Mornin'.everyone. At long last, I have DSL at the farm, and as I write this at 6:50 A.M. Luke is sleeping on the foam port-a-mattress nearby, with my small goosneck lamp and the soft orange glow of the woodstove providing the only light.
When Luke and I are here on a "guy's only" trip in the winter, we drag the spare mattress downstairs and camp before the woodstove in the living room (my wife Lisa will have none of that). But I draw the line at cooking hot dogs in the old Quadra-Fire (great stove with a nice big window/door for flame watching). I don't know, is that being too uptight?
It's right around freezing here, and through the window I can see in the slowly developing light that we had a light dusting of snow last night. In just a little over 24 hours, I'll be winging toward the southern California desert.
The lengths I went to to file stories via the Internet these past few months (actually, close to three years) are hilarious, and may make for an amusing story at some other time, For now, I'll just say that as soon as the technician finished installing my DSL yesterday afternoon, I had one of thos "smacks forehead" moments and wondered: Why didn't I do this sooner?
Well, I know the answer. The farm was always a refuge from things like email and the Internet, but it now seems as burdensome to go without those things here as it must have been to go without a telephone for suspiciously Luddite-like reasons (disguised as sentiment) a few decades ago.
Anyway, I just heard a sleepy little voice from under the comforter say, "Good morning, daddy. . .where's Biscuit (our cat)?" So I'd better get moving here. It is, after all, Saturday, and I'll be away from my family all of next week.
I posted over at ESPN late yesterday, about some of the times when the Indian Wells event has served as a springboard for champions. I wrote that if I had to pick one guy who might emerge from this event as a potential (or realized star), I'd go with Marin Cilic. I wrote that before his match with Kei Nishhikori, the young sensation from Japan, with my fingers crossed. So I was glad to learn upon reviewing the results (ah, the miracle of DSL!) this morning that Cilic handled Nishikori with relative ease. Can any of you think of any other relatively young player who could surprise us at all at the first North American Masters of the year?
This is your Crisis Center for discussing today's matches and tennis in general. I think Andrew is leaving for Palm Springs this morning, and I'm going to see if he's up for posting a "scouting" report tomorrow, after getting his bearings at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.
If I don't post tomorrow, you can expect something first thing Monday morning. Have a great weekend, everyone!