When she is doing something that is probably not good, and you ask her what she is doing, there are three responses.

1) “I’m doing xyz.” – observation: she doesn’t think there is anything wrong with moving the furniture to get bummy bear vitamins out of the cabinet. Even if she has to remove the childproof lock (not so childproof).

2) “Nothing.” – observation: she doesn’t want to tell you that she is eating a bag of chocolate chips extracted from the top cabinet. But, it doesn’t feel so bad so she can come up something as slick at “nothing.”

3) “I don’t know.” – observation: this is always the worst case scenarios. It is really bad, she knows it is really bad, and even can’t think to say “nothing”. If you get an “I don’t know” you better hurry up and see whether she has nail polish on her cheeks or is feeding the dog plastic toys.

Other comments worth remembering …

Oksana and I like to take a break from time to time and have a cup of tea with some dark chocolate. Oksana found Elana the other day eating that chocolate, and asked her “what are you doing?” The response was …

“I’m having a tea party, and you have to eat chocolate at a tea party.”

“Well, where is the tea?”

“I don’t like tea.”

A stolen cup

Here is Elana, drinking from a cup she stole from the top shelf, above the kitchen desk, behind cabinets with one of those childproof locks.

Me – “Elana where did you get that cup?”

Elana – “I don’t know.”

Me – “It’s probably dirty.”

Elana – “No, I washed it.”

Me – “Don’t spill that water all over my floor!”

Elana – “Don’t be silly daddy.”

Of course, 15 minutes later the cup is abandoned and the floor of my office is soaked in water.

I feel the pain

It’s funny how one thought leads to another, and after a while it’s hard to remember how you got to the current state of thinking. Either that, or I just have a short attention span

For example, I made a post on my Facebook page today about how my shoulder was hurting after playing a couple of hours of tennis this weekend. I hadn’t hit any tennis balls for a couple of months, and the old rotator cuff started complaining. The funny part was that I was playing with a couple of high school girls that I’m trying to help develop into potential college players … maybe. And the thought of losing to a girl, as sexist as that might sound, is not something that is appealing to most guys. (note to blog … after drilling with them, I won the only set 6-0 ).

After a couple of comments about my post and the need for BenGay, I came to the conclusion that the day I lose to a girl is the day I start to play 10 year olds. I think I read that in Tennis magazine actually … when the competition gets tough for old men, the old men find weaker opponents. Hey, that was there suggestion not mine.

But then that got me to thinking about a tournament I was playing back when I was in high school. It was a USTA tournament in Charleston, IL back in the ’70s and I was playing with a kid from Urbana named David Wallace. I was 17 at the time and a Junior in HS, and David was probably 18 and a Senior. There was a bus of kids from some tennis camp in California that was touring through the midwest looking for some easy targets. Of course, they underestimated the gallons of humidity in the Central Illinois air during July.

David and I were playing doubles, and about the 2nd round here come these two little boys … literally little boys. As I recall, one of them was like 10 and the other was 11 or 12. They were rumored to be ranked in the top 5 in AZ … but even so they were tiny. We looked at each other like … wtf is this!? Similar to this weekend, we were victorious but now without losing a few points and thinking … damn, I can’t lose to a 10 yr old.

Then, that old memory got me thinking about David … one of the nicest guys I ever met back in the day. He was always a little quiet compared to some of us, and struck me as a bit of a brainiac. I had no idea he went on to become a writer called “one of the most influential and innovative writer of the past 20 years”. I totally lost touch with him after going to college, and when I was working in Chicago in the 80′s I came across a book in the laundry room of my condominium with the name David Foster Wallace on the spine. That got me curious about David and his whereabouts, but without the Internet it was a fleeting moment with no real mechanism to connect any further.

So I went about my business in the big city and didn’t think much about it for quite some time. Then, about a year ago I was sitting in the sauna at the health club and picked up a copy of the New Yorker Magazine. A few pages in was an article about the death of David Foster Wallace and his unfortunate suicide.

That article brought back so many memories of the days when we were playing tennis and how I really enjoyed playing with him. He was the true spin master and I marveled at his topspin lobs that would climb to the top of the back fence. This time, the Internet gave me an instant connection to some of his writings on the web. My favorite is Tennis, Trigonometry and Tornadoes (http://www.harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1991-12-0000710.pdf). The story reads just like David played tennis … very calculated and detailed, and just like his topspin lob I found it hard to look away.

I love the cow!

Unfortunately David is gone now, so as much as I’d love to connect some time that’s not an option. If only the Internet would have arrived with its current state of connectivity 10 years earlier, perhaps we would have had that conversation and smacked a few balls around. Then that got me to thinking about how the Internet truly has the ability to change our lives and the way we do business. But of course, that is exactly why I started my business – One-to-One Service.com.

So … the thought process is =>

Play tennis with girls > Don’t lose to a girl > Play a 10 year old if you can’t beat a girl > Could have lost to a 10 year old once > David shared that moment with me > Too bad I didn’t connect with David > Too bad the Internet wasn’t around sooner > The Internet is here now > I started my business because of the Internet …

Now I just realized … damn, I should be working on my project that is due tomorrow and not rambling on about this.

Oh well, I guess one thought does lead to another.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091103/od_nm/us_flying

But seriously, what’s the use of an app that you need just as the stewards are telling you to shut off your phone?

Taking down Miami Field

But then I remembered, that one of my friends got his leg broken doing something so foolish. Being a bit more practical, I was busy digging turf up at the 50 yard line. Nothing like having a real piece of history.

There were so many troopers at that game you would have thought it was post 9/11. As it turns out, they were just guarding the old school scoreboard. It’s hard to imagine that I was having a converstation with one of the troopers on the 50 yard line, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and handful of turf in the other. It’s still a bit unclear in my mind why I was trying to pursuade him to do shots of whiskey with me, but thank God life was simpler in those days. I can’t imagine trying to pull that off at a game today.

Cheers