EARTHQUAKES WIN!! EARTHQUAKES WIN!! yes, i realize i'm posting the same way for the second time, but this time, it's for the championship! what a weekend. i had such a good weekend (far more sober than the last time i went to the cup game, but still much fun!)... and i think i'm going to be superstitious about my attendance at san jose MLS cup games! (i just need an excuse to keep going to them. :)) what fun! what excitement! the game wasn't as close as the last two weeks, but after the emotional drain of the games against LA and kansas city, we needed a nice win. i'm so excited for my boys in blue.... i tried to get a championship shirt at the game but couldn't find one! i'll have to get one off the website soon.

so, this weekend in more detail. jessica, arlene, and i headed out for LA friday afternoon... it took us forever to get out of san francisco, and we ended up not getting down to LA until after 2am. yikes! it was a fun ride down though, we were talking about lots of stuff that kept things interesting. got down to steve's pad in long beach around 2:15am, and all my cousins were there (except brittany) because steve and his roommates were having a party... trev was so blitzed it was funny. they left pretty soon after i got there, but it was late so it's cool. steve and i stayed up talking until about 3:30am, and then we all crashed.

saturday morning i woke up at 7:30am (yes, that would be four hours of sleep after a full day of work and a long drive) to head out to tailgate before the usc-ucla game. i met up with anu and friends at their tailgate, which was half usc fans and half ucla fans. we had a really good time, though... one of the girls (arti) is an optometrist at the jules stein center at ucla, and i was talking to her for a long time about grad school and stuff. anu and i got to hang out quite a bit too, so that was good. i like him :) the game result was expected (final score 47-22 usc), as the bruins have been having some serious difficulties putting anything together, but it was still fun to be there. we were sitting in the very top of the student section, so we were able to get some good screaming in. anu's friend ritesh got a little drunk and tried to start something with some usc fans sitting a few rows behind us, and that was funny until he got nasty. ahh, drunk people. i was hoping to be able to meet up with anu again later in the weekend but we kept missing each other. i'll probably see him down in OC this coming weekend, though, so that's cool.

after the game i met up with the wildings, prices, and zoltán to go to the lazy dog, where i finally got to order off the full menu. my tex-mex salad was tasty :) it's also nice to get the steveo discount. :)

sunday morning, zoltán, jessica, imelda, and i headed to the home depot center for the 2003 mls cup game. the HDC is actually a really cool venue! it's soccer-specific (although it looks like they also have tennis and track & field events there), so it's set up like a european soccer arena. the only thing that was weird was the sand padding on the field... sand was getting kicked up everywhere when the players were running. i would expect them to do that if the field was wet, but it wasn't. (it was 75-80 degrees out that day, too!) oh well. we were sitting in one of the casbah sections, which was a lot of fun because we were doing chants all game. our boys in blue played hard and well. a couple of players struggled... craig waibel was having a lot of trouble with damarcus beasley's speed on the wing (wish todd had played!), so was subbed out for chris roner in the second half-- who subsequently had a few horrible mishaps (own goal, tripping up pat onstad, causing a PK). oh well. donovan came to play, which was nice to see. he had two goals and ended up with the MVP award. the other two goals were mulrooney's and ekelund's, and i always love seeing the two of them score. they don't get the chance nearly often enough. walker, onstad, robinson, dayak, and mullan all had excellent games, too. yay! final score, as noted above in the merc article, was 4-2 san jose. yay!!

after the game, the girls and i headed to the torrance marriott to party with the team... it was much fun :) i didn't drink much because i was driving... although this guy named keith bought us drinks and i had no idea what the protocol was! no one ever buys me drinks (well, no random people. friends have bought me drinks before) so i didn't know what i was supposed to do. oh well. i hung out with tim hanley, the goalkeeper coach, for quite a while... everyone was so pumped up by the experience. we took a few pictures with players and the rothenburg trophy... tried to take a picture with landon but he was a jerk and really couldn't be bothered to give us the time of day. (i already don't really like him that much, but that was reinforced by the fact that he couldn't even celebrate with the fans when the team wins the national championship. jerk.) i was also hanging out for quite a while with team administrator chad elert (a guy i've been friends with for a couple of years), and he was exceedingly emotional about the win, too. what a great way to end a tough, well-fought season. i'll post pics as soon as i get them from imelda.

and now, it's back to work for a day and a half. didn't plan that one too well, did i....