Academy Originals

Court Fools

2009-09-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

I don't think this ever made it onto the blog so far, which is sort of surprising because I think I have told everyone I know, but I am working on what could be called a "TV show" except for the fact that it will never be on TV. The whole thing started as an idea about a tennis-related parody of Entourage (how most of my good ideas start) and then slowly morphed into and idea of its own. I've been working on the thing for something in the neighborhood of a year now and have yet to produce an actual episode (though I have enough pages to make several) of them.

I named the show Court Fools. At the moment I am just going to assume that that is not completely stupid and just let it be. In a nutshell, it's about a young WTA player, Jordan Haal, and her coach, trainer, practice partner, friends, etc. It's supposed to be frivolous and goofy in an Entourage-ish kind of way (not a Scrubs-ish) kind of way, and I should probably admit right now that quite a lot of the coach's best lines are things that Luke K has said at some point.

So I've been working on the pilot today and am about halfway done. The way I determined the amount of time I've written script for so far was to read the whole thing out loud and time myself. So right now, I have something in the neighborhood of 10 minutes of talk. Plus theme songs and montages and I'd say I'm about halfway there.

When you see it on Showtime, you'll know that you heard it here first.

A New Record

2009-09-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

Hi all. It's been over 2 months this time, which may be a new record for me for not posting. I'm going to call that my summer vacation, even though they weren't quite synchronized.

The tennis hasn't exactly panned out as I would have wanted. I'm doing physical therapy for what turned out not to be my knee or hip but actually my back. I'll be fine soon enough (I hope) but it's been sorta tough in the meantime.

Here are some interesting things that have happened:

Internship with Change that Works.
National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist.
Got a game off Maria V today.
Did I have my permit last time I wrote? Well I do now.
In the same vein did I tell you I got a 5 on the AP Spanish exam? Well I did.
I broke a racquet at Academy Camp but it was mostly an accident.

Other than that I have mostly just been posting on Twitter and doing homework.

Goals

2009-07-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

So, as I reported yesterday, Richard Gasquet's suspension has been served and he is free to return to competition. If he ever tests positive for cocaine again he will be suspended for life. Also, I definitely mentioned the fact that Rafael Nadal's seemingly ridiculous and/or impossible comments about "if you kiss a girl who's taken cocaine" turned out to be exactly what happened. According to the official report, Gasquet was "on the balance of probability, contaminated with cocaine by Pamela". This strikes me as extra-amusing because I watched Borat yesterday and I'm picturing them saying it "Pa-MEL-ah".

I'm nearly done with my driving hours. I have 3 and a half left: 2 today and the other 1.5 tomorrow. There's a requirement that one of your parents has to be in the car for at least 30 minutes during one of your driving times, so I'll be driving my dad around for half an hour today. A bunch of my friends have told me that they get really nervous with their parents in the car, but in general I think I'm a pretty good driver, so unless I get dramatically worse it should be fine. I don't think I mentioned it, but on Monday the instructor let me drive on the highway, so I must be making progress.

I'm looking up this week's rankings right now. This is the first time in a long time that I've actually been excited to see where I ended up this week. Now that I've actually won a match in the 18s it becomes fun to check again.

And wouldn't you know it? It's not up yet. Over the winter this seemed to happen every time that I had had a good weekend, so I'm used to it.

In addition to my other ranking goals, I have now have a new one: Get in the top 40 so that I can get a discount from the apparel company Athletic DNA, although I myself have none. In order of attainability, my goals are as such:

-Top 100 by end of September.

-Back to where I was in the 16s (#62) by the end of the year.

-Top 50 by March.

-32 or better for sectionals next year.

So I suppose being in the top 40 comes in between those last 2.

Making it to sectionals seems a little far-fetched, but most of what I've accomplished at this point would have seemed pretty far-fetched not too long ago.

AP grades should be coming in the mail any day now. As I said before, I'd be thrilled with a 2 in Calculus, but I think I did pretty well on Spanish. Hopefully if you average out the two grades it'll come out to something respectable.

That's just about all I have to say. I have another one of those 4-9 days in Brunswick this afternoon/evening, so look for my frequent twitter updates.

Stolen from the Ticker

2009-07-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

I have 2 pro-tennis happenings to comment on today, both of which came from Tennis.com's ticker.

First, Richard Gasquet's suspension was reduced to 2 and a half months, and is now over. I checked my archives and found that I somehow didn't mention this when it happened, which is odd, because I distinctly remember telling practically everyone I know about Rafa Nadal's comments. Anyway, better late than never. A couple of months ago, Richard Gasquet was found to have tested positive for cocaine. The whole thing caused kind of a rumpus because only a small amount of the drug was found in his system. Rafael Nadal, who has been friends with Gasquet since they were kids, gave his full support with quotes like these:

"You know what the world is like today. When you go to a party, anything can happen these day. If you kiss a girl who's taken cocaine, anything can happen, and that's the truth."

That is the part that I can't believe I didn't blog about. At the time, I wondered if it was even possible to test positive for cocaine after kissing someone who has taken it, not to mention how Rafa Nadal would know. It seemed sort of ridiculous that this might have been that kind of freak accident but...

"...he was able to demonstrate on the balance of probabilities how the cocaine entered his system (through inadvertant contamination in a nightclub the night before his schedule match), and that, while he was at fault in exposing himself to the risk of such contamination, that fault was not significant."

So, according the the official report, that implausible kissing-at-a-club scenario appears to be exactly what happened. I'm glad that Gasquet turns out not to be using drugs, and I still hope that he lives up to his potential, but my biggest question is here is how did Rafa know? The obvious answer is that he was at this club also, though I'm not sure how he would have known that the girl in question had done cocaine. I'm probably better of just leaving the whole thing alone.

The other story, which is much less consequential, is that Roger Federer visited the Liverpool squad, who were staying at a hotel in Basel yesterday. That's not all that interesting in itself, but I'd like to reprint some of the comments in Federer's website's account of their meeting:

"Roger... apologized for interrupting their lunch before agreeing to pictures with each and every player."

So apparently he didn't tell them he was coming, although they didn't appear to mind. It's entirely possible that some of those pictures are available of Federer's website, but they are not in the public section and I can't bring myself to become a member.

I went to a midnight screening of the new Harry Potter movie last night (this morning), which was much more fun than I was expecting. I got home at around 3.15 in the morning, which made me feel cool. My dad called me at 12.30 today, at which time I was asleep. And I believe that is the latest I've ever slept, so hooray for me and my new personal laziness record!

So connected

2009-07-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

Right now, I am talking to 3 people on AIM and writing on my blog. I am so 2009. Also I have posted on twitter like 4 times today. I am kind of a loser, but I am also kind of great.

It's kind of hard to talk to people and blog at the same time. I'm not really used to having more than one buddy online so this is a new challenge.

Tennis was kind of unremarkable today. I did slightly better than usual at not being way to excited to tell people that I didn't lose in the first round. I was just like "Hey Luke, so, I made the semis the weekend." That might sound a little forward, but it's not so bad when you know my history of declarations like "I AM IN THE TOP 100" or "I NOW HAVE FIVE HUNDRED POINTS."

All this multi-tasking is getting to be too much, so I'll go ahead and end it here. Bye!

75 is 75 more than 0

2009-07-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

As I had already said, I was in Nashua for the day yesterday. Wait, what? The whole day? Not just 1 hour while I get my butt kicked and then leave for Bertucci's? Why yes! Because I actually managed to win a match yesterday!

I lost in the semifinal afterward, but it was close-ish and I didn't break anything, so I'd say that was a job well done. Jordan F reached the final before falling to the top seed today, so I guess Maine represented pretty well considering there were only 2 of us. I have some time on my hands, so I've calculated the records and winning percentages of each state this weekend:

Georgia (1 player): 2-0, 100%
Maine (2 players): 3-2, 60%
Massachusetts (27 players): 25-17, 59.5%
New Hampshire (6 players): 3-6, 33.3%
Rhode Island (1 player): 0-1, 0%

So, Maine was second after Georgia in winning percentages. Although if I had to pick a winner I'd go for Massachusetts, because there were more of them than players in any individual event, and they still had almost the same percentage as a state with only 2 representatives. Hats off to the girl from Georgia, though, because the scores indicate that she took the g16s by storm.

Didn't end up posting on twitter, because they seem to have changed the wireless password, and I'm kind of afraid of the tournament director so I didn't ask.

Anyway, after my second match I got to go swimming, which was pretty fantastic, and then I went to the enormous Nashua mall, which is quite an experience. And, I came out of the day with 75 points, which might not be very much (at all), but it is 75 more than zero. There are currently 10 players in my division with 75 points, ranked 182-191, so next week I'll be somewhere around there.

It's a start.

Advice

2009-07-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention this earlier and am too lazy to edit my previous post:

The Nashua tournament this weekend is on clay. Clay is like algebra: I try my best to be enthusiastic, and I really do wish I liked it, but in the end I don't see the point because there's something else that suits me much better. (Those somethings else are the hard courts and the Calculus, by the way.) Anyway, I'm getting a little sick of clay but don't have much choice.

You all remember Luke K, right? My much-quoted tennis coach? His response:

"Why do you keep playing these ones on clay? Find yourself some hard courts so you can win something!"

On the road

2009-07-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

- I have not blogged in one week. But I have updated my twitter several times in each intervening day!
- I got a 100 on my permit test. This is, apparently, almost unheard of.
- Going to Nashua tomorrow. I just packed and I am bringing an absurd amount of clothes.

These are the clothes that I bring with me for every tournament:

-One skirt/pair of shorts and corresponding spandex undergarments for each day of play.
-One shirt for each match I might play.
-A long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt, regardless of weather.
-One pair of socks for each match, plus an extra pair.
-Pajamas.
-An outfit that I could wear to dinner/lunch.
-Sweatpants and a t-shirt.

So yeah, it adds up. I often feel silly when I come home Saturday afternoon after losing in the first round and unpack all the various clothing I didn't need to wear. Sometimes I make a bargain with myself, like "If I reach the semi-finals, I will wear whatever stupid thing I throw in this bag right now." And for the most part, I don't end up reaching the semi-finals. But of course (and I think we have all had moments like this) there have been times when I ended up in something very stupid. These somethings include my shorts that say USA across the butt and a shirt with "strong beautiful me" emblazoned on the front. You could also make a case that all of my various dresses are stupid, but I like them.

Today I went to the mall with Kayla C. I felt very teen. Anyway, in Macy's we got ambushed by some makeup people and ended up with "mini-makeovers". I think we both looked quite nice. I was tempted to but a couple of the things but they were pretty expensive, but maybe I'll go back there the next time I need foundation. Also, I have the same product on as blush and lipgloss, which is kind of weird but also kind of awesome.

Well, that's about all for now. Can't promise I'll blog from Nashua but I'm sure I'll be twittering prolifically.

Mission Kimpossible

2009-07-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

You know when you get a random song stuck in your head, one that you haven't heard in a long time? Well, I have the theme song from "Kim Possible", which, as far as I know, is no longer even on TV, stuck in my head.

This led me to think some about the show. For those of you who don't know, it's about a teen crimefighter named Kim Possible and her best friend/sidekick Ron Stoppable. And I'd like to complain about it a bit.

For one, the title character's name is Kim Possible. And her tagline is "she can do anything". So why is her name "impossible" with an added K? This is probably supposed to be the point. But I don't understand why. Is it supposed to suggest that the suffix Kim- is somehow the opposite of im-? Maybe it's an intensifier? Kimpossible means extra-possible?

Meanwhile, her inept sidekick is named Ron Stoppable, which obviously sounds like "unstoppable". So the whole thing is a joke. But a weird joke that's not particularly funny.

The other thing that I'd like to mention is the show's themesong, which, if I remember correctly, goes "Call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me." Beep me? This show wasn't even on the air until at least the year 2000. And, she's supposed to be this cutting-edge spy. So why is she using a beeper?

So, that's more or less what I've been up to today. I was going to call Nate J. to see if he wanted to hit, but as you may know I am really quite inept at telephone communicate and so I chickened out and decided to clean my room instead.

Also, I'm watching that episode of The Office when Michael accidentally grills his foot, and it kind of reminds me of what I did to myself at Pilot Pen last year. I had to explain that all over again to Jordan F. a couple of weeks ago, and it gets even more ridiculous each time I tell the story. However, I did not step on a Foreman grill in the first place. Also, I used an ACE bandage and bandaids for first aid material, rather than bubble wrap, so I think I come out of this looking less stupid than Michael Scott.

New shoes baby!

2009-07-02T19:12:00.000-07:00

Finally, finally got my new tennis shoes. Didn't get to play in them yet but I am currently wearing them around the house. That's them up there.

SO BADASS. In case you were wondering.

