Two Weeks

A lot has happened since my last entry. A combination of forgetfulness and business has prevented me from taking some time to get on here, but today is my "easy" day of classes. That's right, I'm back at school baby!!!!

. . . Actually, I'm not THAT excited about it but it is a big step. I'm officially half way done my college career and only have a little over two years of fake work before I graduate and attempt to make a healthy living with real work. Now that I've been taking classes for over a week I have a good idea of how this term is going to shape up, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. I really do have a lot to get to, so enough with the bull shit.

Around the time of my last entry I was already moving into my new house. New might be an overstatement, since it's pretty old, but that's not to say it doesn't kick ass. I got my own room on the third floor of a giant house in Philadelphia, right on Larchwood street. If your not familiar with the 4400 block, it's just west of the UPenn campus. To sum it up as short as I can, the house is big, the property is welcome, the neighborhood is incredible (no bums or crack houses around, it's like the fuckin' Cosby's here), and the BBQ is on full blast. Aside from becoming master of the BBQ (which I built btw) and taking on the role of handyman, I've been settling down in my new room. I'm really happy with my setup and only need some sort of couch or futton to call it quits. Jay is down the hall and we get our own bathroom. A small fridge in another room stocked with soda and I'd be willing to call it a slice of heaven. The long walk to classes is really the only downside, but considering we're paying half of what we would living on campus and that we walk through Penn's campus to get to Drexel, it's a small price to pay for what we get here.

This term should be pretty good. All my classes are Chemistry geared (that's right, I'm out of the TDEC program for engineers thank GOD), and I have a good feeling on how I'll perform. Yet again, thermodynamics is leading the way in toughness, essentially taking up two courses, but the organic chem class is pretty cake and the lab is ridiculously easy considering what I've done my last two co-ops. What I'm really saying is that I have no excuse to not do better this term/year, so I guess we'll just wait and see.

With all this going on, you'd think I haven't done anything else worth mentioning, but you'd be wrong. On the 7th we had our first Atlantic City trip and it was awesome. Me, Jay and Keyur all went to the Borgata and took a seat at the $1/$2 NL game. It was cool because me and Jay actually got sat next to each other, so I didn't feel as intimidated. Honestly, I think me and Jay were the best two players at the table. I bought in for 160 and grinded out for a few hours to get to over 360, never really making any mistakes (actually, I don't think I really lost more than three pots over a 2 hour period).

Then came the hand of all hands: I, John Tegan, got dealt Pocket AA, got it all in against a guy with KK, and LOST when he hit his trips on the flop. A pot that was over $700 went sliding to a player other than me and I was crushed. But I rebought, told myself I just had to grind it all back, and eventually did. Not only did I win a $360 pot later on against the same player when I had trip Kings and he had two pair, but I would then continue winning and eventually cash out +$250 profit on the night. It was a lot of fun, got to hang with some good people, and get out of my element for the night.

Other things have been happening too. We met up with some old buddies at Brownies last Thursday for billiards and socializing, I saw my brothers opening-season game where they won and Mike pitched two innings for 4Ks and just one hit (no ER either), and just now I returned from an inaugural trip to Dave and Busters to celebrate Mr. John Wesley Buffington III's birthday.

Lot's of good things have been happening, and there is no end in site. Should be an interesting year.