Who has time to play poker?

Or to post blogs?

I've been super busy the last few days, hence the lack of posts since Monday morning. Evert at Rounder had me interview Vanessa Rousso, Dutch Boyd and John Phan at the Rio pool while they came down for some photo shoots Monday. Apparently, they all have the same manager, a fellow named Eric who acts like he stepped right out of "Entourage." In other words, he's the kind of guy this Southern boy would just as soon punch in the nose as talk to. But I bit my tongue (and sheathed my fists).

The players were all very nice. Rousso probably has an 180 I.Q. She is something else intellectually. Phan bought me a pina colada (even after I insisted he shouldn't). And I found out I was wrong about Boyd. He's not an egotistical dickhead at all. He asked me about my poker, about Tuscaloosa, he called my last name cool...I'm not sure what happened exactly with the whole sordid PokerSpot mess, but he's OK in my book.

I played a little 1-2 NL at Binion's Monday night and won exactly $200.

Tuesday morning I had a lunch meeting scheduled with two Golden Nugget executives. We talked about all of the new addition to the casino, including a planned club/restaurant/gaming area that will open up into Fremont Street and feature balconies a la the French Quarter. This will open in December.

The work I'm doing is quite the extreme from the newspaper world. With this article, for example, my job is to essentially blow smoke up their butt so they might buy an ad in the magazine and to just have good overall relations in case we might need something in the future. Definitely not the kind of thing we do in the newspaper business. I've now officially turned to the dark side of journalism.

I played the Omaha Hi/Lo tourney at Binion's Tuesday afternoon, but busted out to a fish who played every hand and hit every hand. Later, when I went back, I noticed he was not among the final two tables. Big surprise.

After my bustout, I came over here to the Rio media room to finish up some of the profiles and worked until nearly midnight. I then went back to Binion's and crashed. Today has been filled with buying a new digital voice recorder for a Q & A session with WSOP media director Nolan Dalla, followed by more work.

So far in three days, I've written three player profiles, one casino feature, two articles for PokerWorks, transcribed the lengthy Q & A with Dalla, talked to Hoyt Corkins for our Ask Hoyt feature and started compiling the Southern Roundup for the next issue. Kiddies, it's time for me to go play some poker.