Tuesday morning Dr. Feldman removed the pin from my previously broken finger. To me, the movie’s a bust. I expected more drama, but then, maybe less is a good thing.

The surgeon is such a good sport he tries to direct my filming. It’s his voice asking that I pause, because he’s worried I’ll run out of film time. And it’s his scream at the end.

A Window’s friendly .AVI version

Dear Bill,

So, how are we coming? I’m assuming you’ve finished your downstairs bathroom, but still have to tile upstairs. The chopstick comes out of my finger tomorrow so I’m ready when you are.

Say, when are you going to write another story for the blog?

Michael

Dear Mike,

When the chopstick is out, and you can hit the right key on the billing data base, please send me the correct bill. Granted, the Christmas gift I gave John was pretty weak. But still and all, I don’t feel like paying his bill for his garage leveling and siding. I do owe you a sheckle or two, but even as you come from the John Joyce school of billing, I reject paying for someone else’s job. Ya know, 15 years ago, when we were trying out the name TGH, Inc, (Two Guys Hammering), I told you I could devise a computer program to do the billing. It might have been better, on the 256K, Lotus 123, DOS based program PC I had. Maybe not, but it would have been able to tell the difference between I lewis and B lewis. I figure I owe more like $75. Or maybe more. Let me know.

Our Xmas card delivery was pretty sketchy this year. And my best intentions, unrealized, were to visit or at least call you guys on Christmas morning, but it didn’t happen. I missed our annual visit; seeing your holiday house, trying to level the pool table, listening to a new CD, having a taste of whatever new single malt you were serving, and most of all, having a traditional time to catch up with you.

I got a chop box, home owners 10″ size, for Christmas, so I can now go back and refine the shaky angles I cut for the ceiling trim. Almost done. Seems like the oomph is gone, as the bath is functional and as I sit on the pot each morning, not bad to look at. Can’t seem to finish.

I’ll write the story, you tell me what to write about.

Bill

Dear Bill,

One year, many years ago, which wipes about the senior moment excuse, I sent a bill with a date like 1968. The customer saw it as more evidence of my incompetence and fired me. I trust you can differentiate between my window trim skill and my billing program and continue to hire me for your fun two man jobs. Especially those which require working in your attic on scorching summer days, or in the way-to-close confines of your bathroom where I’ll wonder why I can’t pick up a hammer until I realize I was trying to use your hand, not mine.

Mike

P.S. How about your yearly student story which begins, “Have I ever told you about the time I almost died?”

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

I cleaned out my attachments folder and found these two which should have been posted with their entries.

From birdbrain’s trip to Morocco. Incidentally, her next destination – Botswana.
Full Photo

And one that makes me laugh everytime I look at it. Rakkity in Japan.
Full Photo

Taken during our (Adam, Mark S and Dan) last lunch at La Provence in Concord. The glass table provides the reflective surface.
View image

And this is a perfect segue into my plea for anecdotes. I’ve gotten a few but not as many as I’d hoped for. It’s not too late to send me yours. I’m going to post the ones I’ve collected early this week (see how smart I am not to give an actual date?). And since Diane stole the one I was going to use, maybe I should have saved the one above, but they are so easy to collect.

And one more thing. The blog is changing addresses and design. I hope to have the new one up on or before Friday.

Patrick and I met at the gym entrance for our 5-oclock game on the dot of 4:59, and were tapping on the glass of court no. 1 at 5:02. The couple who were playing there couldn’t be serious players, after all, it was a boy-girl match, which couldn’t be as important as a father-son tournament, could it? They gave up the court gracefully (more gracefully than we had at the end of our unfinished sudden-death match last week).

Patrick scored the first point, and my adrenaline levels notched up a tad, but I got the serve back with a modest kill shot. As I racked up a few points, I relaxed my serves a little, and Patrick got the ball back. He scored 2 more points with wall grazers, and I got more serious, and returned his serve with a wall grazer on the wall opposite to his position. If I had been given that shot, I wouldn’t have even tried, but with his impressive speed, Patrick dove for it. The ball hit the corner and bounced back along the wall without a millimeter of air between rubber and plaster. Patrick gave it a terrific smash, but the ball just blooped towards the front wall, missing it by a yard, and he lost the serve. From that point on, it was all downhill for him.

So after winning the continued sudden-death game 15-10, I went on for the kill in the next game. Patrick served and scored twice. I was already behind 2-0, and the adrenaline surged. I began with a series of alternating shots to the left and right corners. We volleyed about a dozen times, with Patrick steaming to the right wall to return, steaming to the left wall, then the right, then the left. On and on, he returned shots that I would have missed 2 out of 3 times. I could have made a kill, but I wanted to see if he would tire. Impossible. He was sweating a little, but moving just as fast after 10 minutes of sprinting, swinging, reversing, sprinting, swinging,.. I ended the game with a final kill to the depths of the lower right corner. Patrick dove for it, as he always does, but to no avail.

So Patrick was down 0-2 after losing 10-15 and 12-15. I was getting a little tired myself, but P was as sprightly and eager as at the beginning. He served first, and scored twice, as in the 2nd game. This game I was determined to think of new shots that he might not even attempt to return, but it was hard to do that. Two passing players outside the glass stopped to watch his patented back-hand reverse bounces off the glass. No one I’ve ever seen can do that back-hand reverse as well. But a couple of serves later, I got balls deep into the left corner, and his back-hand reverse bounced off his chest—one of his few failures.

