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Today is a holiday, and I’m not posting anything today.

Today is a holiday, and I’m not posting anything today.

Normally by this time of the year I would have made up predictions for all the college football bowl games. But with the change of formats it’s not the same. The addition of the 12-team playoff has made for a more interesting regular season, along with the expansion of the Big Ten (and other conference shufflings).

But the downside to all that is the diminishing of the importance or relevance or meaning of the non-playoff bowl games. It was bad last year when so many players opted out of bowl games, and some coaches too, such that many of the teams in bowls weren’t the same teams they were during the regular season. So it’s basically pointless to assess matchups anymore, except for the playoff teams where everyone involved is still trying to win their game.

And now the college football bowl post-season is just like any other sport – fill out a playoff bracket. I don’t participate in brackets for other sports, so I don’t anticipate doing this every year. But I haven’t been inspired with any other ideas for the CFP yet so here it is.

First Round
Texas over Clemson
Tennessee over Ohio State
Penn State over SMU
Indiana over Notre Dame (based on common opponent of Purdue)

Quarterfinals
Texas over Arizona State
Oregon over Tennessee (no more Rocky Top)
Boise State over Penn State (Jeanty redemption tour)
Georgia over Indiana

Semifinals
Oregon over Texas
Georgia over Boise State

Finals
Oregon over Georgia

We’ll see how it goes.

There are some things that are tradition at Christmas but are not correct. Here is what I have noticed, either on my own or once someone pointed it out to me. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as bah-humbug-ish.

• The wise men came from one country. They are not from different countries. Around here they are usually portrayed as 3 guys of different ethnicities, which implies they were from different places but came together on their mission to follow the star. But they were from the same place so they should have been of similar features. Historically they were thought to be Persian, so that’s what I think of them as.
• I’m not going to correct the idea that there were three wise men, because everyone already knows that we don’t know the number. But if you’re going to have wise men in a scene you have to pick some specific number, so you could argue with any number that’s chosen. Except one. If someone says there was 1 wise man then you can argue that. So let’s just stick with 3 and not argue about it. Feel free to argue about if the wise men were at the Nativity though.
• The angels did not sing. They spoke to the shepherds. As far as I can tell, angels are not the singing type. I even checked Revelation, and there it describes the angels as speaking not singing.
• We do know that Jesus was born at night. This point is not to correct something that’s traditionally wrong but rather pointing out that the tradition is factually correct. It’s not just because of the star, although the star is why all the Nativity scenes are portrayed at night. That, and enough other things portray the Nativity at night (such as the carol Silent Night).

Now you too can be a hit at parties and step in with a “technically” or “well actually” to keep things right.

I became familiar with this song when we watched season 24 of NBC’s The Voice. It was performed by a teenage girl, which I assume was the target audience of this song when it was originally recorded.

I get what the song was going for, and I don’t want to detract from that. But for those of us who aren’t teenage girls, I re-wrote the song to represent how they can sometimes appear to their families.

I also just watched Inside Out 2 so I think this fits in with that. And I don’t want it to come across as all negative, but the stereotypes just lent themselves to these lyrics.

I’m impossible
I will answer with a sigh
I’ve got attitude
Yeah I roll my eyes every day
I will hold a grudge
I don’t hear anything you say
I’m so sensitive
Yeah I’m impossible today

I put my headphones on, show you I’m on my own
I turn my filter on, I’ll show you that I am

repeat

I was going to go with “I’m emotional” but I think “impossible” replaces “unstoppable” better from a phonical standpoint.

Before looking up the lyrics for this blog post, I was only familiar with the chorus. Now having looked at the verses, I see the song has a different meaning than what I initially understood. And it takes me back to my earlier years with a similar song.

The song I think is most similar to this one is “I Am a Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel. Musically, it’s not close. But the lyrics talk about the same thing – putting on a stoic face to avoid dealing with hurt feelings.

Our house came with a fireplace. A typical brick chimney and open hearth meant for burning wood. Due to various reasons, we haven’t used it. But earlier this year we got a wood-burning insert, so we will use it, so now I need to stock up on firewood.

The good news is we have a couple acres of trees that I can harvest. So far I’ve been taking already downed trees. Most died and then fell over but a storm took down two live trees so some of this wood needs to age first.

But I thought the stacks of firewood were scenic, so I took some photos of them and am sharing them with you now. I had a plan for two of the stacks but I ended up with more wood so we basically ended up with random stacks of firewood around the yard. My goal is to consolidate them a bit, maybe next year.

That last one is not as pretty as the first or fourth photos, but some may appreciate the rusticness of it. Those are big logs, so it will turn into a huge pile of firewood once it’s cut and split, and I don’t have a spot for it yet, so that’s waiting.

With a couple different trips this year, I’ve had time to read some books. Half of these I picked and half of these were recommended to me by the kids.

I’m going in order of when I read them.

First up: Exhalation by Ted Chiang

This book was a mixed bag. It is a collection of short stories, and most of them had interesting premises but the stories had objectionable material. Most of the stories could have been saved by changing some of the side topics or characters situations without changing the premise, but my guess is the author was going for pushing a diverse cast of lifestyles.

There were a couple of short stories in there that were fine, but overall there were more things I didn’t need to read.

Next up: Winterhouse by Ben Guterson

This was actually a review of two separate books, Winterhouse and The Secrets of Winterhouse. I read Winterhouse first then when I saw the library had another Winterhouse book I grabbed that.

I liked these books. They are mild mysteries, nice easy reading with nothing bad, meant for lower middle grades I would think.

Next up: Sky Raiders by Brandon Mull

This was tremendous. Out of all the middle grade fiction books I can remember reading, this series was my favorite.

I didn’t come to that conclusion after reading the first book. This is a series of five books. I read the first one and was intrigued enough to read the second one. And then so on.

And then after I finished the last book, I was sad about it. Partly because of how it ended but mostly that it ended. The last time I got so involved in a series was the Little House on the Prairie and that was decades ago.

I will note that Gamma said that Five Kingdoms is his favorite Brandon Mull series. And Beyonders is his second favorite, so that’s in the queue.

Next up: The Land of Elyon: The Dark Hills Divide by Patrick Carman

This one was a random book I found on our shelf. No one seemed to know anything about it, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

It was okay. It’s the first in a series, but it wasn’t interesting enough for me to want to continue with the remaining books in the series. Part of that might have been because I had recently finished the Five Kingdoms series and it would be hard for anything to follow that.

There was nothing wrong with the book, and I assume the rest of the series would be fine too. So if you need something to try, this should be an option.

That’s it for this review. Got some more planned for winter.