JenLeoLIVE!

Happy Easter!; house sitch; free Wi-Fi at Starbucks?

Happy Easter everyone! I hope your kids are having fun with easter egg hunts and chocolate bunnies. There's very little spirit of Easter in these them thar parts. I got John some Easter jelly-bellies. I suppose I'll pick myself up some Cadbury eggs or Sees jellies sometime this week. Those are the only Easter basket goodies I like. 

What can you do? No kids, no church - no Easter. Hopefully this time next year I'll be knocked up and we'll be settled in a town where we can start thinking about a church. At least I'd like to. I didn't grow up with church and therefore wanted to be every denomination my friends were from Catholicism to Judaism. Didn't matter, sign me up. But with John's family history, I'm happy to go to a  Southern Baptist church.

I'm a bit of a news junkie these days. My brain has been in 5th gear. I check Google.com/trends several times a day now and am watching the development of Guy Kawasaki's AllTop via Twitter. If you have any great social media Twitter pals that you can recommend besides Jowyang and Guy Kawasaki - let me know. They keep my phone pretty busy, but I'm open to following any exceptional thought leaders that use Twitter. I love it. Of course, I love Otis' tweets and I'm still waiting for Pauly and Iggy to kick in with their genius on Twitter.

I love my new phone - BlackJack II

Goodbye Palm Treo! And good riddance!

I got the BlackJack II this weekend and I couldn't be happier (unless I could figure out how to blog on Word Press with it). I downloaded the Opera.mini - but just like with my Palm - the WP admin to the LAT Travel Blog is all squished to the left and you have to scroll FOREVER down the screen to get to a text body area. I wonder if I'm doing something wrong...I don't think I can use TypePad on it either. It's got Windows Mobile 6 - so maybe. It would be so great if I could mo-blog. There's got to be a way - there just has to!

However, I bought the BlackJack II because my boss at MobiTV just got it and raved about it. The engineers (and the AT&T customer service guy) recommended it over the AT&T Tilt. Whatever phone I get has to be able to show off MobiTV - and the Blackjack II does for sure. My MobiTV is jamming! There's very little "stop and reload" time like my last phone had. I can't wait to brag to my uncles about it because you can get ESPN and watch live pro and college basketball on it. They will be so jealous.

I can check my email on it much easier too. Texting so far is easy peasy. I just wish I had a cheat sheet for how to work everything else. I took some pics, but then couldn't find them. And I haven't figured out the one click way to turn it to vibrate.
AT&T was not able to transfer over my contacts though and told me to do it through my computer. There's no way I'll be doing that extra step as I would have to install two different cds. So, if you call me, and I act like I don't know who it is - don't worry, I just have to store your number. Start calling me already - I need your number in the new phone!

CURRENT: Las Vegas
NEXT: Chicago (March 13-17)

Dreaming about Pauly and the Tao of Poker

Last night I had a dream about Pauly. I haven't seen him or Change in ages. Ages! I can't even remember the month and have no intention of thinking that hard. We were supposed to have a few days together in Australia, but then I went home early. Anyway....Pauly. In real life he's off enjoying friends and the now at the Langerado music festival in Florida. But last night, last night he was in my head and in my dreams.

I know you're panting and waiting for the juicy sex details, but dream analysts might say that this dream was more about me being in love with me. We'll see - you tell me what it meant. Pauly and I were in a mix of friends, not quite working, but not at the Tilted Kilt—R.I.P.—either. There was no stress and pressure of the WSOP - but I think we were at our laptops with non working folks around. Pauly mentioned something about me and made a reference to his blog, Tao of Poker. I hadn't read it in a while and clicked over. To my surprise, the whole banner had changed to include several pictures of me and me and Pauly. That's weird. Pauly has a gazillion friends, why me? I clicked on the header and it turned into a video montage - short videos began to play of Pauly (and me in the background). Like a video account of lots of times that we'd been in the same place at the same time. There was a slight infatuation element to the videos. The way they were shot, sometimes I was dancing, one time I was lying on a towel at the beach in the sun. Every video short showed us at the same place at the same time, even if we weren't there together - and many times it was from many years ago. Needless to say, I loved it. Apparently the header had been up for at least four days before I found it. I asked Pauly how he did it - where he had the secret satellite camcorder - but of course he wouldn't reveal his secrets. Just a wicked smile. And he had others...There were three or four more montages to make their appearance as the header of Tao or Poker. The question was, who was next....My vote was for Otis.

