Okay,  here I am again with tennis-talk, i.e., Rafael Nadal talk. Postcards will be featured a little later.

As you already  know, I am a big Rafa fan. The US Open has just started in the Big Apple, and, being a Rafa-fan, I couldn't be more excited! He is the top-seed in the tournament with Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, and *gasp* Robin Soderling, completing the top five seeds. The rest of the top ten are Nikolay Davidenko, Tomas Berdych, Fernando Velasco, Andy Roddick, and David Ferrer. The draw, however, puts Rafa and Roger on the opposite sides and could potentially meet in the finals - now that would be epic!  On the top draw with Rafa is Andy Murray, David Nalbandian, David Ferrer and Alexandr Dolgopolov scares me! However, if you could recall the 2009 Australian Open where Rafa "marathoned" his matches and Roger merely waltzed through his, it actually gave Rafa the utmost advantage he needed to beat Roger in the finals! I hope this pattern will be replicated in the USO. We'll see.

Now, it seems that most of Rafa's matches are during the evenings, NY time. It's a bit advantageous on my part as it is early mornings here on my side of the planet. I wake up early anyway to prepare my husband's breakfast. The catch is that the USO is not broadcast in any of the cable channels and, to my horror, there is only one live streaming channel that is accessible in my location, for free. The streaming quality decreases after 7am. Like right now, I was up at 6am watching Velasco's match against the Italian Fognini, the streaming was smooth and the sound was perfect. By 7.30am, it has gone to worse. If only I have a Slingbox, this shouldn't be a problem. I should include it in my wishlist for Christmas - oh, Santa dearest, I'm definitely going to be nicer in the coming months :) And while Christmas is more than three months away, finding a quality live streaming to watch Rafa's games is a major, major problem for me!