Christmas recap, greatest day in Eagles history

These four day recaps are tough.

Christmas  Eve I left work a bit early to go pick up my mom.  When we got back to our place I was talking to the neighbor for a bit before going in.  Mom said she would smoke a cigarette while I did.  Well I was talking longer than the smoke break took so mom went inside the house, expecting that Ali was home.  Well Ali wasn’t home and the house alarm was set.  Mom didn’t remember the code and panicked.  She came running out to get my attention and said she didn’t know the code.  I yelled the code to her but it was too late, the alarm started blaring.  I ran over and shut it off.  It was a noisy way to start our Christmas celebration.

It was the first time mom saw our Christmas decorations in person as well as our clean pool area, bountiful garden and freshly cut grass.  She said it all looked great.  Nicki was very happy to see her grandma.  Her excitement was evident from the pee all over the kitchen floor. 

It didn’t take long till I had mom on the Wii Fit.  She was convinced she wouldn’t be able to do it, she would fall off.  The good news is if she fell, she only had three or four inches to do so.  After watching me weigh in and do some of the yoga, strength and balance games, mom reluctantly agreed to try it out. 

Mom was surprised at her weight, it was lower than she expected.  She thought that maybe the number was inaccurate but we assured her that the Wii numbers have been right inline with our bathroom scale.  Mom only did a few yoga poses, nothing extreme.  Despite her reservations about trying it, she actually did quite well on the poses she tried.  In fact she beat a few of my scores in several of them.

After her 10-15 minutes of Wii Fit mom acted like she just ran a marathon, saying how this and that is going to be sore.  I reminded her that was a GOOD thing.  The next day she was fine.

For dinner we had london broil that mom had been marinating along with sweet potatoes.  The whole deal was prepared out on the grill.  It was warm enough that we could eat Christmas Eve dinner out on the lanai, pretty sweet. For entertainment, we watched the new Miser Brother’s Christmas, which was surprisingly well done.  We followed that up by watching Fred Claus.  It seems like Vince Vaughn is the new Tim Allen of Christmas movies. He has done two in the last two years.  It was a light hearted and fun flick that I’d give a solid B to.

I stayed up quite late Christmas Eve as I started to watch Spiderman back in the bedroom.  I probably lasted close to midnight.  A scant five and a half hours later I am awakened by a black furry alarm clock that decided she was excited for Christmas to begin.  She NEVER wakes me up that early.  So Nicki and I were up for a solid two hours before everyone else decided to come out and join us.  I spent the time like I have the past few Christmas mornings, playing WoW.

So the festivities started.  Ali and I made a conscious effort to buy less this year.  We have spent lots of dinero during the year for various projects and items, we didn’t need to blow out another huge wad at Christmas.  Even with things trimmed back, we still had quite a bit to open.  I’d say we were at it for a solid hour or so.  I got a lot of cool stuff like an official Phillies World Series Champs hat and t-shirt, a new wireless N router, gigabit switch, work jeans, cordless drill, books and more.  The only thing I was surprised I didn’t see was a single Wii game.  I plan to take care of that with the multiple Best Buy gift cards I have so it’s all good. 

Ali’s “big” gift from me was two tickets to an Eagles concert in Homestead in late January.  She seemed to like all of the lesser gifts as well.  I pretty much worked off her list otherwise except for the Victoria Secret gift card and digital picture frame I threw in there.  Mom got a series of three gift certificates.  One was from me that was redeemable for a full car spa treatment, the second was from Nicki that allowed mom to rub her head and belly and the third was a gift cert, accompanied by a check that could be used to either help pay for the new appliances she just bought or for some new furniture item for her place.  She liked the gift certs but the biggest hit was a pair of flip flops that Ali found for my mom online.  They are some sort of special kind that is supposed to help tone your legs or something weird like that. 

As usually Nicki was right in the middle of the festivities.  She enjoys the present opening experience, hence my 5:15 wake up call.  After present opening mom heated up the french toast she prepared at home. Again, we ate it out on the lanai.  After breakfast we worked on cleaning up/putting away.  It was less daunting than some prior years due to fewer and smaller packages.  By the time Christmas afternoon rolled around, almost everything was put away.

I ripped out my old router and two network switches and replaced them with my two new Dlink devices.  I was impressed with the features of the Dlink router.  It is a gaming router that prioritizes gaming traffic, just what Ali wants to hear.  The new gigabit switch is pretty sweet as well, it is a 16 port GREEN switch.  It saves power by automatically turning off unused ports as well as only supplying enough power to the live connections based on the length of the cable that it is connected to, pretty slick.  The new switch not only will use less power than the two it replaces, it’s also much quieter since the Cisco switch had a very loud fan.

We had a late lunch of burgers on the grill. After that mom walked Ali through the process of cooking the beets we harvested from our garden and then I took mom back home.  I actually left my truck at her place so I could drive mom’s Rav 4 back to our place so I could clean it on Friday.  Mom was worried.

During Christmas day mom and I discussed her braking problem.  She SWEARS that in the past, when she has used the AC on her RAV 4 she has had issues with braking.  The brakes didn’t fail but she said that she had to pump them until they would grab.  Mom has told me this several times and each time I do my best to hide my skepticism.  My knowledge of how automotive systems interact made it pretty clear that brakes and AC are not connected.  If anything, I figured what mom may have experienced was the higher RPM’s the motor might hold to support the AC compressor.  Those higher rpm’s could create the need to use more brake pedal pressure to stop the vehicle, but it certainly would be nowhere near a failure situation. Well anyway, mom knew I would insist on using the AC to see if the problem occurred.  She was worried that I would wind up in an accident as a result. I assured her I would be careful.

