Master's champion

Was out in Regina this weekend playing racquetball. I played singles, and lost in the semi-finals of A, and I played 35+ doubles with Dave - although they had Bill written down on the draw by mistake - leading to "Bill" jokes all weekend long.

We won our first two matches in a four team round robin draw. One win was in a tie-breaker, and the other was in two straight games.

In our third and final game today, we start a bit slow, and the other guys are able to win the first game: 15-12, I think. In game two, I realize that the guy on my side is just killing us with his forehand shots when I try to kill the ball up the middle. So, I try keeping it to his backhand, hitting the ball down the left side wall. This works well, and we win game two going away, 15-7?.

In the tie-breaker, it's close early on, but then we put together a streak, and take a 8-2 lead. But after losing serve at 8-2, we never served again. They came back and won 11-8! Ugh!

Making it worse for me was that all their serves were to me. They got to 10-8 with the guy on my side serving lobs to my backhand, and somehow we just couldn't get a point for love nor money. Then after winning a rally to get them half down, the second guy comes in and also lobs to me. I hit an ok shot down the line, but it comes into the middle a bit and the guy serving kills it to win the game and match. Sigh.

I was really disappointed and felt I let Dave down. To have that large a lead and not win was deflating. The final record in our division had three teams at 2-1, including us, and one at 0-3. I wasn't concerned about where we finished after that loss.

So I go and have a shower, and sit in the great whirlpool that club has. Really enjoyable. Then I go to their little bar and try to order some food. The person working says they are short of food but someone's gone to get groceries. So, I'm not sure whether to order or wait or what Bob, the guy I drove out with, wants to do.

Now twice disappointed - by our loss and by the lack of food at the club - I figure I'll go look at the final doubles standings to see where we finished with the thought that we'll be 2nd or 3rd.

BUT NO! We finished first! Ha!

I had a good laugh at that.

More photos from home

My friend Lynn and her pal Will dropped by earlier this month. Lynn was in town to visit her folks, and Will had tagged along. They live in London now. Will was fascinated by some of the bits of my house, and he took some pictures.

Will was particularly taken with the steam radiators. Such as this one:

My vintage microwave oven also caught Will's eye.

It was a Christmas present from my dad to my mom back in 1975. The sticker on the back says it was manufactured in "November 1975." Yes, Nineteen Hundred and Seventy Five. "I know!" said in that Craig Ferguson sort of way. "I know some people that aren't as old my microwave!"

Picture of Paris

I went looking for Freud books (again!) yesterday, and came home with a little picture.


It's an image of Paris, and I think it's looking from the left bank to the right; that is, the view is to the northwest. The bridge would be Pont de l'Archevêché at the eastern end of the Ile de la Cité.

I liked it, because (a) it's Paris, and (b) it's done in a comic book kind of style. I'm not sure if it's a print or a watercolour. It could be taken out of a book, although it is signed. "Guy" d'something, perhaps. I can't make out the two noms autre than Guy.

The picture measures 9" by 12" for picture itself and 16" by 20.5" for the frame. It was $60, and I figure it'd be hard get something framed for that, so it was a good deal.

The person at the bookstore couldn't tell me anything about it, except that they probably bought it at an auction or from an estate that they'd purchased books at. The back of the picture is covered in brown paper with a local framer's name tag on it. I'm thinking this is the kind of style of framing that was done several years ago, so it's probably at least 25 years old.

In general, I'm happy with it. It's the kind of image that I'd wanted to have of Paris, but never found to my liking before.

What I did NYD

Slept in. Watched some football, sadly seeing the Illini lose and those nasty Wolverines win. Cleaned out the fireplace, seeing the bottom of it for the first time in ages. Had a fire: "fire, fire, heh, heh."

Reading Stephen Brunt's Searching for Bobby Orr, which is quite good. Very interesting about how Orr got involved in hockey, and ended up with the Bruins; that's how far I've got in the story. Orr's 14. Definitely worth picking up if you've any interest in hockey, or sport in general.