Remember regular, ‘ordinary’ days?

Paperwork … always paperwork.

So even though it was a regularly scheduled physical — pending the results of the standard bloodwork one morning next week, I’m healthy, although because of a change in age guidelines my doctor recommended something that starts with “colon” and ends with “-oscopy” — I was filling out paperwork.

OK, it was a minor annoyance at worst, but as I was checking to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I noticed on one of the forms I had written the right date … but the year as 2019.

Soccer in the rain

The result was pretty much a foregone conclusion, but for those interested in the details — the U.S. women’s soccer team beat Mexico 4-0.

Sisters Kristie and Samantha Mewis — the pride of Whitman-Hanson Regional High School in Massachusetts — opened the scoring, with Kristie setting up Samantha.

Christen Press scored two goals, and Tobin Heath connected on a rocket shortly after coming into the game, scoring right below where we were standing.

It’s not that hard

My hair had reached the stage where it had gotten so long, it was sloppy and gross.

Plus, while I don’t have a ton of gray hair, mostly at the very front of my temples, it gets more prominent when my hair is longer.

So I went for a haircut.

The joy of just being … happy

I don’t go to movies a lot.

It’s not that I dislike them, but unless it’s a James Bond movie — apparently “No Time To Die” comes out Oct. 8 — there aren’t a lot of movies that jump out at me as ones I want to see, so I just don’t go very much.

If there’s a movie Suzi wants to see, I’ll go, and I usually enjoy myself, but the last movie she saw before going to the movies stopped being a thing people did was “Emma” on a Tuesday night when I was in a photography class.

The week gone by — June 6

The night before my birthday, Suzi and I went out to dinner with my parents.

Massachusetts had lifted its restrictions that day, and when I called ahead for seating, I found out that fully vaccinated people (which we all were) didn’t have to wear masks.

I was giddy.

It’s good to be back

I sat down at the exercise bike, set the timer, tightened the straps to position my feet just so and began to pedal.

As always, I had to stop right at the beginning to adjust my seat, but it didn’t take me wrong to settle into a nice, loose, relaxed rhythm, the type that covers “distance” quickly without feeling like I’m pushing too hard.

On my Kindle, I started reading John Connelly’s “From Peoples into Nations,” because nothing says light reading on an exercise bike quite like 900 pages on the history of Eastern Europe.

Reaching the end of the trail

The woman was sitting at the edge of the trail, painting.

I could see the river scene she was working on by looking over her shoulder, but her back was to the river, and the scene didn’t look anything like what was directly in front of her.

So I’m assuming she was working from either inspiration or memory.

Finally … baseball

When we left Hadlock Field a couple summers ago, I didn’t know where and when my next baseball game would be.

It probably wouldn’t have been a return visit to Portland, not right away, but maybe there would be a road trip to Cape Cod in our future. Manchester and Lowell are two of my favorites. Hartford has a beautiful ballpark I have to get to again, and of course I’ll always want to see the Yankees if our mostly annual trip to New York City comes at the right time.

Perhaps our travels would bring us to a ballpark large or small, or maybe we’d go for a serious adventure … Boston.

And then, there were two (shots)

“Did he miss?”

Between barely feeling the needle for no more than a second and the strange sensation immediately afterward like someone pouring warm water down my side, I actually did wonder for a moment if the guy whiffed.

Then I realized that if he had, the Pfizer vaccine would be running down my arm, not my rib cage.

Another escape to the beach

Dogs … everywhere you looked, there were dogs.

Big dogs, little dogs … sometimes little dogs with big dogs … and when one dog saw another dog, they had to come together for a confab or a chase.

Lots were on leashes, but lots weren’t. That usually annoys me — large, jumpy dogs make me antsy and therefore don’t like when they’re running around loose — but everyone looked like they were having fun and I was in too good of a mood to complain.