You know you've been playing too much poker when...

Too much exposure to any one subject, I suppose, can do strange things to one's brain. When I was most heavily into competitive shooting, I would tend to see gun calibers in addresses and license plates (e.g., 22, 45, 357, 223, etc.). If a word like "clock" was somewhere on a page, my eyes would pick it out and think "Glock" (which is my favorite handgun manufacturer). Any reference to "Smith" would register as "Smith & Wesson" (because we gunnies tend to just call them "Smiths"). And so on.

For quite a while now I have noticed the same sort of mind warpage happening with poker terms. Two have occurred within the past 24 hours. Last night I was reading in a political magazine a piece about the history of Middle East problems. When they used the term "PLO," I couldn't help wondering for a split second what pot-limit Omaha had to do with the subject matter. And just now I was typing an address for something going to zip code 16234, and my brain flashed with, "Wow, that's a nice razz hand."

Maybe I need a nice, long vacation....