last post for a whileeeeeee

so ive been all over the place out here and therefore terrible at updating, my bad

song of the day is courtesy of win jones, good work buddy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHuebHTD-lY

earlier in the week i went rock climbing with derek and its gonna be my new impulsive hobby, i can already tell



we didnt actually do any toproping (using belays and harnesses etc) but we did more bouldering which is just climbing routes that go up to like maximum 12 feet and you dont need all the protective stuff. Derek insta turned into a 6 year old and was running around and rolling on the mats like a gymnast on crack

but its really fun and good exercise and something new so A++, plus we can go when the climbing gym is totally empty like mondays at 11 am so its great

im on a reading kick so I spent the rest of the week finishing up The Jordan Rules (book following the chicago bulls through Michael Jordans first NBA championship season) and Into Thin Air (story of the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster) and they were both awesome. Now im on to reading the roy williams and agassi autobiographies so i can steal their secrets and become wildly successful at whatever I do



sabo's birthday was the 9th and scott's was the 12th so we had some people over friday night to hang out. Being the perfect planners that we are, we managed to tell about half the people it was 80's themed and forget to tell the rest. We were gonna go to a thrift store to get 80ish clothes friday afternoon but we all fell asleep, so sabo and mithil dressed normal, sean wore an ugly christmas sweater, i just looked like an idiot, and scott ended up looking like a miami vice character. success? this is actually the only picture i took all night, but emily and felsha and juliana were allstars and rocked 80's to the core



my friends from across the bridge even made it out (and they were dressed to a TEE) but all those pictures are on maren's camera so i will put them up later

then the next day, two teachers from sabo's school were having a christmas party at their place in san francisco so we threw on some cocktail attire and meandered on over and sipped some eggnog and chummed it up. it was a fun time and their place is awesome so hopefully we can schmooze our way back soon.

on our way home from the party our friend Angel took us to one of her favorite taquerias where sabo and I promptly ate 5 tacos each. Theres a wonderful authentic taqueria on every corner of every block in san francisco and I will miss that when I leave fosho



sabo, scott, and mithil were ALL sick this week (hahah the 3 of the 5 of us in the house who interact with the real world = sick) so ive been desperately trying to avoid it before I fly out wednesday. Its all gonna be in vain because I know I will get owned as soon as I get back into the continuous sinus infection pass off between the baker/dew households in NC but we can all dream

Sabo and I have a tour de california planned after christmas break, which should be really fun. he doesnt start school until pretty late so tentative plans are

jan 1: we both fly back into SFO, we drive to tahoe
jan 2-3 : snowboard at tahoe
jan 4-5: drive to mammoth and snowboard/ski there
jan 6: drive down to pasadena
jan 7: go to alabama vs texas at the bcs national championship game
jan 8-11: bum around southern california down in OC and LA and san diego
jan 12: make our way back up to oakland

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick

see you all soon love NICKY

ps - i typed this up while distracted playing cards so ignore something if it doesnt make sense

byebyebyeybyeybeybe

im finally starting to decorate

it only took me like 3 months. I printed a ton of random pictures I had saved on my computers and from facebook that made me happy from home and random travels and am putting them up everywhere. I decided on very expensive frames for every picture as you can see. Even milo and abby made it up there

for those of you already trying to scrutinize and see how many pictures you made, go ahead and click the images and they will get bigger so you dont strain your eyes too bad







i didnt take pictures of every picture (head explode) for you guys to see but you get the gist

I think im gonna get some plants tomorrow (I saw a plant called "lucky bamboo"and i decided i need it immediately) so maybe JUST MAYBE the room is starting to come together

printing out all of these reminded me of how fortunate I have been to travel so much... its still my favorite thing ever. It also gave me a serious urge to see a new country, so expect an update soon where I impulse bought plane tickets to Fiji or something. i know i know, ROUGH LIFE, but its gettin time for me to get a little this in my life



Im flying home dec. 16th to jan 1st, looking forward to seeing everyone!