The Woodlands

2009-07-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

It was quite the day yesterday, logistically. I was juggling a number of variables all afternoon before eventually getting lunch, securing transportation to the Woodland club for Junior Team Tennis, and then returning home to find that UPS had not delivered my shoes because I wasn't there to sign for them.

My current pair of tennis shoes are at "throw-em-in-the-trash" level worn-out at the moment. There are holes straight through to the insole in both of them. My dad actually almost put them in the garbage yesterday at the Woodlands after I was done playing/hitting, but thought better of it in case the new ones hadn't arrived. They haven't. I'm just hoping they deliver them in the next hour because otherwise I'll be gone, miss the delivery again, and have to stay home all day tomorrow waiting.

So yesterday was the Maine Pines 18 and Under Advanced team's first match. Luke K. called me at about 11.30 to ask if I wanted to be on this team as well as the other one, and now I'm officially registered for both. Yesterday we almost definitely lost (to a team that made it to Nationals last year). I played doubles with a girl who I get along with quite well, but we make a pretty bad team. After the match, Nate J. and I went out to the Har-Tru courts and hit for about 45 minutes while we waited for it to be his turn to play.

The court was wet (it's been raining for about a month), which made correct footwork a challenge, to say the least. Once, I fell completely over and got up covered in green dirt and actually bleeding. When we'd finished hitting I went on an adventure to find the locker room and get the clay off of my arms and legs. The locker rooms at the Woodlands are downstairs and distinctly hard to find. The long walk from the courts to the lockers makes me fell like I'm at the US Open.

Once I finally found the place, I pretty much took a bath in their sink and effectively ruined a hand towel, which was covered in all of the gray-green dirt I removed from my knees and elbows. The locker room is pretty fancy, as locker rooms go, so I also took advantage of their hand lotion and mouthwash. I know I probably shouldn't use things that are meant for their actual members, but if you offer free mouthwash you can't expect me to not use it.

I also drove again today, and I think I did a lot better. The instructor had me park at Wendy's for 15 minutes or so while she got lunch, which means she at least trusted me not to roll away or steal the car.

I'm going to be in Brunswick for 5 hours tonight. Junior Team Tennis (intermediate this time) is at 4, until approximately 5. And since I need to be back there before 7.30, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to drive back to Portland, eat dinner, and go directly back. So, tennis, dinner, gym, and more tennis. Those are pretty much my favorite things, so it should be a good night. Now if only the UPS truck would show up...

Driver's Ed movies in the wider world

2009-07-02T04:57:00.000-07:00

I have to head out to, what else? Driver's Ed very soon, but I just wanted to share this link to The Onion.

Driver's Ed Class Finally Gets To See Legendary Safety Film

It's apparently among the "most faxed" on the site, although I am unable to determine whether that is a joke.

Driver's Ed Movie Review: Intersection

2009-07-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

Today's feature over in the Driver's Ed class was Intersection, a documentary-style film that shows snippets of the lives of several drivers and motorcyclists who are later involved in a collision.

This movie was fairly recent, but not totally devoid of outdated slang. In one scene, a teenage motorcyclist's friends urge her to come up to the mountain and hang out with them, and "get a li'l tipsy. Li'l buzz goin'!" Another character is "Elaine-Multitasking Mom" who is fed up with driving her 2 sons, Louis and Joey, around town to their various activities."Why do I have to go to Louis's stupid recital?" asks Joey, who is being followed by Louis, who carries his tuba. "The same reason that Louis has to go to your soccer games," Elaine informs him. Other characters include a trucker, a waitress, and an ER doctor who just wants to get home and play "Indian Princesses" with his daughter.

When the doctor leaves ER in the charge of a colleague of his, the other doctor is unsure of whether he can handle running the place by himself. "Come on man, it's Saturday. As soon as the sun goes down all the crazies come out." This doesn't feature, however, in the rest of the film, because on the first' doctor's ride home he is in involved in a major, and probably deadly, collision.

The title, "Intersection", refers both to the physical location of the crash and the overlapping paths of each of the characters.

After the dramatized part of the film is over, one of the actors explains to us the best way to see and avoid motorcyclists on the road. She encourages us to SEE- Search, Evaluate, and Execute. And remember, never drink and drive: "Do you think any of this gets easier when you're drinking? No!"

Text to Speech

2009-06-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

I have seldom been this amused. Check out the text-to-speech demo from Voiceforge. For voices, I reccomend Belle, Damien, and Emporer, so far, but I'm not done working my way through all 50.

Driver's Ed Movie Review: Just Another Saturday Night

2009-06-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

Just Another Saturday Night features young sweethearts and recent graduates Lake and Anna, and their friend, Hooper. This film shows the chain of events from drinking at a party to reckless driving to vehicular manslaughter and eventually court and jail. Choice quotes include:

Hooper:
"Why are you trippin'?"
"I'll tell you one thing my friend. You are in harm's way. Big time."
"Man, the casa was bangin', yo!"

Judge:
"Lake. You're 18. And I bet you never thought that by 18 you would have killed one friend... and scarred another."

Hooper: "Let me drive, man, I'll make this thing fly!"
Lake: "Hoop, you're already flyin', man."
Hooper: "Excuse me! I forgot, Captain Responsibility!"

The No Zones!

2009-06-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

Some of the videos we watched in Driver's Ed today was refreshingly weirder than usual. One was a mock film-noir number about anti-lock brakes, featuring a main character names Shirley Taken. Sample comedy lines from this video:

Private Eye: You must be mistaken!
Shirley Taken: Yes, I am, Shirley!

The second, and most remarkable, video from today was concerned with the much-discussed No Zones. The actual title of this is "Semi Conscious" because it reminds you to be aware of nearby tractor trailer trucks. This video used various musical styles to impart its lessons. There were 4 songs in all, among them a rock ballad called "Intersections". The refrain goes "Intersections... Don't cross that line. Intersections... Give trucks more time."

But the song I will remember most is the No Zones Rap. The whole thing was remarkably 80s anyway, so the rap was even more so. Anyway, I now know what the No Zones are: Left side, right side, front and back! (Repeat this rhythmically for full effect.) These are the blindspots of a truck, and you should not "chill out" in them.

One of the chapters that we read today had a little feature about how to handle other drivers who are displaying road rage. It sounded like it was giving instructions for dealing with an angry bull. Among the bullet points were :

-Do not make eye contact with an angry driver. Eye contact could make the person even angrier.
-Remain calm and courteous. Do not exchange insult or gestures with an enraged driver.

Keep in mind that I am not paraphrasing. All the quotes here are things that I actually copied down in class with the intention of sharing them here.

As for Wimbledon, I actually haven't been watching much. I've followed the scores but I can't really comment on how well anybody is or isn't playing. At the moment, I want Hewitt, Roddick, and Ferrero to win (against Stepanek, Berdych, and Simon, respectively) and I think that they're all fairly likely to. And that's all I'm prepared to offer in the way of predictions.

Pre-Tournament Craziness, Part 2

2009-06-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

I remember last July, I wrote a post about how crazy I used to get before tournaments. I hadn't played in a junior tournament in a really long time, and I was literally writing out game plans for possible opponents before the draw even came out. And it seems like now I'm back to that. I haven't played in a tournament since before the high school season started, which is a pretty long time considering I didn't take more than one week off from September until March. And while I'm definitely not as crazy as I was a year ago,
I have checked the applicants list about 15 times today.

Well, I'm cutting myself off. I'll definitely check again in the morning, once entries close, but no more tonight. Also, I've decided not to look up rankings and find out who will be seeded or my chances against possible opponents. Actually, I will definitely check out ranking and recruiting profiles of my first-round opponent, but not until after I find out who it is. So there. I'm making progress.

Tomorrow morning it's back to driver's ed. Oh boy! I usually bring quite a bit of coffee with me into class to keep myself awake, and/or purchase some at the IGA when we have our break.

Shoutouts

2009-06-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

Here's another good one:

"Please don't let Brad Gilbert in the announcers booth."

Driving Hours

2009-06-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

I drove for the first time today. At first I was extremely nervous, but by the end of the hour I think I was doing all right. I only drove onto the curb one time, and I got right off. The instructor must have thought I was doing okay, because after driving around empty back roads for a while he had me go back over the bridge to Portland and head through the Old Port, which was full of tourists. I feel like you shouldn't be able to drive down there anyway, but like I said, I did all right and didn't cause any serious harm.

At the moment I'm watching Murray vs. Troicki, and Brad Gilbert is sounding a whole lot like my dad. Gilbert, who's Murray ex-coach, is talking about getting Andy to do yoga. My dad has been trying to get me to do more physical stuff than I have been and to "get focused" etc. Anyway, Gilbert says that the emotions of a tough match get you tired both physically and mentally, and that since he has been doing yoga Andy has been calmer. This is a lot of the same stuff my dad's been telling me, so I guess I have to start listening and do more balance and flexibility instead of just cardio.

Still can't really picture Andy Murray doing yoga, though.

I sent him a couple of food/names this morning. He's on the court right now, so I'm still waiting to see if he'll reply, but I'll just let you in on a couple of the better ones which were:

Fernando Tabasco
Ivan Lentil
Carsten Swedish Meatball

I think those are all good compared to "James Flake", one of Andy's, so we'll see whether he puts them up.

The other day I mentioned the little shoutout widget over on the Wimbledon site. My favorite at the moment is:

"ROGERR ! I LOVE YOU"

I don't know why, but the double-r just makes that one for me.

I have already failed

2009-06-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

More fun with WikiHow!

I have clearly already failed at this, but here's one about How To Dissuade Yourself From Becoming a Blogger.

The World's a-Twitter

2009-06-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

I just (a couple of hours ago) got back from my cousin's graduation from Navy Officer School in Newport, RI. Going to Newport always had added fun for me because I feel like I know the place pretty well after spending 9 days there last summer. When my dad and I were driving into town, I kept pointing out "landmarks" from last year, like "The Gross Restaurant!!" and "It's Shaw's!!". Anyway, my cousin graduated from Officer Candidate School, and he is now almost definitely the first in the family to be in the military.

I know that talking about Twitter on your blog is something akin to discussing Facebook at a party, but since most of y'all don't have one, I feel like I need to share some of the more remarkable things that go on over there. The other day I talked about Sam Querrey getting punched by a homeless guy, which was for the most part only something his Twitter followers (and people he is actually acquainted with) knew about. Andy Roddick has been in the news with his Twitter updates; he recently said in a presser that he felt "like i answer more questions about twitter now in press than i do tennis". It's a little weird to hear about this stuff on Twitter, then the Wimbledon website, and then report it myself, and so I've been leaving ones like that, which have gotten more coverage, alone.

However. Andy Murray was being especially weird of late and I think it needs to be known. Yesterday, he started a little game where he was trying to make names of tennis players into names of snacks. I realize that it's hard to make any sense out of that description so I'll go ahead and provide a couple of examples:

"Dorito Starace"

"Egg Rusedski"

"Lleyton Chewit"

"Martina Haggis"

"Vania Kingsize Mars Bar"

"Prawn Borg"

I think my favorite at the moment is "Juan Martin del Popcorn", who lost the other day to Lleyton Chewit.

Why I Love Twitter

2009-06-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

As I've already shared, I've been really into Twitter lately. There are a couple of reasons for this. One of them is that I can write just one sentence or quote or thought about something that doesn't really merit a paragraph, and it's perfectly acceptable. I can do it from my iPod, which makes me feel very cool. I suppose I can also keep in touch with people, which is what it's actually for.

But the best thing about Twitter is that it allows me to know stuff like this:

-On Sunday, Sam Querrey was punched in the arm by a homeless man.

-Andy Roddick thought that everyone should hear that story.

-It hurt.

-Yesterday, Sam Querrey was punched by a homeless man again, this time in the stomach.

I spend considerable time in Driver's Ed today making a comic about this chain of events. It's far from done, but so is Driver's Ed, so I should have plenty to do when I'm done reading about the No Zones in next week's classes. I've already storyboarded a Part II to this comic in case I have the time. That part tells about how last weekend, when I was keeping Jordan F. and Patrick O. from burning down Maine Pines, I read everybody some Twitter updates and they were quite amused.

The No Zones

2009-06-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

I started Driver's Ed on Monday. People who I told this to generally told me that it would be boring, the videos would be cheesy and/or horrifying, and thank goodness I was finally doing this because how old was I, anyway? People were generally right.

Two people advised me to "Stay out of the No Zones," though neither of them remembered exactly what The No Zones are. Hopefully they'll show that video in my class as well, so I can find out and steer clear of 'em.

At the moment I'm watching Entourage. I'd forgotten about this: the guy who plays Taub on House is a studio exec in this episode. It's only for 30 seconds or so (so far) but that was enough to get me to yell "Taub!" at the screen. Yesterday I also yelled "Neal!", referring to the character from Freaks and Geeks. This is what I tend to do when I recognize an actor.

Another thing about this show is that when I watch too many episodes in a row, I start thinking they're referring to real movies. The other day I absentmindedly looked for Queens Boulevard in Videoport before I remembered that it doesn't exist.

