Easter Sunday morning was a great time for tennis. Some inside doubles with a couple of the guys.
Service game was streaky, like always. Ground strokes are still a mess from the re-tape of my racquet handle. I’ll try to fix that before I play again this week.
Spring USTA starts next week and it’s time to start playing outside again.
The temperature was perfect, but the 20mph gusts made it kind of silly.
It’s going to be a long spring and summer of battling the sun.
My sister was over for the game and she brought some Taylor Swift-inspred, Blake Lively-promoted cocktail recipes.
First was this Aperol, simple syrup, orange juice, tonic water adventure called “Better Than Revenger (49ers Version)”. I’m assuming the names are based on T Swift songs, but I’m tragically ignorant in that category. The drink was fine. Too sweet for me, and I don’t know that Aperol is enough to base a cocktail on. I think this one was constructed to easily be alcohol-free.
The next one was this tequila, pineapple juice, and Meyer lemon club soda mix-up called “Gold Rush Spritz”. I made them with 130% of the tequila called for and it was delicious. There wasn’t much pineapple juice, so it didn’t get too sweet, and the flavored club soda was a nice touch. There were a couple of rounds of this one. We liked it a lot.
And it wouldn’t be a cocktail post with a good ol’ Negroni to pull the anchor leg. I’ve been using the Dolin rouge vermouth and it’s been a nice switch up from the normal recipe.
The game was also exciting, eventually.
Lucked my way into a work-related golf outing last week during the previously-mentioned heat wave. It was foolishly hot outside, which is what I’m blaming my back 9 struggles on.
I couldn’t make a putt. It was awful.
And, as always, I hit enough good shots to go again. Hopefully soon, but not so soon that it’s still summer-hot out.
I was down in Newport News this past weekend to play in the Men’s 18+ USTA Mid-Atlantic Regionals. I am but a humble 3.0-rated player, and this is the tournament to qualify for the Sectionals weekend next month. I went 1-2 in my matches, but the team went 3-1, so we’re through to the next round. It’s tricky to coordinate the schedules of a bunch of grownups in the middle of vacation season, but we were able to get enough guys together to get it done.
It was so damn hot. I may never be hydrated again.
It’s been a tough season for the Mets, so far. Last night’s walk-off win over the best team in the league, after being behind three different times in the game, was a taste of the good things that could be around the corner.
The Mets still need better pitching, but it was nice to go to bed happy.
I had a pretty good powerlifting meet yesterday. Went 8/9 with state records in each lift. The records were vacated, so I just had to make lifts to get them, but I got them which was cool. In a lot of these strength sports, especially at local meets, there are big guys and there are old guys but it is rare for me to run into other Big Old Guys.
I had a rough training cycle to get to this meet because the holidays didn’t leave me much room to get the work in. My openers were all recent gym maxes and I took some modest jumps on the additional attempts. All of these lifts were well below my lifetime PRs and with any kind of decent training or dedication I could have maybe made a run at a couple of them. It just wasn’t in the cards for this meet. I don’t know why I even sign up for January meets. I always choose the non-training option through the holidays and then I grumble when I don’t do my best.
Small success makes me want to make a more serious run at another powerlifting meet, but I’m also planning to play a lot of tennis this year and the two sports are not especially compatible.
Today, I’m sore but not injured, which is key. I’ll spend 2023 working to find a way to balance the two.
It’s been a little while since I had to care about postseason baseball. It’s exciting.
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It was a lot of fun to get out with the old tennis guys last night. We joined a new club this year and I have been spending most of my time playing there. Thursday Night Tennis is still play for a couple of hours and then drink beer and hang for a while, and I’m glad for it, but the Ridgetop game always has bigger beers at the end and I’m moving a step slow this morning.
Now I have to decide if I’m going to play in the heavy heat this weekend.
