As Far As You Know

It's Groundhog Day today--also the setting of one of my favorite movies (hence Bill Murray's pic above)--and supposedly spring is NOT around the corner. But if January is typical of the winter we are having, I can suffer through a few more weeks of 50+ degree weather!

It's Winter Long Weekend at school, so I am heading south the Florida for what I hope will be a few days of sunshine!

Spent much of today taking in tennis at the Delray Beach ATP event, nor far from where my parents are spending the winter. My dad and I saw Vince Spadea (pictured serving, above) and Tommy Haas play and watched Andre Agassi on the practice court.

This one is even better than the one I linked to the other day. Click here.

I have been delighted to play with Google Earth for Mac OS X the past week or so. Stellarium is the opposite of Google Earth, in that the view is up and out! Download the application and see for yourself.

This foreign TV commercial spoofs John McEnroe's famous rant at 1981 Wimbledon.

The film Match Point is pretty enjoyable. I saw it this afternoon in the middle of a rainstorm. It didn't really feel like a Woody Allen movie at all. But it was full of interesting ideas, good acting, terrific production values, humor, dramatic tension, and suspense.

I drove down to Fort Lauderdale this morning to check out the exhibition at the city's art museum, "Tutanhkamen and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs." Maybe it was seeing Steve Martin host Saturday Night Live last night, but the whole time I was in the museum, I couldn't get his "King Tut" song (from a late 1970s SNL) out of my head as I meandered around all the antiquities.

I was pleasantly surprise to learn I could find the song as a download on iTunes.

I rented a car from Enterprise on this visit to Florida. The clerk offered me a free upgrade to a two-seater convertible. Unfortunately, the weather has been alternately overcast, rainy, or cool since I arrived. It has been fun to lower the top, though, and two different women commented on the vehicle Friday and today while I was driving it. It would be totally impractical for me to own a car like this, but it's been fun to tool around in for a few days.

Off to the airport soon.

Woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. In most years, I'd be sick of snow by February, but given the mild conditions we've had this year a couple of feet is kind of fun now.

I received an email alert about special fares to London Heathrow right through peak season, so I was able to book a round trip flight from Newark for $401 for June--about half of what I paid the same time last year! This was a steal.

The Choate tennis tour of China begins three weeks from today!

John McEnroe is back, winning a first-round doubles match in an ATP event in California with partner Jonas Bjorkman. The win was completed hours before Mac's 47th birthday.

Winter term classes have ended, the squash season wrapped up a few hours ago, and I am ready for spring! I am officially sick of cold weather, snow, and ice. Though there are exams to be given and graded and teacher comments to be written, spring break is tantalizingly close now. If only the weather would go back to what we had in January!

This year was my first time grading the English department's proficiency test for 11th graders. The kids were given three hours yesterday afternoon to read a short story and write a critical essay in response to a question. Each exam was read by at least two department members this morning. We gathered at 8:30am and over the next three hours I read and graded 78 (!) exams. Admittedly, there was no expectation one had to mark the papers; in fact, we weren't allowed to, as it might influence the next reader. But I flew through those puppies.

Having been away over the weekend, I caught the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, "Downloaded," on my ReplayTV a few days after it aired; this may well have been the best one yet. Because the show falls in the science fiction genre (and because of the cheesy 1970s incarnation) a lot of potential viewers probably dismiss this show without having seen a single episode. But it's one of the best conceived and best written shows on television.