I’ve feigned illness, pretended to complete detail work on the decorating that didn’t need doing and spent more time in the pub than was good for my liver but I finally have to admit defeat.

    I have to go Christmas shopping with the wife.

    You’ll already know my views on this from a previous entry but now I have to do it for real and there is only one thing that can ensure my participation:

    Beer.

    A very, very large amount of it.

    Although the bulk of this year’s purchases will be completed over the Internet, thereby reducing the physical shopping to an absolute minimum, I will still have to be semi-conscious to be dragged round the shops by an enthusiastic wife. There’s a good chance this awful task will have to be done tomorrow so I’ve done the only sensible thing.

    I’ve started drinking today.

    The only problem with this strategy is the proximity of the Christmas holidays. With my friends and colleagues visiting each other on a regular basis there’s a high probability I’ll be completely plastered until mid-January. This plan is sounding better by the minute.

    I managed to avoid the weekly food shop with the skilful ruse of unscrewing a light switch, pretended a vital electrical repair was needed and fiddled around behind it with a screwdriver. In many respects this wasn’t a deception as I had to remove the wire from the fuse box to avoid electrocution and then forgot where I put the fuse. Rather than a thirty second job of doing the screw back up again and putting the fuse back in, it took nearly an hour before I finally located the lost item and returned it to its rightful place in the junction box; just in time for the wife to stagger back in laden with shopping bags like a pack horse.

    The usual train of events when Mrs. Snowman gets back with the food shopping is for her to unpack everything, throw it randomly into the nearest cupboard and have a wrestling match with me while I try to grab the chocolate and/or cookies. I managed to get my hands on a bar of chocolate before it was squirreled away but unadvisedly left it on the cooker as I made a secondary attempt for the cheese slices.

    What I didn’t realise was the cooker had been left on for the Sunday roast to slowly cook at it’s leisure and within seconds it had melted onto one of the hobs. Worse still it was also dripping into the oven. Soon afterwards a telephone call was made to the local Chinese restaurant and a meal less exotic than roast chicken with a chocolate glaze was ordered. At least the cat was happy with an extremely large bowl of extra food.

    Like the cat, I was also happy with the day’s events but they related to the poker rather than the cooking.

    Three freerolls were entered and I made the money in two of them. Once more I tried my hand at the $50 pot limit Omaha and should have done better than the 42^nd place that earned me $0.32. I was eliminated early in the $250 Hold’Em tournament but the $500 event was a different matter. I’d amassed 80,000 chips and then made two colossally stupid errors to see my stack reduced to around 10,000. I managed to hang on and reach 84^th place with a prize of $0.93. One day I’ll learn not to be so complacent with a big stack. We’ll see if I learn from my mistakes tomorrow.

    The only other point of concern from today was the aftermath of our impromptu Chinese meal. Even with the television on full volume I still heard Mrs. Snowman in the toilet. I can only assume she’d eaten an off lump of pork.

    It sounded like someone emptying a sack of potatoes into a bath.

    I get the feeling I’m in for a windy night.

Starting bank:  $0