Strange Strategy

Barb was very disappointed with her regular pickleball partner because her partner wouldn’t be able to play in a tournament because her partner’s husband wanted to go on a motorcycle ride for the day.  So Barb had to play with another partner who wasn’t as good.  In the finals, she was playing against a team of lobbers which is very unusual for pickleball but they were very good at it.  Usually the game is won by playing at the net.  So Barb told her partner they should not rush to the net they should stay back.  Staying back is very unusual for Barb but her strategy worked and they won gold.

All Night

I sleep in in the morning quite late.  Barb gets up early to play pickleball before it gets too hot in the day.  So she goes to bed early.  I have gotten in the habit of staying up late and listening to my Ottawa radio station, reading and working on the computer.

I turned off the radio and the lights and came to bed.  Before I got to sleep I thought I heard some noise in the living room but I didn’t do anything about it.

The next day when Barb woke up she found I had left the radio on all night.

Coming to Sebring

Out of the blue, Barb got a message from The Pickleball Guru asking when would be a good time to come to Sebring to play with her and Debbie.  He was going to be in Florida for a couple of weeks running a Boot Camp.  Barb thought this would be a great opportunity and was very honoured to have him come to play.  However, there are no good players here to play with.  So Barb called and emailed her friends from Okeechobee and invited them to come to Sebring to play with the Guru.

She was getting it all arranged, then the Guru said he couldn’t get away because of his kids and the Boot Camp.  Then she got another email from The Guru asking if her and Debbie could come to help out with the Boot Camp.  Barb thought that the whole thing about coming to Sebring was just a ploy to get some free help with his Boot Camp.  Her estimation of The Guru went down considerably.

Lowball

Our real estate agent said don’t shoot the messenger but he got an offer for our house in Barrhaven.  It was a real lowball offer.  We weren’t happy but I guess they thought we were desperate to sell because the house was empty and thought they could get a great deal.

We felt we had priced the house to sell at the price we listed at.  So we were not happy with the offer of $25,000 less than our asking price.  They said that the upgrades would cost them $40,000.  We didn’t believe the upgrades would cost that much but we countered by coming down a couple of thousand and removing all the conditions that they had put on the offer.

They countered by accepting the conditions coming off and came up $10,000.  We countered again by coming down a couple thousand again.  They seemed to really want the place.  So they countered one more time saying that we should just split the difference between our two positions.  They also brought the closing date up a month.  So we wouldn’t have to pay the expenses to carry the house for another month.

So we came to an agreement and sold our house in Barrhaven.  Barb posted a picture of the house on facebook and said there is no coming back now.  Barb’s friends congratulated us but we didn’t feel we should be congratulated.  We could have done much better taking the first offer we got before we even put the house up for sale.

Separating the Girls

Barb found that the tournament in Naples with the 5.0 players really separated the Girls from the other Girls.  Barb and her partner always win gold at the 4.5 level but I guess the Open 5.0 level is something completely different.  Barb and her partner lost every game but Barb thought it was a great experience and was happy whenever they could have a good rally.  A number of people came up to her and said they played really well.  Barb’s partner was disappointed but Barb was happy to get to play these top teams.  She realized that she would probably never be a 5.0 player because she will never be 20 years old again.

Great Outdoors

Barb went to Naples to visit her friend Paul from Kitchener and play in a tournament with him.  She was excited because she would be playing against some 5.0 players that she watches on the pickleball channel.

She and her partner were staying at the house that Paul rents in Naples.  It is a really big and fancy house.

One of the novelties of the house is that it has an outdoor shower.  Barb thought this is pretty neat and decided to have a shower outdoors after the tournament.  Even though it was outdoors it was very private.  So Barb wasn’t as daring as it would seem.

Sony MP3

One of Barb’s sewing friends asked me to come over to her house and install some music on her new iPod Mini.  So I put some music from my collection that I thought she would like on my memory stick and brought it over to her house.  It took a little figuring but in a few minutes I had all the music on her iPod.  In exchange, she gave me her collection of eBooks which included over 2000 recent books from popular authors.  I was very happy and Barb even bought me a Kindle reader on eBay to put the books on since she likes using my old eBook reader.  Now we have two eBook readers.

A couple of weeks later, I asked her husband if she liked the music that I put on her iPod because I thought maybe she wouldn’t like my music.  He said yes she did like it.  He said she often hooks her iPod into the television speakers and plays my music all over the house.  She told Barb that she listens to my music while she sews in her sewing room and sings out loud with her headphones on.  She said she doesn’t know how her husband stands it.

A couple of weeks later, Barb gets a message from this lady’s best friend asking me to put the same music on her iPod.  I said okay.  She comes over and I find out that it is not an iPod, it is a Sony MP3 player.  I thought okay this should be easy.  I load music on my MP3 player all the time.  So the first thing I do is move all of her music over to my computer.  Then I reformat her MP3 player using Windows Explorer.  Then I try to copy over my music but it doesn’t work.

I look up Sony MP3 players and find out that you need special software to load music on this type of MP3 player.  So I found that I can update the firmware on her MP3 player and I have to format the MP3 player using special software.  But I find that Sony is no longer distributing the software to load music.  So I search and search the web and I am up until 3 am and having no success.

I told her I would bring the MP3 over to her house at 4:30 the next day while I am on my walk.  I get up at 11 am the next day and Barb is at a pickleball tournament or she would have never allowed me to work on the problem all day long.  I eventually find some software to replace the Sony software but I can’t get it to work because it only works on a Windows XP operating system.

I try using my Windows XP emulators but it still doesn’t work.  Then I find it on my Linux distribution but that doesn’t work either.  Finally, I download the software in Linux using the Open Source provider and am able to run the software using the command line.  At 4 pm, I start loading music on her MP3 player and I have finished by 4:30 so that I can bring it over to her house during my walk like I said I would.  For my troubles, she gives me a little jar of home made Salsa.