I think the dream is about blogging. I'm working on a new website - completely different from anything I've ever done, but something I know I'm confident I can do. And Pauly has been my blogging inspiration for far longer than I've known him in poker writing circles. I actually found Tao of Poker and Truckin when I blogged for Written Road.  I just love the way he blogs - magnanimously.

Anyway Pauly - hope you're having a blast out there. I'd love to talk with you sometime. As always, you make me want to be a better writer.

CURRENT: Las Vegas
NEXT: Chicago (March 13-17)

Osaka for dinner, Looking for Las Vegas rentals

So, we're back in Vegas.  As much as the apartment has become affectionately nicknamed "Satan's Ass" - I'm happy to be in it. Happy to be on my own schedule again. Now we're looking at getting a house to get us through the WSOP. Yesterday we looked at a big house out near Sahara and Rainbow where the edge of Vegas housing used to be. Back in the day. The house was nice, but I'm hoping for one with a pool. We'll look some more this weekend. The real estate agent that showed us the property yesterday had gone to a big real estate agent meeting and said the banks are expecting the market to go down another 10% within the next year. He recommended waiting to buy a house  at least six months if not a year in either California or Nevada.

Susan and Jeff Brady & Sean Keener are in town independent of one another. It's Jeff's birthday and we went  to Osaka to celebrate. It was a fun restaurant where you sit on pillows and take off your shoes to eat. The food was good, and perfect for a birthday dinner. John and I are such Nobu snobs that it was hard not to compare. The Osaka waitress rushed us a bit, bringing out nearly all the food at once, instead of in the set order that Nobu does. This was a little annoying - but luckily the food was great so there was little to complain about.

Click Here for the Best Las Vegas Hotel Deals!

Today I'm thinking about going to Morel's at the Palazzo. I've been wanting to try their Parmesan truffle fries. Susan and Jeff and Sean can be my guinea pigs. I was shocked that Susan hadn't even heard of the Palazzo. That's how fast Vegas is growing. If you live here, the eye sore of a building going up seems to take forever, but when you're a visitor coming once or twice a year, it's easy to miss the additions. Just for that I drove them through the Town Square.

CURRENT: Las Vegas

NEXT: Chicago (Mar 13-17)

Leaving San Diego, Poker home game, virtual assistants

Leaving San Diego: I woke up exhausted. That rarely happens. Usually I wake up happy and ready to be in a Sprite TV commercial. But I am - I'm tired and ready to take a break from all of this. This emotional beating. I'm so sick of being upset every day. Jason and I are so blessed that our family is being supportive. My Uncle Jon has helped us every day we were working on cleaning my dad's condo. My grandparents are letting us use their garage for things we want to keep (so I don't have to get a third storage unit). And my other aunts and uncles have helped us with the bill. I am thankful at the exact same time I can't wait to get out of here. I leave today on Amtrak out of Oceanside and will cruise north county looking at Encinitas and Cardiff by the Sea on my way out.

Poker home game: Amtrak? Yes, I'm meeting our ole gang in L.A. for a poker home game. A tinge of fun before heading back to Vegas. It'll be great. Friends, fun, poker - what's that? I haven't played in months.

 

InsideTrip, saving furniture, virtual assistant

Doing: Jason, Uncle Jon and I have been cleaning my dad's place this week. It's slow, miserable work but I think we've turned the corner. John will hate that I'm doing this - but I'm saving my dad's dresser and nightstands. I've been watching a lot of HGTV and I know all it needs is a new coat of paint. It's the perfect size to put a changing pad on, so I have plans to make it white, do up the hardware and put it in the someday baby's room in the someday house. Well, hire someone else to do all that— you know what I mean. I just can't decide on whether or not I should save two matching lamps from the Salvation Army pile. I know all they need is a coat of paint. And new lamp shades...

