Blonde tennis joke

While out one morning in the park, a jogger found a brand new tennisball, and seeing no one around it might belong to, he slipped it intothe pocket of his shorts.
Later, on his way home, he stopped at the pedestrian crossing,waiting for the lights to change.
A blonde girl standing next to him eyed the large bulge in his shorts."What's that?" she asked, her eyes gleaming with lust.
"Tennis ball," came the breathless reply.
"Oh," said the blonde sympathetically, "that must be painful.... Ihad tennis elbow once."

Study regarding recreational preferences

... After a 2 year study, the National Science Foundation announced the following results on America's recreational preferences:
1. The sport of choice for unemployed or incarcerated people is: basketball.2. The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is: bowling.3. The sport of choice for blue-collar workers is: football.4. The sport of choice for supervisors is: baseball.5. The sport of choice for middle management is: tennis.6. The sport of choice for corporate officers is: golf.
Conclusion: The higher you rise in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become.

Twas The Night Before City Playoffs

Twas the night before city playoffs and all through the house, not a creature was stirring...except the one that should have been asleep! I'm sitting here surfing the internet and watching Oprah's big give. Hmmm....I hope I give big tomorrow! Big hard serves, big high lobs, big smashing overheads, big numbers on my side of the scoreboard! But most of all...I feel a big accomplishment, not because we have made it to the city playoffs, but because we didn't give up after being knocked out of the playoffs over and over and over again. We kept playing, we kept trying, we kept learning and finally we have arrived. But that is the funny thing about competition, we have arrived here and are feeling the satisfaction, but tomorrow after the match, we will be forward looking to our next dream....arriving here again at the next level of play. It may take us years again to arrive here or we may never arrive, but the journey is so exciting it can not be resisted! Tennis rules!!!

Is good sportsmanship still alive in tennis?

After today's match, I pondered the question if good sportsmanship is still alive and well in tennis. The ladies we played didn't do anything wrong exactly, well...a couple of line calls, but beyond that they didn't do anything wrong. However, I felt that they didn't do a lot of things that were right. First of all, they beat us soundly in the first set. We gave them lots of positive comments, such as "good serve", "nice shot", "good return". They however, never even uttered the words, "Thank you."

During the second set, my partner and I decided just to be overly polite to ourselves. When one of us made a good shot, we would turn to each other and say.."nice shot" and the other person would reply "why, thank you!" and then the first person would reply," you are welcome!" It almost became entertainment to us, which of course relaxed us and we began to play better. Suddenly we found one of our opponents saying nice shot, good serve etc. while her partner became more and more agitated. She didn't seem to be having as much fun as the rest of us on the court. In fact, her actions became more aggressive. When returning loose balls, she began throwing them in the opposite directions from where we were standing so we had to chase them. She even hit a ball directly at me when my back was turned. (lucky her...she missed!) At the end of the match, yes, she did shake our hands. Mine is still tender from her strong squeeze. However, she did not say...good match, kiss my ..., nothing.

I thought about many of my matches over the years and realized that the competitiveness in us all is slowly eroding good sportsmanship. Myself included. While pondering this, I thought of some of the people I have played that have shown good sportsmanship and plan to incorporate some of these examples in my own game. My partner and I once played a team that would say "good call" when those tough line calls were made...even when they weren't in their favor. We marveled at that match. Thought it was interesting and wondered to each other why they would do that, but the next week we found ourselves doing it. Sometimes I still do it. Not as often though.

So I say to you all, lets bring the manners back into our game and enjoy the game and each other just a little more!

During the Off Season

Ok...I'm not playing tennis, so instead I'm surfing the web. I wanted to share some interesting websites I have found this week.

Freerice.com Improve your vocabulary and feed the world.

Tennisorbit.com Kind of like facebook, but for tennis players. Don't forget to add me as a friend. Call me SmashGal.

pumpone.com They have fitness programs you can download to your ipod and one especially for tennis.

katyshops.wordpress.com Cool ideas for gifts either for someone else or for yourself.

http://www.ezinearticles.com/?Tennis-And-Dating-Lessons&id=850827 Jackie's article on ezine.

Neighborhood Net News

Congratulations to Marla and Michael Moulder for winning their division in T2 and making it to the city playoffs! If anyone knows how they did in the city playoffs, please add it here.

Congratulations to Linda Rakowiecki for making it to the KSwiss playoffs! Linda, if you find that you will be playing Veronica, please let me know so I can bring a cheering section!

Currently in 1st or 2nd place in their T2 divisions
Linda Howell/Tonya Hensley
Casie Akoubian/Linda Rakowiecki
Piper Yarnall/Jinelle Brooks
Jackie Hamilton/Karen Simmons

Please let me know if you know of anyone else currently playing and I will add them to the next update.

