The attraction of stuff

One thing Michelle and I share is a geeky fascination with cool gadgets. We don't spend a lot of money on nice furniture or fashionable clothes, but dangle a new computer or the latest tech wizardry and we're both likely to feel a burning sensation in our pockets. Michelle refers to the Best Buy circular in the Sunday paper as "the porno."

And so, despite our better judgment, we both find ourselves pulled with Newtonian force toward the new iPhone 3G. You've seen the ads and heard the hype, I'm sure. It's a cell phone! It's an iPod! It's the Internet at your fingertips! It's a mini TV in your pocket! Your calendar, a camera, instant messaging, games, even a GPS system to tell you exactly where you are right now! (Aisle 2 of the Best Buy, no doubt.)

How can anyone resist? This is a device that would have come in quite handy on Pie in the Sky II, and we talked about it often. We're in the middle of Kansas; where's the nearest cup of coffee? What's the deal with these "Purple Heart Memorial Highway" signs everywhere? OK then, where's the largest cross in the Eastern Hemishphere?

Look it up, look it up, look it up, that's what you could do with the cool new iPhone!

Except, back at home, in rare moments of clear thinking, we've both noted the many reasons to resist. Such as, if you're not on the road, how often would you really need to look something up on your phone? Maybe to check a movie time or settle an argument, but not all the time. Also, iPhones are expensive, both to purchase and to operate over the life of the required two-year contract. We already have cell phones that work just fine, and in fact the quality of our Verizon service is excellent. The AT&T service required for the iPhone is spotty, and last time we had that carrier we couldn't get a signal at our house, which is why we switched to Verizon. If we switched to an iPhone and then had to switch again we'd have to pay twice for the privilege.

Another problem with the attraction of stuff is that you end up with more stuff. We've already got a basement full of old network routers, Tivos, computer parts, power cords and formerly cutting edge cell phones that we don't use anymore. I'm not one of those back-to-nature, live-off-the-land freaks, but even I see that piling up so much plastic and silicon is ridiculous and wasteful.

Also, I'm not sure I want the extra level of connectivity that the iPhone offers. As it is I don't want to answer my phone half the time, and I delete plenty of email without even reading it. If anything, I'd like to be less available to most of the world, not more.

And then there are questions about the iPhone device itself. It's gotten terrific reviews, but already there's some backlash out there among people disappointed with the service, or with Apple's bungled rollout, or with the relatively feeble battery life. Some iPhone fans are boasting on message boards that they're able to get through an entire day without charging the battery -- if they turn off the wireless, the GPS, the enhanced "3G" network and they don't play any music ... all the stuff that makes this thing better than a regular old cell phone.

Some are having a tough time reconciling their tech love and their tech snootery. "I just noticed today that the buzz is gone," said one poster on Gizmodo. "Almost makes the instability and constant call-dropping worth it."

I stopped by the AT&T store the other day (my car was parked right next to it) and asked about the cell coverage problem. The service has been upgraded, the guy said, and you always have 30 days to return the phone if it doesn't work, but if you're worried about it you could borrow the phone of a friend with AT&T and check it at your house.

Hmm.

Wednesday, between doctor appointments, I poked my head in at the University Village Apple Store. A line of people out the door waiting to buy from the limited supply of iPhones, with the average wait time two hours. Whenever a customer emerged from the store with that little rectangular bag in hand, the people in line would cheer. It was kind of sick.

And still, I keep surfing back to the Apple review sites to check the latest news. The porno has its pull. I can't decide.

Michelle and I are heading out to the movies this afternoon -- the new "Batman" -- and we'll probably stop at the Southcenter Apple Store. The force will be strong, I'm sure.

Somebody, quick, talk me out of it. Or, alternatively, if you happen to have AT&T, can I borrow your phone?

No news, news

One definition of news is that which is unusual or unexpected. By that reckoning yesterday's six-hour doctor trip was pretty newsy.

For the first time in months there were no hassles with the MRI or the blood draw, both of which are regularly screwed up to an almost comical degree. This time, in and out: Some nicely trippy Pink Floyd music nearly masked the loud "Tron"-like droning of the MRI machine; nobody freaked when sticking both my arms with needles (one for the MRI contrast dye, another later for the blood draw); no lost paperwork or spilled blood or bureaucratic snafus. I almost called the newspaper.