For my first several points, I was bearing down hard on my serves, but after getting a margin of 5 points, I relaxed and made easy serves. Patrick surged on, and was within two points, so I bore down again, restoring my 5-point lead. Then I relaxed, serving to Patrick’s right hand, and he picked up 3 points. My right arm was sore, but I went back to the old reliable underarm left-corner smash. Surprise, surprise. I found that I could return a few shots over P’s head, high enough that he couldn’t reach them, and crept ahead to 14-8. Then Patrick gained 3 straight points on front kills that I didn’t bother to chase, and I began to worry. Regaining the serve, and, panting, I banged one that even The Dominator wouldn’t have returned, but P blooped it to the front. I was so surprised that I didn’t even go for the ball, and P had the serve again. Then he scored twice, and was within one point of tying. After regaining the serve when P swung wildly and missed an easy shot, I changed tactics. I served a Z-shot, which Patrick fielded easily, but I moved into a position for a Dominator front-z shot that ended up moving parallel to the front wall, grazing it gently. P. dove to the front for the ball, returning it, but left himself vulnerable to my return that came off the front wall behind him, and headed towards the back glass just two feet off the floor. P sprinted and dove, but he was 10 milliseconds late. So I won 15-14.

It was now 6:00, and new players were now advancing on the court, so we had to quit. As we walked together towards the exit, Patrick pointed out that he had come closer to winning in each successive game. I agreed, and smiled, saying, “If we had played several more games, you would have won them all.” But privately, I said to myself, that I would have worn my right arm off, and wouldn’t have relaxed, if I had thought there was a possibility. But, bravado aside, Patrick was probably right.

• rakkity
jan 14, 2005

Mike,

In about an hour, rakitty & son will have their sudden-death match continued from last week. Somewhat repaired after the Dom match two days ago, I’m ready & raring for this one, and the adrenaline is
already coursing through my veins.

To be continued…

rakkity

More wild and crazy people from Ginger’s sister’s wedding.
View the whole kit’n'kaboodle

Christopher, Cole, Mark, Molly and Cole’s mom, Kay
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Mike,

Unfortunately, there isn’t much to the story. Dom and I got to the court about 10 minutes before time and started up after no warmup. This is usually a mistake for me, but this time it wasn’t. Dom failed to return any of my first 8 serves, and he went on to lose 15-3. The next game wasn’t so easy for me, but the Dom couldn’t score more then 6. By then I was relaxed–a bit too much relaxed–and Dom started off scoring 6 straight. I buckled down and chased after him, catching up at 10. He failed to score after that. By then I was so relaxed I was a standing puddle of jelly, and the Dom was scoring steadily. He was up 9-2 in the 4th game, when the adrenalin began to re-flood my veins. We reached 14-13, Dom’s favor, when he blasted an unhittable serve past me and won his first of the night.

The sweat pouring down my face, I looked at my watch. We’d been playing an hour. I said, ‘How many games have we played so far? Six?” Dom was a better counter than me, retaining 6 or 7 functioning brain cells to my 3, and said, “Let’s play a fifth.” By then we were both physically shot and refused to chase after any ball further than 3 feet away. By the time we got up to a 10-10 score, The Dom was just standing in one place, swinging pathetically, and I won that one just by spinning balls 4 feet away from him.

As we walked out, Dom panted, “I’m going to be sore tomorrow.” I smiled, but didn’t tell him I’d have to recover for my game Friday with Patrick.¬†

Now it’s Friday morning, and the Ibruprofin has kicked in. The court reservations are for 5 pm. Whatever happens, I have the weekend, with no snow-shoveling or tree sawing, to recover.

Patrick returned to the challenge court on Friday at 5, and we played two long games, followed by an interupted no-decision. The first game was a wipeout for Patrick (15-3), but he wore his old man down in the 2nd game and managed to get 10 points before losing. It’s a good thing for me that our games are so long, because time ran out in the middle of the 3rd game. We were tied 8-8 when a knock on the door from two other players interrupted us on the dot of 6. Patrick asked them if we could play until one of us scored and then we’d quit.

So it was sudden death between Rakkity & Son.

It was my turn to serve, and P. fielded it well. I lost the serve, so P. served, and blasted a good one. I
returned it to a low corner. He dove for it, and missed it, losing his serve. My subsequent serve made a ridiculous bounce–impossible to return. Nevertheless, P. returned it, and I was so surprised I missed my return. Three serves now, and neither one of us had scored. This went on for 5 more serves without a point.

We figured we had exceeded the good will of the anxiously waiting players,so we quit. At least we gave them a good show. And now we await next Friday’s match for a final decision.

rakkity & son

From today’s Book Section in the Boston Globe.
Art that baffles and Exhilarates
By James Sallis
The beauty of the novel, the great fascination of it, I often proclaim, shoehorning my words into a space taken up by sputtering attention spans, the latest celebrity news, and remakes of films that apparently (though who could have thought it?) were not bad enough upon initial release, is that it can do — can be — anything.
And is that, I wonder, looking out into the classroom, a vague terror I see in the eyes of my postulant writers? Nietzsche (I might continue) observed that every philosophy, every great summation of thought, however grand its intent, finally comes down to ”a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” The same may be said of fiction, another, more modest summation of human experience.

In the recent comment section you can now roll over to see email addresses. In the past when this was an option for all comments, folks would make up addresses which would further add to the content of the comment. I suggest continuing to do that, or to alter your email addresses in some other way to thwart spam bots from harvesting them.