Man Tantrum

Tuesday afternoon, my wife started preparing two elaborate recipes (Crispy Sour Cream and Onion Chicken and some Ethiopian lentil dish) and then she left to go do some gardening at her elementary school-- she runs the gardening club there and she's always planting stuff on the school grounds-- and then the kids came home from tennis practice (Ian defeated Alex 6-1, 6-3 and so the younger brother is officially first singles) and they were hungry and I was getting hungry as well (and inebriated-- I've been avoiding grains and bread and sugar, for the most part-- so the two beers I had while making salad really went to my head) but my wife lost track of time while she was planting things and I don't think she had her phone on her (or she was ignoring my frantic texts) and so I made an attempt at these recipes but I was quickly overwhelmed by all the ingredients and steps and methods and such so I pretty much gave up and sulked and drank wine on an empty stomach and by the time she arived home I was a frustrated disaster and while I tried not to blame her, she definitely caught my tone and got pissed at the fact that if she's MIA for forty minutes the entire house falla apart and I told her that if it was some simple recipe-- like grill some meat and steam some broccoli, then I'm fine-- but this was advanced culinary arts and she said we should have eaten something else-- and I agreed and apologized and said it was my fault and it definitely made me think of the passage I've included below from Joseph Campbell's Myths to Love By that we are annotating in College Writing-- when Alex and I were alone on our snowboarding trip, away from "completely efficient females," we just ate beans and meat and things were easy . . . and the only thing of value I can offer is the fact that I am slowly but surely constructing a new shed . . . but even that is slow going and harder than it looks.

So much, then, for the mythic world of the primitive hunters. Dwelling mainly on great grazing lands, where the spectacle of nature is of a broadly spreading earth covered over by an azure dome touching down on distant horizons and the dominant image of life is of animal societies moving about in that spacious room, those nomadic tribes, living by killing, have been generally of a warlike character. Supported and protected by the hunting skills and battle courage of their males, they are dominated necessarily by a masculine psychology, male-oriented mythology, and appreciation of individual valor. 

In tropical jungles, on the other hand, an altogether different order of nature prevails, and, accordingly, of psychology and mythology as well. For the dominant spectacle there is of teeming vegetable life with all else more hidden than seen. Above is a leafy upper world inhabited by winged screeching birds; below, a heavy cover of leaves, beneath which serpents, scorpions, and many other mortal dangers lurk. There is no distant clean horizon, but an evercontinuing tangle of trunks and leafage in all directions wherein solitary adventure is perilous. The village compound is relatively stable, earthbound, nourished on plant food gathered or cultivated mainly by the women; and the male psyche is consequently in bad case. For even the primary psychological task for the young male of achieving separation from dependency on the mother is hardly possible in a world where all the essential work is being attended to, on every hand, by completely efficient females. It is therefore among tropical tribes that the wonderful institution originated of the men's secret society, where no women are allowed, and where curious symbolic games flattering the masculine zeal for achievement can be enjoyed in security, safe away from Mother's governing eye. In those zones, furthermore, the common sight of rotting vegetation giving rise to new green shoots seems to have inspired a mythology of death as the giver of life; whence the hideous idea followed that the way to increase life is to increase death. The result has been, for millenniums, a general rage of sacrifice through the whole tropical belt of our planet, quite in contrast to the comparatively childish ceremonies of animal-worship and -appeasement of the hunters of the great plains: brutal human as well as animal sacrifices, highly symbolic in detail; sacrifices also of fruits of the field, of the firstborn, of widows on their husbands' graves, and finally of entire courts together with their kings. The mythic theme of the Willing Victim has become associated here with the image of a primordial being that in the beginning offered itself to be slain, dismembered, and buried; and from whose buried parts then arose the food plants by which the lives of the people are sustained. 

Joseph Campbell

The Deers Hate My Shed

The shed project continues: I've leveled out the base, bordered it with bricks, put down plastic pavers, added the pea gravel, hauled the lumber for the joists and floor, and now perhaps I'll hire a professional to do the rest . . . especially since some stupid deer rubbed their paws or their hooves or their stupid fuzzy antlers on the shed package in my driveway, ripping open the plastic and damaging (slightly) the shed lumber . . . these deer have no respect for property or propriety.

Sci Fi Sunday (Profound and Absurd)

It was a rainy Sunday yesterday, so . . .

