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."