Today is my last day at work. Or should I say "work." It'll be hard, not being able to play text twist and blog from a corporate cubicle but somehow I'll manage.

I played 8 hours of tennis this weekend. My body feels like it's been hit by a train. Except my insides are still...well, inside. We headed down to these tennis courts by my cousin's house in Matawan. For the 99% of of you reading this who don't know where Matawan is (my cousin's like "Hey!! I know where Matawan is!!") it's down in south Jersey somewhere. Of course, to people who live in Northern New Jersey, everything south of Newark is considered "South Jersey." Except Elizabeth I guess, and only because they have IKEA. So we're on these tennis courts and it seemed like an interesting cast of characters showed up to play as well. In the far court there was this group of girls who kept asking random people to pass their balls to them. When one of them finally went to pick up one of their balls, I told her "I know you guys are beginners but it's against court etiquette to ask other people to pass balls that are on an empty court to you." She was highly offended. Apparently they weren't beginners, they just sucked. They were soon replaced by a group of what I imagine The Township of Matawan "hoodlums" look like. You know, a group of wannabe Eminems who you can tell come from relatively affluent families, no matter how much they try to hide it. They seemed like nice guys though. Picked up all their own balls. That's key. In the far court on the other side of the fence, a guy and a girl showed up who were obviously on a third or so date, judging by their body language. They were still in the flirtation stage, and past the whole dinner-and-a-movie stage, but not yet in the stay-at-home-with-a-rental stage. They paid two dollars an hour to talk to each other at the net, in between really brief yet bad rallies. I think he lost brownie points on the whole tennis excursion thing though because he kept turning his head in mid-conversation to watch me and George trying to blow each other off the court. I have a hard, flat forehand and backhand and George has a slice backhand and topspin forehand so it's always interesting when we're on court and NOT SORE. Not being sore is key. On the court to my right was a 12-year-old boy and a woman maybe old enough to be his mother but I don't think she was. She seemed more like an ill-favored aunt to me. She kept calling out instructions to the poor boy left and right, but they were completely wrong instructions. I wanted to walk over and tell her she was ruining any chance the boy had to actually play the sport well, but I somehow managed to hold my tongue. Even when she told him the "proper way to hit a forehand" and her limp-wristed follow-through had the head of the racket over by her elbow somewhere. Poor guy. Guess who's not making the team.

Okay, gotta go log off and figure out what I'm doing tonight for the first of many long-awaited Monday Night Footballs.

By the way, I HATE PETE SAMPRAS!!! ("Riss.... how can you claim to be a fan of the sport yet hate its greatest player ever??") I freely admit my hatred is personal. Watching him grow up in my hometown of L.A. he's always been a snot. I'm not hating on his cockiness per se. There's nothing wrong with a little cockiness if you can back your shit up and he can. But it's possible to be cocky without being a snot and he fails completely. Michael Jordan is cocky (in a way usually only visible to other players). Pete Sampras is a snot. I've avoided all his post-game quotes because I'm willing to bet money that he said something that will instantaneously piss me off. And don't you people start posting them up here either.