Super Service

I like to pass it along when I receive super service.

I would like to thank the guy at Tires Plus on the corner of Old Peachtree and Buford Hwy that loaned Jackie and I a tire jack to change her tire. Guess how many people and tire jacks it takes to change a Volkswagon Jetta's tire and you might win a prize!



Would also like tell you about the personal attention I received from http://www.bookcrossing.com/. I was so impressed with the idea that I shared it with lots of friends and added it to my blog. I got a very nice email from and a comment on my blog from the CEO, Scott. THAT is what you call personalized attention!

"God don't like ugly!"

Ok. I have heard some pretty strange things on the tennis courts. Yes, I've even said some pretty strange things. But this comment took the prize, especially in the context it was said. Jackie and I were playing a T2 match at Collins Hill. The play had been very close but an all around fun match. 6-4, 4-6 and then we were in a tiebreaker for the 3rd set. The bad guys were down in the tie breaker when I hit a pretty hard shot toward my opponent's alley. I must interject here...I had been hitting some great alley shots on this particular day. Anyhooo, the ball hit the net with a pretty loud pop and landed on my side when suddenly my opponent burst out with "God don't like ugly?" This comment was coming from a woman wearing red contacts ! At first, I thought she was saying it in fun because we had been going back and forth with witty comments. After realizing that she was not in jest, I, on my high horse, said, " Excuse me?". She repeated "God don't like ugly and you were trying to hit me". My only retort was,"I'm just trying to win this match and it is kind of hard against bad line calls and people refusing to admit to double bounces." To which she indignitely replied," I never make bad line calls." I think my partner may have said something but the incredulous look on her face made me forget what she might have said. I told her, let's just shake it off and play. On the base line, I begged Jackie to tell her that if I had been trying to hit her...well, I would have hit her! Probably more than once. Unfortunately, I must have been ugly that day because we did not perservere and win.

As we were driving away, I heard through my open window.."God don't like ugly!!" and looked into my rear view mirror to see Jackie laughing hysterically in her car. In the recent days, we have had several laughs at Veronica's expense. Many of our friends have laughed at the story and I hope you will have found some humor in it too!

If you have had stranger comments on the tennis courts, please add them here. Also, feel free to enlighten us if you have had the pleasure of playing Veronica. Apparently she plays T2, KSwiss, ALTA and the League because she kept telling us that she was a solid 3.0 player. I guess that is why she is playing 2.5.

The Book Swap

I got the bright idea to host a book swap brunch. I invited several of my girlfriends, told them to bring 5-10 books to swap and a breakfast item. Two days before the party, I realized that I didn't exactly know what we were going to "do" during this party. Suddenly I had visions of bridezillas fighting each other for the perfect dress and immediately envisioned my mild manner friends fighting over the perfect book. I immediately tapped into the internet to see what other people did at these parties. It was there that I came across the link for www.bookcrossing.com . Soon I had forgotten my real reason for surfing and was reading all through the bookcrossing website. It impressed me so much that I had to share it at the bruch. After we had all grabbed the books we wanted, there was a pile left. I told everyone about the website and they all agreed we should take one book, register it on the website and set it free. We were all particularly excited about a trip that one of the ladies was about to take to Australia and she plans to leave the book in the airport there. After we had all taken the books to set free, we agreed to take the rest to a woman's shelter so they could be set free also. We decided to do another swap in 3 months and are all very excited to see where our books may have traveled by then! Stay tuned for an update.

If you are reading this post and want to join www.bookcrossing.com please enter my name SmashGal as the referrer so we can see how each other's books are traveling. The more the merrier.

Out!

The turtles are ready to rumble!!!(Jackie)

Five for Five!

I'm still trying to decide what what was the most exciting. A come back to win from 0-5 bad guys or the way Linda Howell jumped up and charged the old rude guy. For a split moment, I thought someone was stealing the holy cow cake! Then Mary and JR rushed past and I am completely flipping. There was a fight brewing and HEY! I'm not even involved. Our sweet little captain is giving the rude dude the what for. Then it is over as quickly as it started and the ladies are playing again. I am amazed at their determination and mental discipline as the play resumes. We are cheering, they are cheering. I am smoking and Jackie is smoking. They are scoring and we are scoring. They are cheering but we are cheering more and scoring more and finally success!

Congratulations line five for bringing five home today!

And a special shout out to JR for talking me down off the ledge of my temper and for being our hero. Laugh..I later told Warren......I was wondering how many of us it was going to take to take JR down if he started wailing on the rude dude?