Retreat

Off to a work retreat this week in Germany. It's been full of hijinx so far. First, I somehow ended up on a flight a day too early with the Big Boss. Then two taxis came to pick us up, so I went in one and he went in the other (these are one hour taxi rides, by the way). Then I ended up in a pretty odd hotel-apartment away from the conference venue. It was up the hill, which was a pain for me because I pulled my right hamstring on Monday, and it was of course raining. The room was in a building away from the main hotel, and shared with what appeared to be privately owned apartments for pensioners! There was no soap to be found in the room. Since I did not have anything scheduled, I settled down to watch the last set of the Murray Djokovic match which included lots of panning to Sir Sean Connery in between points. I realized that in all my years of playing tennis, I never bothered to figure out the origins of the bizarre scoring, so I wrote down a note to Google it. Why not just Google it then? No internet in the room. Then it was back to the venue for dinner, then back up the hill in the rain. Did I mention that the hotel room smelled of cucumbers? Could be worse, I suppose.


n.b. According to The Internet, the origin of Tennis scoring is not definitively known, but might have something to do with a clock face --15 being 1/4 of the way to "full". 30 being halfway, 40 uh... I guess that one doesn't fit. "Deuce" from "Deux", as in you need two points to win and "Love" from "l'oeuf": an egg, which looks like '0'. I'm not sure I am convinced.