Thanksgivingggggggggggggggggggg

Song of the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7MK5Esy-L0

I encourage you to right click the song of the day and just open it in a new tab and let it play in the background while you peruse

Wow its been a week and I havent updated... I bet youre all just sitting at your computers crying and refreshing the page and waiting since this is the GREATEST BLOG OF ALL TIME (GBOAT)

Thanksgiving was relaxing up here, Scott and I went down to the rec center last week and played basketball with some local 15 year olds. Each of us had about an 18 inch height advantage, so a typical possession went:

1. Nick shot (miss)
2. Scott rebound (without jumping)
3. Scott put back (miss)
4. Nick rebound (without jumping)
5. Nick put back (miss)

etc. etc. etc. SKILLS. see you suckahs in the NBA



Thursday morning I took scott to the airport, swung by justins place in the city to pick him up, and then headed towards Sacramento to eat thanksgiving dinner with maren and her family. Justin is a fellow professional button clicker and maren is one of his good friends from law school. They both live in San Francisco and are good people


LOVE THE CANDID

I took my camera to thanksgiving but managed to take 0 pictures (trend?) so I had stalk this one from facebook. Maren is awesome so of course her family was awesome and they were as nice as they could be. It got out that Justin and I were professional poker players so we had to own some of her younger cousins after dinner in card games. Hustling teenagers on the basketball court and then in poker, BALLIN. When he was broke and started making wagers with Itunes gift certificates we knew our job was done (we didnt make him pay). Justin and I stuffed ourselves and chatted it up and then headed towards Lake TahoeEeeeee (2 hrs from sac)

Driving into tahoe I look in the rearview mirror and see this



YESSSSSS. The cop walks up to the passenger window and is noticeably angry. He tells me I was going 56 in a 40 and that he has been "FLASHING LIKE A UFO" behind me while I proceeded to drive for 300 additional yards (not sure how this was possible by the way). I tell him I was focused on the road in front of us and sorry I didn't see him. Justin is on his laptop in the front seat and the cop starts yelling at him, asking why HE didnt see him. "WHAT YOU DOIN ON THAT LAPTOP SON, YOU PLAYIN TETRIS ON THAT THING????" Justin just looks confused and says he doesnt know ahahahahahha.



So im like well this is great. He gets my license and registration and starts asking me about north carolina, if I like wilmington etc etc. He says have you been drinkin son I say NOPE. Its like a switch flips and he is suddenly our friend, cracking jokes and chummin it up about NC. He eventually tells us he wants to "catch a drunk" tonight and that we aren't his guys and lets us go. SHIP ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. Thank you God and thank you officer harrington

We roll into Tahoe, drop our stuff at the hotel, and go hit up one of the casinos for some poker.

Cliff notes of poker: Justin and I play cards for 4ish hours with the worst people ever but are never dealt hands and situations to take advantage of it. We sit folding 74o 30 times in a row while contemplating about ripping our hair out. We get owned by fish for like 100$ each and go to bed defeated, angry men

Ok it wasnt that bad but we did both actually lose money which is kinda funny considering we play for a living and these people were clueless. C'est la vie (look how cultured i am)

Lake tahoe was awesome and looks like this



It was snowing like crazy the day we were leaving so I cant wait to go back ya heard

Then I made my way back to Oakland and shattered the healthy eating plan. I ate a large mushroom pizza, 8$ worth of food off the taco bell 89 CENTS value menu, and 24 inches of subway in something like 36 hours. BLOBASAURUS rex reporting in

Phew this got long, ill put up the roommate post soon so you can see who i live with

weird sleep schedule = payday

so i went to bed at 10:30 last night to try to fix my sleep schedule and become more like a normal person. I promptly woke up at 3am wide awake and ready to PARTY

scott is asleep in room next to me so I couldnt exercise or play loud music or watch tv or something so I just played cards from 3 to 4am, PAYDAY



i think it was this song just relaxing my soul and took me to the pot of gold http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk9XYQMRiLY

and before you all feel like im rich, Im not even cashing any of this out because I need to keep some more $$ online so its basically just numbers on a screen. I did go shop online and buy two $20 sweaters from Gap afterwards though, BALLER

ps - i should have quit after 2k hands

pss - after this i played video games until like 7:30am and then got tired and went back to bed. Then I woke up at 11:30 and talked to mom on the phone and now its 1:30pm and im tired again so im probably gonna go to bed again? sleep schedule = donezo

oh hey hey heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey

well things have slowed down out here since a lot of people are going home for thanksgiving. I've just been relaxing and trying to put some hours in at the tables and hanging out with people who are still around

i listened to this song about a million times http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=291hqSAmwmg

we also finally got a 5th roommate, Scott. Hes a real cool guy and is very similar to all of us so thats great. I just realized I havent even put pictures of Sean or Mithil up here, so I will make all 5 of us sit down and take some HOUSE PICTURES so I can show you all what the deal is

The T.V. I ordered from full tilt finally got here, so we have a nice new 52" plasma upstairs.



