I want to fix the evil in this world. So when people do evil things to me I want to understand why. Of course such people generally do not want to speak to you. So you're left not understanding why, at least not for certain, not exactly. You can guess. Jealousy. Misjudgement. Perfect selfishness. Unable to face that they were wrong for some reason. Desperately trying to conceal something else... But you can't know for certain. And it can be a puzzle you just keep trying to understand. Trying and trying. And so you spend so much time thinking about this ugly thing. And some of that time is spent feeling a combination of amazement and moral outrage.

Sometimes you just have to accept that you will never really know why. You don't have adequate information to work with. And stop trying to solve the puzzle.

Lost in the finals 6-4, 6-3. To my nemesis Mr. Cooke. He's beaten me like 6 times in a row. I must have hit about 15 double faults and finally near the end moved a bit away from an eastern forehand serve grip and finally won a service game. I double faulted at my ad in my previous service game. Lots of close games. I guess it was a promising. The forehand and backhand weren't the problem really. Bad serving mainly. And should have come in to the net a bit more. Really want this one back. Think I could have had him.

Was up 30 love in the last game. And then....... he sliced it to my forehand and came in and what the hell? Didn't prepare to hit a drive until too late and then weakly hit a crap shot out. Then went for a bit much on a backhand, hit it long. Then weirdly hit a forehand drive on a short ball that I had been successfully slicing the whole match and hit it like 5 feet long.

Stupid mental errors and double faults. I could see double bageling this guy. But he's far better than anyone else in the league. He does mix it up. High / low. Fast / slow. Moves it around. So it's a bit tricky. But really I handled that stuff pretty well. Should have came in more.

Just need to play him more often. And get more consistent on the serve. Simply getting the damn thing in could have been the difference.

Not to mention I called about three balls in that were out. Lost a game that way.

In other news think I have something precancerous. Unhappy about that. A bit annoyed with wife as it's on the back of my head where I can't see and she allayed my fears for quite a while. Finally I must face that it's not getting better. So yet another health issue despite a far healthier lifestyle than the average person.

I lost my toughness also I must say. Haven't been trying to be a tough person at all for a long time now. Maybe I should bring some toughness back. I guess the living has been good enough that I haven't needed it. Maybe I should envision myself as a tough person even though the living has been kind of good. Because all in all I've been kind of unhappy. Unhappy about no longer having parents and how S ended our friendship without ever even speaking to us.

About S though, clearly she has mental issues. I knew that from the start. And what she did was quite weird. Doesn't make sense. Makes at least a little sense if she was thinking of me in an inappropriate way. But then, she manages to do that with everyone eventually.

I tried to help her and I failed. I keep trying to fix broken people and I keep failing.

Lost the other day 6-0, 6-2 to J Engle. He was excellent at retrieving balls and just pushing them back. I stubbornly stayed back and attempted to rip groundstrokes for winners and hit a bunch of unforced errors. Additionally I didn't even slice on the return of serve. And this was the first match I really tried to stick with the one hand topspin backhand throughout. To win I should have sliced far more and rushed the net a lot. This guy had trouble when he had to generate his own pace and did great when I hit really hard. But I just really didn't want to slice... In the future I'll try to do so though. Want to start hitting a lot more slice and drop shots and coming to the net I guess.

Today took thunderstick (strung at 60 with gamma tnt2), prostaff 6.1 28 (strung at 44? with gamma tnt2 tour) and prince longbody graphite classic (strung at 50 with natural gut) and compared them with the ball machine. Really not much meaningful difference actually. Maybe the natural gut is getting too old but it felt the least forgiving. And otherwise the main difference was I liked how the prostaff felt a bit better I think mainly just because it's strung so loose. The slice felt so much nicer.

As to topspin drives, if I try to put a lot of topspin on them, they can all potentially go wrong. Maybe a prostaff 6.0 85 strung tight would a bit less so.... But here not much difference.

But I am curious to try the thunderstick with a 44 or so tension. Thinking to cut out current strings and put in a nice synthetic.

Looking at dulcimers. Even considered selling my viola to fund buying a nice one. But can't really find any info online about a reasonable price for the viola, so I expect I wouldn't be able to sell it for what it's worth. Do have my eye on a HD that is priced extremely cheap at the moment... Probably should pick up a cheap zither/autoharp too. Still thinking about building my own instrument.

Finished The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett. It was OK. But I need a gritty well developed typical fantasy fiction world. Low tech pseudo England in the 14th century with magic, etc. Or write my own. The bad guys were too simplistic to be very interesting here. Wolves/men in suits that eat the world and don't really have personalities or much of anything really. Just not dark enough ultimately.

Also been watching Hannibal. Watched it and Game of Thrones in the last 5, 10 years... Liked season 2 much better but especially when Will was imprisoned. The idea of the hero stuck in a predicament.

Had really started eating a lot of chocolate and seemed a bit stressy and also having energy lows.. So trying to stop eating it. Tonight was really my first day without and I almost succumbed to an overwhelming urge. Literally stood and looked in the window at the chocolate chip cookies. Kept telling myself if I go home and have a beer the urge will pass.

Went to S's halloween thing last night. Her sister (B) was also there whom I play tennis with a few times each month. Her sister is not as smart. Something about her is really attractive. Her slutty german outfit really didn't hurt. Her brother and father are sort of neat too. Just something about them. S is the best though. My fellow INTJ.

B went with her brother and his friend and a few others outside where they were smoking weed. S said B didn't smoke any but considering she then got really sick and was vomiting I think she probably did. Anyway to think of her smoking it bothered me at the time a bit. Almost a lot. I don't really know crap about drugs but I walked by the porch screen door and it almost looked like something beyond weed... Don't think it was but strangely it bothered me to think of her being like that. S says she's all about following the crowd and oh well. B doesn't keep it real like S. Not entirely sure why she wants to play tennis with me.... S is kind of awesome. One of a kind. The only person from working at the hospital that is very interesting. (Maybe that one girl who plays the cello somewhat.)