1) I read over a hundred pages of Chen Qiufan's futuristic vision Waste Tide . . . it's translated from Chinese by Ken Liu (the same guy who translated Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem) and it's excellent-- the story of an e-waste worker on Silicon Island-- where electronics from cell phones to laptops to cybernetic limbs-- come to be recycled who gets involved with labor disputes, an American company that ostensibly wants to make the island more environmentally healthy but actually has more nefarious goals, and the future of intelligence-- artificial and otherwise; the book is dark and violent and precise and surreal and touching all at once, and apparently-- according to this Wired article-- the author is regarded as a prophetic rock star in China;

2) my family went to the movies-- the first time since the pandemic started-- and we saw Godzilla vs. Kong . . . which had HIGHLY entertaining battle scenes-- you should see this film in the theater . . . it's fantastic how often these two punch and kick each other, though they have so many other ways to attack, and the undersea battle amidst the naval vessels is stupendous and literally breathtaking, BUT-- and this is a major but-- the plot of the movie seems to have been written by a bunch of drunk twelve-year-old boys . . . maybe Hollywood was able to grab them since they aren't attending school-- they take Kong to Antarctica so that he can go through a tunnel toward the center of the earth and lead a bunch of levitating ships to an incredible power source (which the levitating ships seem to already possess) and in the center of the earth there is a weird hollow jungle environment with giant creatures and clouds and Kong plays with some inverted gravitational rocks that are floating and then he grabs a giant tomohawk and sits on a throne-- it's very surreal-- and Godzilla gains access to this world by shooting his nuclear breath straight down into the earth and then the thing ends with a battle to end all battles (and a plot twist that I predicted) and I should also point out that there are a lot of movie stars in this film-- Millie Bobby Brown, Bryan Tyree Henry, Kyle Chandler, etc-- and they all seem to find each other wherever they happen to be . . . including Hong Kong, though most people get stomped (or fall off bridges . . . Godzilla loves to stand up right when he's under a bridge) but the stars all seem to be standing close to the action but not in th epath of Kong and Godzilla . . . and the great Lawrence Reddick is in the movie for like two seconds- they must have left his role on the cutting room floor . . . my favorite moment is when Kong pops his dislocated shoulder back into place on a skyscraper and then gets back to battling--epic-- anyway, quite of continuum of skilled and ridiculous sci-fi for one Sunday.

Even More Tennis Notes

Yesterday, after purchasing, loading, and unloading a dozen bags of pea gravel (for the shed base) I substituted again in the tennis league and eked out a tie-breaker victory over a big-serving, hard hitter-- some call him Ken-- and while I didn't hit the ball very well, as I was sore from tamping and digging and carrying bags of rock, I remembered to back way up when Ken was serving-- a simple tip that is easy to forget-- and while he certainly hammered some of my weaker returns, I occasionally hit drop shots and more often got it deep enough to stay in the point . . . and while his serve was brutal, he was also prone to double-faulting and being too aggressive, so I just hung in and hung in and eventually tied it up 5-5 so we played a ten-point tiebreaker to finish our time and I beat him 10-2.

We've Been at the Mercy of Evil Geniuses

It's not a fun read, but it's compelling; Kurt Andersen's new book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America is a comprehensive history of all that went wrong since America took a sharp right turn in 1980-- and while we all know Ronald Reagan was famously at the wheel when the country steered away from progress, the ramp-up to this new path was the dynamic and radical change happening in America in the late 60s and early 70s . . . Vietnam and Civil Rights and the Weathermen and acid rock and mini-skirts and women in the workplace and the oil crisis was too much change all at once and so while culture lapsed into nostalgia, the conservatives launched a concerted and organized attack on all the "progress" that was made; greed became good and the bottom line was God; Milton Friedman was a prophet; unions were attacked and dismantled; laws were written in favor of large corporations; regulations were eased (which reminds me of this repugnant Reagan deregulation . . . what a douche); dark money proliferated; conservative think tanks and advisory boards gained power; conservatives made inroads on talk radio and economic departments; the country became finacialized; Wall Street and banking went from boring to a casino; stocks became sexy; we had various economic meltdowns because of these right-wing deregulation experiments; the liberals became neo-liberals and shifted rightward; income inequality grew and grew . . . and while Scandinavian countries figured out a kinder version of capitalism, with a social safety net, but often made slight conservative alterations to their course-- we went whole hog, convinced by the right-wing pundits that this was the only way to make America great again-- that the free market was sanctity and anything that impeded it-- from pollution to income inequality to lackof social programs to a pandemic-- was an obstacle to raze over or ignore; so we erased the progress that happened after WWII and retreat into the robber baron age from before WWI . . . the conservatives had their forty-years in the wilderness from 1940 to 1980 and they've had their time in the sun, and it's been disastrous, and now-- perhaps because of Trump (who received no more votes from white people than any other Republican president) and the pandemic, progressives will have a chance to change things, and to help usher in this weird new age . . . the book is a monster and this sentence hardly does it justice, but it does end with some hope and a call to the future-- so let's go already.