Please notice the wonderful mantle decorations, i got love for the family (Tara, dont worry, you and Jamie and the nats are in the middle of the coffee table since I ran out of room). The stuffed animals are like 100 points from full tilt so I get them and throw them around the house when I'm mad or running bad or something. The wonderful artwork is from one of Mithil's autistic students who LOVES to draw dinosaurs and spaceships with lasers attached to them, pretty cool idea if you ask me.

Friday I went into the city and hung out with some of Scotts friends over by the university of san francisco. We got to talking about what I do and a guy named Andrew ended up showing me articles like this, which is pretty cool.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=from-poker-table-to-the-wall-street-2009-11-20

Apparently some companies are just "blindly" hiring poker players, heavily discounting GPA and major, because we basically do exactly what they do. PRO TRADER BAKER, reporting in?

Saturday I went back into the city and ate at this really good Tapas restaurant with derek and his girlfriend. I managed to spend like $60 bucks but I never eat nice so it was worth it. Plus, I couldn't pronounce half the stuff I was eating so I'm definitely a classier person now.

I was supposed to go rock climbing yesterday with Derek but we ended up eating so much mexican food before we went that we felt sick and had to take it easy. worthless

Sabo, sean, and mithil have all flown out so its just scott and I for a while. I think we are going bowling tonight with the lake merritt posse (me and sean have been going on sunday nights and he taught me how to spin the ball, SUP), so hopefully I can show off and not bowl a 58 or something.

Dearest family, sorry that I am not coming back for thanksgiving to hang out with you! I love you all very much and will call a lot this week so it feels like I'm right there

LOVE, NICK

ps - oh yea, justin organized this trip to lake tahoe in march to watch all the basketball games and snowboard. I think like 14 poker players are going (I convinced HeHo to come too) so it should be really fun, plus we booked this sick house with an indoor pool and hot tub and theatre room etc etc etc. Pictures are small but you get the gist. IM PUMPED

Day Two and Three and Four

Well I hope the last post gave you an idea of Vegas. After going to bed at 8 am or whatever I woke up Friday afternoon at 2:30ish. Heho had been up playing since 9 am or something (what a beast). We grabbed some food and walked the strip a bit and before I knew it, it was 9:30 pm and time for us to go to LOVE, the cirque de soleil beatles show. Henry had snagged front row balcony seats and it was perfect

The show was great, if I had to sum it up I would go with "acrobatic chaos set to beatles music." I have loved every cirque show Ive ever seen and still want to see them all!

The rest of the trip can be summed up as a sleeping a little, eating a little



(we hit up the dinner buffet at Planet Hollywood, here Im crushing the seafood section with a little alaskan king crab legs, salmon, shrimp tempura, fried fish, and boiled shrimp NOM NOM NOMMMMMMMM)

and then a whole lot of poker



on this particular night I bought in for $200 and left with $1450 or something, so that was nice. 90% of the table hated my guts and I had one guy raging so much I thought he was going to physically attack me. ALLS FAIR IN LOVE AND CARDS BOYS. Henry and I both ended up $$$ on the weekend which is always great

The trip is a blur, just lots of being awake and gambling. Henry and I avoided the pit pretty well (pit = table games that you lose lots of money on) except for one little -$200 blip at roulette, where we gathered a crowd by making 100$ bets in towers of 1$ chips stacked 100 high. It was fun until we both lost all our money :( but i did fall in love with the dealer :) (who got no tip because I busted, haahahahhaha)

henry flew out sunday morning at 7 am so we just stayed up till 5 am on saturday night and he headed out and I passed out. I checked out of the hotel late on Sunday and then watched basketball/football games in the sportsbook of the MGM until I had to head to the airport at 5ish.

All in all it was a fun but exhausting trip. Ive been trying to recover from my wonderful 5-8am until 1-3pm sleep schedule all week and just muttering how vegas wore me out. I thought heho would feel the same way, but I check my email today and see this:

"If you're interested in a trip, let me know. even though we just got back, ive still got the itch. 2.5 days just isnt enough. im thinking 13th-19th or so. excalibur = $25/night total."

hahaha hes a beast

PS- OH YEA GRANDMA, i forgot I put your $10 in the quarter slots and decided I would pull 10 times on max bets and cash out whatever was left (up or down). You are now 5$ richer my dear, after the 10th pull I had $15 in credits and cashed that baby out. Congrats!

