Hooray for tracking! Hope you having a nice trip

50 min Ruck (30 lbs)  

I'm here to kick ass and sing?

Yeah, they kind of expect you to forego exploration and just do the main story for the first several hours. In a setting where the mere idea of exploration was pretty much the main selling point... 😅     Alright, here goes:   When my previous laptop died, 13-year-old me was in the last 16 of the junior Wimbledon tournament. My opponent was the same one I beat in the second round of the junior Roland Garros tournament, but since he's a serve-and-volley player, he was going to be a tougher opponent on the Wimbledon grass. The week hiatus hadn't hurt my form: I won pretty comfortably 6-2 6-3 to advance to the quarter finals.   There I met a Russian player who mopped the floor with me. I lost 6-1 6-2, but despite the result, I managed to put up a decent fight and I couldn't shake the feeling that on another surface I could have had him...   Cue my first summer tournament after turning 14: the B-grade junior tournament in Warsaw, Poland. After Wimbledon, I was the junior world #17, so for this tournament, I was one of the 8 top seeds. That meant that I got a 'bye' into the second round. In the third round I was to meet my Wimbledon nemesis again, and I was itching for revenge. I didn't get that revenge. My second round opponent was a tall, fast player with an insane topspin. On clay. Every ball ballooned so high that my short 14-year-old stature* regularly made me misjudge the ball's height after the bounce, and I went underneath the ball several times. I was brushed aside 6-0 6-1. It felt like a taste of things to come when I will face Nadal on clay in the future. So no advancement to the third round, and no rematch.   * The in-game height of my player is programmed in such a way that I'll only reach my "full" height of 183 cm when I turn 18. As a 14-year-old, I was just 157 cm in this game. This is not like in real life, as I had matured early and have actually been 183 cm tall since I was 14.   My next tournament was the junior US Open. I drew Czech player Jiri Vanek in the first round and if I got past him, I could still get that rematch against my Wimbledon vanquisher. Jiri Vanek was not an easy opponent. Despite winning 6-1 6-1, the actual match was a lot closer. My opponent just had the misfortune of hitting unforced errors or double faults at the most inopportune moments, which really decided the match. So, through to Round 2 at the US Open. My long awaited rematch??? No, my opponent lost his first-round match to a qualifier. A qualifier whose stats looked really intimidating. The first set was a marathon set that went back and forth and was decided in a tie-break. A tie-break I managed to win 7-3. The second set was similar, but the longer it went on, the more I tired my opponent. But he didn't give up and managed to break me late in the set to win 5-7 and force a decider. That decider turned into another slog that went back and forth until 6-6. At that point, I *thought* I had him in the ropes, since his stamina was just near depleted. Unfortunately for me, he managed to access another set of lungs or something, as he utterly demolished me in the final 2 games to win 6-8 in one of the longest (non-Grand Slam) matches I've ever played  in this game. The match lasted 2 hours and 56 minutes in-game (1 hour and 7 minutes real-time).   Next up: the A-grade junior tournament in Osaka, Japan. I drew a qualifier in the first round. My initial thought was "easy win", but his stats indicated he might be trouble. His forehand was *very* powerful, but also low on precision and consistency, so while he can hit the ball really hard with it, he's also prone to making unforced errors. His backhand was the inverse: relative "weak", but *very* precise and consistent. It quickly became apparent that this match would be a disaster. His backhand was still hard enough to be an issue, and he never took a lot of risks with his forehand to keep his unforced errors down. And he completely annihilated me. 6-1 6-0, and I only managed to score 11 points in the entire match...   Penultimate tournament of my first season: the A-grade clay tournament in Mexico City. I had dropped to the world #27 so was unseeded. My first-round opponent was... Justin Gimelstob who knocked me out of the Roland Garros quarter-finals.     The difference with Roland Garros was that I was 6 months older. I was hitting a tad harder, and I was running a not-insignificant deal faster. A lot of points that would have been winners back in Roland Garros, I managed to return this time around, and I put up a *much* bigger fight. So much in fact, that I got the upper hand on his serve a few times, could exploit his backhand error rate, and ultimately pulled the match my way 6-3 6-2. I kinda broke his resolve in the second set when I broke his serve to go 4-2 in front.   I'm now in the second round of the tournament, but facing another opponent whose stats look like he might play like a young Nadal. Wish me luck!       In unrelated news: I'm impressed with the cooling of my new laptop. Operational CPU temperature of 35°C during normal use (as opposed to the 55°C I got with my previous one), and a CPU and GPU temperature of 45-50°C while gaming, where my previous laptop regularly exceeded 75°C. Let's hope that this is an early indication of longevity. I haven't been very fortunate with gaming laptops yet - I could use one that exceeds a 4-year lifespan for once... 😅

How frustrating to be left to take care of the guests on your own and not knowing when they will be where!   I hope you can get ahead on things over the next couple days so that you can enjoy the 4th and the weekend.    

Yay for getting your new chair tomorrow!

Yay for improving at sleeping!   I have done that meditation where my brain wants to go into dream mode between each breath. It can be amusing to watch if you are tired enough not to be frustrated. I found that my brain tried a different dream every time. I work on watching what my brain is doing when moving into dream state in hopes of being able to replicate this when I am having trouble falling asleep.

Im with everyone else. If it isnt already illegal, it should be

Week 3 Trackers   🌊 Drink 64oz water daily 🫤 🍍 Track on LoseIt daily ✅ 🏄‍♀️ Move 60,000 steps weekly 😬 ⛱️ Update NF 2x weekly ✅     Apologies for the potato post quality, I'm on mobile. Numbers were not great this week, but the important thing is that tracking happened! We're at a cabin in rural Oklahoma for the first part of the week and I'm still not getting any movement in. We were hoping to go hiking, but it is just so hot here. I'll be playing catch up next week, but for now, signing off to relax and have fun. 🏕️