A cardinal lives in my back yard

And it's not Cardinal Richelieu. He died in France in 1642. The cardinal in my yard is a bird, and he apparently has a mate, too. He may be the bird that's trying to build a bird's nest on the outdoor light fixture by the back door. I'm in a battle with whatever avian is doing that. Every morning I go out and demolish his overnight construction and put up my mini scarecrow - one of the action characters from the cartoon series "He Man." So far the bird has continued it's fruitless pursuit. I think I'm winning.

It was a very nice day, climbing into the 60's. The geezer guys I play tennis with decided that we'd play outside. It was a trifle too windy for effective play, and a little cooler than ideal, but it was only our second nice enough day for outside play. And it is May 4th already. So we played a couple of sets at Marie Park next to the duck pond and enjoyed coping with the wind currents. We split sets 6-2, 3-6. Over in the pond a couple of mallards swam back and forth, probably getting ready to raise a family of ducklings.

Bill C. brought to our attention that the Champions Tour - an exhibition competition featuring Agassi, Sampras, McEnroe, and Chang - is coming to town - the Target Center - late in September. We decided to get tickets and go watch some "old timers" play tennis against each other. It's odd to call them old timers when I'm 25 years older than any of them. So it goes. I think it'll be fun.