No personal record today in terms of time, but my Monday streak is very much alive. I mean 31 Mondays in a row is a lot of Mondays.

As we all know, tides are extremely important to our lives. That’s mainly because without tides, we couldn’t have tidepools. And tidepools are fun! I know that some people don’t like sea creatures. Those people are so entitled because this is America.

In college, my roommate Darren asked me if I wanted to join him and two of his classmates to the tidepools a very short bike ride from our apartment at UCSB. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity, and off we went.

I got to see things I probably wouldn’t have seen in the wild. Like an octopus. And then another octopus. And a third octopus that inked. But the octopi were very hard for me to see because they blend in so well.

“Oh, look! Another octopus!”
“Where?”
“You’re looking at it!”

Routinely, I’d be completely lost. I just saw rocks and various sea life. No octopi.

Here’s your last chance to look over the above photos again before you can never again completely miss this octopus.

And to think this story all came out of 29D Shore phenomenon around the time of the new and full moons: SPRINGTIDE. And I believe that’s about when we went to the tidepools.

As for the rest of the puzzle, there was a pretty moving theme.

17A Sweet item at a bakery: JELLY(ROLL)
Which brings about the joke of why did the jellyroll? Because it saw the apple turnover!
23A Keep watch while a homeowner’s away: HOUSE(SIT)
33A Bar-to-bar activity: PUB(CRAWL)
41A What a speaker or musician may adjust before starting: MIC(STAND)
48A Easy win: CAKE(WALK)
all for the theme
59A Small advances … or the progression suggested by the ends of 17-, 23-, 33-, 41- and 48-Across: BABY(STEPS)! Roll, sit, crawl, stand, walk.

I liked the tidepools part of this blog post better.

Completed in 7:04.