Three Beautiful Things 09/08/2021:Cleaning the Kitchen, Djokovic Triumphs, Covers on Deep Tracks

1. The kitchen surfaces look better. The inside of the refrigerator is cleaner. Most of the counters are spiffed up. I have things packed up to go to the basement. The stovetop is clean and so is the refrigerator's outer surface. I have some counter cleaning left and the kitchen floor.

Then I'll move on to the basement, living room, bathroom, and bedrooms.

I'm trying to make the house as clean as possible for Debbie's return.

2. I broke away from house cleaning around six o'clock and watched Novak Djokovic methodically and surgically wear down Matteo Berrettini in four sets. In a grueling first set that lasted an hour and seventeen minutes, Berrettini broke Djokovic's service in the set's 11th game and won the set 7-5, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Two factors made it so: first, Berrettini expended a lot of mental and physical energy winning the set. Djokovic is in exquisite physical condition and expends energy efficiently. Losing the first set actually began the match-long process of Djokovic wearing Berrettini out. Second, as he always seems to do, Djokovic absorbed information about his opponent in the first set, seemed to let what he learned sink in at the break between sets, and translated what he learned into how he played Berrettini for the rest of the match, resulting in his 5-7, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 victory -- in fact, I'd say that after the first set it was a crushing victory, dominant one. Djokovic's precision and relentless return of shot after shot by Berrettini demoralized his opponent. Djokovic won this match both physically and emotionally. 

Now, on Friday, Djokovic's faces the 2021 Olympic gold medalist, the player who defeated him in the semis in Tokyo, Alexander Zverev. Zverev has won his last 16 matches and so brings a ton of momentum and confidence into this standoff with Djokovic. 

3. It's been about nine years since we last subscribed to SiriusXm radio and I've enjoyed getting listening to their channel, Deep Cuts, again. On occasion,  Deep Cuts goes "undercover" and the channel's hosts play songs that other than the original artists have covered. I wish I'd written down some of the cover tunes I heard today -- I remember they were songs by Bob Dylan, JJ Cale, Joni Mitchell and others and the covers that intrigued me most were performed by folk rock groups -- I'm not sure I heard any Fairport Convention today, but I heard Renaissance and others that gave familiar songs a very unfamiliar sound.