Katie, Patrick & I recently restarted our traditional 3-way racquetball meets of Friday afternoon. Patrick & I always have played left-handed to make things more even for Katie.

Winding the racquet safety string around my healing left wrist, tight enough to support the racquet, I announced to Katie and Patrick that I was going to play them left handed today. They were both initially incredulous, but I said that my physical therapist was trying to get my grip back to full strength, and this was as good a way as any. KT served first, and from the beginning as well as later, she took advantage of me mercilously. All her serves crawled along the right wall, and as I was on the right and Patrick was on the left, my returns had to be with my normally poor, and currently pitiful, back-handed left. Without the help of the safety string the racquet would have flown across the court, at least on the few occasions when I managed to hit the ball. Usually I just flailed.

Patrick flailed too, though with more zip and power. When it was my turn to serve, I couldn’t even get the ball over the foul line, and double faulted. Then it was KT’s turn to torment me with her wall grazer serves, For my next few serves, my feeble swing didn’t succeed at getting a ball into play until the score was 6-2-0 (K-P-D). Then at least I got the ball into play, sometimes accompanied by a wrist twinge or two. For the entire game, KT dazzled, bamboozled, and baffled her two patzer opponents, volley after volley, until she finally won, 15-2-2.

In the second game, I tried a new strategy, since I couldn’t hold the racquet tight enough to return the ball with anything more than an arching bloop. My first attempt was a golf grip with my left hand grasping the racquet and my right hand pressing against the left index finger and thumb. That didn’t violate the rule of the game that I had set–it was still basically left-handed play. The extra arm in the swing, though, threw off my coordination, so I missed the ball completely in my first attempts. But on those occasions when I connected, I could give the ball a good smack. I scored two points that way, and then started developing on a baseball grip. This got me a couple of more points. Meanwhile, Patrick, still playing left handed, had regained his eagle leftie eye, and was beating me and KT 11-4-4. KT and I stopped his momentum for a few more volleys, me with my baseball grip, and she with several spectacular diving kills. But Patrick went on to beat us soundly, 15-6-6.

At last it was 6 pm, end of our court hour, time for me to go meet Beth at the local Tex-Mex, and time for KT & P to fix their dinners at their apartments. We congratulated each other with hugs and went our separate ways. So what if I lost both games, my therapist will smile at me when I tell her I played (or tried to play) left handed r-ball. Tonight I expect I’ll have to dip into the Ibu-advil Motrin pillbox again, but next game I’ll have that baseball swing down pat and my southpaw racquet game will be stronger.

rakkity

Peter’s brother, Jim Finlay.
Michael and Jim
Photos by Emma

Have you ever looked around in a restaurant, after a late dinner, and realized yours was the only remaining occupied table? Have you ever peeked up after picking at the last scrumptious scraps, and noticed chairs turned upside down on other tables ? Yeah, you’re nodding your head up and down, but how about this. Have you ever peered down the length of that restaurant, to the adjoining bar, and seen your waitress sitting on a stool, watching the last college football game of the day and pulling on a longneck Budweiser?

Emma’s cowgirl Halloween costume.

Rakkity hopes to play a left-handed racquetball game today. The old left hand is only about 1/4 the strength of the right, but the doc and therapist both say to start strengthening the left wrist, so now is the time. Katie has volunteered to play this afternoon and gauge the left hand’s mettle. Dom, if you’re listening in, get ready to gird your loins and your racquets!

rakkity

The season’s first snowfall. Chysanthemums outside Concord Park.

Photo of Joe Barbato found on my camera and presumably taken by Matthew.

Finally, a brief glimpse of sun.
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Adam leaves for Italy tomorrow. His constant blog presence will be missed, but I’m hoping he’ll entertain us all with mini-travelogues.

