In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

At the local library, I am now known as "the guy who is always requesting poker books". Today, I had the librarians place a hold on Cappelleti's Omaha/8 book. We discussed holdem, and they mentioned that they want to expand the "gaming" section. They hinted that they'd like my input on what poker books should be stocked. I thought that was pretty cool, and I'll make up a list for them soon.

I've finished the two volumes of Harrington on Holdem, and I've enoyed the Dana Point HORSE tourney three times now. I've read the O/8 section in SS2, and some of the musings of AlCantHang and Felicia, but I thought it time to get my O/8 learn on. I'm not sure if Cappelleti's book is any good, but the OC library system only has two O/8 books, and I hadn't heard of the other guy.
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I've been running very well at the poker tables recently. Live play has been going rather well for more than a month now - I won the Tustin tourney I host twice, and I won the NL Dana Point tourney once, besting Tony, the host whose tricky play made me nervous when we got down to heads up.

Online has just started to heat up. I've won several single-table SnG's, though unfortunately that's just me screwing around at the $1 turbo and $5 regular tables. Still, it feels nice to do well.
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Every so often, I'll make a bet/raise, and I'll think "Man, that was dumb. There's no way I could have what I'm representing right now." Sometimes my play will work, sometimes not. My plan is to write down a few of these situations, study them with the goal to make less-suspicious plays when I make plays.

The consensus at my homegame is that a lot of my plays get caught. That isn't quite the case - a great number of my stabs at small and medium pots work. The bluff into the big pot, the last-ditch steal on the river... those are remembered when they fail. And that guy is me.
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My mother is coming for a visit in less than a month. I've told her about how I host poker nights twice a week, and she wants in. This should be gooooood, as I'm fairly certain she hasn't played much holdem. I vowed to teach her as much as I could before the first night. I think I'm going to ask her to promise to try both a cashgame and a tournament.

I also hope that my regulars don't embarass me (much) in front of her. Yeah, right.

She'll also get to hear the story of me putting Shawn on "poker timeout" for 6 weeks. (I've mentioned it in a previous post - when I decided to kick him out of the game in mid-September, I decided he couldn't return until November.)