Lightning in a bottle

It was the kind of an evening where you question why you went to the pool hall in the first place.  I woke up at 4:00 AM last Wednesday, and had an active day.  Still, after some caffeine (Mt. Dew) and a shower, I thought I might be awake enough to get some practice in, so I went to Buster's for a couple of hours.

I did my usual opening drill, rolling the stripes and the 8-ball onto the table and trying to run them out.  When I miss on this drill, I put one of the solids out there too (making the layout a bit harder) and try again from the beginning.  Each time I mess up the runout, another "opponent" ball goes into the layout.  This time I needed SIX tries before running out the stripes.  I knew then it could be a rough night on the table.

Once that drill was finished, I started my drill of breaking up the last six balls of a nine-ball rack and running them in order.  As I detailed in my last post, I was able to do this 4 out of 10 times a couple of weeks ago.  This night, I could not even do it ONCE in my first 12 tries.  I kept coming close, but could not complete the runout.

As a side note, the pool hall was crowded and people were playing decent music on the jukebox.  So, I was having a pretty good time anyway.  When the music stopped for a bit, I figured I would put in some songs and give the drill one more shot (so to speak).

Well, I don't know if it was that "my music" was playing, or that I finally woke up...but I was able to complete the drill SIX OUT OF NINE TIMES!  I got my degree in Statistics, and I KNOW how improbable it is that I could do it 6 out of 9 times after not being able to do it even once all night.  Not only that, but after the sixth victory, I tried a few more times and once again I could not complete it even once.  Truly, it was lightning in a bottle...I am not sure whether to move on to seven balls for the drill, or make it so that I have to do the six-ball drill again first.

On another note, I ran into the man who is making my new cue.  He seems mostly recovered from an accident he had last autumn, and he is working on getting the blank for my cue.  After that, he will be working on getting the cue itself.  It will likely still be a few months, but at least there is progress being made.