....

My showing in the games was less than spectacular. I ended up dumping a pretty fair amount on one hand early on when I bet my straight and flush draw but didn't hit either. Not too long after that I found a couple of queens in the hole and pushed all in after Matt made it 3xBB to go. He called rather quickly and I knew before he turned over his cards, "Tell me you got the kings, right?" Of course he did, and they held up to send me to the rail. The second game I never really made a hand and played pretty passively, no surprise that I didn't do well. Guess I will have to build my momentum for the townie poker tournament by playing online this week.