Playing on the Clay

Monday night is tennis with the old guys. Tonight we played at a new place. Dennis is nursing his injured hip and was unable to play. Our sub tonight, George, belongs to Somerset Country Club in West St. Paul and he invited us to play on the clay at the club. Curt and I arrived early enough to sweep the court smooth and sweep the lines, a necessary ritual for playing on clay. This photo is Curt starting the job while I climbed a nearby hill for a vantage point. And the tennis was pretty good, too. We played two sets of sufficiently close tennis and then George and I won a third set in a tie breaker. It was a very pleasant evening after the torrid heat of last weekend.


I finished the New York Times (NYT) Sunday crossword puzzle today. It had a baseball theme and used a technique that I usually don't like, but seemed ok in this one. A few of the answers had whole words fit into a square. The words were "home", "first", "second", and "third", and were arranged on the page like a baseball field. For instance, the 66 across clue was "commoners" and the answer was "third estate" with third crammed into a single square. The down clue was "Precede the the cleanup spot" and was "bat third" - "third" in the single square. There were some other clever clues and answers as usual, but I've beaten this dead horse enough.

As an aside, my stat counter disclosed that I have been a google hit eight times for "waters of tener" aka "water softener" from last week's NYT poser. Technology rules.