First a little about me I guess....born in Killeen, Texas when my dad was stationed at Fort Hood, however mostly raised in San Antonio, Texas. I am 49 years old, female, however very much a tomboy...married to the same man for 25 years, pretty much because he puts up with me in so many ways. But this isn't very interesting, is it? Soooooo.....I guess the things that people find interesting about me are the following: I ride my own Harley Davidson motorcycle (Softail Deluxe), love riding in the the beautiful Hill Country north of San Antonio. I am an avid poker player, a game that I take very seriously. My game of choice is "Texas" Holdem (see I told ya everything on this blog was related to Texas in one way or another)...I love playing so much that it has become one of my goals to play semi-professionally at some point when I retire from my real job. But more about that later.
I own my own business, 2 successful skincare clinics in San Antonio. We mostly specialize in waxing. .Yes folks, we rip your hair out, and you pay us to inflict this pain. You pay us very well.... I also specialize in cosmetic tattooing (permanent makeup). I've been doing this a lot of years...with a 4 year stint owning my own tattoo shop. That was fun, but hard to manage, so I dumped it after 4 years. I seem to do well with the 2 waxing salons and some permanent makeup thrown in now and then. I also teach permanent makeup classes. I have people fly in from all over the U.S. and Canada to learn how to do this. It's not easy teaching people, however I enjoy it to a limited extent. Let's be honest...I like the money, and the freedom it gives me to do all the other things I love.
Now for the third thing I'm passionate about....a far away land called "Terlingua, Texas". Terlingua is located in far West Texas in Big Bend Country. Many people from Texas don't even know about Big Bend. This is a land made up of mountains and desert, all in one. In is remote, beautiful, wild and rugged. And the few people who are able to live there, are wonderful and crazy, choosing to walk to the beat of a different drummer, altogether. "Ter" means earth, and "lingua" means tongue. Well, that's just cool. And I have chosen to "bite the tongue", and bought 40 acres of this beautiful place. The back ground picture on my blog is a shot of my raw land...yes, it's all mine. Some day I will build a little house there, completely paid for, off-grid living at it's finest. And the original plan once I got there and built the house, was to make my living playing online poker...that's it in a nutshell...until April 15, 2011 aka "Black Friday" to poker players all over the U.S. This is when the US Department of Justice decided to shut down the top 3 online poker sites and issued indictments against owners of these sites. The big scare now is whether we can legally play online poker any more, what could the repercussions be, etc.
Why, you may ask, was online poker so important in achieving my goal of playing professionally? Well, it's like anything else. The only way you get good, and I mean REALLY good, is by practice. We're talking millions of hands played over a successful pro's career. The really good players such as Jon Turner (known online as Pearl Jammer), we're playing anywhere from 10 to 40 tournaments and more, EVERY DAY, online. This isn't casual play. And yes, they were making an incredible living at it, 6 figure income every year, and more. But it didn't come easy for them. It involved a lot of work, study, and most of all, time playing.
A gentleman by the name of Phil Ivey is considered probably the best poker player in the world right now. He's the "Tiger Woods" of poker, and in fact, looks a little like Tiger. But in many interviews he admits that he eats, sleeps, and breaths poker. He is constantly going over hands in his mind, how he could have played a specific hand better, etc. This is how you become successful in poker. Well, since online poker has been "outlawed" in the U.S. this goal has suddenly been pulled out from under me. And not just me, but other poker players all over the U.S. who were making their living this way, and were suddenly left trying to figure out how they were going to feed their families. It's that serious...And it's funny that a few weeks before "Black Friday" , we were worrying over certain government services shutting down because of the lack of funds to run this country, yet we have money to spend on investigating and prosecuting online poker sites. If you want a good laugh, take a look at the video produced by the Poker Players Alliance...it is true in so many ways, how we have drug cartels in our neighborhoods and can't control illegal weapons, yet we can bust the local kid playing poker online. Check the video out, it's really funny, and puts things in perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c1M0HhLnLQ
Ok, so back to my whole point of this first blog. Casinos in Texas are virtually non-existent, so that left online poker for those of us wanting to play. Now that it's been taken away, my goal of bettering my game has been shot down. I can't play enough live home games to really make a difference....My Terlingua home in the desert is still going to happen, and I promise, most of this blog will be centered around that journey and the pursuit of off-grid living. But I wanted to play poker in the desert, and now that is not possible, unless of course, online poker is legalized and regulated.
Whew, that was a long story...here are a few pics I love...my desert land, me at Contrabando in Big Bend, my 3 legged dog and my 3 legged cat:
Texas, poker, motorcycles, you - I love your blog already!!!
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