Monday mornings I slog through paperwork. I sort sales receipts, I send out Word.doc invoices, and this morning I chucked those endless pieces of paper with numbers and names that no longer apply to anything. One of those odd scraps of paper contained the name and phone number of Matt’s compadre, Debbie. I hadn’t tossed it because on the other side was a note from Roland with the name of his ship’s commander.

As I put it back down on a pile of desk clutter, Matt, Joe and Robbie walked in the side door looking for lunch.

“Hey, Matt, whose number is 264-3215?” I asked

“How should I know?”

“It’s a local number?”

“So what?”

Later on, Joe meandered into the office.

“Hi, Mr. Miller.”

“Joe, whose number is 264-3215?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

Last night, after dinner, I again asked Matt whose number it was.

“Why do you keep asking me that? How should I know?” he grumbled, “But I’ll call it if you want.”

“That’s a fine idea. Do that.” I felt the hook set in the fleshy part of his cheek.

He thought for a moment and began to waffle. “It’s a house number, not a cell phone. If it were a cell phone you’d have less chance of getting someone.”

I thought to myself if it were a cell phone number you’d know whose it was.

“Ask for Ann or someone and see if you can tell by the voice who it is.”

He flipped open his phone, dialed the number and asked, “Is Sara there?”

I could tell by his pronunciation it was Sara without the “h.”

I could also tell by the look on his face that while he may not have recognized the person who answered the phone, that person sure recognized him. It was Debbie’s mom.

“Yeah, I mean, Debbie.” He fumbled

That’s right, now I’m doubled over.

“Hi Debbie. It’s me, and my father is an Asshole.”

I could tell by the way he said it, it was asshole with a capital “A.”

Sally is Patti’s closest friend. They grew up together; not from grade school, but during those late adolescent spread-your-wings-and-those-whose-feathers-are-ruffled-be-damned times until they were both married. Sally met her husband at a party at Patti’s mom’s house in New City.

“Flo must have been in Arizona. He walked in the door and I said, ‘You’re mine.’ ”

Sally is about 5’5” and has long brown hair which frames a round, youthful face. She invites conversation, punctuating her stories with smiles, but you can sense the hard take-it-or-leave-it edge that lives within. In Sally you can feel those early bar-hopping days with Patti. Her favorite musician is Jorma Kaukonen and if you ask, she’ll tell you a really funny tale about a recent concert at a small club.

Sally lives and works in New York, and when Peter asked her to come up and help she walked into her boss’s office and said, “You know my friend in New Hampshire; she’s not doing too well. I need to go up there and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Her boss – they’ve been together for more years than one can count – said, “Then why are you still here? There are more important things in life than landscaping.”

Sally replied, “You’ll notice I didn’t ask.”

Stepping Stones
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Wednesday night’s poker game. From left: Stu, Bryan, me, Ernie (Rob’s father-in-law), Rob and Dwight. Missing from the phot0 – Dave.

View from our “beach.”
The requested view .
Same view, not so close.

We all (Matt and Debbie) went to the MFA last night to see the Ansel Adam’s exhibit. As I was walking out I heard some guy asking his girlfriend, “Why couldn’t Adams make just one album in color?” As we neared our car, Diane said, “That was a lot of black and white.” This morning I woke up and thought, maybe I should experiment more with black and white.
I also wondered what Adam thinks of Ansel, given that Mr Adams would squirrel his photographic plates off to the darkroom and return with finished prints of what he felt he saw, rather than what he saw.

The utter stillness of Rainbow Lake was punctuated by loons chattering away. We heard all four typical calls, which inspired two of us to chatter back. Though I didn’t record the lake loons, I did capture the camp loons. The first voice you hear is mine encouraging Mark to engage the water fowl.
Compare those sounds to these .
Okay, I goofed. I uploaded a movie with dependent files and I should have uploaded the full version. The best thing to do is play it a second time (provided that it loads), because it’s a large file that might stutter initially. I hope it’s worth the wait. I laugh everytime I hear it, but then I’m way too familiar with the characters involved.
Rak, is this large enough?