PSS - notice how they laser cut the crab legs or something right in half so you dont even have to crack em. Laziness at its best!

what just happened

well i just got back from vegas and the entire trip was just chaos

ill just give you minute by minute of the first day and you will get the gist of the trip

10:30 am - I board my southwest plane to LAS VEGAS. I forget southwest has no assigned seats and dont know what to do. I play it cool and figure it out.

10:55 am - I get cold and realize i left my sweatshirt in the san fran airport. YES.

12:40 pm - Arrive at the westin and fall asleep for a few hours until heho arrives (heho = henry holderness)

4:00 pm - Heho and I hit up the poker room at MGM for a little 1/2 no limit. After playing for 2 minutes I confirm that everyone is in fact terrible. I will crush these games.

6:30 pm - I'm stuck $600 vs people who dont know which hands beat what. Is this happening? I lose my last stack to a drunk guy who i am 90% sure is too inebriated to read his cards. I pinch myself to wake up from the nightmare. IM ALREADY AWAKE

6:32 pm - I tell heho i need some dinner and 15 punches to the face. henrys up like 200 or something, at least one of us is winning. I pound some subway and take 4 more bills out of the ATM, vowing to not go to sleep until im even

7:00 pm - I'm back at the tables. I am focused. I am an animal.

7:07 pm - I get stacked by an off the clock dealer in a standard hand. -800 so far. This game is expensive to play

7:15 pm - I hit up the ATM for 1k and go to the roulette wheel to double it up and be even really quick. I put it all on red and

HAHA just kidding mom (i know this story is making you worry already)

7:15 pm - really though im still sitting at the poker table folding 26o every hand and wondering how many people i must have killed in some past life to deserve this

8:15 pm - The inevitable happens and I stack someone. It is a weird feeling for the chips to be pushed my way after the hand. i like this

11:00 pm - I meet a professional rock climber from wyoming. His forearms are as big as my thighs. i have a new friend and we chum it up between hands

12:15 am - I stack rock climber guy. Hes not my friend anymore. I'm sitting at -400 or something at this point

2:00 am - Henry is falling asleep at the table and hasnt said a word in like 3 hours. Hes heading back to the hotel and I tell him I have unfinished business

4:00 am - Ive been playing for 12 hours, no biggie. A drunk guy joins the table and I mentally prepare myself for him to own me. I stack him, SHIP IT

6:00 am - Drunk guy is making funny jokes, but I dont laugh because im too tired and have been playing poker for 14 hours straight and hate my life. I win some pots and am like +$25 dollars on the night i think

6:15 am - I cash out and am in a daze. I start the walk back to the hotel and the guy in front of me is walking the strip smoking a joint and drinking a keystone light tall boy. welcome to vegas. 6 drunk people on segways whizz by. welcome to vegas. there is a man dressed as captain america sitting on the curb. welcome to vegas.

6:30 am - I pass a dennys and get sucked in for dinner/breakfast/whatever meal im supposed to be on. I am starving and ecstatic. I order eggs and double hashbrowns

6:41 am - Midway through the meal I see an advertisement on the table for buffalo wings. Why not? I finish my eggs and order buffalo wings

6:55 am - i have a life crisis. I am sitting in dennys at 7 am eating buffalo wings alone. rock bottom, is that you?

7:30 am - I get back to the hotel room. heho is passed out with the blinds open, the lights on, and saved by the bell on tv.

7:32 am - wow saved by the bell, i havent seen this show in a long time. this is the best day ever, why cut it short? I am suddenly not tired and get sucked into 2 episodes of saved by the bell "the college years"

8:30 am - DAY ONE COMPLETE. SLEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

I'm off

been playing a ton of cards lately so I'm off to vegas to mix the scene up a bit and catch up with henry. looking forward to relaxing, ill be back sunday!

the unc days

this post is dedicated to trey coe, a faithful blog reader and wonderful friend

you know whats comin


masculine


stoic


AN ANIMAL


just hanging with friends while mike and trey mean mug and I apparently have a seizure


tradition. trey maintains this picture will be used at his wedding


8 guys, 1 lawn


topoooooooooooooooooooo


not sure what mike is saying here, but I bet its 50% inappropriate and 100% hilarious


snick maintains she can see her house from here. why does mike have a tie on? why am I crying? why does trey look like our dad?