On the Wimbledon website, they're doing that thing where fans can post a sentence or two. They're usually something like "VAMOS RAFA" (not this time) or "Roger you are the greatest of all times", but there's one up there right now that says "... Does Tim Henman have a comb over?" That's my favorite at the moment, but I'll check it out every so often and re-print my favorites.

Roger's Cardigan

2009-06-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving for work in about 2 minutes, but I'd just like to put up this link to a Tennis World post. Hover your mouse over the picture of Roger Federer and you will notice a caption come up that says "Weenie".

Supervision

2009-06-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Luke left me in charge during lunch this weekend, seeing as I was the oldest. I figured this was going to be more or less a title only, because the kids I was supposed to be supervising were 11-14 years old. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job, although I did let them:

-Lock Justin B. out of the office

-Go through all of the office supplies

-Tap on the windows on the third floor until Luke, who was on the court, turned around

But let's put this into context, because I did not let them:

-Hide Luke's briefcase

-Put cookies in Luke's briefcase

-Put ice cream in Luke's briefcase

-Put cookies on the treadmills in the gym

-Throw away the Human Kinetics DVD

-Fill an exercise ball with helium

-Open all the tennis ball cans

-Go into the unlighted storage area/closet

And bear in mind that those are all things that were suggested.

Link

2009-06-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

I had a good day of tennis today. It was more or less uneventful. I actually did have some other stuff I wanted to say but I'll leave it until later, because right now I'd really like some dinner.

In the meantime, here's a link to an amusing post on Concrete Elbow by Steve Tignor. I especially like his analysis of Monfils' name and the little anecdote regarding JMDP.

Yeah, that's right, I'm calling him JMDP now too, along with everyone else in the world. Sometimes I'm just too tired to type "Juan Martín del Potro" and nobody understand why I call him Jimmy.

Busy?

2009-06-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start posting every day, now that school is over and I have very little to do. Yesterday I actually did go to work and then a party, but I spend the morning and early afternoon drinking coffee, watching Freaks and Geeks, and drawing comics about Juan Martin del Potro. I'm really just not very cool.

Today is my last day, however, of sitting on the couch in with my sweatpants and Sharpies, because for the rest of the summer I've got stuff to do. I mentioned the tennis that's happening this weekend, and then I have Driver's Ed (starting on my 17th birthday. Like I said, I'm not very cool), Junior Team Tennis, Newport, Ocean City, tournaments, and hopefully some work hours when I get the chance. It should be a good summer, probably better than if I had gotten the Bronfman Fellowship.

I can't remember how much I blogged about that, if at all, but it's a very prestigious thing apparently. Which makes me feel a bit better about getting rejected outright. The rabbi who wrote the rejection letter wished me an "educational" summer, which also makes me feel a bit better.

Someone asked me to PLEASE CHANGE THE TIMESTAMP on this blog, because it was apparently off by several hours. But next to the SAVE NOW button, it says "Draft autosaved at 10:10 AM", which is correct. So either it fixed itself or I just have to go set the time zone.

Speaking of time zones, this is a bit of a tangent but tangents are kind of my thing, seeing as the derivative is my favorite part of Calculus and all... (A third instance of me being not very cool.) When I was in Mississippi (the most recent time I was in a timezone other than the one I live in) I noticed that my phone set itself to the right time automatically. My watch did it one better and broke. Anyway, does anybody know how phones etc. do this? Someone told me it comes from the signal tower in whichever area the phone's in, which makes sense, but if anybody else has another explanation let me know.

Summer! Finally

2009-06-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

School has seemed over for a pretty long time now, and by that I mean since we got back from Mississippi. Of course, in the intervening time there have been many exams and essays and sign-ups for senior year classes. But the last week or so has seemed more like a gradual drop-off from school to summer, and now that it's officially over, it's not much of a shock, seeing as I haven't been to a whole, academic day of school in quite some time.

I'm also lifeguarding for the first time in a long while today. I got a friend to sub for me during most of tennis season, but since she's away this week and the high school season is over, I'm taking my shift back once until the summer schedule takes over. As for the summer, I don't even have a permanent work schedule, so that I'll be able to go to all the various tennis and friend and family things that I missed all of last summer. I explained this to Luke, trying to make him feel guilty, but I could tell that he was trying hard to suppress his smile when he said "that's too bad."

Speaking of Luke/tennis, I'm not going up to Brunswick tonight, but I am doing a camp this weekend. Luke's email said it was "for players that made sectionals and players that came close". I know he has read this blog in the past but I don't think he's reading this now, so it's safe to say that I was in no way close to making sectionals. My ranking was literally twice what it would have needed to be in order to qualify... But I'm looking forward to it.

Right now I'm watching Freaks and Geeks, which is a great show and very little like Casco Bay High School, with the exception of Mr. Rosso. CBHS students, would you care to guess who I am thinking of that reminds me of Mr. Rosso?

Chemistry!

2009-06-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

We had our chemistry "final" yesterday: tie dying. We used soda ash (also known as sodium carbonate) as a mordent, which is what bonds the dye to the fabric. During my free block today I washed the dye out of my shirt in the chem lab sink, and didn't bother to wear gloves. Sodium carbonate is quite basic (pH is 3.67), and handling it makes your hands feels soapy. This is because it dissolves the cell membranes of some of your skin cells. This is kind of gross.

Anyway, my hands feel pretty much better now. You would have to handle the soda ash a lot in order to actually damage your hands, I think.

I got an ID photo taken at Rite-Aid today. It's for my Newport press credential. I had quite an adventure trying to get my letter of recommendation printed out on school letterhead today, seeing as the printer is out of ink and/or just plain broken. Anyway, the new ID photo looks pretty good, if somewhat mugshot-like. They don't let you smile in passport photos, so it looks like I'm trying to be model-y, even though I guess that's just what my face looks like when I'm trying not to smile.

I don't know why, but as soon as someone tells me not to smile I have to work very hard to suppress it. I also tend to smile/laugh because I'm sort of uncomfortable in front of a camera, so trying not to smile in front of a camera is generally as losing battle. But I handled it today, and now I have a totally usable ID photograph!

Check me out on twitter at twitter.com/maggie_eismeier

Most of my friends are too cool to have twitter, but maybe you are so cool that it doesn't matter to you and you have one anyway.

And just for the record, I used the word "anyway" 3 times in this blog entry.

States 'n' More

2009-06-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

So, we lost to Lewiston at states yesterday, which was pretty much to be expected. Lewiston is sort of the Russia of Maine tennis. Following that analogy, I guess Portland would be Poland. Anyway, after states we played PotatoMaster on the bus and then ate pizza, and those are 2 fun activities, so I think everyone is more or less over it.

I finally finished up the last of my Farm Policy project today: my painting for the action project section. After I finished it I realized that I'd accidentally painted a right hand on a left arm. I'm too lazy to try to fix it, so I'm just hoping that my history teacher doesn't notice. And if she does, I guess I can say I did it on purpose, either as a symbol of the disarray in the agricultural sector or a mutation caused by the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.

I have 3 more days of school, 2 of which contain "final assessments". Final assessments include:

History- Analyze several political cartoons and their relationship to the the Vietnam War
English- Write a literary analysis of The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
Spanish- Make and eat tortillas
Chemistry- Tie-dye a shirt

I already performed my dance final and Calculus more or less ended with the AP exam, so those are the only 4 finals I have at CBHS proper. History already happened, so once I'm done with English tomorrow morning school will more or less be over for me.

As for tennis, I'm taking some time off. I'm going to Brunswick tomorrow, per usual, but Thursday I have to work then have a social engagement (quite unusual for me), so I wouldn't be prepared for a tournament anyway. I'll be back and eating at Bertucci's before you know it, however, and all of you will again have the chance to hear about such illustrious locations as Nashua, Haverhill, and West Springfield.

Portland 4, Gorham 1!

2009-06-11T04:13:00.000-07:00

I have to leave for school almost immediately, but first I just want to report that we won the Western Maine Class A Tennis Championship yesterday, 4-1 over Gorham! Corey and I played 2 tiebreaks in our match, which was the last to finish but not actually the deciding point.

Also I went to Olive Garden for the first time. It was sort of like Bertucci's, and as you may know I went to Bertucci's about 40 times this winter, on the way back from tournaments.

Almost There

2009-06-09T16:05:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the Western Maine final, Portland v. Gorham. Because of inclement weather, we're not playing in Lewiston. Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly when and where we are playing, but hopefully I'll be there to help Portland make it to states.

Today I was trying to look up some Matisyahu lyrics in school, but I came up against my old enemy, the Portland Public Schools Web Filter. That's not exactly news. The interesting part of this is that the category that came up on the filter was "Tasteless and Offensive". I don't know how many of you are familiar with Matisyahu, but I'd say that a guy who sings about peace, love, and keeping kosher is anything but Tasteless.

I just ate about a pound of mashed potatoes and I think I'm about ready to go to bed. Goodbye for now, and I'll be sure to post up the scores after the match tomorrow.

Playoffs?! Playoffs!

2009-06-07T04:28:00.000-07:00

I swear, I wrote a post about this on Friday night. There must have been some kind of computer issue with it because, as you can see, it's not up on the blog. So anyway, we played our Western Semi-Final match yesterday, against McAuley. And we won. And it was 4-1. And the one girl who lost played 3 sets, plus she'd been sick all week anyway.

This Wednesday is the regional final, in Lewiston. Unfortunately, ours is the ONLY match that's scheduled after school, so I don't get to feel important and miss class for tennis.

In more depressing news, Toni Nadal says he's "not at all optimistic" about Rafa's chances of playing Wimbledon. I don't know if that's just Toni being Toni or whether he's really not playing. Rafa's having some tests on his knee next week to determine whether he'll play or not, and I'm not going to say anything else until then.

So, if my timestamp has finally been fixed (and I think it has) you already know that I'm writing this at 7:45 in the morning. This implies that I am awake at 7:45 in the morning. In fact, I was awake at about 7:15, because I went to bed at approximately 8:30. So if you see me in the afternoon and I fall asleep in my latte, that's why.

2009-06-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've got a couple of interesting things to report today, although the first one is pretty much just straight-up bragging.

Yesterday, we played a practice match against Falmouth (a Class B team), and although the team lost overall, my partner and I rocked it and won against the previously undefeated Falmouth #1 doubles. Even better, this was the day when a reporter and photographer from the Portland Press Herald was there to write a story on Portland doubles. So, hopefully we didn't ramble too much in our little interviews, and the story should be out tomorrow.

It was weird being on the other side of the reporter's notebook. I've spent a lot of time (for a high school student) interviewing, taking notes, and writing up results and stories, so it was both familiar and strange to be answering the questions rather than asking them.

The other somewhat notable thing was a weird dream I had: Last night, I dreamed that I emailed a college coach and told him that my address was "100 President St, Argentina City, Argentina". That, obviously, is not true, and wasn't true in the dream, either, and I worried that perhaps I'd done the wrong thing. When I woke up it took a while to remember that this didn't actually happen.

It's Rafael Nadal's birthday, if anyone cares. Normally I'd link to a picture of him wearing a pink polo shirt and eating ice cream, but since he's not at Roland Garros, I don't have one. He's 23 today. So feliz cumpleaños, Rafa.

June starts

2009-06-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

I actually don't have much to say today, but I want to blog every day of June, so here I am. Playoffs start tomorrow, officially, but Portland, as top seed, doesn't play until Thursday. We'll face the winner of Thornton Academy vs. South Portland. I'm predicting that it'll be South Portland, who we beat 5-0 a couple of weeks ago, so we should do fine. The real tough one will be Saturday's semi-final, which will probably be against McAuley. They were our last regular season match, and also our toughest, so if we can get by them, Scarborough or Gorham will seem easy.

Here's something that happens about once a year: I remember to make some kind of snack for Crew Lunch tomorrow! I've actually just put some muffins in the oven. That's pretty much all-out remarkable.

One more thing before I go: I've had a lot of people come up to me today and ask me if I am devastated by Rafa's loss, or inform me that he must be feelin' pretty bad right about now. The thing is, I'm not, and as far as I know, neither is Rafa. I won't quote his press conference at you, so all I can say is that you should never be more upset about an athlete losing than the athlete themself is.

Lots of stuff

2009-05-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

The blog's in pink today as a little homage to Rafael Nadal, who has just lost in four sets to Robin Soderling. It's pretty shocking, but I'm not really in a position to comment, seeing as I didn't see any of the match. True to my own history, I have once again missed Rafa's final match of the French Open.

This, along with Novak Djokovic's exit yesterday, pretty much turns the tournament upside down. Andy Murray, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and, of course, Roger Federer are still in, among other contenders, but considering the torrent of upsets of the last few days, I'm starting to believe more and more in Andy Roddick. Roddick reaching the second week came as a surprise to many, and he certainly has looked strong.

