GEs at 6: Dress Appropriately! (OT)

Mornin' everyone. Well, it's been a pretty long slog through the French Open for me, and now I'm about to head out this afternoon for a four-day mini-vacation. Cowboy Luke and I are jumping into Uncle Glyn's Jeep, with Stella the dog, and hightailing up to the farm in Andes. Wives to join us later. I'll drop in from time-to-time over the weekend, and we'll have a special Queens Report from Rosia, my thoughts on an interesting conversation with Justine Henin (it took place on the day of the Roland Garros men's singles final) and, of course, Ed McGrogan's Monday Net Post.

Feel free to use this as your all-around OT post, and the Queens for a Day posts for your more targeted tennis discussions on the actions of the day.

Now, for the big news.  I'd like you all to welcome Heidi, a Comment poster familiar to many of you, who is going to serve as the Tribe's Social Director. You know, I've missed the Tribe Notes we used to run as part of the Monday Net Post, so we're going to start running them again, once a week, in a stand-alone post produced by Heidi (with whatever help she would like from me).

Here's how we're going to start out. If you have any news, preferably good news (although sometimes you may just need the Tribe's support, thoughts and prayers), just email them to Heidi (click on her name for the Social Director email window). She will cull, edit and produce a post from the ones that fit our mandate. I also encourage you to send her photos, as jpgs, of yourself (who can forget the dashing Ray Stonada, or the lovely FoT and he-man Mr. FoT?). Don't be bashful. You can also submit other images (your child, your spouse dancing with a lampshade on his/her head, your Pit Bull Terrier).

It may take a little time to get this up and running, but ultimately it will be a place where we can share useful and fun information about each other. For instance: the publication date of Rolo Tomassi's much-anticipated James Blake autobiography (will the Comment poster formerly known as Andrew Friedman please stand up?). And, of course, news upcoming TW gatherings during Grand Slam events. Right now, I'm leaning to calling the weekly post  The Deuce Club, but if you can think of a better title for the Tribe Notes, please submit it, either in the Comments below or to Heidi.

I hope you'll get to know Heidi, and each other, pretty well over time. But for now, I'll just say that Heidi, like our much-loved AmyLu, is a graduate student and instructor in literature at a major midwestern University. She grew up on the East Coast and is multi-lingual (English, French and German). She will be  attending her first U.S.Open this year. She's watched tennis all her life (her first memory is the Stefan Edberg-Michael Chang French Open final), and finally took the plunge and started playing the game last year. She won't divulge the string mix or tension she uses, but says she hits a two-handed backhand because her wrist isn't strong enough for the one-hander.

I'm sure all of you would like see a photo of Heidi, but I think we'll save that for another time; maybe we'll have a "Who's Heidi?" contest or something. Meanwhile, here's a picture of a bunny named MarleyMice. Heidi likes bunnies. In fact, in her spare time she fosters rabbits at a local animal shelter, making her just another Tribe member who does the right thing, by nature.

So please welcome Heidi, and please don't be bashful about shooting her an email or jpg. It's graduation season, wedding season, vacation season, and somebody. somewhere, is always getting out on parole, right? We'll take a look and see where we stand next week, and hopefully post our first Deuce Club item.

BTW - the picture at the top of the post is of the Tribe members who gathered to watch the French Open in Los Angeles; many thanks to Dunlop Maxply for organizing that, and I'm hoping one of you who attended will get on to either I.D. the participants, or at least yourselves (we all know who "Dunlop" is, right?).

Have a great weekend everyone; I'll be around, off-and-on.