Now, this is the kind of post I like to write...

Editor's note: This post has been cross-blogged at Up For Poker for obvious reasons. It's included here...well, for obvious reasons

Let's talk a little bit about karma for a second.

I've always been a big believer in what comes around goes around. That goes for good and bad. If some malevolent creature conspires to hurt me or a friend, I feel like, regardless of the outcome, that creature will someday get her's.

It goes for good, too. And that's the good thing about karma. Pauly half-joked last week that he made it a point to give handouts to as many homeless people as he could find in hopes the poker gods would shine down on him in Vegas.

Karma can be a fun thing to consider as you live your humdrum lives. Perhaps more than that, it can be a good way to live your life. It's sort of an off-shoot of the golden rule. Do unto others, yada, yada, yada.

Now, I need to talk to you about Wil Wheaton a little bit.

As any poker blog reader knows, Wil is a poker playing uber blogger with the grandest of hearts. If you've read his latest book as I have, you'll find that despite his cheery insistances on his blog, he suffers many of the same slings and arrows as us regular shlubs. He gets interviews, auditions, nibbles from possible employers. And he gets turned down. Just like a regular human being.

Though I don't think he's ever stated it outright, Wil seems to live his life with karma in mind. He's lived a life of success and failure in a short thirty-something years and knows the outright orgasmic feeling of success as well as the chug some gin with some sleeping pills type of failure. Maybe that's what makes him human. More than that, that's what makes him the approachable and fantasically good person he is.

So, why, when I have to write about ten more installments of the trip report have I chosen this moment to kiss Wil's ass? Well, it goes a little something like this:

In the hours before I left for Vegas last Thursday night, I got a strange comment here on Up For Poker. It came from a familiar name. It asked that I send him an e-mail so we could discuss something.

At the time, I thought it was a joke. Bloggers and blog readers tend to be the lead dogs in the practical joke pack. But just in case it wasn't a joke, I shot off an e-mail to the commenter and tried to catch a few winks before I had to leave for the airport.

After three hours of restless sleep, I got up, showered, checked the clock, and realized I had time to check my e-mail before I hit the road.

At 4am Friday morning, I sat in my home office and had to fight the dog from gnawing on something that had fallen on the floor. That something was my jaw. It somehow fell off my face as I stared in amazement at the screen.

I'd now been instructed to call the commenter on his private cell phone line. Four in the morning seemed like an inappropriate time to make such a call, so I headed for the airport and tried to put the possibility out of my head.

Several hours later, just minutes after finding the bloggers in the Excalbur poker room, I slipped out into the lobby and made the call. It seemed to confirm that this wasn't a joke. This was for real and it was, in short, way cool.

It appeared I was up for a freelance writing/blogging gig. The commenter asked me to send him a short proposal by Monday. So, Sunday morning before heading to Mandalay for football and poker, I pulled up the high speed access in my room and sent of the proposal.

Last night, I got another e-mail telling me I got the job.

So...

On January 4th, I'll be flying to the Bahamas to blog the Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure poker tournament. This will be a World Poker Tour event that eventually will be televised as part of the WPT series.

Jon Vorhaus did much the same thing for Ultimate Bet's Aruba Classic earlier this year.

After a lot of consideration about the possibilities of this blog and blogging in general, it's made me think about the future of the bloggiing medium and how important it can eventually be. I know that I've had discussions with a number of the blogging elite about the future of our poker blogging community. I can only hope this latest project can add to where we're going.

Oh, I never got around to why I'm kissing Wheaton's ass.

As it turned out, I wasn't Poker Stars first choice. They wanted Wil, but he had a conflict. Instead of sending Poker Stars the way of some famous guy's cousin, he pointed the site to me. And as a result, I get to add one more thing to my growing freelance resume. And it appears I'm going to have a damned ball in the process.

Wheaton, friends, is good people.

So, that's that. I'll have more details about the PCA blog in the coming days, where you'll find it, etc.