Shed Shit

Shed shit is happening, slowly but surely.

God Helps Them?

Thoughts and prayers are the opposite of solutions and action.

Extremity Revelation!

 I'm not a size 12 shoe, I'm a size 11.5 wide.

Let the Taunting Begin?

I didn't want to ask for too many details, but they are doing "challenge matches" now at tennis practice to determine the positional order of the players and it seems my older son Alex and my younger son Ian were at the top of the ladder and had to play each other for the number one spot-- Alex was ahead in the set 5-1 but Ian came back and beat him 7-5 . . . so for the time being-- for a change-- the younger brother is number one and the older brother is number two . . . I haven't heard any taunting or trash-talking, so I think they are both handling the situation with aplomb, but we'll see how long that lasts (this coming from kids whose dad takes great pride in trash-talking about the NYT mini . . . so I'm certainly going to come off like a hypocrite at some point).

Some Simple Advice, Since the Marketplace is Broken

The new episode of Radiolab, "What's Up Holmes," is required listening for anyone interested in the great American experiment with freedom of speech; Oliver Wendell Holmes eventually comes to the conclusion that there is "a marketplace of ideas" and that nearly all speech should be allowed-- good ideas will rise to the top of the marketplace, win the competition, and the truth will prevail . . . and while this has become an American ideal, the metaphor may need some revision-- marketplaces need rules, regulations, and referees because while marketplaces can occasionally work, they can also produce pollution and uncontrolled externalities; they can create monopolies and arbitrage and collusion and unfair trade practices and great inequality; they can poison the water supply (or factual information) and-- when deregulated enough, they can lead to Enron or the mortgage crisis or any of the other stupid crashes created by our idiotic and evil hardline right-wing voodoo economists/politicians that have been having their way with this country, it's laws and marketplaces and its unions since 1980 or so . . . anyway, the takeaway is that if you are stupid enough to get your news on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media, you need to realize that marketplace is broken and lies, propoganda, and misinformation compound and spread much fast than logic, reason, and the truth . . . my advice would be to AVOID TWITTER AND FACEBOOK . . . because if you go there, you give those platforms power to pollute the information-sphere and the marketplace of ideas, but-- despite the fact that I crushed at tennis AND the NYT mini today-- who's going to listen to me?

Shed Stuff

Cleaning out the shed, in preparation to knock down the shed, so that we can build a new shed-- it's not for the weak of heart (but I certainly don't want to end up like Arthur "2 Sheds" Jackson . . . although since I own a shed and a mini-shed, I might already be him).

All the Weather

Alex and I just got back from a father/son snowboarding trip where we experienced all of the weather-- terrible wind (enough wind to blow my ski hat off) and fog and sleet (which stuck to our goggles, impeding vision) and lovely balmy sunshine and finally, clouds-- we got a couple of decent days of riding in but that's about it for the season here in the Northeast; on the trip, I finished Sara Paretsky's incredibly complicated mystery novel Dead Land . . . Paretsky's irate and persistent detective V.I. Warshsawki tackles crime and corruption in Chicago, but this case spans the globe-- coincidentally, there's some Pinochet Chilean death squad stuff and I just quit reading Hades, Argentina because the Argentinian death squad stuff was too disturbing-- I guess you can't avoid death squads-- and while the wind was blowing on our trip and the lifts were on hold, Alex and I watched a lot of basketball (he's leading his pool) and Tropic Thunder, Dazed and Confused, and a fair amount of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly . . . but we may never finish because Amazon Prime just took it down . . . and we were mid-movie, so I guess if you start something out West, you'd better finish it.