From the Desk: Speaking of hiring other people. I paid a friend to find me a virtual assistant. It was terrific that he could write the ad, put it up, go through all the crap responses and weed out the finalists. It sounds like online dating and that could've taken me forever.  Instead of using just one of the three finalists, I'm going to divey up the work between two people. For starters, telling me which phone to buy, giving me the hand-held cliff notes to Commission Junction University and a little bit of web research. Maybe coding too. I'm excited about it. The going rate is around $20/hour.

Travel Website you have to check out: There's a new travel website that's hitting the Internet today. InsideTrip.com. In addition to just searching flights and prices, you can compare legroom, the age of the plane, gate connections, and more. It doesn't quite address my "pain point" of a decent entertainment system - but so what. I'm excited about this site and can totally geek out on it. Here's my full preview of InsideTrip.com.

CURRENT: SAN DIEGO
NEXT: L.A. (Wednesday night)

NBC Heads-up news is more interesting than WPT L.A. Poker Classic

I really wanted to go up to Los Angeles for the WPT L.A. Poker Classic because my friends at Wicked Chops Poker were there, but I've been tethered to San Diego trying to clean out my dad's place. It turns out, the best place to be was in Vegas. The NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship sounded like a lot more fun. (Even if Phil Ivey won his first WPT)

NBC in Vegas: As if you can feel sorry for an 11-bracelet winner, poor Phil Hellmuth had a good start with everyone on the red carpet [VIDEO] saying they wanted to play him - only to be eliminated in 3-hands by a not-so-famous online player. In the end Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson beat Andy Bloch to win the title and the $500,000. I guess we could say good for him because he's come close the past two years - but I wanted Gavin to win and of course it was great to see Orel Hershiser in the running.

Multiple Gmail accounts, HGTV and 1-800-Save-A-Pet.com

So, we  started doing this thing on the L.A. Times Travel Blog - good morning message with some highlights from the previous day and any kind of travel news I can mention before morning. I like the format so I'm going to try and do it here, too. Especially since I've been lax on the blogging and I really want to get back into it. Today you get some of my recent highlights—not necessarily from yesterday.

• I can check multiple Gmail accounts without having to sign in and out of each one with the Gmail Manager.  It lets me check the separate accounts just by refreshing or opening up the other one in a new window straight from the bottom of my Firefox browser.

• Current cheer me up activity - dreaming about getting a dog on 1-800-Save-A-Pet.com. John and I will probably debate what kind of dog to get right up until we do. He likes the little dogs that look grouchy like bulldogs and pugs. His compromise is a boxer, which I think still don't look very happy. I want a dog that looks like it's smiling - medium sized. But we can't have one until we get a house...so I just look at dogs on Save-A-Pet.

• Speaking of the someday house - I like to have HGTV on in the background so I can absorb household design on a dime knowledge. I've learned a lot - just can't wait to put it to good use!

CURRENT: SAN DIEGO
NEXT: LOS ANGELES (Wednesday), VEGAS (Thursday)

Do bloggers shower? San Diego vs. Vegas

Showering has become a somewhat low priority for me. Eeew, gross. I don't go past three days, but I've definitely been hitting the three-day mark lately. Eeew, double gross. My blogging frequency isn't so high that I should be giving this hygenic necessity up altogether, but I'd like to blame it on it anyway. I like to be at my computer first thing in the morning. And sometimes, I'm too tired to shower at night. Besides the fact that I've started blogging late at night. So - it slips. And slips. And then I think about cleaning myself, and then I don't. And then eventually when I'm tired of wearing a head band, I get around to actually turning on the water.

It's a phase. I'm sure of it. Lets blame it on another cycle of grief. One day I cried in the shower, so maybe subliminally I don't want to go in there - or go there. Who knows, next subject.

CURRENT: I'm in San Diego. John's in Vegas.
NEXT: Both of us in Los Angeles.