Last night, Laura, myself and her daughter were shopping at Best Buy. On the way home, Laura (driving her hybrid Civic) mistakenly took one exit too early off I-70.

Just a couple blocks after the exit, in the left lane of a four-lane street, another car pulls out in front of us, and we hit it. She did a wonderful job of hitting the brakes as fast as possible and probably saving the other driver from serious injuries. Nobody was hurt, even.

It was somewhat surreal for me as the car pulled out to turn left on a side street from our right side. Once he pulled out and wasn’t going fast enough, we both knew collision was imminent, it was just a matter of how bad. Definitely a slow-motion moment for me.

Her car is probably totaled as we all agreed the front part of the frame appeared to be bent inwards pretty sharply.

The other driver was friendly, and in fact, worked at a “rival” casino of Laura’s in Blackhawk.

So, nothing too horrible, except a hassle for Laura and some sore back and neck problems for all of us for the next few days.

I just thought of something.

How cool would it be to get feedback on how well you are doing as a parent? I get regular feedback at work. It’s a key component for me to know how I’m doing at a given task.

Well, I don’t know how I’m doing at being a parent. I only have my son’s feedback to me, and it’s very rare that I get anything back from him on the matter.

Once last year we went to a hockey game with a bunch of co-workers and he made a remark about how I was “the coolest Dad” or something along those lines.

I don’t know if that means I’m a good parent, though. I try to be very friendly with him — “cool” if you will. But I’m also rather strict in a lot of ways. I make sure he follows a very healthy diet around me. I make sure he gets exercise, has good hygiene. Stuff that seems to me are important things in life.

Adam is a very quiet kid, but I know he likes to talk a lot when he chooses. It’s just rare that it’s around me.

Anyways, what we need is some kind of Nielsen ratings for parenting. Or a report card. Something.

Wanna see an over-the-top gorefest? A true grindhouse-worthy piece of cinema?

Look no further than Cannibal Ferox.

Purveyors of the B-movie scene are surely aware of this classic, but I hadn’t heard of it until Laura added it to our Netflix queue last year. I actually hadn’t seen Tarantino’s/Rodriguez’s Grindhouse until a few weeks ago. Not that I completely dislike the pair of ex-wonderboy directors, but I’ve lost a bit of respect for them over the years.

Anyways, Ferox is wonderful. And by wonderful, I mean bad. Bad acting, bad story.

But! There’s a lot of quality cinematography at work here. I’m certain Tarantino saw this and incorporated at least a couple shots seen in Ferox in his own work.

I pick up Adam from his mom’s on Thursdays after work. This is a relatively new thing since school ended, previously he would simply walk to my place after school.

Anyways, I needed to remind him to pack extra shorts/shirts for this weekend since he took all of his shorts that were here with him for his week at summer camp last week.

He replied back with an OK, but also informed me he was learning how to play guitar.

Pretty cool, for sure. He had received a shitty acoustic guitar for Christmas a few years ago, but rarely used it. Well, apparently today he was over at a friend’s and he was showing Adam how to play guitar, both an electric and acoustic.

So he’s been sitting in his room on a few occasions tonight, strumming away some tune he learned earlier today. I think it’s pretty awesome.

Sunday. July fifth.

Again, Laura’s on the same schedule, so we roll up again at noon. Again, no good cash games rolling at her room, so I wait for the 1pm tourney, which is of the same buy-in and structure of the Saturday tourney I “won” the day prior.

Whole different group of players than from Saturday, which is surprising given that so many regulars play in those tourneys at this place.

It was a total battle for me. I started off well, made a few mistakes, and then ended up being quite shortstacked about halfway through. Thanks to the friendly blind structure, I was able to be patient enough to go all-in at the right times and managed to get the chip lead a few times. I finished fourth out of only ten people (hardly anyone was there for some reason) and won my original buy-in back.

But let’s not forget some hilarious happenings from the meat of this one-table event.

Seat 5 was mister gangster dude, who is easily the worst player at the table. He always fishes for flushes and straights, and managed to hit a couple and ended 5th.

He and I got into a bit of a squabble when we were 5-handed. I’m in Seat 3, and the guy to my right was apparently using his cell phone in the middle of a hand, which is not allowed in Colorado. The floor has the right to kill your hand if they see it. So gangster guy has raised cell phone guy’s big blind and he’s the last one to either call or fold, and gangster guy flips out and wants his hand killed.

I then point out that gangster guy has no right to call this guy out, because he’s had a fake blue chip at his table the whole tourney, which looks a lot like a real 10k chip. Gangster guy professes that I should know this as he always has his fake blue chip at his stack, apparently as a card protector… except it’s always IN HIS STACK and never used as a card protector. Whatever, man.

He ends up allowing cell phone guy to play his hand, except cell phone guy folds anyways. I then thank everyone for allowing me to be in the Knows About The Fake Blue Chip Club.

Not long after this, I’m in the small blind and everyone folds to me. I go all-in with about 6k, and the big blind has about 25k, blinds were something like 800-1600. He sits back, thinks, and then starts yabbering about what he should do. He then proceeds to ask the table what he should do.

Anyone who knows poker knows that this is a completely illegitimate thing to do. You cannot involve others in the hand, and he was clearly doing this. I don’t often get worked up and bothered over things, but I do get pissed when people are clearly not playing fair. So, I start to get agitated, and this guy claims he wasn’t doing anything wrong. The floorman gets called over, and the dealer tries to explain what happened, but failed. I had to reiterate that the guy was clearly addressing the table as to whether he should call or not.

The BEST part is all he got from the whole ordeal was a warning. Thankfully, he folded.

After seven mostly grueling hours of that table, I got my buy-in back finishing fourth, and took Laura out for a delicious steak dinner, followed by some more cards at another casino.

Around 12:30am we were getting ready to leave, she manages to win a hand with quad jacks. This place was offering a high-hand jackpot every two hours for the best hand during the previous 2-hour span, so we decided to stay until 2am to hopefully collect the $100.

Nope. Someone else hit the same exact hand (quad jacks with ten kicker) at 1:59am, which turned the $100 into $50. Never mind that the floor guy had apparently “called it” and was going to give her $100, and then decided to reverse it when someone hit the same hand a few moments later. Whatever.