Distemper

OK. November is over and I can stop this every day blogging bit. But I'm sort of used to it and I managed to get a couple of photos around noon when the sun was shining, during our nine hours of sunlight allotted for today. I took a walk around outside. I felt like I needed the exercise because I haven't played the great game since Saturday morning. It's icy out there. It was also a little colder than I'm used to - sixteen degrees - a temperature that in January will be classified nearly balmy. I took a walk over by the rec center in my neighborhood and looked for photo worthy locations.

The first is the tennis courts where I played several matches this summer, notably with Rich the Tucson tennis titan. The nets are still up, but the courts appear unplayable. The lines are all under snow cover, for instance. If this was Coleraine, we'd take down the nets, pile snow around the fence, flood the area with water and make a skating rink. Here it's just scenery.

Further west in the big open field at Linwood, someone has constructed what appears to be a public snow fort. We used to make snow forts as a kid, too, but we usually had more snow to work with. I guess we are expecting some more later this week.

Later in the afternoon I went inside at Fort Snelling Tennis Center and played three sets of tennis with the usual gang of geezers - Dennis, Bill and Bill, today. They were pretty good sets and competitive, but were more one sided than has been the case lately. We each played one set with each of the other guys as doubles partner. I ended up a little winded, but glad to have played again.

December is just getting started. It gets much colder and appreciatively darker. December deserves its nickname from the family poem - distemper, as in : "You lie, August, split timber, all over, no wonder, distemper." It's a ditty to remember the last six months of the year.