I myself have been cleaning my room all morning. I never realized exactly how much stuff I had. Most of this year, I didn't seem to notice just how messy it was in there... During the week I usually didn't get home until the evenings and then on weekends I was at a tournament. But now that it's high school season and I'm taking some time off from tournaments, I'm at home on the weekends and realizing that it's nearly impossible to walk all the way across my room without stepping on my Junior Team Tennis uniform or a pair of hiking socks.

Anyway, I'm taking a break from that now and doing some homework, so I should probably get back to it.

Long absences

2009-05-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

Hello all. It's been a long absence, though not my longest, but now I'm back. (How many times have I said that now?) But seriously, I'm planning on daily posts, as used to be my habit.

A lot has happened in the past month or so, primarily AP Exams and the high school tennis season. AP Exams went just about as well as can be expected. High school tennis, however, (leaving out the usual absurd team drama), went much much better than I think anyone was expecting. We went 12-0 this season, which was pretty much unprecedented and certainly a PHS Girls' Tennis first. Playoffs start Thursday, with Portland as top seed.

Quick recaps are not a real strong point of mine, as I generally prefer more detailed explanations of short occurrences, so I'll leave the rest of May to speculation and talk about something that happened yesterday.

The CBHS yearbook was unveiled yesterday, though I don't think it's available for purchase yet. I took a look through Ms. Teller's copy and found that I had won "Most Scholarly" in the superlatives. This was a pleasant surprise and made me feel like Reuven Malter from The Chosen. Anyway, I commented on how it was not something I would have expected to win, seeing as last year I recieved "Most Unique". Hearing this, my friend Erynn, who is on the yearbook committee, informed me that I in fact also won "Most Dramatic" but the guy in charge of the yearbook thought I would get too upset and they printed it with the runner up. Basically, the yearbook committee thought I was too dramatic to recieve "Most Dramatic".

For the record, I would have been amused rather than upset.

This summer: I've got a number of things going on, including Driver's Ed, Junior Team Tennis, hopefully Rhode Island Part II... Should be eventful.

Making fun of kids.

2009-05-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled upon a stupid little YouTube video of some kids pretending to be Cesc Fabregas and his pretend manager. It's an imitation of a very funny promo for The Cesc Fabregas Show, which was an inexplicable phenomenon in itself. Before I talk about the kids' version, check out the real one.

Funny, right? And then there's the kids' one. It's made by a couple of 11 year olds who don't speak Spanish (they borrowed the original audio for the Spanish part) and whose phone comes from appromately 1985. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous, especially the dramatic office-destroying. Check it out.

More Food Stuff

2009-04-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

My Public Policy project is all but over, but I continue to be very interested in the subject of Farm Policy. Lately, I've been focusing more on Food Policy (a subtle distinction). Anyway, even though I can't use it in my presentation, I found another movie, and this one is available online.

'The Future of Food' is available on Hulu.

The movie is mostly about genetically modified food. It's not extraordinarily well-made or insightful, but there's plenty of good information.

Mississippi!

2009-04-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hey there. I'm leaving for the job site in just a couple minutes so I should make this short. As I mentioned, I'm also blogging for school. But on my school blog, I can't talk about how I miss Academy, or how much some people are annoying me, or how I'm slightly freaked out by all the religiousness around here.

Well, all of those things are true. But I also love the weather and the scenery. Yesterday I nailed siding and crawled under the foundation of the house.

I should probably go now. It's about 25 miles to the job site so if I missed the van it'd be a serious problem. Also, Gulfport MS has the biggest Wal-Mart I've ever seen!

Nashua, oh boy!

2009-04-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am at the Nashua Swim and Tennis Club, where I seem to have spent most of my junior year. I was supposed to play at 10.00 and it's now 10.13, so I should be on any minute now. I thought I'd just do a little post to remind myself and everyone else that blogging is a thing that I need to do.

There's some kind of woodstove/heating element in the lobby, right back behind me. The flame is reflecting on the glass, and it's early enough in the morning that I needed to remind myself a few times that cement tennis courts do not actually catch on fire.

Only 2 more days until Mississippi! I'm mostly packed and totally excited. I'll be blogging from there, too, at http://blogs.portlandschools.org/burked

There are several students blogging, and a few teachers, too, so check it out if you're interested in knowing what exactly we're up to down there.

Daniel Gimeno!

2009-04-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

If you remember from the beginning of the year, I've been following the career of Spanish ATP player Daniel Gimeno Traver. I planned on writing a blog about his tournaments etc, but I figured I should get his permission first. He never returned my email so I decided not to go through with the blog idea (it would have been pretty creepy) but I still look for his results every once in a while.

So, it was a happy surprise to come across Dani in this Tenispro Video.

He shows up about at about 1 minute 30, with Pablo Andujar.

Crazy Spring

2009-04-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

Over at Casco Bay Learning Shack, we're in the middle of a long stretch of pretty much anything but normal school. I've already referenced last week's internship/public policy presentations. This week is more or less normal, except that we have Maine state math and science testing on Wednesday. Then next week is Mississippi (!!), and then the week after that is vacation. After that, it's not long until SATs and AP Exams. And after that, I play not to do anything but play tennis until senior year.

I've probably said all of this a few dozen times already, but I'm pretty stressed out by the whole ordeal. Oh well. Eventually it'll be over, and then it'll start up all over again in the fall. Oh boy!

Right now, I'm watching "Wife Swap", and one of the wives is an extreme neat freak. I think she may actually have moderate to severe obsessive compulsive disorder. (She drinks her coffee through a straw in order to not stain her teeth!) I think that maybe there should be a rule against putting people on the show who have actually psychological disorders.

Sorry Rafa

2009-04-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

As you may know, ATP world #1 Rafael Nadal to Juan Martín del Potro yesterday, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(3). Del Potro came back from two break behind in the third set of the 3 hour match.

Nadal called it an 'amazing disaster'.

Del Potro agreed that it was the best moment of his career, 'of course'.

I heard all of this and laughed.

I read over both of their interviews, and it seems like both players have different feelings about the match. Nadal, in general, didn't seem to think much of the match. The feeling I got was that he thinks he played terribly during the entire match, that his winning the second set was entirely dependent on del Potro's mistakes, and that he generally just 'didn't play well during this tournament'. Del Potro, on the other hand, was understandable thrilled. He said that although he was 'a bit lucky' at times, he was at a high level and 'did a great job'.

So there you have it. I didn't see the match, and therefore can't offer any of my own analysis, but I'll admit that I'm pretty darn happy for Juan Martín. I met him once for about 30 seconds and since then I've thought of him as somebody I 'know', in a way. (He asked me how I was doin'!) It was fantastic to see him break through last summer and I wish him all the luck in the world.

Emotions

2009-04-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to make it so that there actually is a single word that comes out of my mouth (or from my keyboard) that isn't about Luke Korzekwa, but at the moment this is all I have to say:

Luke has ditched me at lessons TWICE without apologizing, and yet offered me a sincere "I'm sorry" after this conversation a couple of hours ago:

Mike: Nadal lost.

Luke: Huh. I don't care, I don't like Nadal anyway.

Me: (Exaggerated sad-face)

Luke: Oh, no, I'm sorry.

I guess I've leave it at that. I'm not due over at the planetarium until 10 tomorrow, but I'm pretty tired and don't have a whole lot to say. I guess I could stretch it out another couple of sentences by saying that I did my public policy presentation the other day and it went fantastically. Ms. Doane almost cried.

She's the teacher who yelled at me back in the fall for deliberately mispronouncing the name of the Maine state legal database. (It's Janus. I said 'Janusz'. That's apparently not right. It's like 'Janice'. The whole thing is kind of funny now, because this whole experience at the planetarium has taught me about the actually Janus from Greek mythology.)

Annoying-ness

2009-04-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

Why hello there! So, I missed the entire month of March. Sorry about that. I've been busy with school and tennis and everything.

But I know that I need to get back into the blog routine (how many times have I said that now?) because I'm starting to annoy people more than usual. This is because I have been saying all of my stupid anecdotes and insights to people who are already listening to me, instead of writing them for people who have willingly accessed my blog.

Luke has been whatever he normally is. I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but he was growing a beard for a while, with the intention of eventually having dreadlocks. Well, that episode recently came to an end. After weeks of everyone telling him to get rid of it, Luke finally shaved off the beard because it was bothering him and "it annoyed the baby". I'm not sure how he can tell that the baby, who is 3 months old or so, was annoyed by his beard, but whatever.

I've also been working a lot on my "pilot" for my "TV show" and also a bunch of other "episodes" for the series. It's fun. I can't tell exactly how funny and/or entertaining it would be if performed by actual humans, though, so I'm thinking of buying pizza for some dramatic freshmen and getting them to act out one episode.

More about this "show": One format I was thinking about for this would be to publish the scripts as a blog. So, every week (or whenever I finish it) I would post a new "episode" which y'all can read if you're so inclined. The only problem is that I haven't managed to finish an entire episode of the thing. But when I do accomplish that, I'll let you know.

One more thing: yesterday I found out that the Danish version of Where's Waldo? is called Hvor Er Holger?

Snow Day!!

2009-02-23T11:42:00.000-08:00

Today was supposed to be the first day back at school, but the weather didn't agree. It almost seems like a waste of a snow day. Almost, but not quite. I've actually done a little homework: the calculus equivalent of a vocabulary quiz (if f(x)= tanx, then f'(x)=-sec^2x...) So it's been an slower transition to the extreme study extravaganza, and I'm not arguing with that.

The power's still on around here, but not at Maine Pines, so there might not be Academy tonight. Which would be I might not leave the house, which would be pretty sad, so hopefully I'll get out of here for a while, for one reason or another.

It's been a pretty uneventful day, overall. Probably the most exciting thing was that the new rankings came out (on a Monday. How professional!) and I'm now at #73 in New England. That sounds pretty good, to me anyway. Of course, 132 sounded pretty good to me when that was where I was at, so my judgment may be a little questionable.

Effort

2009-02-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

Only 1 and a half more days of vacation, and then I'm back to school. I've tried (and succeeded) to not to any studying during the week, but I have plenty to do once Monday comes around. You see, for most of the year I wasn't particularly bothered about how well I do on the AP Calculus Exam. I figured if I get college credit, great, and if I don't, it'll be a whole lot easier when I take it again. But my view on that has changed, as a result of some college visits I did this week.

I visited Brandeis, MIT, Harvard, and Tufts, and I'll probably end up applying to all of those. Anyway, hearing what they look for at competitive schools has made me realize that if I actually want to go to MIT, I should do something I've never attempted before: Put forth my full effort over at the Learning Shack.

So, I went over to the Harvard Bookstore and bought an AP Calc exam prep book, which I plan to study and whatnot. The exam is on May 6th, which is starting to seem like it's pretty soon, and while I'm doing pretty well in the class, I could probably know some of the stuff better, so when school starts again I'll actually, you know, try. Also, MIT requires an SAT Subject Test in one of the sciences. Since Casco Bay doesn't offer AP Chem, Bio, or Physics, I decided to just pick my favorite (Bio) and teach myself.

Um, yes. This summer I'm homeschooling myself out of a Princeton Review book.

Anyway, I have a day and a half of slacking before setting off on a 1.5 year extreme study session. Should be fun.

I predicted the future.

2009-02-18T18:15:00.001-08:00

I seem to have developed psychic powers while I was busily not blogging and watching Friday Night Lights on Hulu. Let me explain-

Those of you who knew me freshman year know that I used to write stories about a bunch of imaginary weird kids at an imaginary weird tennis academy. I stopped, partly because in the stories (um, yes, I was the protagonist) I was 16, and it would be too strange and desperate to be 15 and writing stories about things that were supposedly going to happen in 6 months. I'm not sure why I thought it was any less strange or desperate when I was 14, but that's somehow how it seemed.

Anyway, lo and behold, it did happen, and now I have real-life weird kids and an real-life especially weird tennis academy to write about. But I still had a bunch of ideas of things that 'would be funny if they happened'. So, I created a new imaginary tennis academy, as a place to put all those ideas until I find a better project for them.

One story, which I wrote a few months ago, is about some sweatpants. The sweatpants fit badly and everyone sort of hates them and adores them at the same time. (Yeah, yeah, it's not a good story. I write 'em for fun.) This comes from that story, which I wrote in probably November.

"What the hell is the deal with these?" asked Eric.

"They're sweatpants," Nick said. "Team sweatpants. Nice, right?"

"We look like an 80s rap group," said Matt, dancing, with the waistband of his pants somewhere around his armpits.

Chrissie and Laura eyed the box disapprovingly.

"Yeah," said Nick. "They're kind of horrible."

These are things that actually happened when we got our new MPTA sweats a few weeks ago:

-Numerous declarations of "It's Hammer Time!"

