I Like That!

Kirk Cousins bought himself an old school starter jacket on eBay.
Not the cool solid-color hooded one like my beloved Minnesota Twins jacket, but the second generation which I believe was a pullover.
Still pretty cool for the quarterback of the Redskins to walk into the facility rocking this.

Weekly Picks

I am picking almost all the road teams to keep my streak going.

HOUSTON +3 kansas city

seattle -5 MINNESOTA

green bay +1 WASHINGTON

BEST BET
pittsburgh -3 CINCINNATI

Last week: 3-2 (4 points)
Season: 46-39 (43 points)
Best Bets: 1-0 (9-8)
Home Favorites: 1-0 (15-17)
Home Underdogs: 0-0 (1-2)
Road Favorites: 1-2 (18-13)
Road Underdogs: 1-0 (11-7)

*1 win is missing somehow, I can't find it

NFL Playoff Predictions

I'm going nuts this year, picking both #6 seeds to make the Super Bowl.

AFC
Pittsburgh Steelers over Cincinnati Bengals
Houston Texans over Kansas City Chiefs

Pittsburgh Steelers over Denver Broncos
New England Patriots over Houston Texans

Pittsburgh Steelers over New England Patriots
NFC
Seattle Seahawks over Minnesota Vikings
Green Bay Packers over Washington Redskins

Seattle Seahawks over Carolina Panthers
Arizona Cardinals over Green Bay Packers

Seattle Seahawks over Arizona Cardinals

Super Bowl L
Seattle Seahawks over Pittsburgh Steelers

3000 Words

Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Ryan Gosling in the Mickey Mouse Club

Guy makes a portrait of Steph Curry out of salt.

Continuing in the tradition of Dingle-Berry, Short-White-Cox and Clark-Griswold, the Sacramento Kings show they're just like many of us: they have Gay-Cousins.

Song of the Week

"This Will Be" - Natalie Cole
Natalie Cole passed away recently of congestive heart failure at the age of 65.

This song has one of the best endings ever, I can't even do it justice in print, you just gotta listen. She runs off a bunch of verbs and other declaration says "love" 18 times and then about 10 "from now on"s.

New Year, New Adventures

I would like to start off 2016 by announcing the arrival of a new Baby Poop due in May.

Here's Chase and Julian's reaction when we told them.



"It's so crazy. I feel like it's not real."

We wanted to find out the gender, for obvious reasons, to figure out whether we needed to go out and buy a bunch of pink shit or just go up into the attic and bring down the blue shit.

So Mrs. Poop got the results of the test in an envelope, gave it to the people at Party City who filled an opaque black balloon with the corresponding color shredded paper.

We periscoped the big reveal:



Mrs. Poop was able to borrow an at-home Doppler, so here is the baby's heartbeat:



And to answer the question all of you are asking: No, it was not an accident or a surprise. This was the result of very careful planning.
We had to wait to buy a house to have another baby. We wanted to do DisneyWorld also. And Mrs. Poop had always wanted a May baby so she could have June, July and August off. Baby is due May 27th.

Weekly Picks

We're putting together a good run late in the season. Again watch out for this week's Steelers, the team that has a lot to play for, against a dead team, and loses anyway.

seattle +6 ARIZONA

new york jets -2 1/2 BUFFALO

pittsburgh -10 1/2 CLEVELAND

st. louis -3 SAN FRANCISCO

BEST BET
HOUSTON -6 1/2 jacksonville

Last week: 3-2 (4 points)
Season: 43-37 (43 points)
Best Bets: 1-0 (8-8)
Home Favorites: 1-1 (14-17)
Home Underdogs: 0-0 (1-2)
Road Favorites: 1-0 (17-11)
Road Underdogs: 1-1 (10-7)

Thoughts on the Force Awakens

Do not read this if you haven't seen it but want to.

I liked the movie, but didn't love it. If I had to give it a grade I would give an A-, maybe a B+.

A couple of issues:
I thought Finn was too jokey. He wasn't wise-cracking like Han Solo. Just a little annoying, and didn't provide comic relief, just disrupted the tension.
I hate, hate HATE when a show or a movie seemingly kills off a character, the other characters believe he's dead, and then he comes riding in when he's needed most, as happened with Poe Dameron. It's intellectually lazy movie-making.

