Jan. 27, 2014

I set the PVR to record the men’s final of the Australian Open on Saturday night.  As I woke early on Sunday morning, I watched it while I ate breakfast and waited for Miriam to pick me up to go skiing.  The finalists were Stan Wawrinka and Raphael Nadal.  Wawrinka is 28 and, as usual, he was the underdog.  He’s never been able to break through the top three and win a Masters.  I was hoping for him, partly because of that and also because although he’s rather unfortunate looking, he has sparkling eyes and I usually like his comments about the games.   He had beaten Novak Djokovic to get to the final, so it seemed that this might be his moment.  I have noticed that he has quite a bit of writing tattooed on his forearm but never been able to read it.  Because I was watching the game on the PVR this time I could stop the frame at a moment early in the play when they focused on that arm.  Now I know what it says.  It’s a quotation from a work by the Irish writer, Samuel Beckett, one of his later prose works, Worstward Ho, that I read at university and found baffling.  I only picked up bits of it and didn’t remember this quotation, but it seems an for Wawrinka:

Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter.

Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.

And this time he won.

I don’t know if I passed or failed the stress test.  The doctor seemed unclear himself.  He kept saying as I trudged on and the treadmill sped up, “Would you keep going now?” And I would say, “Yes.”  Finally, he stopped it and said, “ You don’t complain, do you.”  He had seen something strange on the graph, but nothing was clear, so he decided I would need another type of two-day test, which I will have on Feb. 12 and 13^th.   In the mean time I have slowed my exercise routine.  I now snowshoe with the University Women’s Club rather than the ‘grinders’ in the VOC, and I ski with either Miriam or John, Mo’s husband.  The former is very athletic but in the early stages of Parkinson’s, and the latter is a gentleman who keeps to my pace.  Miriam and I sometimes joke that we’re getting to the stage where we’re only good for parts; together we make one good skier with her heart and my left leg and arm. 

I’ve just had a good chat with Barbara Clegg about her heart problems and know that whatever I’m going through is early stages and very manageable.  She had a more serious situation years ago and by looking into it and getting the necessary work done, she has carried on very well.  And I talked with Bert and Peg today about the miracles that have been worked on Jules’ heart.  Medicine has made great advances in that area.

Hoar frost on a tree at the side of the snow shoe track

Bobcat tracks beside the cross country trail at Silver Star.  The set of four closest to the trail clearly showed how it pulled up its back paws before bounding across the groomed track