Yeah, it’s the end of summer, but things are going well and I feel great. The Yanks are in first place baby! And speaking of baby, my Grammy-winning friend G called the other day to tell me his wife just gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, their first child! Very cool. Work continues to be busy in a good way. My fantasy football team is 1-1, but in decent shape since Ricky Williams should be back in 3 weeks and then I’ll have 4 legitimate running backs to go with Randy Moss and Steve Smith. On tv, the new season of House has started and has been pretty decent so far, so I dig that. Finished reading a book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, written by the guy who wrote Tipping Point. It’s a fascinating read, all about how the subconscious mind dominates instantaneous decisions and how that impacts a wide variety of scenarios, from art experts judging authenticity of works to law enforcement officers’ instantaneous decisions to pull the trigger or not. I picked up the book at the airport on my trip out to Vegas just to have something to read on the plane. I applied what I read in it to help guide my blackjack play thru four days, and it was remarkably successful. I basically just tried to pay more attention to what my subconscious wanted to do with regards to bet sizes based upon the cards seen in the prior hands. I took that feeling as one extra data point and balanced it with my rational thought processes about money management. I would then make my betting decisions weighing both sides. That allowed me to resist chasing my money when I would lose a stretch of hands (by chasing I mean increasing or even doubling my next bet after a losing hand in order to try to win it all back quicker). I think a big reason it worked was because I was internally trying to feel for when the subconscious mechanism was trying to convey a decision it had made, and not surprisingly, that feeling is *completely* different than the internal pissed off voice telling you to double your bet when you’re steaming! I know it all sounds hokey, but the examples in the book show clear and tangible evidence of this internal decision making mind. Read the book, I think you’ll be surprised by a lot of it. The main bad thing about the book is that it never quite tells you how to put a better framework around the mechanism in order to really make it work for you. I think the whole listen-for-it-at-the-blackjack-table thing I did was probably a lousy approximation of how to truly effectively harness it. But who knows, maybe figuring that out won’t happen in our generation. That ties into some of the Spiral Dynamics Integral concepts that I also find interesting, but SDi is way too much to get into here; just Google it. But be warned, all this can make your head hurt! Fascinating stuff though.

In less positive developments, my favorite bartender at the Spanish bar across the street had to quit and her replacement was some lady who hardly speaks any English, doesn’t like to answer the phone and somehow does not know what a Coke is even though she’s been in the country for four years. I talked to Hector a few days ago and sure enough, he agreed that she probably wasn’t going to last. I think he’ll fire her tonite actually, so maybe I’ll stop back in there sometime this weekend, maybe tomorrow after work. Speaking of which, I should probably get to bed early tonight. Gotta take Metro North in the a.m. cause I’m working out of the Times Sq. office tomorrow. Maybe I’ll stop by Mekong before coming back home tomorrow; only 8 more days before they close 🙁