Money makes the world go round

Had a good night at poker last night. We started relatively late, as half of the people were delayed one way or another. The table was quite cosy as seven of us clustered around it, but I think the game was more aggressive as the pots were bigger. That said it was still the usual lively, friendly game. (Poor old Mark G is involved in the current EU budget shenanigans and didn’t get out of the office until gone 9pm. He was quite fraught when he arrived, but declared himself totally relaxed by the time that he and Chris left around 11:45, so we must be doing something right.)

In the end the pot was split four ways between Brett & I and Mark & Chris as they had to make the train. I came out ahead with about £33, Brett & Chris had about £20 each and Mark left with £7 – having actually thrown a lot of money away on his last hand and then folded after the fifth card.

Rosie and Andy stayed overnight with us. Andy was away first thing for work but Rosie hung around and chatted for a while. She is moving to a new flat in a few weeks which prompted us to think about house-buying again (we have discussed the possibility of pooling our resources to buy a property in the past.) The reality of it is that to save up a decent deposit we need to cut our expenses drastically, which is quite do-able but would be no fun. When our lease is up we need to find a much cheaper place, which will mean a much smaller place, which will mean having to sell most of our furniture. Also, cutting our entertainment spend; eating-out less and doing less theatre/cinema, etc. With a bit of resolve I think we could save quite a bit in a year or two.

The rest of today has been fairly lazy. I’ve made good headway in getting the Christmas cards written. Brett has even managed to draw up a list of people in the States that he wants to send cards to – now all he has to do is confirm their addresses are still current before the last posting date in ten days time…

Tonight we are off out to see “Sunday in the Park with George” with Ping and a few other Chorus guys. All I know about it is that it’s a Sondheim show, so I suppose I’m expecting a good evening.

I only scored six out of ten in chemistry on the BBC’s latest national curriculum test.

In other news:

Associated Press reports that the Vatican looks likely to abolish Limbo. If God really is guiding his church, I wish he’d stop changing his mind; it hardly enhances his reputation for omniscience!