Relatively Speaking

Big snowfall here overnight last night, starting around dusk and lasting pretty much until the sun came up this morning. Was kind of an eerie scene walking up to feed the horses around 6:30, with something around eight or more inches having accumulated.

We’ll sometimes go an entire winter without snow here in western North Carolina, so whenever it does happen we don’t necessarily take it in stride the way the top half of the country does. I happened to be in the grocery store yesterday midday and it was kind of a mad house with folks stocking up in anticipation of the storm.

As it happened, it wasn’t too long after I fed the horses and then put them out with some hay this morning that our power went out, no doubt due to some lines going down under the weight of the snow. We have a working generator here and had to use it last winter after losing power. We probably would have cranked it up today but the power returned during the late afternoon to make that unnecessary.

Since most of my work involves me being online, I had to tether with my phone for a few hours early in the day to connect and finish what I had to do. After that I signed off and enjoyed playing around in the snow a bit and also reading for several hours.

Still, the electricity was off long enough to start to miss a few of those amenities like heating up lunch in the microwave, having running water to shave and shower, and being able to keep our electronics all charged.

It reminded me vaguely of a short strategy piece I had over on PokerNews last week titled “If You Lose a Few Hands, Don’t Lose Your Mind” that focused in part on the psychological effect of losing hands at the start of a session and that feeling of being “in a hole” that we’ve all experienced.

It’s such a hard-to-shake feeling -- that is, feeling “down” after losing your first few pots, despite the arbitrariness of looking at your stack size when starting a session as a reference point. As an example, I talked about depositing $100 in an online account, running it up to $150, then sitting down to play again and promptly losing $15 right away. You’re up $35 overall, but you feel down.

Check out the article for more, including a funny cameo by my nephew. Meanwhile, I’m going to heat up some water in our electric kettle and have a cup of tea while watching the snow melt outside.

With the temps in the high 30s, it already feels a lot warmer. But you know, it’s all relative.