Saturday morning. I should have bacon and eggs. I should be sitting down to tackle the weekend crossword puzzle. I should have a second cup of coffee.

A few days ago, enroute, I took a look at tee times and rates at some of the golf courses in the Gold Canyon area. I noticed that there was a golf clinic scheduled for today — more than 4 hours of instruction to a small group by the resident golf-school instructor focussing on the golf swing, especially the long irons, hybrids, and drivers. I signed up. So after a quick fruit and yogurt and only one cup of coffee (although it was a GOOD cup of coffee — my grinder, my aeropress coffee maker, and my package of coffee beans made the trip here with me), I drove down to the practice tees at Mountain Brook Golf Course. For the next five or six hours I listened to Maria P. critique our swings and encourage us to ‘swing through the ball’. I kept wondering why we were being critiqued but not really given any ‘lesson’ on how to improve. But Maria promised she would start ‘teaching’ once she had taken a short video of each of us with her iPhone.

We stopped for a sandwich lunch at the clubhouse and then returned to the range and kept swinging our clubs. At one point Maria offered that I should try one of HER clubs — a Ping seven-iron with a longer than average shaft (she was also a professional club-fitter and would happily have measured me up and sold me a set of custom clubs!) I was amazed at how far my first swing at a ball flew. However when I tried to repeat the shot, my (longer) club dug into the ground and I injured my hand. That made the rest of the afternoon less enjoyable, and I was actually a bit concerned that I might have sprained my right hand and wouldn’t be able to go golfing with Robert and Arlene for the next couple of days. Finally, in the last hour of our lesson, Maria took out a big poster with clock-like numbers arranged around a couple of parallel lines. Maria gave a little talk about the importance of the 45 degree angle at the 2 o’clock and 7 o’clock positions. Hmmm.. I don’t really get it. So why are you showing us this at the end of the day, when we really don’t even have time to PRACTICE this and for you to watch us practice this? At the conclusion of the clinic I was disappointed with how little I had learned. I came away frustrated and with a sore hand to boot!

Oh well, I tried. I went back to my townhouse. The house was pretty good — I felt confident that my kids will enjoy it when they come at the end of the week. It will suit us just fine. But after going through it, there were some things that it lacked. Most of the light bulbs were the ‘new’ fluorescent energy efficient kind — the kind that start up very dim, and gradually get brighter. And only two of the four in the kitchen worked at all! I can’t tolerate burned-out light bulbs! So I made a shopping list and I headed into town to the nearest Walmart. 

Here are some of the photos of my rented townhouse (‘borrowed’ from a realtor’s online listing)

I found most of the things on my list and then stopped at a Chinese take-out on the way home. I unpacked and replaced bulbs and filled up soap dispensers and rearranged dishes and washed all the cutlery and mugs and generally cleaned and fixed things. Then I sat down and watched a couple of interesting documentaries on Netflix (via my AppleTV which I brought from home and hooked up to the living-room TV) before going to bed.