Went to The Melting Pot last night for dinner with Becky. Not really a special occasion or anything. She had gotten a gift card as rewards points from AMEX and I had always wanted to try it out. Talk about a ton of food and it also being very different from what you might normally eat! See, it's a 4 course fondue restaurant. So we started off with a cheddar cheese and beer fondue with breads, apples, celery, and carrots. Very tasty. Next came the salad. We chose the mushroom salad. It was basic but the mushrooms were incredibly fresh and the house italian dressing was excellent. The main course was probably my favorite. They heat up a coq au vin mixture in the fondue boiler bottom and then you cook your individual bites of meat in it yourself. We had a great selection of chicken, new york strip steak, filet mignon, beef teryiaki, shrimp, and potstickers. There was also potatoes, squash, and broccoli to go into the pot as well. They had a variety of dipping sauces to go along with all of the other choices on the table. Finally came the dessert, which we decided would be the smores mixture. It was milk chocolate with melted marshmellow creme and grahamcracker cumbs mixed in. To dip, we had a selection of pineapple, bananas, strawberries, brownies, and cake.
I was so full at the end that I couldn't eat another bite even though I didn't want to stop. I will definately be visiting that place again!
Well Becky is at a hotel north of Philly tonight. I'm sitting in bed digging the new wireless that we put in the house last week. Even upstairs in the bedroom, the signal is sitting at 96%. She ended up finding out at work yesterday that she'll have to be there for work the rest of the week. She was going to come home tonight as I have to leave to head back to DC tomorrow anyway as I start my next 4 day shift on Friday. Anyway, I ran some errands like taking books back to the library and picking up kittly litter at Costco. Pretty exciting huh?
I did at least take the time to go for a run tonight and plan on doing it again first thing in the morning. I do NOT plan on failing my Army PT test next month. Anyway, there's a really nice park a few miles from the house that has a 2 mile path. They even have the whole thing lit at night so it's really great for me.
Tomorrow I plan on cleaning up around the house a bit and putting a new shelf thingy in the bathroom. I might even wash my car if I get around to it. I won't be in too much of a hurry to get home because waiting until evening will avoid a ton of traffic.
Well after some hemming, hawing, and basic arguments the better half (Becky) and I have agreed to come to some sort of agreement about me playing poker. I had ended up cashing out my previous meager bankroll anyway to help get her groceries and other things needed for her new house.
She's had quite a few friends and family members in her life that have a number of addictions. These include alcohol, drugs, and of course the part that pertains to yours truly, gambling. She just plain doesn't like it at all in no shape or form. Plus her sort of adopted family father type said that after going with me to AC that he didn't know if I was good at setting limits for myself. Not sure about why he had thoughts on that as we weren't sitting at any of the same tables or anything. Maybe it had something to do with me talking about poker and listening to Phil Gordon's WSOP podcasts the entire way down there? 
Anyway, she's agreed to be fine with it as long as I don't do it all of my waking hours or talk to her endlessly about it. Her main concern is money budgeting in general. So I'm going to figure out a nice small amount per paycheck or month that will be poker related and also start actually setting aside some savings too. I deposited $84 into Ultimate Bet as they were offering a reload bonus and I like their micro-limit tables. Why $84 you might ask? Well I did some sort of fuzzy math with percentages and such and thought that was a good small restarting amount.
Ultimate Bet doesn't offer the best bonuses in the world. But they do clear at micro-limits, albeit slowly, and they also release an amount every time you leave a table. These are both very important playing at some of the lowest limits and with a tiny bankroll. So from now on I'm going to keep a running total of my bankroll in a block on the right of the poker section of the site.
So I'm going to post this in both the poker section and personal blog so that she can see that yes I'm glad that she is letting me play (kind of like DoubleAs wife) and that I'm also going to follow her advice / wishes and get my act together. I mean I guess I don't want to bankrupt her if we get married to I?
As you can tell, there's not much to report. I must admit that I've been remiss in my updates here. The one thing I do have to report is very sad. Becca lost little Lucy. She was the newest member of the family and was about half-feral. However, she was starting to come around a bit. Unfortunately, she hid inside a couch that we moved over to Carl's house and then jumped out when he was unloading it. So there's a have-a-heart trap out waiting for her and we're hoping she shows up.