But my main issue is I felt that not enough was made of The Force. What has always separated Star Wars from other science fiction or action movies is they actually had a fascinating plot point. The Force, the good and evil inside all of us. Do you give in to your negative feelings, fear and anger, or do you let the good in you shine through. There were opportunities to do so here, they just passed on them.

Problems that in retrospect weren't really problems:
1) The movie was too derivative of the originals. Yes, a droid containing a crucial piece of information is being pursued across the galaxy by evil people and good people have to see that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, culminating in the destruction of the super weapon. How many Death Star and Death Star-ish things can they possibly build.



Yes, but...if they had completely abandoned the earlier movies I would have been even angrier. I know there's some middle ground there but probably a very thin target to hit.

2) It was too predictable. As the movie wore on you knew Kylo Ren was the son of Han and Leia and you got a pretty good idea that he was going to kill Han. You knew they were going to blow up the Death Star and you knew they were going to find Luke.

Yes, but...if they had a serious of ridiculous plot twists I would have been even angrier.

In summary, it was a good movie. I really liked it. There were some chill-inducing scenes. The special effects looked great. It is one of the few movies I really think does need to be viewed on the big screen. I think they have set up the next movie to be phenomenal. It can leave behind the past and blaze its own trail. Is Rey Kylo's sister? Is she Obi-Juan's descendant? Will Luke train her, and a new order of Jedi Knights? Will Kylo Ren be redeemed in the end as was Darth Vader.

I can't wait to find out.

But the boys certainly seemed to like it:

Song of the Week

"Take Me Home" - Cash Cash

Word is the Word

I had never heard of University of the Incarnate Word before November. But now, a strange series of events has occurred and it now seems like all I hear about is Incarnate Word.

The first time I heard of Incarnate Word I was looking at the coaching tree for Pat Summitt. I saw that Angela Lawson is now the head women's basketball coach at Incarnate Word.

The second time I heard of Incarnate Word I was searching for something about Oklahoma, and a recap of Oklahoma University's college basketball game against Incarnate Word came up.

The third time I heard of Incarnate Word I was looking up RPI and was looking for the team with the #1 Strength of Schedule: Incarnate Word.

The fourth time I heard of Incarnate Word, I was listening to college basketball scores and St. John's suffered an upset against a school no one had ever heard of before: Incarnate Word.

I know what you are saying. All these things have to do with college basketball. The school has only been Division I for three years, so it's not unusual to have never heard of them before now.

The Universe is going to have to do something better if it wants me to believe in its powers.

So I decided to look up Incarnate Word. It's a Catholic University, obviously. It's located in San Antonio and has nearly 10,000 students. Incarnate means "in human form," often used along with the word "devil."

Any of that interest you? No, ok, hope about the University's motto:

"The Universe is Yours."

Weekly Picks

This is a pretty tough week. Let's see if we can keep the streak going. But this is the part of the season where you'd think that teams fighting for something would beat teams who are out of it, but it doesn't always work that way.

BUFFALO -6 1/2 dallas

KANSAS CITY -10 cleveland

houston -5 TENNESSEE

san francisco +10 DETROIT

BEST BET
cincinnati +3 1/2 DENVER

Last week: 4-1 (5 points)
Season: 40-35 (39 points)
Best Bets: 1-0 (7-8)
Home Favorites: 1-1 (13-16)
Home Underdogs: 0-0 (1-2)
Road Favorites: 2-0 (16-11)
Road Underdogs: 1-0 (9-6)

I Walk Alone

There's an old breakup song by Dru Hill called "What Do I Do With the Love?" and one line "what do I do with my time, if I'm not spending time with you?" has really hit home for me ever since Diesel died.

I miss him terribly. I hate coming home to an empty house. No one waits for me by the door.

I hate dropping food. No one comes by to scoop it up.

I watch TV and look at the floor next to the couch. No one is there.

I hear a noise and look for Diesel.

I see something black on the floor. I think it's Diesel. But it's just a sweatshirt, or a pair of socks.

It's going to get even worse over the summer. I used to walk him almost every day when the weather was nice.

The rabbits would run and he would chase them.

Will I even leave my house this summer?

We used to go everywhere together. We walked foot and paw together through the world.

But now I walk alone.

Song of the Week

"Favorite Time of Year" - India.Arie featuring Tori Kelly

Weekly Picks

I do better when I don't explain.

