Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
I played a little tennis this morning. I didn’t know if I was going to make it, because the weather was kind of rough out there. I gave the club a call about 45 minutes before the clinic started and they let me know it was “on.” If I tell you one thing today, let it be that I love all-wheel-drive. This is like the tenth time I spun all four wheels going up the driveway. I keep doing it because it’s so much fun. This X5 freakin’ rules. I drive around in the snow like it’s nobody’s business. It also has descent control, so when I want to get back down the driveway, all I do is push a button.
I showed up on time, but the others were late. That was fine with me, because it gave me a chance to become acquainted with the ball machine. Man, about 5 minutes with that thing and I was whooped. I really need to get out there more. The older I get, the worse it becomes.
Laura has been talking about a treadmill lately, so I have a feeling that is going to be making its way into the basement. There are days when we can’t walk because of the weather. I tell her that I have an allergy to the whole “exercise at home” thing. I have seen basements full of rarely used equipment all my life. I have to give her credit though, she is beating up that Bowflex. I have never met someone who actually does what she says like this. Amazing.
Tennis was fun. There were only three of us, plus the pro. Small groups are always a good time and we used our time wisely. I am still practicing my forehand, so things are a little weird, but I expect to get it one of these days. I remember back when I was on the swim team over at the town beach. I was the worst one in the whole group at freestyle. I was doing 22 second laps. I went to visit a family friend in Long Island with my father one weekend and practiced swimming in their pool. When I came back, I was doing 16 second laps. I remember the look on the coach’s face…”WHAT?” That ended up being my best stroke. I’m tellin’ ya Mike, I’m tellin’ ya.
In between other things for the past few days, I have been painting the purple room. If you forget what the purple room looks like, you can check it out here. It’s the one that’s purple. I decided to get off my duff and start painting upstairs of the house. It took a while, but I’m doing it. I cleaned out the room, painted it and then moved my office in it tonight. Here, you can take a look…
Office
Oh, you know I went down to the flooring place in town. I was going to go all out with the top floor, one room at a time. I was first going to put down new carpeting in each room, then I lost heart at during my visit. I brought back samples of pre-finished hardwood. It only took a few hours for me to completely change my mind and lose all motivation to turn this into a multi-week project. If we ever want to re-do the floors, we’ll do them. For now, we are only going to worry about paint.
By the way, can you believe I have that much stuff in the little office? Geez.
Now that the old office is cleaned out, we can start painting in there. After that, the bedroom and finally, Laura’s office. It will probably be spring by that point, so I’ll be outside for the rest of the season.
After I was finished moving all the furniture, I went downstairs to grab myself a glass of Brandy. I must tell you, after tasting that Scotch, I have admitted that I am a Brandy man. It’s the whole, “after dinner” thing, I think. It’s just the way I am. I don’t need any more hair on my chest.
I did a little looking around and decided that perhaps someone should buy me a nice bottle of Christian Brothers XO Rare Reserve Brandy. I would really like that. If you want to just drop it off, cool. If you want to meet me someplace, I can do that, just let me know when.
Finally, let’s talk about music. I am done organizing my albums into nice, neat folders on my computer (backed up, of course). I have a whole slew of them and they are mixed with most of Laura’s. She still has a while to go. As I was sitting here in the new office tonight, drinking my Brandy, I decided to cruise through some of the folders. I knew what all my albums were, but there are some of Laura’s that I really am not all too familiar with.
I first listened to one of my favorites, Christopher Cross. Then, after that was done, I opened one of hers. I listed to the first part of the first song and decided to give it a chance. I was in the middle of working, so I didn’t notice all that much after that, until the third song. It was “Days Of The New - Enemy.”
Now, I know you are chuckling under your breath, mumbling that I am not as “hip” as you are when it comes to music. You’re probably right, but I have already gotten over it. I really like the song and I would like to share it with you. Enjoy. (You’ll have to click here to see it. They disabled embedding.)
