Tennis, Cooking, and Scanning

Tennis, Cooking, and Scanning…that’s about all I have done this weekend. Add doing load after load of laundry to the list and that would about sum it up.

I don’t think that I have mentioned that I rolled my ankle while running in the woods and ended up with a pretty bad sprain, my first ever. It is not unusual for me to step on something and for my ankle to turn, but usually I am fine. I am lucky to have really strong ankles. The Friday that this happened was the super cold day where all of the schools were closed. Yippee! School was closed! So I headed out to run. The sprain happened on the day that I was on tv. Remember that embarrassing event? I stepped on a frozen rut left by a mountain biker and over my ankle went. I let out a bloody murder scream when my ankle bone hit the ground. I can be pretty dramatic in the woods and I will admit that I scream from time to time (usually it is a snake that makes me scream). It took running buddy a while to realize that this wasn’t a normal ankle turn. My scream or maybe the numerous bad words that flowed off my tongue should have clued him in. We were three miles out, so I had to run three miles back on my sore ankle. It never bruised, but it has been swollen and sore for a week now.

I went on with my normal weekend plans, ankle be da#*ed. I wasn’t about to let it ruin my fun. Friday night we had a tennis practice for our 6.0 team. Ladies played on one court and men on the other. After playing two sets, we played a set of mixed doubles. It was great fun and good practice. We socialized afterwards and did a lot of laughing. Ankle was fine.

Saturday morning I ran and then went to a tennis clinic. My ankle was MAD when I finished tennis. I babied it for a while with some ice and then I told it to grow up and stop complaining because I had more tennis to play.

Saturday night we had a tennis birthday party to attend for our friend Bill. He is a very young 64. Happy Birthday to Bill!

Here’s the birthday boy playing with his wife. They are newlyweds!

These two realized that tennis is a lot more fun after you’ve consumed a beer (or more):

My ankle threw a fit on the court and told me to sit down and drink some wine, so I listened.

Elsie partnered up with Mr. SP for the rest of the night.

A good time was had by all!

In between my tennis clinic and the evening tennis party, I scanned slides into our computer. When my grandmother moved out of her home to a retirement village, I was given all of her slides. Some of the slides are of family, but most are of flower arrangements. Granny was in the garden club and was a judge for flower shows. I’ve been wanting to go through her slides for years now and finally I am doing it. Mr. SP bought a slide scanner for me so that I can store the pictures on our computer. I’ll be able to enjoy them this way and share them with other family members.

Here is one of Granny’s arrangements from Christmas 1969. Don’t you love how the dried plant looks like a star?

Here I am with my daddy.

This was taken at my grandmother’s house. Doesn’t my mom look cute?

It was time for more tennis on Sunday. My ankle was well behaved and let me play a very hard match against the most hated lady tennis player in our town. She is very nasty on the court and is a known cheater. My partner and I won the first set and were losing in the second set when time was called. We played a ten point tie breaker and lost. I HATE to lose!! I so badly wanted to beat this woman. Every time she or her partner made a good shot, we would say “good shot”. Or if we missed their serve, we would say “good serve”. This bitty didn’t say one nice thing the whole match. She only cheered when one of us messed up. Grrr… I hope I beat her next time.

I concluded my weekend by cooking some yummy things for us to eat this week. Our schedules are so busy during the week that I’ve found that it is much easier to make a few things on Sunday to eat all week.

I made Three Cheese Pasta Bake:

I will post the recipe, if anyone is interested. This is a super yummy comfort food dish.
I made casserole to use up two bags of frozen broccoli, cauliflower, carrot that have been in my freezer for a while. It doesn’t look too appetizing here. Hopefully if will taste better than it looks.

I made Rachael Ray’s Buffalo Chicken Chili with Blue Cheese-Corn Mug Toppers for dinner tonight. I used ground turkey instead of chicken and added some chile powder to the recipe. The blue cheese-corn mug toppers make this chili extra scrumpcious. I can’t find the recipe on Foodtv to share, but I’ll gladly type it if anyone thinks that they would like to make this recipe. I don’t have a picture of this dish to share.

The weather man said the “S” word when I watch while cooking this evening. I love it when he says the “S” word! I’m hoping that I may get a two hour late day or maybe even a snow day this week. I’ve got my fingers crossed!

Have a good week!