Let Me Tell You Why I Suck

I've discovered a new trend in my life. Well that's not true it's actually a very old trend that I just realized was happening this weekend. For lack of a better term I'm going to steal a name from Brian and call it Mack Syndrome. Mack Syndrome is when you take a perfectly good, enjoyable situation and make it suck somehow. Not sucky enough to ruin everything mind you, just enough to make it not nearly as fun as it should have been. Also by situation I don't necessarily mean big things like relationships, or jobs, or cars (although my track record with those is pretty awful too). I'm talking about smaller things like a night out, something along those lines. This weekend I was 3-3, the Mack Syndrome came into effect all 3 days.

Friday:

Friday I agreed to play in a poker tournament that a coworker had put together. It seemed like a pretty good time, $50 buy-in, no-limit hold 'em tournament. He predicted there to be enough people to have a 3 table tournament meaning the prize pool would be decent. Well we got there and only 10 people showed up so instead of the tournament it was decided we would play a regular cash game. This was fine with me, I consider myself to be a pretty solid poker play, and in any regular cash I like my chances. As predicted I was doing fairly well about an hour or so into the game, I was up just about twice what I bought in for without getting any thing close to a decent hand, just outplayed a few people in a few key pots. Then Mack Syndrome kicks in. All night my left contact was really irritating my eye, and getting progressively worse because I'm an idiot and I keep rubbing it even though I've worn contact lenses for almost 10 years now and know the worst thing you can do is rub it. Eventually it gets to the point where I have to take them out becuase I can't stand it anymore, the pain is unbearable. Luckily one of the guys had an extra case to store them in, and Brian brought his glasses and he wasn't using them so I thought things would be cool. They weren't. I don't think I've ever realized how bad my vision is until now. I think Brian's glasses actually made things worse. I couldn't see a thing, I'm like Mr. Magoo blind. I had to hold my hole cards literally 2 or 3 inches from my face just to see what I was dealt. After that I was done, I couldn't even see the flops that I dealt directly in front of me. Eventually I just had to stop. Playing poker is much more visual then I thought, it's hard to get a read on someone you can't see, and it's even hard to think about your next move and the moves of others when you're constantly playing catch up because you have to have someone calling play-by-play for you just to know what is going on. Night 1 of the weekend, botched because of contacts, dagger.

Saturday:

On paper Saturday looked to be a perfect day. Frese got his companies' Orioles tickets for the game that afernoon. Four tickets a few rows behind home plate, pretty sweet. Add to fact that the Yankees are in town, even sweeter. My favorite team is only in town a few games a year, and I can't get to all of them, so when I get to go, for free, with some of the best seats in Camden Yards I'm pretty pumped. The weather was perfect too. It had all the makings of a good day. Three of my favorites in the world are: going to a baseball game, drinking outside on a beautiful day, and gambling. Well I already had to out of three so I thought, why not mix in the third? Mack Syndrome thats why. I actually haven't bet on sports in a fairly long time, I'd say it's been about 2 months, so I decided to reload the sportsbook.com account just to place a few wagers on the game. It couldn't have been more of a lock, the Yankees are playing well, a rookie pitcher on the mound, this will be great. Wrong. Yankees get one hit, I lose 6 seperate bets, I'm pissed, day botched, I suck. It was somewhat salvaged though by the girl at the bar later calling Frese the scum of the earth, that was funny.

Sunday:

Most Sunday's during the summer everyone gets together and hangs out at our friends pool. It's a great time, 15 or so friends just being lazy, playing random sports and the like. Well this one was a double Mack Syndrome. The first wasn't so much a Mack Syndrome because I think it happened to everyone. When it's been floating around 100 degrees for about 2 weeks straight the ground is going to be pretty hard. And by hard I mean like concrete. Playing soccer barefoot on said ground is not a great idea. The result is that my feet still hurt today and I have a mystery hip injury that causes me to have to use my arms to lift my leg up and put it in my pants when getting dressed in the morning. The second thing is a little more obvious if you know me. No suncreen, now I have a wicked sunburn. Which is just plain stupid, I'm a pale, Irish, super freckly, redhead, who has lived at the beach his entire life. You would think I know better at this point, and I do, I've been to the beach/slash pool a bunch of times already this summer with no sunburn to speak of. Sunday I just never even thought about it, because Mack Syndrome kicked in to cloud my thoughts.

There you have it, a whole weekend's worth of examples of my suckiness. Please don't let Mack Syndrome affect you and your loved ones.