The ides of May

What is so fine as a day in May? It finally seems to be spring, so I mowed the lawn and trimmed the Japanese lilac bush a bit where the pesky rabbits feasted on it over the winter. It was nice to be outside and, even though it was in the marginal 60's, a nice day to go without shoes. Barefooted.

It's a tennis blog. So tennis should be at least mentioned. Friday was a nice tennis day, but only because I was able to play inside in the evening. I played twice, once with the gang of geezers at Marie Park in the early afternoon and again in the evening with Jerry's Mixed Doubles team at Wooddale. Outside was windy and cold enough to require long pants and a jacket. It was windy enough to require me to watch the tennis ball very carefully as it curved in my direction or very certainly to mis-hit the ball. That habit of watching the ball gave me an advantage in the evening match. I was able to hit nearly all shots in the sweet spot and my error count was pretty low, so Marsha and I were able to win handily at the number two doubles spot. The number one team won in a third set tie breaker and we went home a 2-1 victor in the first competition of the new season. A nice way to start the season.

I discovered on-line scrabble this weekend. It turns out that crossword puzzle solving is not good cross training for the board game. I was mauled twice by about a hundred points a game. I'm thinking that I may have to study the long list of two letter words to have a half a chance to prevail. Maybe I should just stick with the NYTimes Sunday Crossword puzzle as my "raison d'etre."

Incidentally, I checked my blogger counter and this is blog entry 799. There is no award for blog 800, but I seem to have settled into this sporadic blogging and posting of photos, so I think I'm going for a thousand. Maybe they'll start to improve in quality soon.