Friday morning I started on cleaning up mom’s car nice and early.  I gave it a bath, waxed it, armor all’d the vinyl/rubber surfaces, vacuumed out the interior, cleaned the windows and sprayed Febreeze on the carpet and cloth surfaces to combat the cigarette smell.  It turned out great if I do say so myself.  It went from looking like a 12 year old vehicle to a four or five year old suv.  It’s amazing the difference a little elbow grease can make.  I had the car back to my mom at work before noon.  She was very happy with the transformation.  She asked how the brakes were.  I reported that I didn’t have any issues during the 50 or so miles I put on the vehicle with the AC on the entire time.

The rest of Friday Ali and I did a few of the things we would normally do over a weekend.  Ali also worked on cleaning up the hobby/workout room.  It was in dire need of some attention, junk was piling up everywhere.    Friday night our Tivo was void of any programming we wanted to watch so instead we dug into the vast collection of movies I have on the NAS.  We decided to watch Step Brothers, ANOTHER Will Ferrel comedy.  Will seems to like to work with the same actors in film after film.  The actress that plays his mom was in Elf, the actor that plays his step brother was in Talladega Nights.  I expected this film to be like all of the other Will Ferrel comedies, sort of funny in the beginning but hardly prompting a smile during the last half of the film.  Well thankfully this one broke the mold.

The movie was funny through out.  Ali and laughed out loud regularly.  Hopefully he remembers this formula for future films.  Comedies should not have all of their laughs reserved to the few clips they show in previews. I’d give it an A-, one of the better comedies I have seen in awhile.

Our Saturday was EXTREMELY laid back, thanks in part to what we did on Friday.  While Ali was at the gym in the morning I did an extensive Wii Fit session.  At this point I have almost every exercise unlocked.  I wanted to do EVERYTHING and see how much time I would use up.  An 1:35 of Wii exercise time later I found out.  Wii Fit does a very good job of hitting most body parts.  Following the order on the screen of Yoga, Strength and Aerobic exercises is a good fit that allows you to gradually warm up before tackling some moves that can really tax you physically.  After my marathon session I was pretty tired.

Wii Fit has been a big hit in our house.  Ali likes it because she is good at it.  I would say that she currently holds the top score in 75% of the activities.  Ali outdoing me in any video game based skill is pretty rare so she certainly enjoys turning the tables.  The logging and charting of your progress in the game is motivational as well. It’s surprising how powerful just seeing a simple line on a graph can be.

Saturday night we watched another movie in my collection, Wanted.  Wanted is an action film where Angelina Jolie, among others is part of a league of secret assassins.  The film is filled with over the top action, ridiculous plot lines, implausible character development and just lots of silliness.  The film tried to make a few good points but they became lost in all of the theatrics.  Angelina looked hot and that is probably the best thing you could say about it.    It gets a C.

Sunday was a bit more work oriented then Saturday.  While Ali was at the gym I knocked out all of the interior floor surface cleaning, pool maintenance and bedding maintenance.  Ali was exhausted after the gym and after eating lunch retired for a couple hour nap during which I just played some WoW.  I didn’t even bother turning on football.  The Eagles didn’t play till 4.  I knew the game would be meaningless since in order for the Eagles to make the playoffs both the Bears AND the Buccaneers had to lose as well as the Eagles taking out the Cowboys.  The Bears losing was possible since they were playing the Texans who are decent.  The Buccaneers losing was practically impossible since they were playing the stinking Raiders IN Tampa.  There was no way Tampa could lose that game with the playoffs on the line.

Well around 4’oclock I flipped on the tv to get ready to watch the Eagles.  The tuner just happened to be on ESPN 2 which was showing a World Strongest Man episode, one of my favorites.  As I was watching  they showed the NFL scores in the crawl at the bottom of the screen.  I saw the Tampa score, I did a double take…. the Raiders were AHEAD late in the fourth quarter!  I also saw the Bears were behind!  I quickly plugged in the satellite to see the Tampa game.  I tuned in just as the Bucs were trying to drive down the field with no time outs.  I cheered loudly as Jeff Garcia got sacked holding onto the ball way too long and time expired.  Oh my God!  What a choke! As bad as the Eagles collapse was last week, the Bucs choke was monumental.  They lost their last four games in a row to miss the playoffs, the last one to the Raiders, at home, a team whose wins can be counted on one hand. Wow. 

I could not believe the Eagles good fortune.  I proclaimed to Ali how a miracle had just taken place.  The Eagles now not only had a shot to make the playoffs, they also would be eliminating the Cowboys from the playoffs.  I was besides myself with excitement.  Imagine if the Eagles could pull off the win and snatch a playoff appearance when it seemed impossible at the start of the day?

I was worried that once again the Eagles would choke, just like last week when the stars were aligned in their favor and they responded by falling flat on their face.  The Cowboys would be playing for their playoff lives as well so it was sure to be tightly contested game.

Wow, was I wrong.  The game started off close but the defense just blew the Cowboys apart causing turnover after turnover and scoring a couple times in the process.  There were so many exciting plays in the game I couldn’t possibly document them here. 

 The 44-6 final score on top of the highly unlikely series of events that lead up to the game enabling the Eagles to gain a playoff berth, leads me to proclaim yesterday as THE most memorable day in my history of being an Eagles fan.  Making the playoffs after a year of extreme ups and downs is not on par with a Super Bowl appearance in magnitude of accomplishment but nothing I can remember generated as much excitement as the four hours I experienced yesterday. Merry Christmas, to me.