It's been a while since I've written anything of consequence, but all I can remember is rain and food and friends. There's been a spectacular storm system accompanying everything during the past few days—literally the first I've seen in six months, and estimated to have been the worst one in five years. Jessie and I had planned to meet for outside the red Green fountain for a potluck picnic lunch on Thursday, which looked iffy because it had been sprinkling in spurts all morning. As it turned out, we still met outside, but retreated to the School of Ed lounge for our salads and pear/avocado/spinach/sour cream/brown sugar sandwiches on Daisy's pumpkin banana bread, accompanied by a satisfying little check-in on each others' lives.

The rain started getting heavy and began to be accompanied by lightning just around the beginning of practice on Thursday, so we threw and sloshed around the wet field for about an hour, at which point there began a screening of the '99 Nationals finals game in the Potter lounge. A handful of girls and I stayed outside for another half-hour, deliberately making just-barely-there passes to give the receiver chances to lay out, before reluctantly joining the rest smothered in mud. The bike ride to Syn was a wee bit miserable, but cheese-smothered stew and hot chocolate courtesy of a special cook crew made it much better.

Getting back to the food tabulation, ate half a cake that night. A prayer for power outages came a bit too true on Friday: the Woodside restaurant where we'd planned to have dinner had had one, so it was milkshakes and burgers and ice cubes being launched across tables at the Creamery, and falling asleep to rain...

...and waking up happy to sunshine making every rain-drenched thing sparkle. A group attack on the Friday crossword. Similarly frittered away most of the daylight hours, then cooked a second night's worth of hamburgers with Wilson, Clare, Molly, and Tory at Mirrielees. Oof, moans the stomach.

We were supposed to have been at the Sean Ryan Invite all weekend, but UCSC's facilities department decreed most of their fields closed to prevent cleats-in-mud damage. A bummer that we didn't get to play this weekend and will have to miss the second day of it next Sunday for stadium clean, but so very glad to have been here for a wonderful weekend.