Well, I'm glad to see my thought process was similar to both of you guys. I did respond with an allin on both these hands:
Hand #1...BB held 99 for trips (I was drawing dead to 1 card)
BB's fooling around w/ weak bets and min reraise had me confused and questioning myself. Thoughts of a set popped into my head and I almost just called to slow down the action and see if I could figure it out on the river, but I said screw it and pushed. Thought maybe I copped out there and let my emotions make an easy and bad decision.
Iceman, your flop suggestion of check raising to the other players weak play was something I hadn't thought about....I usually don't play mid PPs that aggressive. But maybe this would have given me more info though probably not considering how slow the BB was willing to play his set. I'll give that move a try in the future. You don't even mention the possibility of a set so I'm guessing you figure this to be remote and a chance you're going to take with something as strong as a middle set. (I'm guessing your comment in parentheses about 99 was a mistake...did you mean 88)
Hand #2...Button has T8o for flopped 2 pair (I didn't improve on turn or river)
Guess button liked this hand in late position then couldn't lay it down to a PF raise. Should I be raising more PF?....seems like a lot of players will fold facing a cold call PF raise, but will call most raises once they've limped with something PF.
I definitely thought about 2 pair as kenny mentioned, but expected AT if anything; not T8o. This brings up again in my mind how strong a hand should 1 have when playing against a potential maniac. The same situation against most other players, and I would've really had to slow down and think about that one.
After both hands I felt like maybe I should have read the situation better and avoided losing an entire buy-in. My cards have been running cold for the last 4 or 5 days, and then even when I do seem to hit a strong hand I'm still beaten. I feel like this really has me second guessing my play and my reads on all hands. A week ago I felt my ability to read situations was never better, but now I've become confused and passive in many situations, and then I felt as if I got excited to hit big hands and became to aggressive on these.
Thanks Iceman and kenny....hopefully this confirmation of my play will boost my confidence and I can outlast this cold streak.