Despair
This ding dong
Too tall to sit on the ledge and dig in, he’s hanging underneath and plucking individual seeds out of the feeder.
What a goof.
New Boots, No Goofin’
I forgot to mention these swanky cowboy boots I got in Abingdon. I’ve never owned a pair, so when I had a chance to get an appointment at LaGrange Leather, I had to take it. It was fun trying on some wild exotic stuff, but in the end I went with a regular cowhide.
I do enjoy a fun shoe. Breaking these in might be the end of me.
Birthday at the Track
We celebrated my wife’s recent birthday at the horse track, of all places. We’re casual fans of the Triple Crown races, so we took a trip east of Richmond to see some smaller-scale races. It was a blast.
Gambling isn’t generally my thing, but it was fun to learn a little about how to bet on horses. My 90’s NBA fandom was showing with this dumb bet in the last race.
Vinsanity didn’t pay off.
More Virginia Road Stuff
Had a recent work run that took me to Roanoke, Marion, and Abingdon Virginia. It was a good chunk of driving to a part of the state I hadn’t yet visited. I took the non-highway route to Roanoke, because it’s pretty.
Good breakfast and a clean mid-2000’s 4Runner.
Abingdon has a special charm, and a revolutionary-war-era Tavern that now holds a great steak house.
There isn’t a way back from Abingdon that isn’t on Interstate 81, but there were still some sights.
This man’s dumping.
I finally got back into pickup truck life. While I loved my little car, the utility of the pickup is just too useful to ignore. Even for a poser (not diesel, no gun rack, no Punisher sticker) such as myself.
I didn’t waste any time in making two runs to the dump this weekend, though, so it’s not a complete pose.
On the road
I started in a new role this year and I will be spending a good chunk of time on the scenic byways of Virginia and North Carolina, with occasional detours out into the greater US.
I don’t mind a quiet drive through the ivy- and kudzu-covered countryside. It’s nice.
I also enjoy seeing what remains of some of the manufacturing infrastructure that was the basis for these communities in the first place. Not ruins, necessarily, but rather the well-worn railways and warehouses. It’s all still running, but it’s far from shiny or new.
Postseason tennis is back
We took one of the two spots to advance out of the USTA Sectionals this weekend. I was only available to play one of the matches, but we won our line and the team won handily. This is the same kind of thing we did a few years back when we went out to USTA Team Nationals (as 3.0 players, “the best of the worst”).
The weather had been dodgy all weekend so we played an adjusted format that greatly shortened the match, in an effort to get as much tennis in before the rain as we could. It wasn’t a crushing physical task, thank goodness, but it was still muggy enough to get up a good sweat.
We go again in three weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Home crow!
This is the most bold of the crow gang at the house. This was after the morning batch of crackers and peanuts, so I think maybe they were hoping for one more shot before I left for work (they got another handful of peanuts).
There are a couple of bald crows in the gang now. The internet suggests that it is just normal molting, so maybe they’re juveniles?
Dunno.
Too hot to be fun
Another too-hot day with a USTA match. We didn’t get going until 2:30 and man, it was rough. It was the first time this summer I was paying attention to my heart rate in-match. It broke 160bpm a few times, which is where I start to reconsider my choices. Even with generous breaks for water and shade, things were dicy.
I played pretty well, which was no small feat given the temperature and crushing sun. My serve held most of the match and my ground strokes were consistent. That’s a few matches in a row they they’ve been decent. I *might* be getting better.
Those improvements were balanced out by a hysterical inability to hit a volley at the net. Like, it was bad-bad.
It was my first win at 3.5, too. Also, holy shit it was hot.