-Teddy and Mike Hickey both pull their pants up to their chins and walk around that way

-Luke offers me an apology because "the pants suck" and promises to do better next year.

I think this more or less qualifies as ESP.

Time Flies

2009-02-11T11:49:00.001-08:00

It's been almost a month. The only thing I can offer for an excuse is that I was busy, but the truth is that I wasn't that busy. Maybe just 'lazy' is a better description. Anyway, I'm back now and quite a bit has happened.

I had a couple of good tournaments in the last few weeks, and this weekend will (hopefully) be another one. (Top seed!) Tennis is going pretty well, in general, and high school season is now within sight. So is my official 1 Year of Academy Day, which is on March 21st. I've been reflecting a lot lately about that, and what all has happened in the last year.

But here's where we get to the funnier stuff- My attempt at university calculus didn't work out as planned (or at all), and so I'm still taking the online AP Calculus. I've gotten used to it, really, and the format doesn't frustrate me as much anymore. The problem with that was that I was only taking 5 classes, while they recommend 6. So I signed up for... Dance! So now, every other day, I go upstairs to the dance studio for 2 and a half hours. This is literally the first dance class I've ever taken, but the teacher likes me and I seem to be doing ok.

Anyway, in this class they do 2 days a week of Modern dance, 2 of hip hop, and 1 is for yoga and conditioning. (The conditioning day, along with the daily pilates etc., is why I signed up in the first place). I greatly prefer hip hop to modern. For modern this semester we are making (and yes, that is apparently the correct verb) a dance about Teenagers and Technology.

I had to make a dance with my cell phone.

In other news, next week is February vacation, which is very exciting. I plan to play a lot of tennis and also to do a lot of nothing.

I guess I've sign off with this, which comes from Tennis.com

"A complaint has been filed against David Nalbandian and some friends after they failed to pay a highway toll while driving in Nalbandian's home state of Cordoba. One of Nalbandian's friends said the incident was intended as a 'joke.'"

This reminds me of last year at Junior Team Tennis Sectionals (been a while since I've mentioned that, huh?), when Luke refused to pay the toll going into the park where the courts were. We in the next van got yelled at by the toll collected, who told us to tell Luke "not to bother coming back here" because she "wrote down his plate number, believe me!".

Here we go again.

2009-01-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

Today has been refreshingly similar to being homeschooled, because there was some kind of water heater emergency at Casco Bay this morning. So this morning, I have slept moderately late, done homework for my online class which is kind of designed for homeschooled kids anyway, completed a quiz for said class, exercised while trying not to injure myself further, and checked the draws for the tournament I'm going to this weekend. All in all, I've been enjoying it.

I know it's been almost 2 weeks since I last wrote, but the thing I wasn't all that funny during those 2 weeks. I've had a hard time with a few injuries since that tournament in Westboro, and last week I was spending all my time complaining about what I was doing at school. (It was 7 straight hours of musical theatre each day. I don't want to talk about it.) But now I'm back, and hoping for a good tournament this weekend and a better week in general.

The Daniel Gimeno Traver thing didn't exactly work out. I sent him an email, which he didn't respond too, probably because it made me seem like a crazy stalker. Of course, my intention was to explain that I am NOT, in fact, a crazy stalker, but I'm not sure if he read that far down.

Speaking of crazy stalkers, here's the 'Ask Rafa' question of the week from Rafa Nadal's website-
"HI RAFA I'M YOUR NUMBER ONE FAN WOULD YOU GIVE ME YOUR EMAIL OR YOU CELL NUMBER"

So, if it were me answering that question, I think I would first ask who had allowed it to get on the site in the first place, question their sanity, and then proceed to pick another one. But, gracious boy that he is, Rafa actually wrote something back-
"A lot of people ask me here for my email or my phone number. I hope you will understand that it's impossible for me to give it because if I did, imagine, I would be answering so many questions and calls that I wouldn't have time to to train or play :-) I'm sure you understand. Regards anyway, OK?"

He's showing remarkable manners here, because if it was me I would probably leave it at-
"No."

Originals

2008-12-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

So apparently the idea of 'a blog about some tennis player that nobody knows' is already taken, by just about everybody, it seems. There are blogs about Diego Hartfield, Leo Mayer, Eduardo Schwank, Pable Cuevas... in short, everybody. But - and here's where my journalistic instinct comes in - there is not one about Daniel Gimeno Traver.

The thing that would make my blog different from the rest of them (hopefully) is that there would be more analysis and less 'Woo hoo Dani!!!' I'm still working on a title that doesn't make me sound like a stalker, and an email to him to ask for permission. The thing is, the combination of the formal and business-y Spanish grammar and the effort to not seem like a creep is going to make this hard.

Also, speaking of blogs and this already having been done, nobody has done this more than El Tenis Que No Vemos (in Spanish). The site is all about the tournaments that don't get coverage, primarily Challengers and Futures. There are also profiles of players who the blog follows, and it's all and all pretty cool.

New Year

2008-12-29T07:03:00.000-08:00

Westboro was not as fun as I had expected. I only made it through one set before having to withdraw because of a blister on my hand. Hopefully it heals by this weekend (or today, so I can practice)...

Anyway. A couple of weeks ago I was on the ATP site and I did a survey that popped up. It asked me about whether I was able to find the information I was looking for, what features I was using, etc. It also asked for a few sentences about what I generally liked about the site. I said that I liked how quickly the news was posted, and the layout. They have now completely changed the layout, so I must have been pretty far off public opinion.

I read their little introduction to the new format for the tour. They gave it a new name and everything (sort of): now it's the ATP World Tour. There's a new logo and stuff, too, so my sweatshirt is somewhat out of date at this point. It seems like they've been talking about all these changes to the tour for YEARS, but none of them had happened until now. So remember, they're not Masters Series anymore, they're ATP World Tour 1000 events.

This year, I've decided I'm going to follow the career of Daniel Gimeno Traver, a Spanish player on the ATP World Tour. Gimeno Traver is currently ranked 90th in the world. In 2008 he won 2 Challengers (Aarhus, Brasov) and reached the finals of 2 others (Tanger, Banja Luka). He will start off the 2009 season in Chennai next week. To read more about him, check out his website: http://www.danielgimenotraver.es (in Spanish)

I don't know exactly why it seems like a good idea to follow his career, but it does. So I'm going to look at his results and rankings every week, see what tournament he's at, and generally what's going on with him. Eventually I'd love to get an interview with him, but we'll see about that. This might become a separate blog, or I might just do separate posts. We'll see.

Tiebreaker

2008-12-22T06:04:00.000-08:00

Next weekend I'm going to a tournament in Westborough, Massachusetts. I pretty much based my selection off of how similar the place looks to Maine Pines and the hilarity that may ensue. (Probably not that much.) Anyway, because it's a snowday and I have no life, I checked the rankings of all the girls who have entered, to see who's going to be seeded. And... I don't know.

I know who the top seed will be. I know this because she's the one who's ranked the highest. The second seed is more of a problem, because there's another girl who has the exact same number of points as me. THE EXACT SAME NUMBER. I think she's officially ranked "higher" than I am because she has a better wining percentage. But the thing is, I know that for National Championships and other things I don't get to go to, they break ties like that based on who has the tournament result that got them the most points. Again, because I have no life, I happen to know that that's me.

Tomorrow I actually will have to go to school, and it's going to be weird to have just the one day sandwiched between all that time off. I didn't feel like my vacation was starting this weekend, though, because I had a lot of homework to do. Now that that's finished, I'm pretty much free. I have to work for 90 minutes today, but I don't think anybody would notice if I didn't show up, because there are no swim lessons this week. There's open swim, but it's not of the schedule so nobody knows about it and a lot of people are away anyway and... I'll just read or something.

Consequences

2008-12-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

I lost in the first round of yet another tournament in Nashua yesterday. It was at least close. I'm going to be very whiny and blame my bad performance in the first set on not having played since Monday.

I lost the first set 6-2, and was down 0-3 in the second. At that point, I made a decision, which was that if I couldn't play better I was going to quit tennis. That lasted for about 5 seconds, because it's a horrible idea. After those 5 seconds, I changed it to 'if I can't play better, I will take a week off of Academy and do Calculus during those 5 and a half hours'. I lost the set in a tiebreak, but I will tell you that I improved a lot at the prospect of 6 hours of math.

I'm writing an article for Zenithe Jr. Tennis Magazine on the topic of Tennis vs. Social Life. In need of comments from junior players, I brought my voice recorder to a fundraiser/party at Maine Pines on Friday night. I got a few good quotes, but interspersed between them are entire minutes of everyone saying 'Totally!' and 'TENNIS TENNIS TENNIS!!'. There's also one moment where you can hear the sound of Teddy hitting Mike Hill in the chest.

The only other thing I have to say about that is that it's good that neither sarcasm nor silly voices show up when you're typing.

Definition

2008-12-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

During the first few months of the school year, I was busy, but at least I was going through a list of easily defined tasks. We're now at the point in Public Policy that we have a few big deadlines but no daily assignment. We're supposed to come up with our own homework.

This isn't usually a problem for me, but right now it's getting a bit frustrating. I have 6 sources, but I'm not done reading and note-taking yet because 1) All of my sources are 30-70 pages long and 2) my printer is running out of ink. And because the school printer is only sometimes functional, I don't know when I'm going to be able to get paper copies of these 200 pages of information on US agricultural policies.

Calculus still has many a defined task. This week we're doing Section 3.6: A Summary of Curve Sketching, which may actually be the most tedious thing I've ever done. I knew something was up when I saw that we'd only been assigned 2 homework problems for that section.

So yeah, this week I'm busy. This is my first full week of school in a long time, and I'm already counting down until the next vacation.

Finally

2008-11-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

I won the match that I played right after I finished that post, then lost in the quarterfinals. That was the first match I HAVE EVER won outside of Maine. Ever. (With the exception of Junior Team Tennis, which doesn't really count.) So, I'm really happy about that. Less happy about losing and also rolling my ankle, but still pretty happy overall.

Lazy?

2008-11-29T09:49:00.000-08:00

I am literally at a tournament, getting ready to go on the court right now. So I'm not sure if this post will qualify as lazy or not. Anyway, I just read this article my Steve Tignor, which I liked and want to share. Here's the link.

I hope that works, by the way. I'll check it out later.

At the moment I'm listening to this week's pre-match playlist, which features Daddy Yankee, Rihanna, and Fort Minor, as well as the A*Teens. Seriously.

Unexpected

2008-11-27T08:58:00.000-08:00

First off, happy Thanksgiving everybody. But that's not what I'd like to talk about.

I was downloading some music on iTunes today and I came across two very bizarre songs:
1) Imagine, by Antonio Banderas.
2) Hoy Me Voy (con Colbie Callait), by Juanes. (And Colbie Callait.)

The first one is weird because Antonio Banderas is not a singer, and when he does sing, John Lennon is not who he reminds me of. I haven't been able to find a video to link to, but I think you should listen to the 30 second preview of it on iTunes (or even buy the song, I guess). It's worth your 30 seconds to hear Zorro sing about world peace.

As for the second song, I love it and I adore Juanes. So what's weird here? Well, Colbie Callait and Juanes don't seem like a natural mix to me. A Spanglish version of Hoy Me Voy doesn't seem particularly natural to me either. I didn't find a video of this one either, but again I think it's worth it to listen to the preview. I really like the song anyway, but I prefer the original version.

Almost Done

2008-11-25T13:34:00.000-08:00

It's almost Thanksgiving break for me... I just have my USM class left and then no more schoolwork until next Monday. Of course, it is an exam that I have to do, so it's almost more than one class. Oh well, at least when that's done I have a couple days of not studying.

I'm going to Riverside, Rhode Island this weekend. I've never been there, but I know it's close to Providence. But then, everything's close to everything in Rhode Island.

Riverside is also quite near to Seekonk, Massachusetts, my enduring memory of which involves driving around in a van, yelling and trying frantically to determine what state we were in. And no, this was not on the way back from Junior Team Tennis sectionals this summer. It was actually a trip I went on in 8th grade, back in my former life as a swimmer.

The entire 3 days, we were never really sure whether we were in Massachusetts or Rhode Island or what. 'Well, we're definitely not in Maine,' was all my coach could offer us. That was kind of a strange meet.

It was also the only time I ever missed a warm-up or an event that I'd qualified for. Because we'd gotten so lost on the way down, we all finally arrived in Seekonk too late for our alloted warm-up time. My coach had us warm up in the diving well, which is the deep narrow part with the diving board in it. It's also a really bad place to put 20 people swimming laps. I climbed out of the pool and went to talk to Sharon, (my coach), and she just calmly told me that we'd all gotten there too late and that I wasn't going to swim that night. Only a few of us had qualified for that event (500 freestyle, if you were wondering), so not a lot of us missed anything. I am (and always have been) the kind of person who always wants to arrive early and be completely prepared, but the weirdest thing about this was that I wasn't even that upset.

