today was a tennis day, which means i set an alarm for 6:40 am last night before i fell asleep. i woke up and got dressed and ate an apple and walked across the street to the courts and was delighted to see they had replaced the piece of rope suspended across the two sides of the net with an actual tennis net overnight (phase 4, baby! we can go to the zoo and also the city splurged for a real tennis net for us plebes). as i waited for kate and tyler to roll up, a woman biked over to me. “don’t worry, i won’t get close to you,” she told me, a person who had done nothing to indicate concern about a masked blonde woman on a bike who seemed very interested in the state of the tennis nets at our neighborhood court. Tennis Karen was, like me, incredulous that they had finally replaced the rope with an actual net. “do you come here often?” she asked me. “i live here,” i replied, which is pretty much true—you can see my building from the courts. standing six feet apart, we marveled at the net, and also looked disdainfully at the other side of the court, where a paltry yellow strip of plastic remained suspended with twine between the two end posts, forming a makeshift net. “nets only cost $100!” she scoffed. “unbelievable.” she kept repeating this fact over and over to me.