Counting Cats

Sorry for the lack of updates – holidays and such, you know. It’s going to continue to be spotty through mid-January, as I’ve got a guest visiting for the next few days, then I’ll be visiting friends for a few days, then I’ll be at the PCA where internet may or may not be good enough to allow for regular blog updating.

This guest, actually, is the reason I’m going to PCA. I’m ordinarily too cheap to shell out several hundred dollars a night for a room at the Atlantis, but a friend of mine won a package and offered that I could share the room in exchange for some coaching. He’s from Budapest and was planning to spend a few days in the US before continuing on to the Bahamas. Since I’m currently visiting my mother in the Baltimore area, I encouraged him to come spend a few days with me before he meets some other Hungarian poker players in Miami and then he and I reunited at Atlantis. So I’ll be picking him up from the airport in a few hours and am looking forward to a fun couple of days here in the mid-Atlantic!

I’ve been hanging out a lot with my brother for the last few days while we’re both staying under the same roof, and after I told him a few stories about the strange people you meet in the poker world, he told me a good one from his summer as a canvasser for MaryPIRG.

He was going door-to-door soliciting donations, and this one woman invited him to come inside. When he stepped through the door, he was greeted by 8 – 10 cats, at which point he has to wonder whether all of this woman’s cats have just come to greet him or if this is just the tip of the cat iceberg. So anyway since his job is to sweet talk people into giving money to his organization, he asks her, conversationally, “Oh, neat, how many cats do you have?”

She narrows her eyes, stares at him, and snaps back, “Why are you counting my cats?!”