E-I-E-I-O

2008-11-24T11:20:00.000-08:00

I was looking over the qualification lists for the Maine Tennis Association Grand Prix today. I don't know if I mentioned this before (I looked and didn't see anything, but you never know), but this will be my first year playing in either Grand Prix event (Junior and Women's). Qualification is based on Maine Tennis Association rankings, which appear to be completely arbitrary. I'm really not sure how they calculate it, or which tournaments count, or whether witchcraft is involved. But in any case, I qualified for both Women's singles and Girls 16s, so that's nice.

But the real point I was going to make is that my name is spelled wrong a different way on each list. In the Maine juniors I'm Maggie Eismiere, in the Maine women's I'm Maggie Eismeir, and in real life and/or New England tournaments I'm actually Maggie Eismeier.

All three of those fail to pass on spellcheck.

Spain has won the Davis Cup for the third time in this millennium, and while I'm happy for them I can't help but feel bad for the Argentinean team, especially Acasuso. He is now the only player to ever lose deciding matches in 2 separate Davis Cup finals, (the other was against Marat Safin in 2006). It was really sad to watch him cry about it (again), and this time even worse because I was celebrating.

Yesterday I went to Planet Fitness, as intended, and I had to ask for a new membership card, which made me feel like an idiot. But at least I only had to do it once.

Quick Note

2008-11-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

I was just reading the Wikipedia article about the Argentinean band Villanos. (Yes, I did hear about them from the little article in Smash magazine about international music.) The whole thing is pretty badly translated, including a link that takes you to their 'no official site' and this sentence (capitalizations included): THE THE FIRST ADVANCEMENT "CONTACTO" was widely disseminated in all the radios, are among the most PAST AND ARRIVING AT THE FIRST PLACE IN RADIO AND TV. THE VIDEO CLIP FOR "CONTACTO", was led by GABRIEL Grieco, hyphenated OF NIKO Villano, WHERE ARE OUR BOYS FACE.

But I think my favorite part is near the beginning, where it lists one of the band members as playing the 'under' and another with the 'battery'.

You can see the full article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villlanos

I'm back, and this time for real.

2008-11-23T06:27:00.000-08:00

I lost in the first round yesterday, which was, obviously, not what I was hoping for. But I think I played well, and the match was pretty close, so I feel ok about it.

When I finish writing this post, I'm off to the gym. I realized that this will be the first time I've been to Planet Fitness in Portland in months. It's not that I haven't been working out, because I have, but most of the time I'm in Brunswick anyway, so why not there? I'd actually prefer to go to Maine Pines, but I'm eco-conscious enough to see how stupid it is to drive 40 minutes in order to work out for an hour. Unfortunately, I've lost my Planet Fitness membership card, and forgotten my number, so I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to assure them that I'm actually a member.

It's starting to seem like a rare occurrence for me to be a member of whatever gym I'm in. Every week, I basically trespass in the gym at whatever club I'm at for a tournament. They all have signs that say 'MEMBERS ONLY' but I go in anyway, figuring that the fact that I'm playing tennis there entitles me to 20 minutes warming up in their gym. Also, it's not as if anybody would know that I'm not a member right?

Well, actually, they might, because I usually wear my Maine Pines Tennis Academy sweatshirt.

Right now I'm reading a really interesting and really good book, which is news enough in itself. And the book is about MATH! It's called 'Everything and More- A Compact History of Infinity', and it's by David Foster Wallace. I would definitely recommend it to anybody with an interest in mathematics and/or very good writing.

SORRY

2008-11-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Hi. I know it's been a while. I don't have a whole lot to say, but I thought I'd just write something to prove I haven't forgotten.

Another pretty good tournament last weekend (semifinal). Hopefully I'll be in the top 100 this week.

I've been quite busy with school, what with Calculus and Public Policy and all. I think I'm doing ok in everything at the moment, or at least I hope so.

Ok, well, that's all for now.

(Another) 100

2008-11-08T18:15:00.000-08:00

I got to the final of a tournament at Maine Pines today. I played the same girl that I played in the final at Maine Pines in September (and lost by the same score). The semifinal was not very exciting. Probably the whole thing was not very exciting, but oh well. As I said, it's another 100 points. I estimate that my ranking will be something like 109 after those get factored in, which is good good good.

Roger Federer gets my pick for quote of the day: When asked if he was disappointed that Nadal is not going to the Masters Cup, he said 'We're not dating.'

That actually made me laugh out loud.

Speaking of things that make me laugh out loud, does anybody else in the entire world watch TenisPro? Anyway, it's hilarious, and they've started their new season. There's less playstation and more actual reflection on their career, but still the same amount of hitting each other and yelling out the windows of cars. It's awesome.

Next week I'm playing in a Level 6 in Portland. I hope that I'll also be able to repeat those results and get another match win. At the moment nobody else is entered for the girls 16s, which is very weird and disappointing. I'm sure that somebody will enter... right?

The other day I ate this weird apple that tasted like a potato. It was definitely an apple. But it looked and tasted potato-y. Just a thought.

Also, did I not even mention that BARACK OBAMA IS THE PRESIDENT ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES?!?!

New Email

2008-11-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

I was just on the phone with the United States Tennis Association's account updating robot. I got a call today (from a person) asking me to please call back because they'd tried to email me and it came back s 'undeliverable'. My email address on file pretty much doesn't exist any more, so I called to update it.

The robot asks you to say your email address, and it records you. And so that nobody gets cut off, it records for a long time. As far as it's concerned, my new email is rafa.GK.madrid@gmail.com-ahem-feet going up stairs-inhale-exhale-door opening.

NaNoWriMo and a few other things

2008-11-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

It's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I'm writing a novel. You're supposed to tell as many people as possible so that you'll be embarassed if you don't finish. So there, I've told you.

In my last post, I predicted that the score of Federer-Soderling would be 7-6, 6-4. Well, it was 6-4, 7-6, so I was at least close.

For Halloween, I was Frida Kahlo. I've attached a picture. That's not my actual eyebrow, by the way.

This was a weekend without a tournament, and I've taken advantage by doing basically nothing. I have homework and stuff to do, thought, so I should probably get started.

Paris

2008-10-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

This week's major ATP tournament is in Paris, which is supposed to be 'The City of Lights'. So why is it so dark? We're back to badly-chosen music, smoke-machines, and players practically tripping over each other as they walk onto the court with the lights off.

Everything they do weirdly in Masters Madrid they do even more weirdly in Masters Paris. The dim-light, the Bon Jovi, and the echos and oddly colored floors of the indoor season reach a high point this week.

Also Roger Federer is carrying his stuff onto the court in a glittery red handbag.

Also also, Roger Federer seems to have had some custom plastic bags made to put over his newly-strung racquets. I don't know what possible reason he has for this, but the bags have his little RF logo on them.

Federer is just starting his match with Robin 'he no say "hi" to me' Soderling. I don't think it'll be too interesting but I also don't think I really know what I'm talking about. Maybe a tiebreak in the first set and then 6-4 Federer in the second?

Sad Things

2008-10-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

I heard a piece of sad news from the tennis world today. ATP player Federico Luzzi, who was diagnosed with leukemia last week, died yesterday. I don't really want to go through all the details, but if you want to read more there's an article on tennis.com. This reminded me somewhat of the death of soccer player Antonio Puerta last year. I don't really want to go through all the details of that, either, but it was also extremely sad.

I painted a picture of Puerta on my bedroom window today. I underestimated how creepy the silhouette would look in the dark, unfortunately. I might put some Christmas tree lights around it.

New Hampshire Again

2008-10-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, it's been a week. I'm aware. I just didn't have a whole lot to say. In a few hours I'm off to Nashua (as usual). Hopefully I won't embarrass myself this time. I'm getting used to packing stuff for tournaments. I used to always bring way too many clothes because I didn't know exactly what I was going to want. Now I've streamlined it a bit.

I do still seem to forget something every week, though. Hair gel, tape, Academy sweatshirt, Advil... I'm just hoping I never forget to bring underwear or something.

That's about it. I'll let y'all know how I do tonight and hopefully have something funny to say also.

Out of State

2008-10-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

You'll have to excuse me for not posting lately. I've been really stressed out and busy, as usual. We had a really bizarre schedule at school last week, so I didn't have any study blocks during the day. Which meant I spend pretty much all my free time with my Calculus book. And now, I'm sort of freaking out about some more of the Calculus stuff... Oh well, nobody wants to hear about that.

I lost in the first round yesterday, but it was really close so I wasn't too disappointed. Next time I could win, that's what I keep saying to myself. The thing is that my record is currently 3-3 in Maine, 0-3 out of Maine. That's sort of weird, but I think it'll get better.

I feel like I never chill out at home. I have minimal chilling out time anyway, and with Academy, my USM class, and my job, I'm not home after school until late. And then on the weekends I'm away at a tournament.

It seems like every time I go to a tournament I come back with more clothes than I went with. In Nashua I always end up going to the mall, because it's better than the Maine Mall. And I also often shop in Portsmouth on the way back. And this weekend, I went to the Nike Factory Store, which is basically my favorite place in the world. So I have new clothes to put away.

Me Voy

2008-10-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

I turned on the tv to watch Federer vs. Stepanek and it was a really lovely surprise to hear them playing the song 'Me Voy' by Julieta Venegas, which I really like. I've always thought that whoever picks the music for TMS Madrid does an eclectic, if not downright bad, job. As Federer and Stepanek are taking the courts the background music seems to be Riverdance. Last year they played either the theme from Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Whichever one wasn't in Madrid was what they played for Rafa in Paris two weeks later.

I get more freaked out than ever now when I see Radek Stepanek. I seem to remember Mariano Zabaleta on TenisPro describing him as 'the most unpleasant guy on tour'. I don't know if you've seen his 'worm' dance, but I won't inflict it on you. If you really want to see it you can check it out on YouTube. Anyway, the thing that's especially creepy about him lately is that I've finally got confirmation that he's dating Nicole Vaidisova. She's 19. He turns 30 next month. They've been dating for about a year. Also he's really really creepy. The whole thing seems like it comes straight out of Rebelde. (I'm remembering when Mia was dating Gastón, who was consistently described as being 'at least 10 years older' than her and then turned out to be José Luján adopted brother. Also, what exactly was his job at the school?)

Rafa's back!

2008-10-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

That's 'Rafa's back!' as in 'He is back!' not 'His back!'. I'm watching Nadal-Gulbis on Tennis Channel right now. And look at that, I even remembered not to write 'The' before Tennis Channel. Rafa took the first set, and is currently down 3-5 in the second.

Here's my up-to-the-moment analysis:

So where's this 'new look' I heard so much about? Rafa was supposedly going to have some sort of new and remarkable outfit, I guess, but I haven't noticed anything. He basically looks the same as in New York.

And Gulbis takes the second set. In normal circumstances, I wouldn't know what to say, but I think the the (extremely) partisan crown give Nadal a distinct advantage. And if he does take down Nadal, Gulbis will be extremely unpopular in Spain.... basically forever.

Nadal has called for a trainer. I don't really have a clue what's going on with him. The commentators aren't saying anything at all and there's no courtside audio at the moment. Oh wait, is it his butt again? I honestly have no idea. Well, he's back on the court now so I don't think it was anything too bad.

I take the PSAT tomorrow. Hooray.

Similarity

2008-10-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

One of these is the vice president of Bolivia. The other is a soccer player.

Does anyone else think that in 20 years, Fernando Torres will be Álvaro García Linera? Minus the Marxism, jail time, and degree in mathmatics.

La Macarena

2008-10-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

I knew these things:

La Macarena is a neighborhood in Sevilla, Spain.

La Macarena is a crazy dance that everybody knows.

But I somehow never connected the two. But now that I know, I feel like I have to issue an apology on behalf of all of us speakers of Andaluz. I am so, so, sorry that Andaluz and the flamenco culture somehow resulted in the middle school dance favorite, the Macarena. Mostly I am just baffled.

Anyway, when people used to ask me 'What the hell is Andaluz and why do you talk like that?' I used to refer them to Antonio Banderas and shrug. Now, I can tell you to go listen to/watch La Macarena, and then I can shrug.

A couple my friends at school have challenged me to come up with a Spanish sentence with as many of the letter D as possible. I've got nothing. Although I guess it will be 'due' on Tuesday so I have a little while. Any ideas?

Neighbor cat

2008-10-11T13:28:00.001-07:00

I just got back from Nashua, where I lost very quickly and in the first round. I also went to the mall. All in all, it was ok.

I had a lot of stuff in the car, so I propped the door to my house open in order to carry it all in more easily. As I was doing this, a giant gray and white cat ran into the house. I then spent an eventful 2 minutes or so chasing him around the house, before finally picking him up and carrying him outside.

I checked his collar and his name is 'Mr. Spoons'. He lives right across the street. Anyway, this cat was so unbelievably friendly and laid-back that I just held and petted him for a while before taking him across the street. So now I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing him again.

