⚽️ Week Notes 073
🗓️ // May 17, 2026 - May 23, 2026
Relatively uneventful week personally, but a very bad week soccer-wise.
⚽️ Just days after winning their final game of the season 4-1 over Brooklyn FC and missing out on the USL Super League playoff by 1 measly point, USL Spokane announced that they were folding the Spokane Zephyr women's team after two seasons. I'm particularly bummed out in that I know I'm part of the problem because I really wanted them to succeed, followed them much more closely than your average Spokanite, and still only went to one game over the last couple of seasons (their second to last game in fact 😥) because our family budget is so tight. They were a great sports entertainment value with tickets in the $15-20 range, but I've got at least four other people that would want to go to games with me. On a final disheartening note, Spokane Zephyr had the third highest regular season point total among all 8 original teams in the Super League across the two seasons. If they can't afford to continue, I wonder how healthy the rest of the league is?
⚽️ Spurs lost to Chelsea 2-1 at Stamford Bridge. Given their 30 year history of futility at the Bridge this shouldn't have been a surprise, but it's particularly disappointing given the stakes and Chelsea's form this year. As usual no favors from the officials with Djed Spence picking up a broken jaw, and the offending player Liam Delap only getting a preposterously grudging yellow. The yellow card on the corner rather than a penalty was unsurprising- it was simply too borderline to ever go Spurs' way. Now it all comes down to tomorrow's game against Everton. A win or draw will keep Spurs up.
🏃 Got in two 4K runs so far this week with the girls, both on the Children of the Sun trail. Our average easy running pace is still hovering pretty close to 6 min/km which is pretty cool because that's a clear improvement for the girls in the time we've been running together. Personally, that's still really slow by my standards, but I'm roughly six years removed from consistently running at least 4 days a week, six years older, and at least 15 pounds heavier and much more liable to pick up an injury if I don't build up gradually.
Playing
🧙♂ Big news on the Magic Arena front, all Universes Beyond Marvel sets will get the official art and IP going forward. They'll also be back porting to the Spider-Man set as well. As a big Marvel fan (comics and MCU) I was fuming when they announced the Through the Omenpaths treatment last year with alternate names and art and didn't really draft the Spider-verse set. Now I'm going to have to step up and draft a set that I was thinking I wouldn't worry too much about.
🧙♂ Got to 6 win with a Lorehold deck and now at 4 wins 2 losses with a Sultai pile that Houston helped me draft. Unusally, that's the first time I've atttempted three colors although the color fixing is wildly good. I'm hovering around 10000 gems now and have done around 11 drafts in the set so far. I'll probably do at least three or four more drafts before I quit and start saving my gold, although if I started losing badly in Platinum that could put a damper on things until the monthly reset.
⚽️🎮 I haven't played any FM 26 since last Fall, but I'm looking forward to playing some World Cup saves in the next month or so once all the teams and IP are finalized. I've also setup my MacBook Air so that I can play games on that if I want.
Watching
📺 The Punisher: One Last Kill 👍 John Berthal is definitively Frank Castle at this point, and the 15 minutes of absolutely cinematic mayhem the whole show is a vehicle for was impressive... But I feel like this special raised more questions about the costs of escalating violence and being an avatar of retribution than it properly addressed.
📺 For All Mankind S5E9 👍👍 Things get super fraught for Alex, Lily, and Boyd as M6 forces fully turn their attention to the Mars colony. Meanwhile Kelly and the away expedition on Titan ratchets up their peril while chasing signs of life, and are still waiting on Mars for their updated mission plan to return home. Expect the finale to be an absolute banger.
📺 Blue Lock 👍👍 Finished up the first season just in time to start on Season 2 this week when it drops on Netflix. I like that the whole crazy program is in danger of getting cancelled by the end of the season and how thoroughly dominated the Blue Lock teams were by elite young world-class pros when they faced off. A cool dose of reality after only seeing the cast of characters' perspective for so long.
Reading
- 🧙♂ 📚 The Hobbit reading continues and I think we should be halfway through by the end of the weekend. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, but between my old eyes and general end of day tiredness definitely need to start reading aloud around 8 pm or earlier for best results!
Listening
- ⚽️ 🎙 The Spokane Soccer Show: Zephyr FC: Gone With the Wind (For Now) 👍👍 Superfan Benji Wade and his podcasting partner Mike Pellicio dropped some serious emotional therapy for grieving Zephyr and Spokane soccer fans. Lots of excellent insights and as the USL-W season starts up, already really annoyed that Spokane doesn't have a team in the Northwest Division playing regional teams, that supporters could road trip to, and develop cool rivalries with; something that was completely impossible in the ridiculously executed USL Super League.