09:00 – Barbara is due back from Winston sometime this afternoon. Colin and I can’t wait. She’s making a small Costco run on her way back to pick up mostly cold stuff like meat. The only LTS food I asked her to pick up was several 3.25-pound boxes of OreIda instant mashed potatoes. Yesterday I transferred what remained of the 3.25-pound box we’d just opened to 1.75-liter Tropicana orange juice bottles, ending up with one very full bottle and one very partial bottle.
For the last couple of months I’ve been expecting Trump to make a statement on healthcare. Something like:
If you like your Obamacare, you can keep your Obamacare. However, we will repeal the individual mandate and the employer mandate, so no one will be forced to pay for health insurance they don’t want. Nor will the federal government pay any portion of the cost, so whatever coverage you choose you must pay for out of your own pocket. Nor will the government force any insurer to cover any particular person or condition or to provide any particular benefit, which means coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, if available, will be extremely expensive.
It’s definitely autumn here. Cool days and nights down in the 30’s (~ 2 or 3C). We decided yesterday that the new driveway had had sufficient time to cure, so we removed the orange warning tape that had been blocking the drive and pulled the vehicles back into the garage. As I was standing out at the street end of the drive looking toward the house, it looked vaguely familiar. Then I realized that it was about the size of a standard singles tennis court, which I spent plenty of time on when I was in my teens and 20’s. A standard singles court is 27 feet wide by 78 feet long, with 21 feet between the baseline and the fence at each end, for a total of 120 feet. I got out the tape measure and measured the new drive. Sure enough, it was 25 feet wide and about 126 feet long. Now the only thing we need is fences and a net.
Being a serve-and-volley player with an overwhelming serve, I always loved fast surfaces. My absolute favorite surface was polished hardwood, because the speed and low bounce of the surface meant I served clean aces more often than not. My next favorite was grass, which was almost but not quite as fast as wood, and didn’t provide a much higher bounce than wood. My third favorite was concrete like we just had installed. It was a noticeably slower surface than wood or grass, but still much faster than Har-Tru or similar grippy hard court (green/blue/red) surfaces, and immensely faster than clay. And it had a very high bounce, usually higher than the net, which meant I could use a full Western grip off both sides and hit full-power flat ground strokes, and approach shots didn’t need to be chipped.
For future reference:
o A 1.75 liter Tropicana orange juice bottle holds at most 1 pound 15.4 ounces of Ore-Ida instant potato flakes if you tap it well to pack it down.