Forbidden

2008-10-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

I tried to access (and subsequently post on) this blog today from school, but apparently access is forbidden. The error message told me that my site falls under the heading 'news group and message boards', which are not allowed. I remember being able to post on my old blog from CBHS, but that was 2 years ago or so, so I guess they've changed the settings. I felt a mixture of annoyance at not being able to get to this page and excitement that I am apparently controversial in some way.

Pretty much everything is going pretty much fine. School is ok, tennis is good to great, etc. I'm off to USM pretty soon. Hopefully the professor will let us out early to watch the debate. Failing that, I'll just leave at the break like I generally do. I am not a particularly good example.

Oh well

2008-10-05T18:01:00.000-07:00

A lot more girls have signed up for the Nashua tournament. So basically now I'll be lucky to win one round. Oh well, I guess that's the way it goes. For some reason I wasn't expecting this kind of depth in the players. There's a recruting website that assigns rating (1-5 stars and then 'Blue Chip') to each player. I am currently unrated. I train with people who are mostly '1 star recruits'. Mostly. Normally the tournament I'm at will have a bunch of unrated and 1-star players, then 2-3 2-star players, and maybe 1 3-star player. This tournament has 4 3-star players. Well.

I don't really want to talk about that more. The deadline is almost there, and then in a day or 2 I'll get the draw and freak out again. But for now there's nothing I can do. So there you go.

Tomorrow, the junior class of CBHS is going on a field trip to the statehouse. We're apparently going to write a fake bill and do a fake vote and everything. I don't know what I'm more excited about, the possibility of meeting the governor or getting to press the 'yea' and 'nay' buttons.

My history/crew teacher informed up that we should dress 'appropriately'. I'm a little confused by what that means. She said no shorts, no hoodies, no t-shirts, no flip-flops... We need to wear sleeves, probably our shirt should have a collar. Jeans are ok but only if they're nice and don't have big holes in them. I really don't have a clue, so I figure I'll be safe if I just wear a blazer.

Both Friday and today I was the only person to show up at Academy. I guess that isn't strictly true, because today one guy came 90 minutes late and another was there working out, but the former missed the whole thing and the latter is pretty much too good. Luke did some drills with both of us, but he had to leave early. So I had basically 90 minutes with Luke. Twice.

When I showed up Friday and was the only one, Luke informed me that an hour and a half with him is 'basically a death sentence'. But I've improved basically every part of my game in just this weekend, so it was pretty awesome.

The one thing that I found out is that I've been doing pretty much everything wrong. Right down to the way I hold the racquet. I'm hitting the volleys more correctly now, but it feels weird because that wasn't the way I was taught. It's frustrating ,because I feel like if I'd learned it right the first time I would be better at this point. But it's not worth it to think about things that didn't happen.

Well, it's going to be another long week. Let's go.

"I'm Excited"

2008-10-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

Two more girls have signed up for that tournament. One of them is ranked about where I am, the other top 40. So basically, as long as I don't play against that girl I think I have a chance. I am disappointed, but I need to get used to it because this is what an actual tournament is like.

The way I'm looking at it, those 2 girls will be the top seeds, so I have a 50/50 chance of playing either of them. Of course, other people might sign up, so it's nothing certain yet.

Ok ok, I'll admit it. I am unhappy about the high probability of losing in the first round. I really need to get over it, though. Whatever happens happens. I have chances against anybody, I guess.

Social Life

2008-10-04T05:16:00.000-07:00

This is my one weekend in 2 months during which I'll have time to have a social life, so I'm trying to take full advantage. Anyway, I'll be busy most of the day, and that's nice.

I got a 90 on my most recent Calculus quiz, which I really feel like I need to brag about.

I've been checking the applicants list for the tournament I'm going to next weekend ALL THE TIME. There's still only me and one other girl, but you never know. The deadline is Sunday, so more will probably sign up. I've been trying to convince myself that that's what I actually want. As it stands now, I would have a good chance of winning a level 6, which is something I'd really really like. But I don't want to get my hopes up too much, so I'm trying to be excited about the prospect of more girls signing up and me getting to play more matches. It's kind of a match play vs. points thing.

Juan Martin del Potro beat Richard Gasquet in the semifinals in Tokyo. His opponent in the final will be Tomas Berdych. If del Potro wins, he will overtake James Blake as the world #8.

I AM SO EXCITED. I LOVE HIM. I met this guy (briefly, sort of) about a year ago in New Haven, when not everyone knew how talented he was. For a while, he was the youngest player in the top 100, so people were expecting a lot right away, but it took some time. This summer, some of the tennis commentators were apparently starting to wonder if they were ever going to see this breakthrough they'd been waiting for. And then, del Potro won 23 matches in a row.

Now, this probably has something to do with most of the top players being at the Olympics, but even so, that's pretty impressive. He eventually lost in the US Open quarters to Andy Murray, which broke the streak. Del Potro has now won 29 out of his last 30 matches.

I'm proud of this, so don't laugh

2008-10-02T06:18:00.000-07:00

My ranking this week is 132. Which is 22 spots better than last week. Which is good. Please don't laugh.

Wednesday Workday

2008-10-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

In crew (basically homeroom, only more of it) on Wednesdays, we're supposed to take care of forms, surveys, and other school-related business. We call it 'Wednesday Workday'. Well, we didn't do a whole lot in crew today, but I did work. That's actual work, as in go to the pool and teach kids, and school work, as in alternately read and yell at my Calculus book. Anyway, I'm extremely tired today.

I have a theory that school is killing my creativity. I've looked over my last few entries and they seem to be in a real decline. Hopefully it'll pick up again (after all, I'm still writing) but in the meantime I'm sorry for these daily lists of complaints.

Tomorrow the new USTA NE rankings come out, and I've actually been looking forward to it. I think the points from last week could move me up 10 spots or so. This is all new to me, so it's quite exciting. It was the same when I used to swim: They have this ridiculous and ineffective ranking system, and when it was new I checked it every time it came out. Of course, I was actually good at swimming, so it was a bit more of a thrill. After a while the novelty wore off.

Also- I got at 88 on my Economics exam!! This is the first "normal" grade I've gotten since middle school. I'm used to 3s and 4s, so a number that high is sort of overwhelming. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's a B.

Free Time

2008-09-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

I mentioned before that I'm not playing in a tournament next weekend. This morning I was giving it some thought, and changed my mind. I figured I could handle another trip to Nashua or something, especially if it means another 100 points. The problem is that I couldn't find one.

Now, I'm not surprised that there's no tournament in the state o' Maine. After all, we only have about 8 junior tournaments around here during the entire year. But no. There is not a girls 16s singles tournament next weekend anywhere in New England. Anywhere. That's Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. I don't know, but that seems ridiculous to me.

I drove a my dad's car around a parking lot for 20 minutes today. I don't have my license, and I haven't even taken driver's ed, (no time!), but I think I did ok. I didn't hit anything (though it would be hard to in an empty parking lot) so that's good, right?

It's almost October, which I can hardly believe. I need to come up with a costume for the CBHS Halloween dance, and it needs to be a good one. Last year I was Ugly Betty, and it was basically the best costume ever, I have to say. So this year's needs to be even more awesome.

Level 6

2008-09-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

This was my first Level 6 this weekend, and I did win my first match and reached the quarterfinals. So that's another 100 points, which actually doubles the amount of point I now have. I checked my ranking from this week and it was 154, and I think these points will put me inside 150. I know that's not all that impressive but it's something to build off of.

Here is one of those weird situations that I don't think can only have happened to me: You're about to serve and you think you're going to sneeze. So you take 5-10 seconds, waiting for yourself to sneeze, so you won't mess up the serve. The thing is, you don't end up sneezing and you just look like a fool.

This happened to me 3-4 times today. I don't think I looked all that ridiculous, because I do normally take kind of a lot of time between serve, but it makes me self-conscious.

For probably the first time in my life, I am impatiently awaiting a math quiz. I feel extremely confident about this week's quiz, but it doesn't seem to be there yet. (On the website. I take online AP Calculus. I don't remember if I've explained this yet.) Anyway, I didn't do very well on last week's, but I'm hoping to get a pretty good grade on this one. However, I will not be able to if the teacher won't put it on the site!

Novak Djokovic played doubles with his brother Marko this week at the Thailand Open. Marko also made his ATP debut, losing in the first round to Jarkko Nieminen. The brothers lost to Fabrice Santoro and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, both of France.

I haven't been able to find any pictures of Nole and Maki (people have been calling him 'Mole' and it drives me insane!) but I'm sure they were quite amusing. It'll probably be a little while before we see Djole (actually Djordje's real nickname) on the tour. He's 13, so maybe in 4 years or so.

Laziness and Shawn Johnson

2008-09-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

I really need to start blogging more. (Just sharing.)

I seem to be becoming more and more similar to Shawn Johnson every day. First it was the clothes and hair, then yesterday I wrote a piece of reflective poetry about competitive sports. I erased it before it was finished, mostly because it was absolutely garbage, but also because it would go much better as a text message. (That's what Johnson does, by the way. She writes poetry on her cell phone, late at night, and texts it to people.)

Everything I know about Shawn Johnson I learned from one magazine article, so I'm not exactly an expert, but I do know enough to tell you that Shawn Johnson and I are basically not comparable in any way other than our age.

School has been going pretty well. Most of my classes are quite easy, which means that I have a lot of time to do work for the ones that aren't. Today I got home at about 11.45, made a poster promoting spiral notebooks over composition books (English), reviewed Solving Limits Analytically (Calculus), and then watched House. Fine with me.

I've been spending basically the entire week, every week, looking forward to whatever tournament is coming up. It's only Thursday but I already am getting impatient. This weekend won't be quite as excited as the last one (the farthest I could reasonably see myself getting is the quarters) but that's all right, I need Sunday to do homework anyway.

100 Points

2008-09-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

I made the final of the tournament this weekend. I can't tell you all how happy it made me to finally see the results reflect how hard I've been working. I was starting to really doubt myself after a string of disappointments, but I feel very confident and excited to play again. The final was kind of an absolutely embarassment. I felt like I needed to apologize for not making it last longer. But the real story for me today was this:

M. Eismeier def. A. Blaisdell (2): 5-7, 7-5(6), 7-5.

The match lasted 3 hours and 41 minutes. Which is, apparently, a Maine Pines record. So now I have 1 more little trophy, 2 more wins, and 100 (more) points. I also happen to have 100 points, total. Oh well, it can only get better from here.

Also, very happy to see Spain's Davis Cup team reach the final. I guess Rafa has somehow injured his butt again (?!) but he was still able to win. They will face Argentina in the finals. Awesome.

Another apology

2008-09-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

I realize it's been quite a long time since my last post. I thought I'd written something on Sunday, but that was actually not the case, so I guess I owe not only summaries of this week but also of last weekend's tournament.

I won my first match but was fairly well destroyed in the quarters. I did play quite well, though, so all in all it went pretty well. I thought I was going to have to play my history teacher, but as it turned out I'd read the draw wrong. At some point we will end up facing each other in a tournament, though. I mean, it's basically inevitable.

I'm now taking online AP Calculus, which is A LOT of work but not as hard as I thought. The thing that's bothering me the most is that we're supposed to draw graphs using MICROSOFT PAINT! That's a terrible program at the best of times, but it's just completely useless for graphing. I think I'm going to ask the teacher if I can draw my graphs on paper, scan them, and email him the jpg. Yeah.

This week is another tournament, juniors this time. I don't want to get cocky, but, to put it like Rafa, I think I have good chances for arrive to the semis and the final.

Ready to Go

2008-09-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

I'm headed off quite soon for my first round/quarterfinal match, and I don't have much to say. Right now I'm wearing my match clothes and I look like an American flag, which was not actually my intention. It's a white dress with blue trim, plus white and blue warmups with a bit of red. I also put my hair in a ballet bun. If I do that thing with my arms when I walk, it could be a Shawn Johnson costume.

One of the reasons I'm writing this is that I need to write some longer posts in order to not have to repeat colors. The front page can handle a certain amount at I time, and I generally try to write in a color that isn't on the front at the time. Unfortunately (for everyone) everything I've had to say in the last week has been boring. Therefore, my posts have been short-ish and it's messed up how I do the colors. So this is shameless filler.

One Week

2008-09-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

Well, that's my first week of school over with. Not bad. There's been more note-taking than I'm used to, but it's not too bad yet.

The draw for this weekend is finally out. All I know is that the woman I am playing is neither seeded nor my homeroom teacher, so good news all around. Playing seeds I am used to, playing teachers I am not used to. If we were to face each other in the first round it really could not have a good outcome for anybody. Either way, I'd walk into school on Monday and not be able to look her in the eye. 'Yeah, hey, nice match... Sorry I beat you 0 and 0.' By the way, I don't actually think I would win 0 and 0.

