Catching up is hard to do

So we basically haven't posted anything for 9 months and wanted to use this blog as a documentary for ourselves, as much as anyone, about how things are going with us.

We left off in September 2009 but that post was mostly about Bea, because we didn't have very many posts that summer, and not as much about me and Melissa, and we count too. So we're going to go back and post for each month we've missed and will add some pictures after the text is done.

I'm going to start with a September paraphrase beginning with our first big event - U.S. Open (tennis) in New York City. Mid-summer while watching either the French Open or Wimbledon both Melissa and I both realized we were thinking it would be fun to sneak off for a weekend ourselves to watch the U.S. Open and knock off grand slam #2 (we saw the French open before Bea was born).

Off we went to NYC. We staged it well getting general admission passes to the Friday session (end of the first week). Thus we were able to go see all of the games at all of the courts with the exception of the three or four large courts that you needed specific tickets for those venues. This worked great in that there was a lot of good action on the outer courts and we stayed until they closed down the outer courts around 10-11 pm.

We decided to buy tickets to Arthur Ashe (the largest tennis stadium in the world) for the Monday session as the outer courts weren't doing well. We ended up having to pay quite a bit of money to scalp tickets because people were expecting some really good players during the night session on Monday. I've thought some of my favorite tennis matches I've ever seen were the late (midnight or later) sessions at Athur Ashe. Connor, Borg, Agassi, Sampras, McEnroe all had phenomenal night matches with two or three ranking as some of the best tennis matches ever in my opinion. Well there were a ton of upsets and night session we paid so much for had (relatively) no-namers, and Federer was playing in the day session, so obviously we dropped even bigger bucks to Arthur Ashe for the day session on Monday.

Melissa really wanted to see Federer play at some point, so we did. In actuality I thought the night tennis was much more fun. The last match started at 10 pm and the two players had played each other about 5 times with all of the matches around 4 hours so I was pumped and ready for a late night game (even though we had been watching tennis since about 10 am). Well the match was a route and the match was over at midnight. The winner apologized a lot to the crowd because everyone was excited for a long match. He couldn't get his tennis coach to play, so invited McEnroe (who was announcing the game on tv) to come down and play. John threw down his headset, tie and jacket and ran out of the booth. He showed up with a pair of tennis shoes on but still in his dress shirt and pants. John immediately went to serve (with no practice) and had a great serve and took the net in about 3 strides so quickly that he was at the net for the return and put the return away for a winner. That was nuts and the crowd went ever more nuts. They made a couple of more volleys before talking to the crowd and then we were all sent home. To make it even more fun, we saw an attendent handing our "rush seats" about 1/2 way through the last match and I ran over to grab a couple. They basically allowed us to go from the top deck so courtside where it was really hard to watch because they were hitting it so fast it was hard to turn your neck and see if the ball was in or out.

We spent two more days (Saturday and Sunday) in the city. The highlight for me was probably taking the Ferry to Ellis island and the whole Ellis island tour. The second highlight was probably going to Brooklyn and walking over the Brooklyn bridge back. We had a few dinners out and met up with some friends of Melissa and walked through Little Italy with them. I walked TriBeca, Soho and a few of the neighborhoolds around them. I went to the Met Insitutue of Art and walked through Central Park while Melissa took a nap. NYC is a nice city, but I think both of us thought 5 nights and 4 days was enough. It's a different lifestyle that to me seems like a much nicer place to visit then stay.