"Annika's high."

I heard those words many times last night. Most of those times, it was in reference to my cards.

At our Wednesday night poker game, I was the Queen of 7 Card Stud.

You have to understand that there is a $10 buy-in and I have never left with more than $3 at the end of the night. Total.

Last night I left with almost $20. My last hand of the night was a full house, Aces over Kings.

What's funny is that I'd arrived in a lousy mood. I was exhausted, had fallen asleep after my shower and not taken well to Will waking me up when he got home (he had to - I had to let him in the building), had a monster headache and bad hair, and just didn't feel like going anywhere.

But I did, which resulted in exposure to crappy traffic. Seriously, it took me 25 minutes to get to the highway (technically 30 but I swung through the Toxic Hell drive-through) and only 6 minutes from the on ramp to Rian's street, where I found parking immediately (the first Good Thing of the evening). And of course Ralph was happy to see me, which is always nice (as long as I don't stop to consider that he was really only happy to see my Taco Bell spoils).

Cassie and Meghan have both tried to take credit as my Good Luck Charm, since neither of them has been there before on the same night as me. Mark hasn't either, but he just sat there and good-naturedly let me win his money. And of course, Will wasn't there...

Rian and I are thinking of trying Doubles Poker, which I made up to justify our usual end-of-the-night cheating (things like swapping a random card); you play like normal except that you make the best hand out of both people's cards. We are also trying to get the rules amended to allow the 4-card straight, and possibly 3 pairs. So far no one seems to like any of our ideas.