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Posted in Food & Drink, Home Improvement, Ramblings, Recreation, Spring, Winter | No Comments »
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Hey, do you remember that time I told you that we had about a foot of snow? You should, it was just last week. Well guess what…it’s all gone.
Never in my life have I seen snow melt so fast. Let me correct that; I didn’t actually see the snow melting, it was just gone. I went to sleep a few nights ago and we had about 12 inches and when I woke up, we had about an inch. I am not sure what happened overnight. I was told that it was warm. Warm? What, like 80 degrees? Even if it was 40 outside, I would have trouble believing that all that snow could melt so fast. I think something else was at play. Something like magic.
Every so often, in between real blog posts, I like to write some random thoughts. Stuff like what I have been up to and what’s been on my mind. Let’s see how that works today.
Okay, so the end of the year is coming. I think that’s great. I am sick of 2008. I think a lot of great stuff happened, but personally, I don’t like endings, I like beginnings. I would like New Years to be over so people can get motivated and back to work. I always love talking to people at the beginning of each year because they have good ideas of what they want to see happen for the upcoming year. People start projects, start new companies…do all sorts of things. They make new investments, hit the gym, stop spending, start spending, oh the list goes on and on. I like hearing all about it. I like to see the hope in people’s eyes.
For my part, I am tightening up what I have. For the past month, I have been examining all areas of everything. Finances, business, organization, assets, friends…everything. Out with the old and in with the new. I’m like a reptile; I’m shedding off some dead weight. It stinks because I am so full of new ideas and start so many things, but I think being boring and simple for a while won’t hurt. It’ll give me time to get to know myself again.
We went for a walk today. It was about 60 degrees outside, so it felt like spring. All I wore was my salmon shirt and a fleece. Oh yeah, I had pants on too. We did our usual two miles, which takes what seems like 15 minutes now. At times, we don’t even talk, we just walk. We are getting faster and faster. It feels good. I always like to walk during the cooler months because my face feels so fresh and I don’t sweat.
Now that the snow is gone, I took a little “coffee walk” outside to check out the yard this morning. I have all sorts of plans for what I want to do, come spring. I am going to order about 100 more pines from ArborDay.org in a month or so. They will deliver the trees in March. 100 trees might seem like a lot, but really it isn’t, once I start planting. I run out fast. I am going to make pine tree areas out of Blue Spruce, Norway Spruce and White Pine. The mix should look good.
I am also going to have about 30 more yards of mulch delivered in April. I do love mulch and with property of this size, I am going to need every last drop. It’s going to make the pine trees grow so much faster and it’s going to work wonders for the gardens. Man, I can’t wait to get back to it.
There are times when I sit at the computer and want to check out what everyone is up to. I wish you all had blogs and told me about them. I would like to have a list of about 20, but right now, I only have 4. It gets lonely in the blogosphere without you. Hey, maybe you can put that on your list of things to do. I think that’s a great idea. C’mon, think about the benefits…you will know that I will be reading all about your excellent adventures. By the way, this isn’t to say that my list of 4 isn’t the most awesome list ever.
I’m not sure what else I have.
We put all house improvement projects on hold. Nothing is really in dire need of improvement, besides the living room carpet. That needs to be torn up and discarded. We got a price for hardwood, but that’s going to have to wait. I am not falling into the trap of sinking tons of money into a house the first year. Slow and steady wins the race. I wouldn’t mind a pool though…hmmm. It would have to be indoor, so I can swim all year round. Perhaps I could just get one of those little plastic ones and put it in a tent.
Okay, now I am officially out of stuff to say. All the juicy gossip is kept quiet because I have to keep some sort of privacy. I mean, one would have to wonder, if what I write is all the stuff I have going on in life, I would certainly be a little weird.
Over and out. Peace.
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Posted in Ramblings, Winter | 2 Comments »
Friday, September 5th, 2008
I’m back, baby. I’m back.
