what am I doing until I can play online poker again?

well first let me say I'm hoping I can play online poker sooner rather than later, but I'll probably have to keep my updates on the subject to the minimum until something substantial happens with congress or the DOJ.

Regardless, for at least the time being (probably a month or so?) I have lots of free time. So what am I doing with all of those hours that I normally spend studying and playing poker? Here's the rundown:

1. get in shape. this is something I always try to do, but I have plenty of free time now so there is no excuse not to work out at least 5 days a week. I finished the first 3 weeks of p90x and then went on vacation and pretty much shot that work. so I'm just starting over now, although I might have to skip some of the arm workouts occasionally because of...

2. throw a lot of bullpens. Last season I had some rotator cuff issues that kept me from really preparing fully. When the season started I was not only dealing with pain but I was probably only about 40-50% ready. This year I haven't experienced similar pain, and I think I can get up to full speed before the season. I have some goals in prep, but in general I want to be ready to throw +5 innings at full strength, and have command at the beginning of the season. That is harder than people think coming off of an injury and then a year of closing, but there is no reason I can't accomplish that.

3. clean the apartment, and keep it that way. Yeah this sounds silly, and makes me seem like a house-husband, but honestly it just feels nice to wake up in a clean place. and it is much easier to get things done when the mess around you isn't constantly in your peripheral. In general our apartment is in decent shape right now. But a good hour a day is probably enough to turn a somewhat messy apartment into a really clean environment. If only I could get the wife on board with this.

4. learn spanish. I know I've been saying for years that I want to do this. But to sound cliched, there is no better time than now. Starting a free spanish podcast today. hopefully I can continue this.

5. play some live poker. I did this on Saturday. went down to the woods, and played for about 8 hours. I won about half a buy-in, but I was playing very low stakes since I haven't played much live poker in about 3 years. I think until I get playing online again I'll probably be making a couple of trips to Foxwoods each week. TBH the play is fairly boring and slow, mostly because you only encounter 1 to 2 interesting spots a day, but it gives me a feeling of getting some work done so it is satisfying mentally.

6. volunteer some of my time This is my final goal, but some would argue it's the first thing I should do. I haven't decided where or when to do this, but I think spending 1 day a week (monday?) volunteering 4-8 hours. The wife has suggested an animal shelter since it would put me in a great mood every time I did. Instead of providing favors at our wedding we made a small donation to a local animal shelter. So we already have a very brief relationship with them, and it would be easy for me to get in touch. Hopefully I'll have some positive followup about this soon.

That's all for now. Might update with my thoughts on low-stakes at Foxwoods, but I'm not sure if it's even interesting enough for a blog post. Also I'm going to try and continue to update about how to fight for legal online poker. Didn't get any feedback relating to my letters to the editor so I guess I whiffed on that attempt. But I'm going to stay after it and hopefully everyone else will and in the not too distant future (2012 plz) we might have legal online poker in the US.

hope everyone had a great easter.

later

jim