Sunday, April 21, 2024 (Court Day #648)

The stress for me this morning was running around, trying to find my car keys. I always put them in the same place. As I was scrambling and hunting, my wife was out walking the dog with a friend. Her phone was gone, which meant that she had it, and as normal with wives, their phones are designed for making calls, not receiving calls! Yes, that’s a joke, but it’s so typical. She was not responding. I ended up grabbing the backup key without the remote fob.

It was a beautiful morning—sunny and warm. Maybe a bit too warm and a bit too sunny to be perfect pickleball weather. I’d rather have overcast and in the low 60s. My wife, before she left, said the weather prediction would be about 80° today.

Derby

I set up like normal, though being later than normal and arriving at the 9 a.m. opening time instead of early, the courts were already pretty busy and I couldn’t blow them off. Fortunately, they weren’t too bad as far as debris.

With not many truly advanced players, I was signing up in red (3.5). If I signed up in blue (4.0+), I’d have no one to join me.

Later, some better players did show up and I signed up in blue hoping to nab some of them. Josh B. signed up in my box which was ok since Josh is a solid 3.5 player . . . he can get the ball back repeatedly in a firefight at the net. Then we waited and waited. I asked Brandon to sign up with me, but he wanted to play with a lower-skilled woman who was there today. Alas. Then I saw that Glenn and Lisa had signed up in our box. Glenn and Lisa are high 3.0 or low 3.5. Ok. We might be waiting forever otherwise. Glenn wanted to play with Lisa and so Josh and I beat them 11-2. Josh was the one that gave them the 2 points.

Done

At 11:51 a.m., I was in my car and on my way home. The waits had been kind of long, though they were shortening later in the morning. But I really needed to make sure that I was out by noon in order to get home and prep for my class at 1:30 p.m. 

Driving away from Derby, I was kind of unhappy. I was unable to get into any games with all 4.0+ players. The best game was me, one advanced, and two intermediates. 

They are good days and bad days with regard to play at Derby. I think there were enough players there that, had it worked out, I would’ve gotten some very good games, but there just wasn’t enough of us to go around. The emotion was just dissatisfaction. My play was fine, but the challenge was minimal. 

Present

After teaching, I stopped by my parents’ house. My uncle Jerry, my dad’s younger brother, had sent a gift to their house for me.

He had purchased a Flash sweatshirt for me. When I was a kid, The Flash was my favorite superhero and Jerry bought me some Flash comics books. I collected those for years into high school before they started getting expensive and I didn’t have time to go shopping. The sweatshirt is an XL size, a bit big for me, but better too big than too small! Thanks, Uncle Jerry!

Keys

Oh, the car keys. Last night, I had stopped for groceries after work at my wife’s request and, with my hands full of packages, inadvertently left my keys in my pants pocket. My wife kindly decided to wash my jeans but managed to miss the keys and ran them through the washing machine. Oops! The good news is that they amazingly still work! Small blessings!

Monday, April 22, 2024 (No Play)

I got a notification that my Gearbox order had been shipped. We’ll see if the paddle is shipping later separately or if it’s in the box.

Number of days on a court: 648
Number of total hours: 2,787.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 26

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