100% sure my face looks like im being hit with a cattle prod because will is grabbing/pinching me


tico, thanks for always having that camera handy buddy. both teams played hard

little EZ?

big Easy looked so good for so many years i figured why not



let it gooooooooo let it growwwwwwwww

end of the weekend and friends leaving

So on saturday we tried to go hiking up in the marin headlands. But Berkely had a game so the richmond bridge was impossible to get to and the bay bridge was backed up for like 2 hours, so we were trapped in east bay and just hung out watching football and reading. I think Worth was relieved to be honest. He also schemed his way into us eating Mcdonalds (his favorite restaurant) for lunch, some things never change.

Sabo finally got back on Saturday afternoon (he had been back home in Ohio) and it was a beautiful day so Anna, Worth, Sabo and I took and walk and caught up. We ended up going out to dinner that night in Berkeley and meeting up with Anne, Sabo's lady, so worth and anna could grill her and make sure she was satisfactory (dont worry, she passed).

We dropped off Worth at the airport the next morning and succesfully made our way up to Stinson beach to hike around.



California Joy:



Then we explored the coast for a bit:



After hiking for a while we made our way to a snack shack by the beach and had a picnic just relaxing in the sun. Then we went out to the beach and just slept in the sand for like an hour listening to the surf, awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Next we drove back down the scenic highway 1 towards the city (i think i've talked about this in one of the earlier entries). The roads right on the ocean, ballin. I feel like this picture I took should be some advertisement for whatever that car is, maybe i'll sell it to them and get rich:


the barebones crew:



By then it was late afternoon so we rolled back to Oakland and showered and ate and got anna on her redeye back to NC. All my friends had to go back to the real world :(

Anna, Liz, and Worthless: Means a lot that you guys came out to visit, and youre obviously welcome back any time. It was great to see you all and thanks for coming out!



ps - ahahha this is by far the most hippie meal ive had so far. While ive been straight bloggin here ive just been snacking on some cous cous and edamame. hahahahaha the transformation is happening. dreadlocks within 7

alcatraz and golden gate

So we picked up worth and went to the golden gate rec area to see some beaches/ mess around in the park/ check out the bridge. this is probably one of the greatest pictures ever taken. things to notice

1) me trying to point to the bridge and failing miserably
2) the naked 70 year old walking in the 40 degree surf behind us
3) worth laughing because of #2



So i asked a women to take a picture of all 4 of us in front of the golden gate... this is the result



uhhhhhhhh thanks lady. If i blow up the right 1 inch of the picture you can see a beam. SPEECHLESS

Then we chilled on fishermans wharf, saw some sea lions (sea lions smell TERRIBLE but are really fun to watch because all they do is bark and mess around with eachother. the seals constantly fight for position on the floating docks so its one huge game of sea lion kING OF THE MOUNTAIN)



went and did the alcatraz tour which was great. they have an audio tour thing with a bunch of cool stories about the place which was just money



went home, showered, went to grab some pizza at like 11, hung out until 12:30 or 1 and passed out. being a hardcore tourist is no easy job

The Jones

SOOOOOOO last week Anna and Liz (good friends of mine from UNC) flew into California and we went over to the Jones' house in Danville (~25 minutes away). Anna played soccer with the Jones' daughter out at UNC, so they invited us all over to dinner and to spend the night. They are pretty much the nicest people ever

Turns out Mr. Jones is a 3-time super bowl champ, 4-time pro bowler tight end for the 49ers. Awesome. He was going to play golf with Steve Young and Jerry Rice the day we were over there... no biggie. Mrs. Jones is a cali native born and raised and is just awesome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Jones

one day i will be famous enough to have a real Wikipedia page... ONE DAY

They were as hospitable as you could imagine and we had a wonderful dinner and spent a rough night hanging out by the pool



and watching movies in the theater



We hung out there for a while and made our way back to the city the next day so the girls could see my house. We took it easy and I showed them beautiful Oaktown and then we picked up worth, who was flying in from LA, the next morning!

Heres worth going for the perplexed model vibe, while I go for the awkward mid sentence half speaking look




alcatraz and golden gate park next!

edit: oh yea ps - the jones let us use one of their cars for the day so we were high rollin through california, niceeeee (they had it washed the day before for us, thats how nice they are)

ANNA RIDING DIRTY