Category Archives: Tennis

1/7/2021 – Thursday – more on Trump’s Insurrection…..

Trump’s Insurrection Follow Up

Found 4ft digital level on walk this morning. 

Sent note to Ba’s bathroom designer. Details of upstairs bathroom. 

Blog and Facebook posts about  Trump’s insurrection. 

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Tennis lesson. Lots of work on foot work, especially volleying. 

Found lectures by Lynn Stout about shareholder value theory of the corporation. Sent note to Noah. 

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Tuna, rice, spinach, cabbage steak. 

More George Gently Continue reading →

12/31/2020 – Thursday – News Year’s Eve

Went shopping early. Ended up with a surprising amount of food. Breakfast.

Mailed 16 Still Stepping books including one to Torrey in Australia.

Andrea says Noah and Nyla enjoyed yesterday’s chat. Spent most of day working on blog posts for 2003-4. Spoke with David Ackerman.

Tennis lesson at 4pm. Very strenuous drills serve and volley. Total Tennis continues to be overrun with city folk.

Karen somewhat depressed. More George Gently on TV.

12/3/2020 – Thursday – work – tennis lesson – cooking – library

UTMH work – not much – boring meeting with Seth, Ryder, and Erin….. about how to document new features…..

Paddle-ball court at Total Tennis

Tennis lesson featured a lot of new drills. Instead of usual warm up did volleys and touch and volley. Lots of footwork practices. Health monitor on phone said I took over 5,000 steps in an hour. Roughly 2.5 miles of running. Tired.

Cooked first bean dish in a long while. Vaguely followed a black beans and rice recipe from Moosewood.

Emily Chameides sent me a query about things wrong with the mobile version of the library website.

12/2/2020 – Wednesday- tennis amidst snow flurries – end of outdoor season??

Spent time trying to get Lightroom up and running to replace Photos app, and UTMH work. Went to play tennis with Ted at 2:30 pm. 40 degrees but little wind. Balls didn’t bounce much so many ball were hit at ankle height. Then we had snow flurries. Time to end the outdoor season?? When will the city take down the nets? Usually already happened by this point in the year.

Hung up banner for last DOG show of the year.

Watched more of Homeland and Ally McBeal

11/27/2020 – Friday – Dermatology, walk, tennis

Drove Karen up to East Greenbush for a reading of the biopsy on her upper lip. Fortunately the results are fairly benign. A pre-cancer finding. Now hopefully successfully eradicated through a cryogenic procedure.

Drove to Papscanee Island Nature Preserve for a walk. This park is located on the Hudson River in New Castleton, NY. 3.5 mile walk. Flat with occasional muddy section on the trail. Nice to be walking in a new environment.
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There must have been a very strong wind storm recently. Whole trees blown down….


Tennis with Ted in the afternoon. Esther Hanig drink at 5:30 via Zoom. Post Thanksgiving debrief…..

4/30/2020 – 7/1/2020

I have not felt motivated to write much during this period. The pandemic and its associated tribulations interfere.

We’ve been quite busy with socializing mainly virtually but with warm weather outdoors chiefly people’s backyards. We’ve moved our drinks with Ted and Anne to our backyards on a weekly schedule. Dave Drake has come by for food a number of times. He is working his way through a myriad of curry dishes. Zoom meetings weekly with Esther Hanig, Ellen Feldman, Dave Drake, the Orton siblings, the Leiden crew. 

With less regularity Andrea and company have Zoomed and appeared here physically. Though we have seen Noah and Nyla twice now in the backyard once including Noah’s girlfriend Kiara Guyton. Andrea actually talked with us for almost two hours in a singe stretch. Probably my longest conversation with her in decades. Nyla wrote a great high school essay, “Aunt Jemima Ain’t Chure Mammy”

3/18 – 4/7/2020 – Coronavirus Isolation

Wednesday 3/18/2020

Hudson Area Library closes; all programs stop.

