How to make Lemonade

Well, first you need lemons:

Lemon #1 - My beautiful IPod Touch has not yet arrived. The FedEx tracking page told me it was supposed to arrive this morning but it's just sitting in Newark. Seriously, it doesn't want to be in Newark anymore than I do. Why isn't it here? Why? Why? Why? And my Vegas flight is tomorrow at 6:30p. I CANNOT play poker without music. That would suck big time. And the worst part is I paid $10 extra for expedited shipping! How come it can get from China to Newark in 1.5 days and it takes 2 days or more to get 15 miles to my home?

Lemon #2 - I canceled my Anti-Valentine's day tournament tonight because my friend Lauren was throwing an Anti-Valentine's day party up at The Fat Black Pussycat. She assured me there would be many single girls there. Well, I got out of work late and by the time I showed up at 8:15p (for a 6:00p start time), I caught Lauren leaving the club to grab a taxi! "Hold up," I said, "why're you leaving?". She explained that no one had shown up until 6:45p and she was afraid the whole thing was going to be a bust so she made back up plans with a friend. But there were people inside and I should go in. I opted not to go in, though, because without Lauren as my context, I would just be the older single guy whom no one knew.

Lemon #3 - As I left The Fat Black Pussycat, at West 3rd and 6th Avenue, I decided that I can't go to Vegas without a working IPod of some kind. My plan, formulated on the spot, was to walk to the nearest Apple store and buy an IPod NANO, use it for the trip, and sell it on Craigslist for near what I bought it for. For a 4 or 5 day old NANO, I should be able to recoup most of the cost. I'll call it a rental. So I was midway between 2 Apple stores, in SOHO on Prince Street and the one in the Meatpacking District on 14th and 9th Avenue. I opted for SOHO because it was in the direction of home. So I started walking there and on the way, I passed the Salami club. Hmmm...It's been a while. Wonder if there's a game going on? I called up W, who despite having a steady boyfriend for 15+ years, was not doing anything tonight, to see if she might want to join me. She was doing laundry, or something equally unromantic, but she said she would call Salami to see if a game was on for tonight. So I waited in the cold for her to call me back. No game tonight. I kept walking to the Soho Apple store. When I got there at 9:20p...

Lemon #4 - ...They were closed. Oh yeah, the Soho store, like the rest of Soho, closes at 9.

Lemon #5 - So I was forced to pay for a cab to go back to the MeatPacking District.

A Scoopful of Sugar - I told the clerk who helped me that I wanted to buy the 8GB Nano ("for my niece who's finicky about gifts, wink, wink"). I asked what the return policy was and I got the answer I was looking for. Return within two weeks with the original packaging and you're subject to a 10% restocking fee, even if the gift is open. And they took my Merrill Lynch corporate discount too. So I bought it. It came to $202. So when I return it next week (I'll blame my niece), it'll have cost me $20 to rent it for the trip.

Mix well with water - I'm loading up my new Ipod NANO as I type this.

LEMONADE!