Frozen Solid

This morning, October 25th 2011, we experienced our first official freeze of the season, as the official temperature as measured at the Spokane International Airport bottomed out at 29 degrees.  This is somewhat later than average, which I hope portends a later onset of winter this year.  Heck...that's Lutheran for hell...we're already experiencing a later onset of winter this year as last fall we had snow on October 18th, and again on the 25th!  In any case, winter can wait, at least from my point of view, as we are still waiting for summer to show up this year.

I am compelled to write a bit about my recent tennis experience.  That compulsion is not necessarily my own, but rather more from one of the members of my posse.  It seems that John, who is usually a happy man, is a little unhappy with the frequency with which I am recording the events from the court in this space.  In an effort to ensure the domestic tranquility, or at least the peace of the posse, I will now fill you in on what has been happening tennis-wise in the past week or so...at least as it extends to last Friday.  I have to admit, I am questioning the dedication of the posse.  One of our regular members, the Hammer, has been off to Spain for a couple of weeks, and Bill went winging away to New York.  Where are their priorities?  Where is their sense of duty?  Well enough of them, in their absence John and I have enjoyed the company of Jim and Ken.  Boy, have we enjoyed their company.  last Friday, as our morning romp was drawing to a close, John and I teamed up to take a 5 games to none lead as our time expired.  We picked things up again on Monday morning, and teamed up to begin the day with a 6-0 victory.  That was 11 games won in succession.  Pretty impressive, huh?  Our opponents didn't think so.  From there, I jumped the net to team with Jim, and we quickly moved out to a 4-0 lead...that's 15 games won in a row!  Alas, all good things must come to an end, as the streak halted there.  The next 5 games weren't pretty, as we lost 4 of them, but still prevailed in the set 6-4.  Tomorrow I will be back out there at 11:00am, and will likely go straight into the crapper.

Looking ahead to the weather for the rest of the week it appears as if the snow will continue to hold off indefinitely.  We will be cool and mostly dry, and the overnight temperature will be dipping down to around or slightly below freezing.  That's okay as long as the days warm up to 50 or so.  Most of the people I know are all wanting to talk about the winter ahead, and the predictions that it's going to be cold and snowy again this year.  That's the idea, based upon another year of La Nina in the Pacific Ocean.  My thought is that we'll know when it gets here.  Nobody around this area can accurately predict what is going to happen in the next 4 days, let alone the next 4 months!