1. I often get news from the world of poker on my Facebook feed. I knew the World Series of Poker's Main Even was nearing the climactic moment, a week into the tournament, when the mammoth field of poker players gets whittled down to the final nine players.
The news flashes posted on my page focused primarily on Will Givens, an extroverted presence at whatever table he plays and who puts his routines of meditation, talking to God, working out, and eating avocado toast and eggs ahead of arriving on time to the tournament, whether at the beginning of the day or after breaks during a day of play.
Givens played himself deep into the tournament, so I kept an eye on live updates at pokernews.com to see if he'd survive and be part of the final nine.
I also became interested in another controversial player and began to follow the play (and history) of Shaun Deeb.
From a comment someone made on one of those poker posts in my Facebook feed, I learned that one of the players still alive in the Main Event, Lucas Jumalon, was from Spokane, a recent graduate of Ferris High School.
So I began to look for updates on this 22-year-old Spokane native, especially after Givens and Deeb busted out of the tournament.
WOW!
Jumalon blasted his way to the top of the leaderboard and will begin play at the August 3rd final table with 194 million chips. The second-place player, Rami Hammoud, has 79 million chips.
Jumalon has a mammoth chip lead.
Insurmountable?
Not necessarily.
2. I hadn't looked at my Goodreads account for a long time and realized that I've read at least forty books since the last time I posted on my list of books read.
I was more interested, though, in what Christy and Adrienne have posted on their lists of books read and, in doing so, I casually read other readers' comments/reviews about some of these books.
Doing so further piqued my fascination with how different people read, what they are looking for in books, and what criteria they use to evaluate and comment on books.
I have a lot of thoughts about ways people read going through my mind, joined by thoughts about how I read, and I realized I'm kind of an odd ball reader.
One example: reviewers/commenters on Goodreads regularly draw comparisons. They might draw comparisons between the book they are writing about and other books the author has written and evaluate the book according to whether it's as good or is better than the other books. Readers often compare one book to another writer's book whose subject matter is similar or whose book covers a similar time period. For example, in writing about a Kristin Hannah book that took place in World War II (The Nightingale maybe?), one reviewer was disappointed that it wasn't as good as All the Light We Cannot See. That struck me as unfair.
For better or worse, I don't think about other books while I'm reading the one in my hand. I'm the same way with movies and plays. I think it does make me an odd ball that I'm not asking myself while reading Bleak House whether it's as good as Great Expectations and when I watched Steven Spielberg's Linclon, the thought of comparing it to movies of his that came before it never crossed my mind.
Maybe I'm not true to this approach all the time, but I do know that if I have breakfast, say, at the Brooks Hotel and if someone asks me if it's as good as, say, The Breakfast Nook, I'm stumped. I just don't tend to think that way.
3. I've written a few times lately that I have focused on fixing leafless salads.
Well, the taco salad I made over the weekend was definitely a lettuce salad.
Furthermore, I didn't use all the lettuce I had on hand when I made that salad.
So, today, I made a huge Romain lettuce-based salad with a wide variety of vegetables.
It's good.
And I look forward to getting back to playing around with grain, noodle, and pasta salads.
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