I made some off-hand remarks about a willingness to drink water from a Stanley cup, so naturally I got a surprise gift from my wife.
Why wouldn’t it be from the Barbie x Stanley Collection?
The Western Ken model is tasteful and classy, like me.
And it blends in seamlessly to the truck’s cupholders.
My hydration situation has been improved immeasurably. And holy shit is this thing heavy when it’s full of water.
In Chicago. Found a spot to watch Liverpool at lunch. Walk in, ask for a table and the match on one of the 12 tvs.
“You can sit anywhere. We’ll put it on that tv, but we’re an Arsenal bar so you won’t get any sound.”
lol
As a long-time advocate of the McDonald’s cheeseburger (and a reluctant convert to the comfort of the Croc), the newest Happy Meal toy promotion is an awkward confluence for me.
I played well in my two Club Challenge matches this weekend with my pal Peter. We always laugh at how nervous we get at the start of these things. Like, legit Waco Kid shaky hands. We did some line shuffling as a team to lock in a favorable lineup so Peter and I were matched against a weaker line from a better team. It didn’t really matter, because we’ve been nice this year and we won the first match 6-4, 6-2.
The nerves and little too much coffee had me bouncing between zones 3 and 4, but we eventually settled down and handled things.
The format for the weekend is two days of play to determine the top 6 (of 12) teams, and then scores reset for Sunday where the top 6 play for the trophy. Our Sunday match was against a better team’s 1st line, and it was a tougher match. It didn’t help that I rolled my ankle pretty badly in the middle of the 2nd set, so I spent the next three games waiting for a pop or a crunch to end my match and season. We won the match 6-4, 5-7, 1-0 in a 3rd set tiebreak.
Once I was confident enough that my ankle wasn’t going to implode things settled down. It was a bit of a marathon match, though, and I’m still sore and tired.
Big Zone 3 energy out there, which is nice. That deep HR dip around 10am was the ankle roll. I had to take a minute to assess the damage and retie my shoe. I was sweating it.
As a first Club Challenge experience, it was a really good time. Probably because I played well and won my matches, but the whole thing was wall-to-wall tennis and watching/laughing/cheering with my tennis friends for 3 straight days. I’m unlikely to move up to 3.5 after this season so I should be in a good spot to make the team again next year. If i don’t make the team, I will 100% make time to go watch as much as I can.
4 stars.
Big, big doings this weekend. I made it on the Westwood Club Challenge team, so I’ve got a bunch of tennis to play and watch this weekend.
A big draw for me is watching the 4.0 and higher players hit. The pace they put on the ball and the smart way they position themselves bounces back and forth between inspiring and discouraging. They’re playing a different game than I am, it seems. This’ll be fun.
It’s only been out a week, but this new Floating Points album has snuck into my top 10 for the year. That damn Berghain playlist has me all up into some house music. I had forgotten how much I love it.
It’s awesome work and driving music.
In a year that has had a lot of great albums for me, this one is right up there. I’ve enjoyed a handful of songs from their earlier releases, but this is a stem-to-stern winner to my ears. The Radiohead influence is pretty obvious, but there is also a nice Storm-In-Heaven-Verve thing going on. It’s tailor made for my wheelhouse. Highly recommend.
While I do enjoy an OS update I wasn’t really paying attention to what was coming. The beefy, dark-mode icons were a fun surprise.
I am curious about the Apple-flavored AI stuff, so I refreshed all of the hardware for these updates, too. I got the M2 Macbook Air last year, the M2 iPad Air this year, and I’m jumping on the Watch 10 this year after getting into the SE2 over the last little while. I am in the iPhone Upgrade Program to get the good camera setup every year on the Pro Max.
Should be fun to see how it goes. I like the tech stuff.
End of summering aside, I have been playing a ton of tennis lately and it’s starting to wear a bit. We’ve got a big tournament this coming weekend and the urge to get as much practice in has started to backfire. I’m tried and playing lazily, which is not a recipe for confidence building.
You see my zones up there. Living in Zone 1 is not evidence of a player getting after it on the court. I’ve got one last mixed doubles match tonight to play as a tune up, and then I’m on hold until the weekend. I don’t usually have to be the guy “making a conscious effort to stay upbeat and positive”, but that’s where I am today.
Fingers crossed.