Another View

Here is a chance to see a photo that Herb took at about the same time that I was photographing him yesterday at Vento Park. It gives a sense of where the park is - very near an interstate highway, a huge railroad yard, and downtown St Paul. The foliage is the same brown that showed up in my photos. The oldish guy in the shot is Herb's tousan. I'm taking a photo of a recently constructed stone walking bridge - one that most assuredly needed heavy equipment to build.



I had another appointment with my tennis racket this afternoon at Fort Snelling. For the fourth day in a row of competition, I did pretty well. My fatigue from yesterday had dissipated and we had two nice competitive sets. We mostly all played pretty well - Bill C. and I against Jerry and Jim W. The court surface at Fort Snelling is much more to my liking and the much higher ceiling gives me a chance to throw up a lob or two, mostly for defensive purposes, but not always.

I stopped at Papa Murphy's on the way home and purchased a family size vegetarian pizza to relieve my pizza hunger - a usual Sunday phenomenon. Onions, mushrooms, zucchini, artichokes, tomatoes, and spinach.

Pie Party

The year is sliding to an end here in the Saintly City. We have had a near record amount of snow fall and the usual lack of sunlight. We could use some fireworks. My photo is the snow loaded evergreen in my neighbor's back yard. It demonstrates the snow depth that we've been "enjoying."


We had the sib's pie party last night with the usual suspects, ten in all. The pies came from Papa Murphy's and Baker's Square. We had a salad and beverages, and then set about opening white elephant presents. We mainly had adults bringing joke and castoff gifts for fun and a chance to be rid of unwanted things. The most popular objects were the battery powered singing and dancing "dolls" including a chicken dancer, and a Vikings attired bulldog. Not so popular was the booble head snowman that I contributed. There was laughing and good natured ribbing. I was able to acquire a "nice" Christmas centerpiece and I plan to use it next year some time.

There was tennis at Wooddale in the morning yesterday, but in the true geezer tradition, I have forgotten who won and what the scores were. I do remember the participants, and thank them for their persistence in continuing to show up for these tennis sessions at their advanced ages. No one got hurt.

Tigers and White Elephants

Sib's Pie Party at Tousan's tomorrow. White elephants expected. no tigers welcomed.



The deadly tiger incident at the San Francisco Zoo has been of interest the last few days. This interest comes naturally, because I occasionally visit the Como Zoo in the Saintly City, which has a few Siberian Tigers of the size of Tatiana, the tiger that killed the guy in San Francisco. Our Siberian Tigers are used to the cold and snow, which is their natural habitat and have a decent size pen in which to romp. Also it is pretty plain that the walls around the enclosure at Como are more than 12 feet 5 inches in height. You don't get the up close and personal view that must have had some appeal in California, but it seems highly unlikely that the St Paul tigers could scale their fences. I'm going to check it out again the next time I feel a need to view wildlife, but it seems safe enough. This is a photo of one of the Siberian tigers in repose, not agitated by taunting or hungry for revenge or (shudder) primate meat. In any case, I'm not as likely to feel completely comfortable in the presence of tigers for a few weeks.



George Miller came to America on the ship Parachute, which I find today, while roaming the internet, was a sailing ship built in 1826, two years before the journey of the old boy to these shores. The Marquis de Lafayette, for whom G.L. was named, was in the U.S. in 1824 for the dedication of George Washington University. Isn't there some story about one of our ancestors being Napoleon's tailor? Does anyone remember? Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo on June 18, 1815 and was exiled and died in St Helena on May 5, 1921. The story may be credible.

Pie Are Squared

It was the evening of the family Thanksgiving pie party. We had nine adults and a dearth of under 25 year-olds. But we had a lot of pie, pizza variety from Papa Murphy and Papa John's (the two papas), and a pair of sugar free dessert pies, compliments of Andy and Tula. The salad that Mark and Peggy brought was very good and varied. There was a sampling of designer beer from Andy and also Gino and BB. We ate well. For the first time in several years we had both Adams in attendance. We talked and laughed and had a good time. This pie party is a long standing tradition and a good way to get together with a lot of the family that we don't always see very often, now that the urge to participate in the MSTRAM bike adventure has gone away.

The tennis playing continued this morning with the geezers at Wooddale, doubles as usual. I tried playing with my Wilson k Six One 95 that I restrung a few weeks back to reduce the tension in the strings from 55 to 50 pounds. I hoped to get some more power from the racket and a little more pop in the serve department. It played pretty well, and I managed to be on the winning side of the two sets we finished, but I'm still not satisfied with its play. The racket is a little too head heavy, and a little too heavy over all. I'm resolved to go back to the WILSON Hyper ProStaff 6.1 racket that I've been playing with lately, and have been for about eight years. Jerry was back from the USTA 7.0 nationals and I had a chance to listen to some of the stories from the matches. It sounded like they had a very good time. I'm looking forward to mixed doubles on Thursday with the hardcore girls to see how the balance may have shifted.

I'm signing up to be on an 8.0 Super Seniors team for the winter session. The team plays on Tuesday nights which fits my schedule nicely. It's a different set of geezers, but they are all 60 plus years old.