Slowing down...

It's been quite the turnaround these days! And I'm not talking about my poker downswing... that's been as brutal as ever, and I'm officially at my trough/bottom as I type this. I'm talking about my playing volume, which has taken a precipitous drop these days for a few reasons. The first and most important reason is that I have been going out with a super awesome Australian chica for almost 3 weeks now. Poker runbad be damned because finding someone in Australia who's as cool as her way more than makes up for it! I've been hanging out heaps with her, consequently I haven't been getting to sleep at a decent hour.

The other contributing factor to my slowdown is "Bjoerni89" and his ridiculous VPP accrual the last few months. He has leapfrogged me in the VPP race, and is almost 200k points ahead of me as of a couple days ago. If he continues at his torrid pace playing the 2k/5k HUs, I am powerless to overtake him and he'll probably get the record if he wants to. This would very much reduce the significance of me breaking the record.

In light of these developments, I'm currently reevaluating my end of year VPP goals. My goal is, and always has been, to play as much as I feel like. You may recall that I started 2011 with this mantra, and it has certainly paid off so far. While playing poker on a regimented schedule is importance to me, my life and enjoyment of it takes precedence always. Now that I'm in a relationship and the outcome of the VPP record is becoming murky, I'm definitely thinking about my schedule a lot more.

One factor that is on my side that could help my VPP grind is that the DST (daylight savings time) changeovers will happen soon. On October 2nd, Australia's DST starts, meaning that our time will advance by one hour. Meanwhile, on October 30th, Europe's DST ends, meaning their time will go back by one hour. As a result, for the rest of the year (and until April of 2012), I'll be able to wake up/start 2 hours later and still enjoy the peak hours in Euroland.

Accompanying these DST changes, obviously, is the new change of weather! The weather, already great here even during the winter time, has been steadily getting better and warmer. We are entering spring, and so temps have climbed into the 70s pretty much every day now. With the sweet weather, I've been running quite often and will be doing the Blackmores half-marathon (13.1 miles or 21.1 km) this Sunday. This is the longest run I've ever done and it should be really exciting since Sydney is shutting down tons of roads, including the Sydney Harbour bridge, just for this event which is expected to attract 35,000 runners. I'll try to get a decent time (under 100 minutes), but I'll let you know about that!

I also went to Maroubra Beach a few days ago and look forward to many many more beach trips this "summer" in December, January, and February. There are heaps of beaches in Sydney and around it, so I'll want to see them all. By the way, it is really weird to even think of going to the beach on Christmas Day and New Years Eve haha! Maybe I'll be getting used to that...