What a lively Liveball outing at Mar Vista Park. I need about a billion practice backhand volleys to get in the habit of poaching instead of letting those dang balls whiz by over my shoulder. This was not a billion but it felt close to a hundred and I am all for incremental improvement, which I saw in the course of these two hours in my more consistently hitting volleys at people’s feet.

So that’s good, and I want to thank LVBL for setting it up and to friendly leader Taj in particular for feeding me and the rest of the gang a whole ton of balls and making sure we got good and sweaty.

My brand new as of tonight tennis friend Ernie had this really encouraging thing to say: “You’re wielding it like a wand up there. You’re putting the ball where you want it to go and placing it strategically.”

I was like, garshk. Did he say I was wielding my racquet like a wand? Yep. He did. And no one can ever take that away from me.

It’s true that I pre-complimented Ernie. I asked if he was watching the French Open because it sure looked like it. Seriously, he was getting to balls like someone who has been watching the pros and taking notes.

All the folks at this outing were hustling and happy. It was challenging because there was a whole family with little kids on the court across from us and their balls were coming over like a herd of round green fearless squirrels. At first I was tsk-tsking the breach of decorum but once it was made clear that there is no “ball on” in Liveball, we all just ignored them and continued hustling and making amazing gets.

Yeah it was a very up-with-people outing. I’m glad I went ‘cause it was a very down day what with wildfire smoke looming over the East Coast and the biggest dam in Ukraine bursting. I was seriously hiding under the covers most of the day but I committed to going out and playing Liveball because I had had plenty of doom and needed a good game and got it.