Jennifer, who is Dr. Spence's nurse practitioner, looked at my scans and pronounced everything "fine," which prompted our monthly 10-minute, no-resolution discussion about what fine means. Everything's relative when you treat brain tumors for a living. She asked how things have been going and I told her about the day wasted at the best hospital in Maine, and I also mentioned a couple of mild dizzy spells I've had recently.

Those actually have concerned me a little, not because they're debillitating but because I used to get dizzy spells all the time before the giant seizure that started this whole medical adventure. I never thought much of them until I was recovering from brain surgery and then later when I noticed I didn't get them anymore. Maybe, duh, all that stuff was related.

So I mentioned them expecting Jennifer to dismiss them as a typical side effect of this drug or that, or of having a hole in your head. It's fine, I expected her to say. Instead she asked a couple of questions and then, quite confidently, said that those few dizzy seconds are probably little seizures.

She decided to boost my prescription of Keppra, the seizure medication I take twice daily. Her idea was to double my dose, but Michelle, an encyclopedia of drug side effects, mentioned that I've been susceptible to Keppra's associated irritability and moodiness. Yes, Jennifer allowed, that can happen, along with depression, psychosis ... she named some other stuff. Well, she decided, maybe we should ramp up the dosage instead of doubling it, from 500 mg twice a day to 500 and 750, and then 750 twice and then 750 and 1,000, etc.

I don't know if that counts as news but it seemed smarter to one half of M&M, and I'm sure it was a relief to the other.

In lieu of the World Series

Somewhere out there on the road, the Pie in the Sky tour took the wind out of the M&M poker sails. Still not sure what happened -- some bad cards, some bad beats, some bad play -- but we didn't exactly set the world on fire. That's not the only reason we cut our trip a bit short without a return to Las Vegas, but let's just say our vision of capturing the World Series of Poker was requiring rosier glasses than we had packed in the Excellent Element.

When we got home though, Michelle set to work on a screenplay idea she's been kicking around that involves a poker tournament. As part of her research she began reading the three volumes of "Harrington on Hold 'em," the bibles of tournament poker. It all must have rekindled an interest, or maybe she just needed some color for her story, but a few weeks ago Michelle suggested we drive down to the Muck to play in one of their Tuesday night tournaments.

Supportive guy that I am, I agreed to go play.

Michelle has always been a good tournament player -- better in tourneys than in live cash games -- and I wasn't at all surprised when she began building a formidable chip stack and scaring the bejezus out of her opponents, me included, with her ice-cold staredown from behind and under big black sunglasses and that shock of crazy hair. Also the giant raises.

Before too long I busted out, in about 20th place, and went to play in my normal $4/8 cash game. But hours passed and still Michelle was in the tournament. Finally I went back to check on her and she had made the final table, where she played like one of those cancer patients you read about in the newspaper (she fought courageously, battled tenaciously, blah blah blah) before eventually finishing in fifth place, good for $125. Nice little return on the $65 buy-in, and an excellent showing against the 50-player field.

At the casino we heard about a larger promotional tournament scheduled for later this month, July 20, with a $500 buy-in and a $100,000 prize pool including $30,000 for first place and $20,000 for second.

We also began to catch wind of some friends' recent success in tournaments. David McCumber, who has been on fire all year, consistently has been making the money at Diamond Lil's here in Seattle, and my pal Joel Rubin in L.A. has made a couple tasty little scores against the degenerates there. Best of all, our former P-I reporter colleague Sam Skolnik, who now works at the Las Vegas Sun, has broken through with several final-table finishes at Caesars, Bellagio and elsewhere, taking down wins in the five figures and barely missing six figures or more. He even has an official ranking now in Card Player Magazine's "Player of the Year" contest.

Michelle and I looked at each other. Sammy's pretty good -- we've both played with him plenty -- but he's not that good. If he and Joel and David can consistently beat these games maybe, with a little practice, we can do the same.

So we decided to try again a couple of nights later, at one of the Muck's $70 buy-in events, this time with 97 entrants. It would be like practice. And who knows, if we felt confident and made a few bucks, maybe we'd take a shot at the July 20 event.

