Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM)

How 'bout a little Shakespeare?

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

--Sonnet XXXIII

This comes to mind as I keep tabs on the local radar. We had a beautiful morning, but there's a system on its way in and the chance of rain has been pegged up to 70% for later this afternoon.

For this, my Nine Year Old plenty whit disdaineth. You see, she really wants to try playing goalie for her soccer team. However, Coach won't put her in unless and until she's had some time practicing the position. The team practices on Wednesdays. She had to miss goalie-drill last week because of a school concert and was keen to try it out this week, so she'll be plenty disappointed if today's practice gets rained out.

Incidentally, last weekend her team, the Creepy Green Leprechauns, scored its first victory of the season in a hard-fought game. I'm immensely proud to say that the gel is developing a genuine talent for defense, to the point where Coach subbed her in on an unscheduled rotation late in the game in order to protect the lead. She also is coming along on offense, the skills of which she has had a harder time grasping, and picked up an assist on one of the goals with a very nifty pass in from her Right Forward position. The final score was 3-2 and the team record is now 1-1-1.

UPDATE: As of 3:00 PM, looks like the mass of rain is hanging to the north for now, so perhaps practice will go off as scheduled. The other good news is that it looks pretty certain the Nats will get rained out at Philly tonight. After watching them choke in the late innings last evening, I don't consider this to be too bad a thing.

UPDATE DEUX: Well, practice ran as scheduled. I may not have mentioned it before, but practice these days consists of scrimmages between the CGL's and another team, both of them just about perfectly balanced in terms of talent. I'm happy to say that the gel did pretty well as goalie. She still has some fine points to work out in terms of technique, but she didn't flinch in going after the ball in the face of the opponents' onslaught and I'm quite proud of her.

On the other hand, the Nats game wasn't rained out. You needn't guess at the result.