I've got a bit of a Friday night pre-tournament ritual going, which I'll be getting started on right about now by picking out match clothes for tomorrow. Chao.

Roger is the God

2008-09-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to say hello, and that I'm still around and writing. School has been going pretty well, actually, and I love my free block, which is what is allowing me to be home at noon on a Thursday.

I don't have much to say about the US Open final, but I'll give you my brief take: Roger Federer is better than Andy Murray. He deserved to win. Murray is a great tactician but Federer is better.

Luke probably summed it up most concisely with several repetitions of 'Roger is the God!'.

One down, 8 to go

2008-09-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't do very well at that tournament, but at least it was a learning experience. I learned how to be nervous, play horribly, and get ripped off on important calls. Whining aside, it was fine. I didn't play very well and so didn't deserve the win anyway. Also, I love playing on clay, so even a one hour butt-kicking was fun.

That was the first of 9 tournaments I'm playing in this fall. That's probably more than all others I've played in combined.

The real upsetting thing for me was that Rafa is down 2 sets to Andy Murray. ANDY MURRAY? I was on the court when they were showing the match on tv, so I wasn't able to see how either of them is playing. But please. Andy Murray? They'll be on again in 3 hours, and this time I'll be watching.

I often have to remind myself that my behavior has absolutely no impact whatsoever on professional sports. 'Oh no,' I'll be thinking. 'If I'm drinking out of this mug, he'll get aced on the first 2 points of this game. I need the green mug!' At some point, usually before I even finish the thought, I stop myself and realise how ridiculous that is.

Tomorrow I embark on my first full week as a high school junior.

Meetings

2008-09-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of school. I was only there for 3 and a half hours, but believe me, that was enough. It was such a difference from what I've been doing all summer. School Meeting at Casco Bay High School and a team meeting at Maine Pines are basically opposites.

Team meetings go more like this:

Luke (coach)- So, tomorrow is the state championship, you guys! It's the same rules as the season, remember. Sets to 4, and stuff. And when you get to deuce, what do you need to do? You only need to win one point, okay? All right, awesome!

School Meeting is like this:

Mr. Pierce (principal): June 4th! The day of the first ever CBHS graduation! And remember, we will be having a school song, which you guys are going to write. So I'm just letting all you composers know that we'll be choosing the school song at Winter Carnival. Ok. Now, we have some new Pathways to Success to review....

Anyway, that was also the earliest times I've gotten up since June, with the 3-4 exceptions of the day we drove to Newport and a few times that I had to work at 6.00 am.

This weekend I officially embark on my fall tournament quest. The draw has been out for a few days now. I'm playing against a girl who (surprise surprise) I do not know and have never heard of. She is not seeded, so I guess I can extrapolate a little from that... but not much.

One more boring personal thing: In a few weeks, all the CBHS juniors are supposed to go spend the night in a hut, building a trail and talking about our Junior Journey. (That's a trip we'll theoretically take in the spring, by the way.) It's Thursday and Friday, so it doesn't actually interfere with the tournament I'm playing in that weekend, but it still makes me hesitant to go. I don't want to miss practice right before that tournament, especially since it's kind of an important one.

There's been some outrage from other junior who are basically refusing to go. I don't want to seem like part of that group, because any other time I'd actually be really excited. It's really a dilemma. Sorry to go on about it so long but it's been on my mind. Anybody have any advice?

Federer has just won a 56 minute 1st set over Gilles Muller. Looks like a good one to me, as long as Muller can keep it going.

Del Potro v. Murray

2008-09-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

Del Potro and Murray will be on court for their QF match in a couple of hours, so I thought this would be an appropriate time to share this video from the last time they played:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muM-UQc_Tnk

If you want a preview, here's what happens: Del Potro allegedly hits a ball at Murray's head. Murray takes it up with Del Potro on the changeover.

Murray: You try and hit a ball at me and you think it's fine?
Del Potro: You are always the same. You never change.
Murray: Yeah.
Umpire: It's ok guys, it's ok. I'll handle that.

Here's where it gets confusing. Del Potro either mentions Andy's mother or his manner.

Murray: You and your mother/manner, the same always.
Umpire: Save it till later.

Andy definitely thought Del Potro was talking about his mom, though, and so takes it up with the umpire. Check it out. See what you think.

Old Novak v. Just Tommy

2008-09-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

After their round of 16 match yesterday, both Djokovic and Robredo had a lot to say. Robredo felt that Djokovic, who won 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3, was exaggerating the show pain and exhaustion.

'It's not that I don't believe,' said Robredo. 'I have pain as well. I was running like hell and my feet were burning, but I say nothing, no?' Djokovic faced hip, ankle, and stomach problems during the match. 'I think that if you're not fit enough, then don't play. But after every time he was asking for a trainer, he was running like hell and making the shot, but he does what he does a lot of times.'

Robredo continued, explaining that he wasn't doubting that Djokovic was in pain, rather that he disapproved of the way in which he showed it. 'I had pain as well, all over my body because I think I run a lot more than him, and I said nothing, no? I think he took his time because he did it because he was a little bit more tired and that's a part of the game. It help him a lot.'

He is not the only one who feels this way. Roger Federer once said that he 'didn't trust' Djokovic's injuries.

'I think I did a great job,' said Robredo. 'So it's a loss, but it's a loss with glory, you know?'

'After the long match on Sunday night, I didn't have so much time... so I kind of ruined that biorhythm and this morning I woke up, I didn't feel really great. I felt soreness in my muscles and mostly in my hip. I made some quick movements in the match, and reacted. Luckily for me, it wasn't really that bad,' said Djokovic. He also added that 'If we start talking about what is bothering me, we will talk until tomorrow.'

Djokovic faces Andy Roddick next. 'I've got to feel good,' said Roddick. 'He's got about 16 injuries right now.' Roddick jokingly added a few possibilities for what's bothering Djokovic.

Q: Do you get the sense that right now he is...
ANDY RODDICK: Bird flu.

Q:Lots of things. Beijing hangover.
ANDY RODDICK: Yeah.

Q: He's got a pretty long list of illness.
ANDY RODDICK: Anthrax. SARS. Common cough and cold.

Roddick also said of Djokovic that 'either he's quick to call the trainer or he's one of the most courageous guys of all time.'

Apart from the tennis, here are a few things I'm amazed by:

Robredo knowing the phrase 'running like hell' and then using it, twice, in a press conference.

Djokovic (or any other human being) being able to use the word 'biorhythm' in a sentence.

Oh, and one more thing before I go... Did everyone already know that Tommy Robredo's real first name is just Tommy? And that he's named after the rock opera by The Who?

Well now.

2008-09-02T13:32:00.001-07:00

I am obviously a complete blogging failure, seeing as Djokovic has just won the final set 6-3. I do have something else (hopefully true) to say, that he will be very tired in his next match.

'Old Novak'

2008-09-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

I'm currently watching Djokovic and Robredo in the fifth set. I've gotta say, I'm really pulling for Tommy here. Nothing against Djokovic, but Robredo and I go way back... (To last summer, when I met him for about 2 minutes and he hugged me.)

Anyway, my take is as such: Robredo has a giant advantage this late in the match, because it seems like Djokovic's fitness is failing him. He's dealing with 2 injuries (hip, ankle) and an illness (stomach), so I think it's safe to say he's not at 100%. I guess he's also had a recurrence of whatever breathing problem he used to have, although I had thought he had surgery to take care of that... Anyway, I'm calling this 'Old Novak'.

'Old Novak' is the Novak Djokovic we saw 2-3 years ago. All the attitude, all the talent, all the injuries. None of the fitness, none of the experience. He made up for the lack of experience by having tremendous confidence, but the injuries took a little more to get rid of. Now he finally seems to have brought his fitness level up enough for it to be a strength rather than any kind of liability.

By the way, whatever Novak this is has just broken Robredo for a 3-2 lead, so I might not actually know what I'm talking about. I still think that Robredo's chances can only improve as the match goes on.

As for the picture at the top, do you remember in Australia, when the Djokovic family wore matching shirts that spelled out 'NOLE'? One of my favorite moments was when Novak's father, Srdjan, left for a few minutes and they spelled 'OLE'. I was also amused by the way Novak, his brothers, and their father all appear to be exactly the same person but at different ages. That's Djordje, 13, on the far right and Marko, 17, next to him.

I found this article about the 2 of them vaguely amusing:
http://www.novak-djokovic.com/eng/about_nole/brothers.php

Here we go

2008-09-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of the university class I'm taking. That really makes it seem like school is fast approaching, probably because it is. Today and tomorrow are my last days of summer, and then it's back to Casco Bay.

It's been nice to see some newer faces go deep in the US Open. Of course, names other than Federer, Nadal, and Roddick seem to give an inordinate amount of pronunciation trouble to John McEnroe. He's still saying 'Jock-o-vich', 'Mon-feez', and and basically anything but the correct version of 'Cilic'. I just remind myself that I probably wouldn't do a whole lot better, at least with some names.

One name that I'm glad I'll never hear a tennis commentator say is Bojan Krkic. It's bad enough listening to the soccer guys try it, and he only has the ball a small part of the time. Imagine if he played tennis and was in control a full half of the time.

The first thing I did when I decided for real that Bojan Krkic has a legitimate chance at being 'the next big thing' was to go on YouTube and search for a video of him saying his own name. I wish that all the commentators would do the same. I do not want to be saying anybody's name incorrectly, especially if they're going to be talked about all the time, as Bojan is.

He's been in the news recently not only for being ridiculously talented and the possible future of soccer, but also for having chosen to play for Spain internationally. Krkic's father is from Serbia, giving Bojan the option to play for either country. Some people seem surprised at his choice, which, in turn, surprises me.

'I feel Spanish,' said Bojan, who was born in Barcelona, by way of explanation.

Normally, the kind of player who chooses to play for one of their parents' country is one who is probably not going to have success in the other team. But Krkic is clearly going to have a great career, but for his club (currently Barcelona) and his country (currently Spain).

The rules say that once you're represented a country at the senior level, you can't switch. Bojan has yet to play for Spain at the senior level. Now, this would be one thing if he was 25 and had never had a call-up, but this guy is barely old enough to drive and he's already getting picked! The Serbian soccer team is perfectly respectable, but Spain are the champions of Europe. I mean, I know who I'd pick.

Image is Everything

2008-09-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there's been a huge debate going on in the Rafa Nadal fan sites about Rafa's new image. My question is this: New image?

I didn't notice anything different about Nadal this week. He's wearing normal shorts, but that wasn't exactly unexpected. I guess the message board people (I am not a message board person. I don't even read them) are really upset about... I actually don't know. And I can't find out, because, not being a member, I am not granted access to the message board.

The men's fashion at the US Open has seemed a little weird to me. What with all the brightly colored shorts, the top players look like a bunch of elementary school kids off to a slumber party. Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, Del Potro, even Blake: it looks like they're going straight from the court to the living room to watch cartoons and eat popcorn.

Anyway, pettiness aside, I do have one really funny quote to share today. This one comes from Rafa's blog, where he answers questions sent in by readers:

We all love your blog so you have to keep winning! You've had a few time warnings before your serve. Are you aware of how long it takes you to prepare and do you think the warnings are fair? Judith, UK

RN: Yes I am and the warnings are clearly fair since the umpire has a time machine.

He went on to explain about how he sometimes gets annoyed, but what he's actually bothered by in the moment that the umpires chooses to give him the warning. But for me, the highlight of that was 'time machine'.

Secret Agent

2008-08-31T14:05:00.000-07:00

Um, so, remember when I said I was done trying to find out any information about possible opponents? I apparently lied. There are now 7 of us in this tournament and I've Google searched every one (including myself). What have I found out? It amounts to basically this: Some of the girls in this event are definitely better than me, and some of them are probably about the same.

I'm not really a master of statistics, but it would seem that I could get that much by just guessing.

I had a moment of self-doubt where I was thinking 'If they are definitely better, should I even enter?' The answer, for all those wondering, is yes.

Every time most pros enter a tournament, they are not the best one there. Gilles Muller, who just beat Nicolas Almagro in the US Open, is not expected to win the event. But he played 3 qualifying matches (and won them) in order to get into it, believing he had a chance to at least get something done. And he has, in fact, gotten quite a bit done. So I'm trying to have that kind of attitude. Winning just one match would be a good confidence booster, not to mention the fact that I really need the points.

Sam Querrey Again

2008-08-31T06:21:00.000-07:00

Sam Querrey just hasn't stopped amusing me, so here are a couple more:

'I made it to the CBS weekend. That was the goal.'
-After winning on Saturday

'The main thing from that match I remember, I was playing at 2.00 and I knew ESPN went on the air at 3.00. I wanted to make it to 3.00 to get some ESPN time, which I did.'
-Sam recalls the first time he faced his next opponent, Rafael Nadal

'I like the TV time, you know.'
-Yes