We both did well again, with me outlasting Michelle this time and making the final table myself. I finished in eighth place, with a payout of about $180.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks to last night. The big July 20 event is approaching -- that's this Sunday -- and we wanted one more practice session at the lower stakes. When we got there and were assigned our seats I gave Michelle a little fist bump and said, "See you at the final table."

Lo, as players busted out to the left and right of us, every time I looked over my shoulder Michelle was stacking chips. And I got off to a great start, more than doubling up on the first hand of the tournament with pocket aces. A few hours later, as six tables were combined to five, and then to four, three, two, we found ourselves still in the game. Before long we were drawing for seats at the final table, just as we had "predicted."

Michelle, unfortunately, came in with a short stack among those 10 players and finished in ninth, good enough to get her buy-in back but not to make a profit. I had a healthier chip stack but played poorly in the final few rounds and felt almost lucky to exit in sixth place, with a $160 payout.

We didn't pull down giant wins -- and in fact we both could have made a larger profit if I had agreed to a proposal to "chop" the total prize pool 10 ways (stubbornness, greed) -- but we feel like we're playing in a different universe than we did out on the road.

Who knows what this weekend will bring. My good friend Mike Stahlberg, who taught me this stupid game, is planning to come up from Eugene to play on Sunday, and I think McCumber's going to give it a shot too.

We'll see each other at the final table, I'm sure. And if the subject comes up, I'll vote in favor of the chop.

We couldn't catch a flight to Rome ...

... so my friend Carol Pucci and I settled for a nice lunch in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood at La Vita e Bella, the cool little Sicilian place where Michelle and McCumber and Mich and I all have enjoyed numerous great meals.


Carol and I decided to get together when she joined Facebook recently and we "friended" each other there. In real life we've been friends for more than 20 years, since I started working at the Seattle Times, although we haven't seen each other in ages. Carol's Facebook profile had a photo of her and some friends at a little restaurant that I thought I recognized from Italy. Sure enough, she confirmed, the restaurant was Orso, in Rome. It wasn't the place I was thinking of, where Michelle and I dined near the Spanish Steps, but it might have been the spot Kaye recommended -- renowned for its antipasti -- and it's located very close to where Michelle and I stayed on our recent trip.

Anyway, when Carol and I set up our lunch date we joked about meeting at Orso. I'll buy lunch, I said, if she picked up the cab fare. In the end, we were happy to meet yesterday at La Vita.

It was really nice to reconnect. When Carol and I worked together she was the Times business editor -- Mich's boss, in fact -- but she has since moved to what she must get tired of hearing is the greatest job in Seattle journalism. She's the Times' travel writer. For "work" she trots the globe meeting cool people, eating great meals and writing stories.

We talked about travel and work and our lives, and when I mentioned Michelle she said, "Hey, I've been to the town of Nicolosi!" Here and here are stories she wrote from there.

Carol loved it in Nicolosi, and all of Sicily, and encouraged us to go. One of these days.

'Wait. Are you the Michelle?'

When we walked up to the annual West Seattle SummerFest this afternoon, we stopped by the booth of the excellent West Seattle Blog to say hello and offer props. WSB really is an incredible blog. Michelle and I talk about it all the time as the model for a neighborhood news source and for the kind of community-centered, reader-friendly micro-coverage that might help save the stupid newspaper industry. So we were happy to meet Tracy Record, a lifetime journalist who runs the venture (more than) full-time, and her husband Patrick Sand, whom their site lists as co-publisher and "the sales guy."

Michelle stuck out her hand. "I'm Michelle," she said. "I run the P-I's web site."

"Wait," Tracy said. "Are you the Michelle? Like, from Michelle & Mark?"

I raised my hand, and we all had a nice few minutes of mutual admiration. We noticed long ago that Tracy had listed M&M on her West Seattle blog roll, but she must actually read it too. She asked about our road trip, and when she mentioned something that had happened in the hood recently she added, "I think you were still gone then."

Very cool. It also made me realize we haven't been doing much blogging lately. Sometimes, I find, you just feel like taking a break. We'll have a couple of little posts to catch up on in the next few days. For now, here are a couple more pics from today's street fair.