![\"foursome_sm.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/archives\/images\/foursome_sm.jpg\")
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Every Christmas we have dinner with the Hopkins, at their house. This year was our first without Matthew who stayed home with the flu. When we got home that night, Diane began coughing, just as Matt had been, and before morning had her own case of the flu. I held off until Sunday and Susan until about 2 AM Monday morning. We now have a 100% infection rate, and this is with three of us having had flu shots. Fortunately we\u00c3\u00adre pretty well caught up, the tree is fully decorated (thanks to Susan) and and a bow has been added to an important present. <\/p>\n
For Matthew\u00c3\u00ads first tennis lesson, not too many years ago, I loaned him my Blackstreak<\/a>, the racket I won following a tournament in 1962. When he arrived the first day, his teacher looked at his racket and said, \u00c3\u00acThere are two kinds of tennis rackets, and this isn\u00c3\u00adt one of them.\u00c3\u00ae <\/p>\n Scouting for a suitable Christmas present for Matt, I thought, why not hub caps for his BMW. They were, afterall, popular in \u00c3\u00acmy day.\u00c3\u00ae When I mentioned them to Matt, he gave me the same look, but with an added measure of disdain, that his tennis teacher must have given that racket. \u00c3\u00acIt\u00c3\u00ads all in the rims dad. You buy custom rims and they run about two hundred a piece.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n With that information, I drove up the hill to Advanced Accessories in Boxborough to follow up on the rim, hubcap theory. \u00c3\u00acYou can spend anywhere from fifty dollars a rim to two thousand,\u00c3\u00ae I was told. <\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acThen how about hubcaps, my son claims they are worthless.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acThey rattle around, then fall off. Your son seems to know more than you do .\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n I trudged off to CompUSA this morning, to buy a new trackball for my computer. My old one was four years old and the spinning rubber grommet had worn down, \u00c3\u00acYou wouldn\u00c3\u00adt believe how fast this computer is.\u00c3\u00ae I had my back to the guy and I couldn\u00c3\u00adt see which computer he was referring to. But his friend, simply nodded. <\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acYou know my G3 at home? It\u00c3\u00ads is a three hundred and fifty megahertz machine.\u00c3\u00ae He slowed down and carefully enunciated the megahertz rating, and I thought, Oh he\u00c3\u00ads being really precise. <\/i><\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acAnd this machine is ONE POINT TWO FIVE GIGAHERTZ.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n There\u00c3\u00ads the comparison, I thought, now he\u00c3\u00ads going to do the math. <\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acDo you know how much faster that is?\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n His friend finally chimed in with, \u00c3\u00acLots faster.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n I waited for the result of his long division, \u00c3\u00acGazillions,\u00c3\u00ae Every Christmas we have dinner with the Hopkins, at their house. This year was our first without Matthew who stayed home with the flu. When we got home that night, Diane began coughing, just as Matt had been, and before … Continue reading
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\nand split, so there was no recovery. While cruising the Mac aisle, that looked like the back of an unkempt walk-in closet, with junk strewn about, I overheard a conversation. I bring it up because Bob Hopkins and I were commiserating Friday night about the loss of subtlety in our culture. <\/p>\n
\nhe replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![Blackstreak<\/a>, the racket I won following a tournament in 1962. When he arrived the first day, his teacher looked at his racket and said, \u00c3\u00acThere are two kinds of tennis rackets, and this isn\u00c3\u00adt one of them.\u00c3\u00ae <\/p>\nScouting for a suitable Christmas present for Matt, I thought, why not hub caps for his BMW. They were, afterall, popular in \u00c3\u00acmy day.\u00c3\u00ae When I mentioned them to Matt, he gave me the same look, but with an added measure of disdain, that his tennis teacher must have given that racket. \u00c3\u00acIt\u00c3\u00ads all in the rims dad. You buy custom rims and they run about two hundred a piece.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\nWith that information, I drove up the hill to Advanced Accessories in Boxborough to follow up on the rim, hubcap theory. \u00c3\u00acYou can spend anywhere from fifty dollars a rim to two thousand,\u00c3\u00ae I was told. <\/p>\n\u00c3\u00acThen how about hubcaps, my son claims they are worthless.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n\u00c3\u00acThey rattle around, then fall off. Your son seems to know more than you do .\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n\nI trudged off to CompUSA this morning, to buy a new trackball for my computer. My old one was four years old and the spinning rubber grommet had worn down,\nand split, so there was no recovery. While cruising the Mac aisle, that looked like the back of an unkempt walk-in closet, with junk strewn about, I overheard a conversation. I bring it up because Bob Hopkins and I were commiserating Friday night about the loss of subtlety in our culture. <\/p>\n\u00c3\u00acYou wouldn\u00c3\u00adt believe how fast this computer is.\u00c3\u00ae I had my back to the guy and I couldn\u00c3\u00adt see which computer he was referring to. But his friend, simply nodded. <\/p>\n\u00c3\u00acYou know my G3 at home? It\u00c3\u00ads is a three hundred and fifty megahertz machine.\u00c3\u00ae He slowed down and carefully enunciated the megahertz rating, and I thought, Oh he\u00c3\u00ads being really precise. <\/i><\/p>\n\u00c3\u00acAnd this machine is ONE POINT TWO FIVE GIGAHERTZ.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\nThere\u00c3\u00ads the comparison, I thought, now he\u00c3\u00ads going to do the math. <\/p>\n\u00c3\u00acDo you know how much faster that is?\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\nHis friend finally chimed in with, \u00c3\u00acLots faster.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\nI waited for the result of his long division, \u00c3\u00acGazillions,\u00c3\u00ae\nhe replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every Christmas we have dinner with the Hopkins, at their house. This year was our first without Matthew who stayed home with the flu. When we got home that night, Diane began coughing, just as Matt had been, and before … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.woodtennisrackets.com\/makers\/tad\/blk1t.jpg\"){kind=link}