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I posted up a new album of photos from Kim’s visit here and a long-overdue trip to California.

New photo albums from my recent escapades:

Grandma’s 80th birthday party and Brian’s graduation
CNI fundraiser in DC

As a somewhat productive member of our capitalist society, today I must do my part in contributing to the free market by generating negative publicity for a seemingly nice little tennis shop in Tucson called Match Point Tennis Shop. Though my site has few readers and those it does have probably don’t play tennis and/or live in Tucson, it is my hope that at least one person will Google for tennis shops in Tucson or Match Point Tennis or Tucson Tennis and somehow read this and not shop there. [end shameless search term planting]

Here’s my story. A few weeks ago, I had a somewhat old tennis racket restrung so I could start playing again. Match Point is the most convenient non-chain store for me, and usually I like the little guys. I even let the owner upsell me on nicer strings. Then the racket came with me to DC, where the strings broke after hitting — softly — for about thirty minutes. Fine, I thought, we had someplace to be anyway, and I’m sure they’ll restring it for free. I never break strings that fast. Nobody does.

So, today I went back to the store, where the owner defensively declared that, based on where the strings broke (near the top), it was clearly because I wasn’t hitting cleanly, and there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with the strings or the stringing job. He proceeded to lecture me condescendingly about how strings work, suggesting that strings will “always break” if the ball hits where it did. Okay. Sure. I mishit the ball. I admitted that. But guess what? I’m pretty sure I’ve done that before. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that every time I play tennis, I mishit a ball at least once. And I certainly don’t break my strings every time I play. Strings break rarely. And when they do break, it’s when I’m playing a lot, slicing a lot, and not even necessarily mishitting. There is no place you can hit a ball that will make the strings break every time.

He didn’t buy it. He absolutely refused to admit that his stringing job could have had any remote effect on the untimely demise of the strings. And he was perfectly willing to argue with a customer he could have made quite satisfied by accepting responsibility and blowing $20 on a restringing, regardless of whose fault it was. What sensible business person wouldn’t pay $20 to keep a customer? (Okay, okay, that’s ironic, coming from someone whose employer won’t pay for pens for employees, but that’s no gauge of good business sense.) Our argument concluded with me asking if I needed to find someone else to string my rackets who would actually stand behind his work, to which he replied, snarkily, “I guess you do.” So I made it clear that he had lost my business and left.

Now it’s my duty to make sure he loses more business than just mine, which, admittedly, was not enough to keep him in business anyway. Considering his general service attitude and the fact that I’ve never actually seen another customer in the store, I don’t expect him to be in business for very long anyway.

This story has a happy ending, though. I swung by Sports Authority to have the racket restrung there, and they had a ridiculous deal on a racket I considered buying a few years ago ($120 off retail!). They string for free if you buy a new racket, so it was actually only slightly more expensive to buy a completely new racket than to restring the old one. And I bet the strings will last longer than half an hour.

Katie and I went to the Desert Museum before seeing Rent. I posted an album of pictures from the day (and night).

It snowed last night. Before you make fun of us: this is rare enough that it made MSNBC’s front page, though I’m pretty sure their snowman picture is fake and the school officials who closed schools were being a tad overzealous. Okay, a lot overzealous. Anyway, here are some pictures of the juxtaposition of cacti and ice (and meat):

Snow in Tucson

I’m back, and I’ve finally set up Gallery. Here are three weeks of my life in photos:

Boulder
New York
Washington, D.C.

Enjoy!