Doomsday Eve

It wasn't much of an outdoors day for most of the day, but I did have a walk around Lake Como again today in the morning before the rains came. The fruit trees are just showing off. The colors are bright and the aroma quite fruity. This beauty is just off the hiking path about a quarter of the way around. The turtles weren't basking - too cool perhaps -but the mallards and wood ducks were still about. The Ramsey county Sheriff's Department divers have stopped searching the lake, so they either found what they were looking for or perhaps gave up.

This is a crab apple tree, I believe.

Since the world ends tomorrow, I thought I should get in just one more blog and perhaps report on the activities of this last Friday. It was another day when my mostly inadequate planning resulted in two sessions of doubles. I may have to do some rejiggering of the schedule next week, but so far it hasn't been too onerous. The afternoon session with the gang of geezers went off without much wailing. We managed two fairly lopsided sets and began a third before we ran out of players. One of the guys was having a little trouble with his artificial hip in the third set, so we shut down the competition. It was okay by me, because I was scheduled for the USTA match that Jerry's mixed doubles team was playing in Wooddale at seven.

The Wooddale match was tight and pretty entertaining. Marsha and I were playing a married couple who were celebrating their 11th wedding anniversary today. You'd think that we would cut them some slack, but just because it was their anniversary and because they were well short of their 40th birthdays, we gave them as much competition as we were able. In the end they beat us in the third set tie breaker after we had split two 6-4 sets. We had two match points at 9-7 in the tie breaker, but they steadied and managed to beat us. They were nice "kids" and a lot of fun to play, too. After the match I wished them a happy anniversary and chatted a bit. They asked how old I am, and I was happy to claim 68. Brian, the guy, was kind enough to opine that he hoped he would be playing as well as me when he is 68, indeed said he in exaggeration, he hoped to still have as much game when he gets to 38. So I came home defeated but in a pretty good mood.

It's just kind of sad that doomsday is tomorrow. I was hoping to get in another week of so of tennis before it all comes crashing down. And maybe a game or two of scrabble.