Yesterday vs Today . . . Teenwolf vs Pfizer

Yesterday began with such promise: I defeated my nemeses in the NYT Mini Crossword (Stacey, Whitney, and Zman) which is a rarity and cause for celebration; then Catherine and I drove the Meadowlands and we each got our second Pfizer vaccine shot and we flew right on through without much waiting; a guy in line informed me that Houston's best player was sitting out with a hip pointer, giving Rutgers a fighting chance; and then I settled in the watch basketball-- my brackets were thriving, as was the pool where select eight teams and get points for their seed number (so you've got to select upsets) and in between basketball I played ping-pong with my sons, and despite my sore arm, I defeated them handily (which did not happen the day before) and then things started going downhill: Illinois lost, Syracuse won, Texas Tech lost and nail-biter, and then Rutgers squandered away a ten-point lead in the final minutes-- they stalled the ball too much, missed a couple gimmes, and Geo Baker slipped . . . it was awful and Alex and I were very sad . . . I was also sad because, over the course of the day, I was getting more and more sore and fatigued and by the end of the Rutgers game my throat hurt and I had a headache . . . it was the same for Cat and she even had a low-grade fever-- our immune systems were responding to the vaccine and it wasn't fun . . . we had chills all night and couldn't sleep and I was having weird racing thoughts, such as who scored the most points in a basketball game IN A MOVIE . . . Teenwolf? . . . which led me to this amazing video . . . the internet isn't for politics, it's for THAT VIDEO . . . anyway, I know there are silver linings to all this: getting a vaccine is better than getting COVID, a robust immune system response means that your immune system is generating antibodies (old people have little response to the vaccine) and Rutgers had to break the ice with the new program and they've done it (and VCU didn't get to play at all!) and-- despite the side effects-- I've heard that the Pfizer vaccine is far superior to all other vaccines . . . 75% of people who receive it improve their NTY mini score, 67% select better brackets, and 11% develop ESP.

College Admissions: More Than You Need To Know . . .

Jeffrey Selingo's Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions is a great book-- well-written, compelling, and chock full of telling anecdotes and vital information; here are a few things I learned:

1) ignore the mail . . . it's random-- you are NOT being recruited by Princeton if you have 1350 on your SAT and a 3.7 GPA and happen to get sent a brochure;

2) there are hidden agendas-- more men, more English majors, more people from five states away, more people that pay;

3) elite colleges are more difficult to get acceptance now but the rest are not;

4) you need a cohesive story of why you actually want to go to a particular college . . . colleges track website visits, they pay attention to who visits and attends admission presentation, they like legacies, they know who opens emails, etc . . . colleges are trying to figure out who will go to the college-- not give an award of acceptance;

5) Early Decision serves the needs of the college "a hell of a lot more" than the needs of the student-- again, colleges are trying to lock-in people who will pay full tuition or play football or boost SAT scores or increase diversity . . . so you're probably not going to get into your reach school just because you apply ED . . . and you won't be able to shop around and negotiate;

6) Selingo breaks colleges into "buyers" and "sellers" . . . sellers are well-known schools with low admission rates and a brand name-- buyers are schools that need to purchase a class of incoming students-- and they need to offer more discounts to excellent students to lure them in . . . there are some excellent schools in both categories-- and many state schools are "buyer" schools that should be considered . . . but it's best to apply to some of each and then weigh the finances and merits of the schools;

7) rich white people take advantage of using sports to get into school more than people of color . . . while basketball and football may admit a number of black students, most of the other sports-- lacrosse, gymnastics, sailing, soccer, rowing-- have mainly white participants, often rich white kids who played elite, club versions of these sports for their entire childhood;

8) college essays could be helpful, but most are "mind-numbingly boring" and deal with several topics: overcoming an athletic injury; dealing with depression, anxiety, or sexuality; or discovering themselves on a trip . . . honest slice-of-life essays have the best chance of capturing admissions' officers severely depleted attention;

9) it's very difficult to determine the cost of a college-- the sticker price is often not indicative-- and the maze of subsidized and unsubsidized loans, financial aid, grants and scholarships is difficult to navigate, even for guidance counselors-- it sounds worse than buying a used car;

10) don't get sold on the tour . . . a tour is just a tour and it's easier to improve the quality of the tour than it is to improve the quality of an undergraduate engineering program;

11) slow down and don't get caught up in Early Decision . . . Selingo hope the COVID might turn some of this process on its ear: less reliance on test scores, college recruiting students the way they recruit athletes, students searching for what they want to do at school-- not for a particular brand name, government subsidies and encouragement so selective schools can take more middle and lower-income kids, he also hopes that some of these brand name universities enlarge their classes; the actual price of college could become more transparent and that students and parents expand the field beyond just certain selective colleges . . . there's no perfect fit and no perfect college-- you need to be very flexible in your shopping;

12) most importantly, everyone involved agrees that college admissions is a short-sighted, out-of-your-control process and you can't get too caught up in it;