MINNESOTA -5 1/2 chicago

cincinnati -6 SAN FRANCICSO

kansas city -6 1/2 BALTIMORE

JACKSONVILLE -3 atlanta

BEST BET
houston +2 INDIANAPOLIS

Last week: 3-2 (4 points)
Season: 36-34 (34 points)
Best Bets: 1-0 (6-8)
Home Favorites: 2-1 (12-15)
Home Underdogs: 0-0 (1-2)
Road Favorites: 1-0 (15-11)
Road Underdogs: 0-1 (8-7)

Song of the Week

"Silent Night" - The Temptations

A Boy and His Dog

The loss of Diesel has been hard on every member of the family and the kids have dealt with it, in their own way, befitting their normal personalities.

Chase was sweet, saying when he is sad he goes and lays with Diesel who makes him feel better.
He is old enough to understand the permanence and gravity of the situation but young enough that he doesn't quite know what to do with these feelings.

Even in his darkest hour, Julian can't help but be hilarious.
At first when we told him we were putting Diesel to sleep, he didn't seem to understand, thinking we would be able to go to the vet and pick him up when he woke up.
Once we explained that we would never ever be able to see Diesel again, he really freaked out, punching a pillow and shrieking.
When he finally calmed down he asked "Einstein and God invented everything right?"
We said "mostly God, but yes."
"Why did they invent dying?"
We didn't have a good answer for that.

Then we tried to explain that everything dies, pets, people. "and the dinosaurs!"

Lastly he wondered why "can't we make a robotic dog, with real dog fur, and we can reprogram him to not die."

Despite all this, I think the boys are taking it well. They grasp it now. They understand it's serious. They were appropriately sad, but not overly so.

But no matter where they go and what they do in life, Diesel will always be their first pet.

And nothing can compare to the love between a boy and his dog.

Diesel 11 (77)

Diesel, 11 (77), of Fair Lawn, NJ died Thursday, December 10th, under the loving care of the veterinarians at Valley Brook Veterinary Hospital, after a brief battle with cancer.
Diesel, an energetic, loving, black Labrador Retriever, enjoyed long walks in the park, chasing tennis balls (and rabbits and squirrels, too), laying in the sunlight and swimming in the ocean.
A lifelong Mets fan, Diesel was known to get incredibly excited every time he heard those magic words, "Mets win."
Diesel is survived by his parents, Paul and Kate, his brothers, Chase and Julian and a long list of adoring grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
In lieu of flowers, please pet the next dog that you see. Especially if it is your own.

Weekly Picks

Yikes!

ST.LOUIS -3 detroit

TAMPA BAY -4 1/2 new orleans

indianapolis +1 JACKSONVILLE

new england -3 1/2 HOUSTON

BEST BET
CAROLINA -8 atlanta

Last week: 0-5 (-1 points)
Season: 33-32 (30 points)
Best Bets: 0-1 (5-8)
Home Favorites: 0-2 (10-14)
Home Underdogs: 0-1 (1-2)
Road Favorites: 0-0 (14-11)
Road Underdogs: 0-2 (8-5)

Song of the Week

"Chanukah Song Part 4" - Adam Sandler
"We may not have a cartoon with a reindeer that can talk
But we also don’t have polio, thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk (smart Jew!)"

Weekly Picks

I hope everyone took that Panthers-Cowboys game to the bank. Worst spread I've seen in my life. I'm going to try a strategy I seldom employ, but I like a lot of the underdogs.

houston +3 BUFFALO
Houston might be the better team right now. Their defense is playing amazing. But there has been heavy action on Houston since the open of the line, moving the spread by three points.

MIAMI -3 1/2 baltimore
This game is the same story, but in this case I like the favorite. I can't figure why people think Baltimore is so good when they needed a miracle to beat the miserable Browns.

ST. LOUIS +6 arizona
I have loved the Cardinals all year but I just have a feeling they won't blow out the Rams.

indianapolis +7 PITTSBURGH
The Colts are undefeated with Matt Hasselbeck at quarterback. He doesn't throw interceptions or make mistakes. That should be enough to keep this game close even though Roethlisberger is expected to play.

BEST BET
NEW ENGLAND -9 philadelphia
Very good team at home versus very bad team. I haven't done too well with big spreads this season but that doesn't mean I should be afraid.

Last week: 3-2 (4 points)
Season: 33-27 (31 points)
Best Bets: 1-0 (5-7)
Home Favorites: 0-1 (10-12)
Home Underdogs: 0-0 (1-1)
Road Favorites: 2-0 (14-11)
Road Underdogs: 1-1 (8-3)