I've been reading this book,"Pete Sampras: A Champion's Mind", for some very obvious reasons: Pete Sampras is the best American to ever play the sport of tennis. I am American and I love tennis. Therefore, Pete Sampras is someone who can't be beat when it comes to tennis heroes of mine. It's been fun to read him talk about playing his big rival, Andre Agassi, and some of the matches I remember watching in jr high/high school when tennis was such a big part of my life. Here are some excerpts I especially like:
"It's true what they say about winning being a habit. Once you open that Pandora's box of doubt, all kinds of nasty things come flying out. I can't stress how important it is to train yourself to seek clarity at moments of doubt. You have t stay calm and have complete faith in your abilities. It takes a strong mind."
"Everybody has a place in this world, and spends a good part of his mature life carving ot his niche--the zone where he is comfortable...I decided that I had this great talent and I wasn't taking care of it. I had the Gift, and I was turning away from it, at least on some of the very occasions when it was maybe the only thing that could pull me through. It wasn't going to be good enough for me to just be in the mix; it would nag and wearat me. I realized that the game as not about getting somewhere, but staying somewhere. Some of us, we get there and we don't want to let it go. We don't want to see some other guy take it. And that's ultimately what makes you a warrior--a fully formed, mature competitor."
"All the while the knowledge pressed in on me: the job doesn't ed when you get to the final; in some ways, that's just the beginnin. Your tournament is like a sand castle. You lose the fnal and it's like the big wave came and,in seconds, washed away all that you had built. I remembered my dad and that acid comment he made in Louisiana: 'Look, that reporter is talking to Mal now.'"
"In tennis, you always have two opponents out there--the other guy and yourself. You can't worry too much about the other guy, other than dealing with the shots he sends your way. The most important guy you have to eat is yourself--the part of you that's prone to doubt, fear, hesitation, and the impulse to give up. If you're too busy struggling with yourself, like some players, you can hardly be expected to beat your opponent."
"When I evaluate how I was able to win so many matches over so many years, a few thing pop up as keys to the accomplishment...Throughout my career, whenever I made a critical mistake, I just wiped it off the hard drive. I don't really know how I developed that ability to move on instead of dwell upon, but I had it...If you train yourself not to let things get to you, they don't--although you probably need to be predisposed that way for the training to work fully...Maybe I'm just built a little differently,but a big part of my mentality and ultimately, success, was making a conscious decision not to lose it in front of others."
"The road was getting awfully bumpy for me...People really don't care about you that much; basically, you're only as good as yor last win; people often love what you do, while you can do it, but there's nothing really personal about it; many people are interested in you for what you can do for them, not necessarily because of who you are, or even how great you are; you may do special things, but you're nothing special; nobody in tennis is given a free ride based on past performance. Some of those truisms are fair and all of them are realistic. But tennis players are selfish and disinclined to see things objectively."
It was really interesting to hear from an insider how the media and the "public" played a part in a tennis player's life. One of the big Nike commercials in '95 was fun to go back and look at. They won't allow you to embed it so here's the link if you're interested:
I miss the days of Sampras and Agassi. It's too bad some good things have to change. I love these pictures--especially the "early years" one. Why do they both look so upset? And why did Agassi ever think it was okay to wear neon green biker shorts?
A little over a week ago, when I woke up and stepped out of bed I immediately felt a pain in my right foot. Right on the top where you foot meets your leg and it bends. It just felt like my muscle had been stretched the wrong way and for the first few steps it was really bad but it started to feel a little bit better as the morning went on. I figured it would go away in a couple of days. Well a few days ago, I started to notice it was swollen in that area. And it's very sensitive to touch. It doesn't necessarily hurt when weight it put on it, but when I move it around or touch it at all. I have no idea what it is, although I'm nearly certain it has to do with muscle, not bone. I really don't want to go get it looked at but I'm wondering if I should? I've stopped exercising entirely and I'm really starting to feel lowsy about the whole thing. Any suggestions?
Is broccoli still healthy if you drench it in ranch? Does the ranch negate any health benefits of the broccoli? I need to know. I bought a huge bag of broccoli at Costco in hopes it would force me to eat more. I definitely have eaten more but the increase in Ranch dressing ingestion since then has risen dramatically. What do you think? Am I better off eating broccoli if it means more Ranch? I can't quite handle biting into raw broccoli without masking the flavor. Boiling it I hear makes it lose some of the nutritional value. Broiling it makes it dryer than dry. Does anyone have a good way of making broccoli taste good?
The Simpers invited us to their celebration of Target coming to South Anchorage tonight. It's maybe a 3 minute drive from our apartment and I've been there probably 5-6 times already in about 2 weeks since it's opened. It's on the way to nearly everywhere so it's the perfect place to drop by for the one item I forgot or whatever it is I need. So it really is a fantastic thing to celebrate. They organized a scavenger hunt for each team to go do in the store itself. Clues led to different items you can find there and you had to take a picture with everyone on your team as evidence you found each one. We left for that portion of the party, unfortunately, but we were leaving for good reason...
Most of the time when I think of cool fog pictures I think of the Golden Gate bridge, which is funny because when I looked on google images there were more fog pictures of that bridge than any other. 
One morning not too long ago we were driving from seminary to Thy's work and I looked over through the mist and in the midst of some pine trees was a mom and baby moose. Would've made a killer picture, right? So sad I didn't have my camera. It was awesome. Here's the best fog picture I could come up with from my own camera this morning. I'll try to get some better ones in the future. These are some trees outside our apartment at the end of the street.
It was more like we were whale 
We did everything that a devoted whale spotter would do. We did research, tried a variety of locations, whale calls, and whale dances. We even used binoculars. This is what we found:
And actually, the whales we were looking for weren't supposed to be black, but a light grey:
We didn't either. So we've decided we'll just have to try another day. We did go back to our special ocean viewpoint to whale spot, which was nice in and of itself. I kept thinking how cool it would be if a beluga popped his head up and waved his fin at us.
But all was not lost. It was a beautiful day outside. High 40's/Low 50's with hardly a cloud in the sky. So it was very convenient that Matthias had the day off for one of the fleeting fall days.
Did anyone else feel disappointed?
On the way back, we stopped off at Mirror Lake:
