3/3

After another month of studying German, I passed my language test today.  The test itself went quite well and I walked out of the exam feeling pretty good.  The readying portion had definitely gone better than last time and the speaking part seemed about the same (perhaps slightly poorer).  And then I waited...and waited...and waited...and worried.  Last time, they had my decision in about 10 minutes.  I really didn't think today's performance was a close call.  I thought it was a solid 3, with no chance at a 3+, but they kept me waiting and waiting and waiting.  Finally, after more than 30 minutes, they came out to get me to give me the results.  I got my 3/3 and that was that.

I leave for Germany on Wednesday next week and I have a bunch of things to do between now and then.  In the next few weeks, this blog should get interesting again as I will be experiencing new and interesting things once again.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Just an awesome weekend

I just had an absolutely awesome weekend.

Friday night, high school buddy Brandon and I drove to West Virginia to do some gambling at the casino there.  We've discussed playing some craps together for a while and finally got the chance to do so.  We then proceeded to play at the hottest craps table I have ever seen.  The first roller threw the dice for about 20-30 minutes and it took two hours for the dice to make a lap around the table.  We only left the table (up about $250) because we wanted to play in a 7 pm poker tournament.  

The tournament was a bit pricier that I would normally play because each player had a $100 bounty.  If you knock out a player, you get his $100 bucks to keep.  This style of tournament highly rewards aggressive players (which unfortunately I am not).  Brandon played as well, but got knocked out pretty early.  I won a couple of decent pots in the first two hours, but found myself shortstacked with just around 10,000 chips (what we started with).  I got Q-10 suited in good position, moved all-in, was called and more than doubled up to around 23,000.  A few hands later, I got pocket Aces in the small blind with 1,000/2,000 blinds.  The button raised to 10,000 and I moved all-in, as I would be happy to win the pot right now.  The big blind called all-in for about 17k and then the button called all-in for about 22,000.  They turned over 7-10 hearts, and 10-Q offsuit (not sure why either called) and although I had to sweat out a flush draw, I tripled up and won $200 cash for knocking both of them out.  Amazingly, two hands later (before I had even finished stacking my chips) I got pocket Aces again.  This time, I won the hand pre-flop.  

My newfound chips allowed me to actually play poker again and I did pretty well for a while.  When we were down to around 14 players, I moved all-in with A-5 suited hoping to get the rest of the table to fold.  I was called by A-Q and sucked out with a 2 to river a straight.  In the end, I finished in 6th place winning $594 (plus $200 for the bounties).  Not a bad trip to West Virginia.

On Saturday, I ran 5 miles around the Mall and the White House before meeting Sara and some of her friends for a pool day.  Sara's college roommate Jess (who is awesome) was visiting this weekend and we had an awesome day hanging out at the pool.  We had some friends over to Sara's for a cookout and then spent the later part of the evening singing karaoke at a shitty Japanese bar.  After sleeping in late this morning, Sara, Jess, and I went for a 3 mile run, then had a delicious lunch at Matchbox.

Simply a great weekend.

Race times

I ran my 6th (and presumably final) race of the year in DC yesterday.  In October, I was worried that I could not even finish a 5k.  Since then, I have continued to run further and run faster.  Here are my results over the last year.

Dead Man's Run 5k - October 6, 2012 -  35:23 (11:24/mile) - 35/35 in my gender/age division

DC AIDS Walk 5k - October 27, 2012 - 32:52 (10:35/mile)

St. Patrick's Day 8k - March 13, 2013 - 53:43 (10:49/mile) - 263/301 in my gender/age division

Cherry Blossom 10 miler - April 7, 2013 - 1:53:31 (11:21/mile) - 1351/1454 in my gender/age division

Capitol Hill 10k - May 19, 2013 - 1:03:12 (10:11/mile) 

Lawyers Have Heart 5k - June 8, 2013 - 28:50 - (9:17/mile) - 30/75 in my gender/age division

I have made pretty significant improvement over the last 8 months.  I've brought down my pace in the 5k by over 2 minutes a mile.  I really wanted to run the 5k yesterday in under 30 minutes and really surprised myself by besting that goal by over a minute.

As I move to Germany, I hope to keep running and would like to do a few races in Europe.  There is a 10 mile race from the Eiffel Tower to Versailles in late September, which would be awesome.  There are also a number of half marathons throughout Germany and Europe.  I'd really like to get a half marathon under my belt this year and possibly do a marathon next summer.