Falling Leaves

I have been waiting for this day...for about 10 years.  The maple trees in the backyard are finally mature enough to bring bright color, and the weather is finally sunny enough to show off the color.  In previous years it has either been too windy, too gloomy or too snowy to bring on this bonanza of beauty in the backyard.  Actually, the weather yesterday was just as good, but my availability to take pictures was severely limited.  The weekend began with me out in the garden picking all of the tomatoes that we had out on the vine.  We are still to see our first freeze up here on the hill in Spokane, and it looks like that might still be at least a week away, but with the shorter and cooler days, due to the lowering sun angle, there wasn't a whole lot of natural ripening going on.  We now have an array of multicolored tomatoes...from green to yellow to orange and dull red...spread across our dining area (it's not really a room, rather part of the overall kitchen experience) table.  That's okay since as empty nesters we tend to dine from folding trays in front of the TV.

I should probably weigh in on my recent tennis experiences.  Weighing in is probably not the term that I should use, as actually weighing myself would be a very embarrassing experience.  I have spent WAY too much time sitting with a folding tray before me in front of the TV.  At any rate, I have been playing a lot of tennis lately, and at times even fairly well.  I am now part of a mixed doubles league that plays on Friday evenings.  We compete against other clubs from around town.  Our first match was a little over a week ago, Friday the 7th.  My partner, Terri, and I competed valiantly, but to now avail.  We lost the first set in a tie break, won the second set 6-4, and then lost in the determining tie breaker 10-2 (ouch).  This past Friday, two days ago, I was set to play with Terri again, but she called our team captain at 1:00pm to report that she was in Seattle.  You would have to hit the ball pretty well to get it over the net from there.  There was the possibility that I might be teamed with another partner...Tracy...if she could get out of her previous commitment for the evening.  She could not, and I found out 15 minutes before play began.  What were we to do?  Only one thing made sense, draft Kay (the missus) to play.  Now since she is not on the team roster our match would not count toward the team score, but at least we could all play.  Kay wasn't so sure about the whole thing, but like a trooper took the court.  We actually won the first game!  I thought...great, we can't get skunked.  We then proceeded to lose the set 6-1.  Undaunted, we continued on, with low expectations.  In the second set we also won the first game, and then the second.  We managed to maintain a slight lead to the point of being ahead 5-4.  It was my serve...so our fate was in my hands.  I held serve and we won the set 6-4!  That took us to a tie breaker to determine the overall winner of the match.  Kay and I jumped out to a lead, and stretched it to 6-2.  From there we must have been awakened from our dreamland.  We ended up losing the tie breaker, and the match, 10-8.  But hey, we did a lot better than we thought we would!

Well, what about my morning tennis posse...Monday, Wednesday and Friday...or should I say my version of "Grumpy Old Men".  We still get out there on a regular basis, and "enjoy" each others company.  My good friend John has taken to bringing guests to our matches, exotic birds from far away places.  Last week he brought a Kiwi, or at least he said it was a Kiwi.  It looked more like a wooden seagull, but to humor him we all agreed that it was indeed a Kiwi.  The strangest thing was that it always seemed like it was during the toss for my serve you could hear the bird faintly cry..."kiwi...kiwi...kiwi."  John is now threatening to bring an Emu to one of our sessions, but he will need to get a sun roof installed in his 1916 Volvo first.

Other than that, life is fairly quiet around the Albrecht house.  The place across the street...Brady's old house...is for sale, AGAIN.  If you would like to spice up your existence, and experience life on the front porch, just go ahead and make an offer.  The price is just about right.