Friday 3/20/2020

Gov. Cuomo announces shit down of all non-essential businesses.

Saturday 3/21/2020

HAL hold first online Board of Trustees meeting; library closed

Tuesday 4/7/2020

Today marks the end of the third week of isolation. Excepting for a couple of trips to the grocery, bank, and liquor store we have had no contact with any one closer than 6 feet.

Walks

Fortunately for us we have been taking daily walks, sometimes lengthy enough to be called hikes. It has been remarkable how few people we see during these walks. You might think that people would be getting out for exercise, air, nature…. maybe this reflects how sedentary we have become as a society. Our walks have mainly featured a route up Warren St. around the hospital and then back down the hill to home – about 2.5 miles (4K). We have extended and varied this to make it both longer and more challenging. 

Here are reports for a few.

Continue reading →

3/17/2020 Tuesday – more coronavirus, work and tennis

Woke up reading a piece that David Drake forwarded from Medium, Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now – Politicians, Community Leaders and Business Leaders: What Should You Do and When? by Tomas Pueyo. Dave’s daughter Margie, the mathematics PHD,  recommended it. At least the statistics pass her muster.

This lengthy article consolidates the coming impact of the pandemic and the government’s failure to act promptly. I cancelled my dentist, physical therapy and docotr appointments because none of them are urgent.

UTMH team meeting telecon was cancelled because the phone system we use was overwhelmed. Not another word from UTMH today.

Spoke with Jonathan from Leiden. They are a bit worried about the Dutch governments policies towards the pandemic.

Tennis doubles on Wednesdays has been cancelled. This will mean that Ted and I will contiue to practice and play but just travel in two cars instead of one. Must check in on tennis lesson on Thursday.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. Karen is cooking a corned beef and cabbage. We dis-invited Dave Drake due to social distancing. He understood because he had much the same reaction to the article Margie sent to us. We will drive over to Catskill to deliver a dinner to him and pick up hors d’oeuvres that he made.

3/14/2020 – Bob’s, shopping, tennis

Saturday

Off to Bob’s Diner for breakfast. Sat at some distance from others. Not as crowded as usual. Couple of cracks about practicing social distancing. Went to ShopRite. Parking lot was over half full. never seen this at this early hour. Some shelves, noticeably paper products and water were nearly bare. Meat in thin supply. Certain air of frenzy about some of the shoppers. We stocked up on canned goods. Also went to Walmart. Both places were sold out of tofu!

Walked up to Farmer’s Market on upper Union. Warren St. was quite empty. Noticed workers moving pews out of the Presbyterian Church. Maybe the roof project is going to get underway. The market had quite a few people. No Berkshire Bakery bread. Bought a bacon and gruyere quiche.

Largely a day lost to the strange vibe of the COVID19 pandemic.

Played tennis at Old Chatham for 2 hours with Ted. Felt like a break through. Much fluid play and more good exchanges at the net. Love the HardTrtu court

3/12/2020 – Thursday – Karen abandons FotoFest, our pandemic isolation begins

Woke up at 4:15 am to Karen talking to an airline agent to cancel her flight to Houston. She had awakened earlier to read the news that the NBA had cancelled its season and Tom Hanks and his wife were ill with the corona virus in Australia. Seemed embarrassingly late to cancel, but as it turned out later in the day others had also cancelled and ultimately FotoFest cancelled the balance of the event. Too many people from too many places including outside the US, probably China and S. Korea.

Glad she didn’t go. Seems like very much an unnecessary risk. We are in the demographic of those most at risk.

Emily and I talked about cancelling events and programs at the library. Need a policy.

Tennis lesson – started work on a knuckle-ball serve – combo top spin with slice.

The news is filled beginning to end with the coronavirus pandemic. Trump’s leadership has so far been more lacking than even his bad earlier performance might suggest. Again busy blaming Obama and the Democrats for the virus. People in his regime refer to the  virus as the Wuhan virus.