Friends Fo-Shizzle

So, I went out to play tennis tonight with my new San Diego best friend, Wilson.  He's my new San Diego best friend based on the premise that he's the only person in San Diego that I've actually had any personal interaction with outside of work for more than 1 minute and 15 seconds.  He takes the honor away from Erica and Tyler who are my neighbors across the breezeway and they were my best friends in San Diego based on the fact that I said Hi to them, they said Hi back and then I helped them carry in a few pieces of furniture. 

So, as you can infer, my social calendar has been rocking and rolling, so I went to craigslist to see if someone was looking for a tennis partner and sure enough I found Wilson.  I was pretty sure 20 minutes into our hitting session that he was going to walk off the court and tell me not to call him again as I was so rusty I couldn't sustain a rally of more than 3 shots (that's with the caveat that Wilson hit 2 of the shots before I hit a double off the fence or hit a grounder into the net for an inning ending 6-4-3 double play.)
Funny thing about tennis though, sometimes if you play for a long enough period of time, strange things happen.  In this case, I was sweating and the steam was coming off the top of my cranium.  Pretty sure Tom Cruise doesn't have this problem.  Wilson, who was very well endowed in the follicle department didn't have this detriment, I'm sure.  So, as the steam is accumulating around my face like I'm in a sauna, I actually started returning some shots in play.  Seriously, I'm not exaggerating about not hitting a shot in.  After awhile, Wilson stopped chasing my errant shots and just watched them like he was witnessing a fireworks display with his head cocked to the side facing up in the air.

One thing I've noticed after playing with my #1 San Diego friend (I'm going to play with a few titles and see which one sounds best for Wilson), is that I'm not 18 anymore.  I remember when I was 18, I used to run and play all day long and never think twice about it.  On one occasion, I wiped out on my bike, skinned my leg from knee to ankle, watched it bleed, and then proceeded to go on to the basketball game I was headed for.  I played a full game of hoops, then rode my bike home and felt like a champ.  In fact, I remember when I used to work at Tops, I had a friend, named Melissa, who came in one time to buy a sports drink and I was like what are you doing and she told me she was jogging around the city.  I was like, "What?!?  Are you crazy?"  By all estimates, Melissa lived about 7-10 miles from Tops, and I might add that the road she lived on was not exactly "jogger friendly".  I'm pretty sure that if she continued to jog and not get picked up before returning home that she probably jogged 20+ miles that day.  I don't know what happened after she left, but that inspired me to start running and now I'm pretty much in constant pain.  Ahhh...good times he said!

So, as I was saying, my game is pretty weak, so to compensate I've got to really hustle after every shot, because when I'm running all over the place, I actually tend to get some shots back.  It's the slow shots that are hit right to me that I lauch to the moon.  Well, after a few of these dead sprints across the court the thought occured to me that there wasn't a great flow of oxygen getting to my brain.  Wilson was doing just fine.  I could pretty much taste my spleen.  He destroyed me on the scoreboard and as I was walking to my car, I thought well this is going to be an interesting night if I don't get some ibuprofen immediately. 

The perfect ending to the night is that as soon as I sat down to relax, Sammie came and nudged me to go outside for a walk.  Mercifully, she wasn't pulling or else she might have ended up dragging me like a corpse on the end of a rope.

Miles Walked Today: 2 (Does the dog ever get tired - I'm setting all kinds of walking mileage records in the brief time since I've moved)
Friends Made Today: 1
Friends Elevated to "Best in San Diego" status: 1
Odds that Wilson will ever call me to play tennis again: It's a crap shoot, but probably 60%