13) here are some random bits of advice from the appendix:

--worry about what you do in high school, and less about standardized tests;

--use freshman year to explore your academic and extra-curricular interests;--take the hardest courses available, but also what interests you;

--keep your grades consistent and don't blow off senior year;

--don't ask for recommendations from the usual suspects;

--make your initial college list about your needs and fuss with names later on;

--visit any campus, not just schools you want to go to;

--connect with colleges;

--think about the money;

--think about each application individually, not collectively;

--be sure those who recommend you know you;

--figure out the narrative you want to tell;

--it doesn't really matter what college you go to-- people with the same grades and SATs make the same amount of money whether they go to Harvard or Penn State;

--mindsets and skills matter more than colleges and majors;

--the majors you think are a guarantee to make money aren't necessarily that. . .  the top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their lifetime than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers . . . even history graduates who make just above the median income for that major do pretty well compared to STEM . . .

and most importantly, don't get too wound up about this because college admission is not the end-all-be-all: 

"one cannot tell by looking at a toad how far he will jump"

for more on this topic, check out This American Life: The Campus Tour Has Been Cancelled . . . the pros and cons of college admissions in a post-standardized test, pandemic universe.

Rambling Saturday Morning Thoughts and Warnings

I'm a little logy from staying up late last night but it was worth it-- Rutgers beat Clemson for their first NCAA tourney win in 38 years-- and I am wondering if all the college towns with teams in the tournament are going to experience a spike in COVID cases in a week or two . . . especially teams that win a game or two . . . I was in a crowded bar last week when Rutgers beat Indiana and I was probably lucky to not get corona, especially since cases are still really high here in Jersey-- the virus is being weirdly stubborn, despite vaccinations and I'm assuming it's college kids passing it around . . . so I decided to stay in last night and avoid the pandemic, since Catherine and I are getting our second shot tomorrow and spring break is on the horizon-- we'll see how this strategy plays out; in other rambling news, while I was returning home from my morning ramble to the dog park, a sketchy looking guy seemed to emerge from the woods on the hill that leads back to my street-- which may mean he was wandering through someone's property and not the park per se; he was a youngish white dude with longish hair-- kind of nondescript but looked a little unkempt-- and he stomped his boots on the street to get the mud off them and this spooked Lola and she started growling at him, so I turned her and continued up the hill but this guy followed us and he wanted to chat and pet Lola, but she was having none of it-- it's weird how a dog can get a sketchy vibe from someone--  and then he kind of walked beside us, asking me about Lola's breed and complimenting her paws and wrists-- weird-- and then he said he'd like to have a dog but his rental doesn't allow it . . . and then I said, "Take it easy" turned toward my house but I didn't go straight into the driveway-- I did the old walk-by-your-own-house-so-the-sketchy-guy-doesn't-know-where-you-live trick, which may have worked-- but anyway, if you live near Donaldson Park, lock your car doors and keep an eye out for this guy, he may have been wandering through backyards and he's certainly worth avoiding if you don't want to end up in an awkward conversation.

The Specter of Walt Disney Raises Awkward Dave from the Grave

In the past decade, I've tamed Awkward Dave to some degree, but he still occasionally rears his ugly, awkward head; one of these times is when adults-- grown-ass adults--  proclaim their love of Disney World; this boggles my mind and-- unfortunately for my awkwardness-- we've got a bunch of these people in our school (and there are several in the English department!) and some of them visit Disney every year-- it's like a religious pilgrimage-- and some of them visit Disney World and they don't have children . . . and while I understand taking your kids there once so they don't feel alienated and neglected-- although my wife and I refused to go and swore we would never take our kids until finally my parents actually dragged us all there and footed the entire bill . . . I had a lot of problems with the experience, but I'm an extra-high-maintenance pain-in-the-ass . . . but that's not what this sentence is about, it's about the awkward fugue-like state I enter when adults mention their love of Disney World . . . I start saying crazy, insulting, and awful things right to their faces, and these are people I work with and see every day; here are some examples of things I start spouting to perfectly nice co-workers: 

-- I rant and rave about how lame it is to share a bunch of antiseptic engineered memories with the rest of the Philistines in the park; 

-- I explain how happy I was when an alligator ate a small child at the Disney Grand Floridian Resort and Spa because it injected some reality into the fantasy;

-- I told someone they were totally fucked in the head because she was touting the merits of the Epcot food and wine festival . . . I told her for that amount of money you could go to Italy and have real food and wine!

