8:35, EDT

Well, I am pretty nervous. People keep asking me if I am "excited". No, not yet. Excitement is a form of joy, and I'm not comfortable with any joy before I am in the throes of joyousness. Joy is also a positive emotion, which makes it sketchy from the get-go.

Nervousness, however, stems from FEAR, and I totally down with delving into fear at any point in time, the earlier and more often, the better.

Weird, but I never seem to get excited until I am doing the activity. When I have tickets for a rock show I have been dying to go to for a three months, I don;' really get "excited" until I am at the show. When I have a cool upcoming trip, I don't really get excited until I am actually ON the plane, or the ship, etc

However, when I have an important gig, or a show in front of people I want to do well for (like family or a girl I am praying has no idea how little money comedians make that aren't on TV), I take full opportunity to sweat bullets in advance.

Same goes for poker tournements in continents I have never visited.

So no, I am not yet excited about the poker tournement. I AM however terrified that I will be exposed there, that the eight other players at my first tournement table will get up and stand on the felt, pointing and chanting in unison, "He's an internet player, he can't play!!!" or "He must be bluffing...tears are rolling down his cheek!"

Last year's chap Ram Vaswani and current world champion Joe Hachem will get up and refuse to play until I have forfeited my ships and left, head hung in shame.

The dealer will mock me for not knowing how to say "raise" or "check" or "fold" properly in Danish, even though all the other competitors are speaking only English.

Okay, so probably most of these things won't happen. That doesn't stop my head from enacting them hundreds of times on its own.

My strategy at this point is to not talk at the table for four days and do my best to channel Randall P. MacMurphy (post labotome) for my "poker face".

Hey...I am starting to get pretty excited about this trip.