As I was walking out on the court this morning with the tennis instructor, he asked me where I lived. I told him where I live and then informed him that I just moved here a few months ago. He asked where I had come from and why I had moved. I told him because there were no tennis clubs where I used to live. You think I’m kidding.
I suppose that was just the icing on the cake or perhaps an indication of the type of area we lived in. I think the only indoor tennis court within 30 miles was inside some old barn. This guy I used to work with told me that someone had redone a barn and put a tennis court in it. That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
You would be surprised at how many dinner conversations Laura and I have about life. We are real thinkers. I probably over-analyze more than she does, but we do have some pretty worthwhile conversations. One of the topics we talk about is what we could do in the recreational arena. I mean, we probably do more walking, hiking and biking than anyone I know, but it never seems to be enough. We work out on the Bowflex, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. I work around the house cutting down trees and spreading mulch, but still not enough. We even wrestle, well, you get the picture.
This type of thing becomes very important to me when the bad weather sets in. I get the Winter blues easily and need to be constantly entertained or else people are going to hear me complain. No one wants to hear someone else complain.
I used to work at the Carmel Fitness and Racquet Club over in Carmel, NY. I worked there for about four years as the head life guard from 1993 to 1997. I loved that job because it would allow me to do all my homework for college when no one was in the pool. I credit that job for helping me graduate Westchester Community College. I also loved that job because I got free use of the gym and the indoor tennis courts. I love to play tennis and having indoor courts at my disposal year round was the best thing to happen to me. Also, to have a life guarding job year round was great too.
At the Carmel Fitness and Racquet Club, I played a LOT of tennis. You couldn’t keep me out of that place. I get bored very fast, but back then, I had something to do about it. I would hop in my car and go play tennis. If there was no one to play with, I would practice my serve or just hit against the ball machine. Those four years taught me a lot about the game and I actually got pretty good at it.
When I went to college at Binghamton University, I stopped playing. Twelve years have now gone by and I have only casually played tennis a few times, but nothing to write home about. I really miss the game.
Living where we used to live didn’t help. Since people were more into farming than tennis, I had a better chance of somehow driving a bulldozer across a field than to actually play some indoor tennis. Year after year, I got more and more sick and tired of putting up with the lack of recreational activities in the area. There is only so much of walking up and down the road someone can do. I mean, people can say, “Oh, we have this and we have that,” but really it’s the feeling you get when you are somewhere. It’s the culture.
So when I gave the tennis instructor that answer this morning, I wasn’t kidding.
Yesterday, as we were out and about, I decided to take a different way back to the house. I drove through a back road (Oak Street) in Glastonbury to hop on Hebron Avenue. As I was driving down Oak Street, I noticed a sign on my right. It said, “Glastonbury Tennis Club.” I almost fainted. I had planned on joining the tennis club up in East Hartford when the weather got a little cooler, but this was a heck of a lot closer to where we live. I drove a little further and turned around.
We walked in the club and talked to the front desk person a little while. I eventually signed up for a membership and scheduled a lesson for this afternoon at 12:30. I thought this was just great.
This club has six nice indoor courts and four pros for lessons. I thought a few lessons would be a good idea, since I hadn’t played in such a long time. I didn’t want to jump right back into playing matches with strangers when I wasn’t sure of my abilities.
I had my first lesson with John, the Tennis Director. He was pretty cool and probably got a kick of how fast my face turned red from all that running around. I must say, I played rather well. I hit some great shots and was consistently “OK.” Let’s just say that I could hold my own against an intermediate player.
This tennis club has a bunch of clinics where there is a pro and about five people per court. They hold the intermediate clinics on Wednesdays and Saturday mornings. I will most likely go to all of them. I want to get back in shape before the Winter comes because I want to start playing matches. The instructor told me that in a few weeks, I should be ready for the advanced clinics.
That would be the cat’s meow.
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Posted in Recreation | No Comments »