-- I like to call out people who claim they are feminists yet worship the princess culture;

so I've decided this can't go on . . . if people want to spend their hard-earned money on Disney vacations, so be it . . . I need to be more tolerant; also, I don't think they can help it-- I wish I could claim to have noticed this myself, but it was Chantal who pointed out that all the devout Disney worshippers are practicing Catholics . . . so maybe there's some tie-in between actually practicing religion and loving Disney-- and we all know you can't control whether you have that "belief" character trait . . . I don't have a lick of it and I think it saves me a lot of trouble (in fact, I just read a great little piece in The Atlantic about how politics has replaced religion in America . . . and Disney is better than politics, I suppose).

Thick Masks and Liquid Skin: More New Shit

     

Like many people, I'm struggling to adapt to the new pandemic world order-- but I'm doing my best to learn new tricks; for example, the new mask my wife bought me was a bit thick, so I used scissors to remove the extra layer . . . but I cut myself with the scissor (which makes me wonder if my tetanus vaccine is up-to-date) and the cut was on my guitar-playing/typing/poking-things finger and it made it difficult to do those tasks but wife recommended using some "liquid skin," a weird substance that reminds me of medical crazy glue . . . and while it works, it's one more thing to remember before heading to work-- I've raced back into the house in the morning for my phone, for a mask, for my coffee, for my lunch, for my backpack, for my loop pedal . . . and now I've raced back into the house to apply some "liquid skin" . . . this added excitement is one of the benefits of returning to in-person school.

Daylight Saving Time: Catastrophe and Miracle

Yesterday, I was running late-- of course-- because we had just sprung ahead for fucking Daylight Saving Time and though I was bleary-eyed, I still noticed (possibly because it was dark) that ALL the interior lights were on in my van-- and they had certainly been on all night; luckily, the battery was okay and the car started but I couldn't get the lights to turn off, even when I was driving; my son had borrowed the car the day previous and he was the last to drive it so he had obviously done something egregious, but I didn't have time to run in the house and wake him up and ask him, so I called my wife (waking her up, as she was taking a day off) and told her to get Alex on the phone; Alex denied pressing any buttons and while all I could say was "THINK!"-- because I was driving down Route 18 with a bunch of other over-tired drivers-- but my wife actually thought for a moment and told Alex to go down to the computer and search how to shut the lights off on a 2008 Toyota Sienna; miraculously, he figured out what he had done . . . there is a weird button with three settings behind the steering wheel: OFF/DOOR/ON; this button toggles the interior lights from always off to turn-on-when-doors-are-open to always on . . . and he had somehow hit this button-- this button that no one has ever pressed in the history of driving-- and permanently turned the interior lights on (why this button exists confounds me, it is as equally unexplainable as the existence of Daylight Saving Time . . . which may be headed the way of the dinosaurs . . . which would make me very happy, almost as happy as when I put a piece of duct-tape over this idiotic button so that no teenager can ever press it again).

Note to Self (in March)

 This is what I learned yesterday: don't install a screen door on a windy day.

Game, Set, Match (Dave Beats the Drowned Man)

Yesterday was the last day of the winter men's league-- and while most of the guys are signing up for the spring session, I will be playing outside with my kids in the coming weeks, in preparation for the high school season; I finished strong, beating Barry in my last match-- though I won handily, Barry is troublesome (especially for a 65-year-old!) as he gets to everything and has a decent serve; while I started this league hustling and fit, I ended it wearing a brace on each knee, basketball shoes (more support than my tennis shoes) and tape on my two sprained toes; this winter I certainly improved my game . . . to some degree, I learned to stop chasing drop shots (for fear of injury) and stop diving at the net, I learned to serve to the backhand side, I learned to hit forehand winners and a hard cross-court two-handed backhand, I learned to hit my slice backhand deep, and-- just in the last match!-- I learned the proper ready position grip (from my wife, of all people) and this enabled me to wallop some forehand service returns . . . and if I can keep this up for fourteen more years, I will be quite happy-- I aspire to be like Barry, who went skiing last weekend in Beaver Creek and was back on the court a week later (although his neck was hurting him from the accident . . . what accident? . . . the drowning . . . you rescued someone? . . . no, I drowned this summer, I was painting my garage and it was 97 degrees and I forgot to drink water all day so I was completely dehydrated and then I dove into my pool to impress my grandkids and I never surfaced . . . my wife had to pull me out and I was blue and close to death. . . four days in the hospital . . . Barry is the bomb).