When I was in college several years ago, my fraternity brothers and I spent many an afternoon passing the time telling many a tall tale about fine tail that we had enjoyed. We also learned all kinds of card games, board games like Penta and backgammon, and other diversions when the boredom of lying about our exploits with women got to be too much. My favorite game was dominoes. I could sit and play that game with a couple of my friends all night if there was nothing else going on. I loved the challenge of the game, and creating a strategy that could let me take on all comers. The cut throat competition with my fraternity brothers honed my skills and drive to win that to this day helps me succeed as a foreign exchange trader in the US office of a small European investment banking firm.
If you ask most people about dominos, they won't relate it to the game itself. Instead they can recall scenes on television or on the Internet where a large group of people line up domino game pieces in a hugely complex maze, and then set off the chain reaction of knocking every piece in wildly artistic pattern. The pure beauty of it amazes. And there were times where we would get bored playing, and we would set up these wild patters in the fraternity house lounge. Sometimes we'd put a shot glass in the middle of the pattern or empty beer can to see what would happen. That version of what you do with dominos is a more appropriate way of describing the last couple of months of my life.
I met my wife Tanya at college, although we didn't start dating until after we both graduated college and ran into each other at a happy hour near where we both work. Tanya is a cute young woman of 28 with brilliant blue eyes and we've been married for a little over three years. She works in the marketing department of a multinational consumer goods company, the name of which is irrelevant to the story. During college, she wasn't much for board games as she could rarely sit still for the quiet introspective thinking for the game. Rather, she'd watch me play feigning interest, and then move to hang around at the bar, dancing and talking to whomever.
By the time I ran into Tanya that night, I had been working for a couple of years for my firm, creating a foreign exchange trading strategy that was fairly lucrative. I had not been spending much time playing dominos, but my strategy was not unlike the crazy maze of pieces toppling along according to a preset plan. The strategy moved across the globe each day starting in Asian markets, moving to Middle Eastern markets to European markets to the United States and then back across the Pacific. Sort of an endless game of dominos - trading yen, diners, euros and dollars. However, no matter how perfect the layout, occasionally, a piece set up in the wrong place causes the toppling to go awry.
As I said, Tanya and I have been married for a little over three years. Even though we have a nice house in an upscale urban Denver neighborhood, we have not even begun to think about children due our fast paced careers. Tanya travels about once per month for presentations, and I have to occasionally fly out of town to meet with potential clients of our firm to discuss my strategy. Even without traveling, we are so busy at work that we usually aren't home until around 8pm each night. Generally on Thursday and Friday nights, we meet up at happy hour with either mutual friends from college or our neighborhood or with our work colleagues from our companies.
Tanya is a very outgoing woman who is supremely confident in herself without being considered arrogant, bitchy, or any other negative stereotypes with ambitious young career woman. She is 5'4" 115 pound bundle of energy with a straight black hair and blue eyes. Of northern European descent, her skin is sexy pale during the cold winter months, but turns to very nice tan in the summer. She looks hot in a small bikini, and she also looks hot in a short black skirt with thigh highs. For that matter, she turns many a head when she enters a room. When hanging around at happy hour or a dinner party, people who don't know her well would say she is "tastefully flirty". Just enough flirtation to make you feel good about yourself, but also let you know that she has her limits.
Fortunately, our relationship has been very good since we married. Very little in the way of fights or disagreements beyond the usual stuff - unloading dishwasher, going to the dry cleaners, errands, etc. Real small stuff. Although I've had the opportunity on a few occasions, I've never stepped out on Tanya. I'm sure that she's had similar opportunities, and to my knowledge hasn't acted on any advances by men she has come in contact with. Our sex life is also pretty hot. Although we didn't hook up the first night we kindled our relationship, it wasn't long before we were spending the entire weekend in bed exploring each other. While not out of control adventurous, very little is out of bounds with each other, and we enjoy oral sex, playing with her toys, anal sex (not too regular) and getting crazy when we go away for a long weekend or a weeklong vacation at a resort or after we've had a few glasses of wine. Our lovemaking is generally four or so times per week, but less than the twice a day routine seen in many marriages during its first year.
Recently, I took on two staff members to help run my trading strategy so that I could spend more time marketing it to clients, and to reduce the active time spent executing trades. There have been times where I've woken up in the middle of the night and tinkered with my trading model for hours. The disruption in normal sleeping pattern was making me feel tired, and I caught myself "setting up a domino in the wrong place" before trades lead to big losses. Early on I would get a call at 2am or so maybe once or twice a week from the traders to ask questions, but for the most part, the strategy worked just like the game - dominos falling right into place.
At about the same time, Tanya was working on restructuring a marketing campaign and had to travel one or two nights a week for about a two month period, plus work late a few nights a week. I also had to travel a bit to meet with clients and prospects so we weren't spending an awful lot of time with one another. We had even missed the last three Thursday and Friday happy hours, and our friends were texting us asking when we were going to make a guest appearance.