LXVIII

Unky Herb and I visited Wild River State Park a while ago and he sent me some photos from the trek around the park. This is the tousan (me) amid some red tinged sumac. I like the photo because the light is such that the wrinkles on my face are not very prominent. This getting old is not for sissies, and also not for the vain.

A nice October day today. Not as nice as last week and the weekend, but for October, one must be thankful.

There was tennis at Wooddale. It was as even a match as one can expect and there were a lot of those enjoyable long, competitive points. It was mixed doubles with one of the hardcore girls, Barb, and a sub, Linda, because Becky had family business to attend to. And Jerry. We played to a tie breaker in the first set before losing. So 6-7, and we were up 4-3 when we gave up the court for fresher players. Ten games apiece.  I was playing with new tennis shoes that I bought today, because all the old pairs in my closet have a hole worn through the toe on the right foot. Even with the new shoes we lost, but there were no blisters to report.  One more thing to be thankful for.

The ash trees in front of the house have given up their leaves. Just like last year the ashes have exposed themselves as quitters. The oaks, stalwarts of the tree family are just now getting around to changing colors, but the cowardly ash quitters are all done. Unfortunately, St Paul has identified the Emerald ash borer in the city, and they are silently, but fairly surely, killing the ash trees. In another five years or so the ashes will be gone, replaced with some more robust species, perhaps maples.

And I guess I'm old enough to start using Roman numerals for my age, and have been for a while.