Sunday - Tennis and Chicken Parm

Ahhhhhhh my first day to sleep in…so nice…long, lazy morning, reading my book and drinking coffee in the courtyard…when Maximo appeared and challenged me to a game of tennis. While not my strongest sport, I am more then a duffer out on the tennis court, and with my dad being a tennis fanatic I have improved a lot the past few years playing with him (and the occassional game with henhouse) and have even started enjoying it. So I said sure, lets play. Maximo made a few calls and was able to secure us a court at the local swim/tennis/golf club that his brother belongs to. So around 11 am we headed over there – absolutely gorgeous facilities, felt like I was back a Cedardale where I spent most of my summers as a kid on the swim team. After a quick stretch and some warm-ups we started playing for real. Now if any of you know me when it comes to sports, you know I am ultra competitive…I wanna win, whether it is tennis, hoops, soccer, running, swimming, pingpong, texas holdem or monopoly…if you challenge me I will try and whomp you…and have fun doing it :o). So here I am playing with my host father, a peruvian, transplanted in costa rica, a heavy smoker, but a guy who is obviously an athlete and who was probably an amazing athlete in his youth…and who is just as competitive as me. Plus he plays a style that henry would describe as “a dinker”…he hits all these soft balls, with a lot of spin, and never really takes any chances, he just always gets the ball back (plus like my dad he plays twice a week and has been doing so for years)…I on the other hand haven’t played in a couple of months, never play regularly, and love to be aggressive and hit the ball hard with a lot of topspin for winners…I just can’t serve…never really could…and because of this whenever I play with my dad we always play rallies and stuff, but never full games cause I can’t serve. So anyway – to make a long story short – you combine all the above factors and you get a lot of unforced errors from wally, a lot of double faults from wally and a few winners here and there…but the ultimate result is a 6-0, 6-0 beatdown…I did not make my father proud :o(…but after the game Maximo spoke with a guy and a girl on the court next to us and challenged them to a game of doubles. Now I don’t know if it just took me forever to warm up, but I was finally nailing all my serves and only double faulted twice in 3 sets after basically double faulting twice every game playing singles…plus cause they played a more conventional style of tennis I was finally able to get some rhythm and was waxing my groundstrokes…and to top it all off using the Go-Go Gadget Arms and my goalie reflexes I was playing a great game at the net…Maximo and I won the first 2 sets easily 6-2 and 6-2.…and he kept asking me why I wasn’t playing like this earlier. For the final set we switched teams and I had the opportunity to hand Maximo his first defeat of the day, and to mildly redeem myself for the earlier drubbing. I stepped up to another level and closed out the hardfought set on my serve 6-4, just as it started raining. Made my father proud :o)..and ended up 3-2 for the day

That evening – after such an awesome meal the night before with the steaks and fries, I offered to cook dinner for the family…and Sol the youngest daughter offered to help me out. So I went out with Sol and Maximo to do the food-shopping for the dinner and my meals for the next couple weeks, and they grabbed the family groceries. Had a little trouble finding basil, but finally secured it in the third store we went to. Got home and got to work making chicken parmesan, with a homemade garlic basil tomato sauce from scratch; and a mini cherry tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil salad. It took us a good 90 minutes to make dinner, but it was a lot of fun, and it turned out pretty damn good. Snapped a couple of pics (see below) as we sat down to eat. Felt really good to be able to return the favor for some of the delicious meals which they have fed to me. Still got the skillz from cooking Sunday night dinners at Theta Chi….jeaaaah