Friday Fashion Face-off: Best-Dressed Woman, 2021 French Open

What a strange French Open it has been on the women’s side. Would you have picked any of the semifinalists (Sakkari, Pavlyuchenkova, Krejcikova and Zidansek) for your fantasy league  team? Well, you might have picked Sakkari, but I didn’t. Fortunately for me, hardly anyone else did, either. I remain in a respectable eleventh place.

Will today’s slate of best-dressed nominees be as surprising as the semifinalists? Let’s find out…

Continue reading “Friday Fashion Face-off: Best-Dressed Woman, 2021 French Open”

Friday Fashion Face-off: Best-dressed Man, French Open 2021

I know you’re all itching to get to today’s nominees, but first let me update you on my fantasy league.

I’m currently in SIXTH place (out of 117) on the women’s side of the draw! That’s pretty damn good for someone who’s new to fantasy leagues. My picks: Sabalenka, Gauff, Collins, Swiatek, Jabeur, Pegula, Sorribes Tormo and Badosa. (The crossed-out names have been eliminated from the tournament.)

And on the men’s side, I’m 144th out of 166th. Wow. That’s embarrassing. But my four players still in contention are John Isner, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jannik Sinner and some guy named Nadal. I’m feeling pretty good about my chances of cracking the top 100 over the next week.

Now, aren’t you sorry you didn’t participate? Okay, I didn’t give you much notice. Maybe you’ll make a fantasy team for Wimbledon.

Without further ado, let’s get to the best-dressed men at the French Open. Ooh la la! Continue reading “Friday Fashion Face-off: Best-dressed Man, French Open 2021”

Fantasy Tennis Is Here!

The French Open starts tomorrow, and you probably think you’ll be all maxed out on tennis for the next two weeks, what with playing tennis and watching tennis and voting on Fashion Face-offs. But this year, there’s even more excitement to be had, thanks to a new (and free) fantasy tennis league!

That’s right. Fantasy tennis! Why should football fans have all the fun?

Here’s how it works. You get a $100,000 salary cap to spend on an eight-player team. Obviously, a player like Rafa’s going to cost you more than, say, Sam Querrey. Since you have a salary cap, you can’t just pick the top eight players. You’re going to have to pick some Sam Querreys. Continue reading “Fantasy Tennis Is Here!”

My Rafa Dream: A Professional Weighs In

This is too good not to share.

A friend and LYB reader forwarded my Rafa dream post to a fellow tennis player and psychologist, Beth Freed. In response, Beth offered up her professional analysis of the dream, starting with my half-assed remark in the comments section about flip-flops signifying an abrupt change of mind:

Continue reading “My Rafa Dream: A Professional Weighs In”

My Mysterious Rafa Dream

If you’ve been paying attention to this blog, you know I have a celebrity crush on Rafa. (Every marriage establishes its own set of rules. In mine, I’m allowed one celebrity crush. My husband isn’t allowed any.)

So maybe it isn’t surprising that Rafa appeared in my dream last week. Sounds hot, right? Alas, as with so much in middle age, it turned out to be a major disappointment.

Here’s what happened: A friend and I buy tickets to a tennis tournament. For some reason—covid, maybe?—few people are in attendance. We score courtside seats in rickety metal bleachers, looking right along the baseline where Rafa is playing.

A ball rolls to the side of the court nearest me. There isn’t a ball kid in sight, so I decide to be helpful. I stand up, and it’s here that we get our first good look at what I’m wearing: a floppy pink hat, shorts intended for a much younger person, and orange flip-flops. I climb down from the bleachers as gracefully as one can in flip-flops and a big hat and noisily flap my way over to the ball. I toss it to Rafa. It’s a terrible toss, much as it would be in real life. It’s way off the mark and dribbling along the ground. Continue reading “My Mysterious Rafa Dream”

Playing the Cyclical Game

Thursdays are match days, which means it’s time for another installment of the always-popular and long-running series, “How I Screwed Up Today and What Big Lesson I Learned.”

In this week’s episode, I was having yet another not very good day on court. Not horrible. Not the worst I’ve ever played. Just too many unforced errors caused by my very lazy feet. Is it possible my feet are aging faster than the rest of me? My brain says “Go!” and my feet are like, “But we just got here!”

Or, “We really need more notice than that.”

Or, “You go on ahead. We’ll catch up.”

(Spoiler alert. They never catch up.) Continue reading “Playing the Cyclical Game”

An Ode to Sore Losers

I hate losing.

I’m sure I’ve said elsewhere in this blog that I don’t care about winning or losing as long as I play well. That sounds good, and it has some truthiness to it. A loss certainly stings less when I’ve done my best to win.

But I still hate losing, and losing when I haven’t played well just plain sucks.

I suffered a loss like that on Thursday. Now it’s Saturday, and here I am still moping about it.

Does that make me a sore loser? Continue reading “An Ode to Sore Losers”

Friday Fashion Face-Off: Worst Dressed at the 2021 Australian Open

Sadly, but fortunately for me, there was no shortage of heinous outfits at this year’s Australian Open. In fact, I had such a surfeit of possible nominees that I had to leave off Serena Williams: Continue reading “Friday Fashion Face-Off: Worst Dressed at the 2021 Australian Open”

I’m Right (nyah nyah nyah)

Did you guys use to watch Modern Family? (Liars. You did so.) There was an episode that I think was late in the series, so you may have missed it. In it, Claire and Phil are in the grocery store. An attractive woman approaches Phil, and he turns toward her, in the process knocking Claire over. I think she may have taken out a product display on her way down.

Phil goes home and tells their family about Claire’s humiliating clumsiness. She argues that he pushed her, which he denies. For some reason, the entire family believes Phil’s account, which pisses Claire off.

She proceeds to track down the video from the store’s surveillance camera, which is now archived off site, and have it reformatted to work on her home DVD player. She gathers the family together and shows them the incontrovertible evidence.

AHA!

Instead of apologizing, they ask what the heck is wrong with her that she would go to that much trouble to prove she’s right.

I’m not sure where our sympathies are supposed to lie in this episode, but I’m totally Team Claire. Continue reading “I’m Right (nyah nyah nyah)”

Friday Fashion Face-off: Best-Dressed Woman, Australian Open 2021

It’s the second Friday of the Australian Open, time for the women to face off with their fashion.

Surprisingly, I had a tougher time finding three worthy nominees among the women than I did among the men. In fact, I’m not 100% sure all three of these nominees are worthy. No doubt you’ll let me know if one of these ladies shouldn’t be here. Continue reading “Friday Fashion Face-off: Best-Dressed Woman, Australian Open 2021”

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