In the books

I’m on the last day of my Christmas extended weekend so I thought I would try to recap the happenings for the 2020 version of the holiday.  Our Christmas Eve was on the quiet side.  We had a nice visit from Katie and DJ for a few hours but the lack of a traditional family get together was something I found myself missing.  Instead I spent a good portion of the day just working on a bunch of small tasks.

I was first to arise Christmas morning.  I headed outside first thing to say hi to the hens and give them a few extra snacks as their Christmas treat as I cleaned the coop.  I then walked up front with the intent of turning on all the blow up decorations since it was Christmas.  I found stuff blown all over the place from the wind associated with the cold front that was blowing in.  I put the stuff back and tried blowing them up but shut it down shortly thereafter, it was just too windy.

By the time I came back inside Cindy was up and doing some prep for the food she was preparing.  We probably didn’t actually start present opening until after 8AM which is way late by 1999 standards but pretty normal in present day old man reality.  Usually I put codes on Cindy’s presents that help me prioritize and sort the opening process as of course you want to save the best presents for last.  This year everything was code free.  Although there were still a lot of presents, there wasn’t one ore two BIG ones so I was ok going codeless, especially since Cindy finds my coding practice annoying for some reason.

Cindy seemed to like what I got her, a number of the items were to help with some of her issues with pain, like vibrating gloves, hand heat pad, electric acupuncture/tens device and a few other items.  I got cool stuff too like a cordless angle grinder, a cool WoW book, clothes, and gadgets.  After opening the first round of clean up commenced as we had equal if not more presents for Katie and DJ when they arrived.

I got most of my family calls done in the morning.  I was happy to hear that my niece and nephew were very excited for the 3D printer I got them.  They wasted no time getting it set up.  During my call to Todd I found out they gave my other niece the dream Christmas gift of a car.

The real fun started when DJ and the kids came over.  DJ didn’t quite get the concept of opening presents yet, he preferred to sit on the unopened boxes while we opened up the presents for him more or less.  He of course got lots of cool toys but his favorite oddly enough seemed to be an electric toothbrush that he carried around with him the rest of the morning.  They headed out  a little after noon with plans to come back later to enjoy the ridiculous amount of food Cindy had prepared.

I actually made a Dunkin Donuts run in the morning, I read online they were open.  I was bummed when I pulled up to our normal location and saw they were closed.  However I didn’t give up and headed to the next closest DD a few miles away which was actually open.  I was grateful that their staff was in there on Christmas morning, grateful enough that I threw a $20 bill in the tip can.

During the afternoon I had more time to get stuff sorted out.  It went well enough that I had some time to mess around more with the mixed reality testing I have been doing with the Quest 2.  I had my green screen set up in the great room which surely looked silly.  The output is getting better but still not close to where I want it.

When the kids came back close to 5 we dug into the food in earnest.  It’s one of those love/hate relationships.  You love eating the food but hate how you feel afterward.  I can’t wait to get back to some cleaner eating.  It had been quite chilly all day with temps barely reaching 60 degrees.  I did not realize that Katie and Daniel still wanted to ride wheels, I thought it would be way too cold for them.  However they said they were down for it so I certainly wasn’t going to be the party pooper.  I threw on a few layers of clothing and rode my Sherman to the school where I met them.

By the time we started the temps had dropped into the mid-50s.  It was cold, very cold.  Despite all three of us being chilled to the bone we rode almost the entire Waterways development, taking in the dozens of Christmas displays.  It was fun to say we did it, despite the conditions.

Later Cindy and I sat down to watch Wonder Woman 1984 which was being released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max.  We both were looking forward to the movie, we liked the first Wonder Woman movie and expected the same this time.  The movie started out ok but I felt it got real dumb, real quick as time went on.  All of a sudden Wonder Woman had all of these Superman level powers that I had no knowledge of.  The plot was just weak and the villlian(s) silly IMO.  Sadly I can only give it a B.  It was just another example of DC super hero movies being the ugly stepchild of Marvel films.

Saturday was again quite chilly.  We picked up Sadie for a quick weekend visit while running errands.  I spent most of the day just working on small tasks with a lot of them being in the hobby room.  I had a couple printers to work on, stands to build and just some general clean up.  I’m sure I did more than that but any other details are escaping me at this time.

Yesterday I felt the post Christmas letdown in full force.  It was combined with an impending full moon and a dreadful Eagles loss to the Cowboys to make for a bad mood filled day.  My big project for the day was adding RGB lights to my Sherman.  It was a relatively easy project which adds a lot of visual flair to the wheel.

So earlier in the day I received a “present” I bought for myself.  It was an impulse buy, a 3D scanner.  In theory it allows you to scan small objects and create 3D models out of them which you can print.  This was an expensive impulse buy of over $700 which I felt somewhat guilty about.  I hoped once I set it up and saw how well it worked the guilt would melt away as I thought I may be able to use it in my 3D store to create items that would be difficult otherwise.  The set up of the scanner was easy and my test scan of the included rubber duck went ok.  However as I tried to scan other objects I was not impressed at all.

Every object I tried was messy and unusable.  There all sorts of issues when scanning, the object can’t be too big, too shiny, and the room lighting is very touchy.  I tried about a half a dozen scans  with no acceptable results.  Obviously this only worsened the guilt I had about spending that much money on something that under performs.  I decided to relieve the guilt by boxing up the scanner and returning it.  Luckily Amazon makes it pretty easy to reverse impulse buys.  This experience added to the bad mood that was already in full swing.

That Eagles game was terrible, for many reasons.  Despite playing lousy this season they still had a chance to make the playoffs if they beat the Cowboys and the Redskins, as long as the Redskins lost yesterday, which they did.  They had everything lined up, all they had to do was win their game.  The team started out strong, jumping out to a 14-3 lead.  However suddenly the wheels came off and they got blown out by a final score of 37-17.  It was embarrassing.

The Cowboys had the WORST defense in the NFL, allowing 30 points per game on average.  After those two quick scores the Eagles were just bungling idiots, not making plays and committing penalties left and right.  The defense was atrocious.  It seems for the last 5 years we have said that the Eagles secondary is terrible and for some reason they just can’t fix it.  They got absolutely taken apart by Andy Dalton. It was a very hard game to watch.

I just felt terrible not just because of what was happening on the field but also what was happening off the field.  To see the franchise QB holding a clipboard while trying to be a cheerleader is just depressing.  Jalen Hurts did not impress nearly as much yesterday so that may further muddy the water in regards to who the future Eagles QB is.  I feel bad for Doug Pederson, I really like the guy but man he has seemed frustrated this year.  I hope they keep Doug around. And WTF happened to Zach Ertz? He is like a ghost in the offense now, I don’t get it.

The injuries this team had this year is off the charts, I think many teams have had similar issues, likely due to the impact of covid on normal off season/ pre-season practice and training.  However the Eagles clearly were banking on some players with a long history of injury, I think that was the fatal flaw with this team.  Jason Peters, Deshaun Jackson, Lane Johnson, Alshon Jeffrey, and more are old by NFL standards and unable to be counted on, yet they did.

So do I think Carson deserves to be the QB?  Well I can’t give you a strong answer either way.  He at times has played very well but the one damning thing about him, his bottom line win-loss record is not great.  He is basically a .500 QB.  They flashed a stat that since he was in the league his record is something like 35-33, not impressive for sure.  Do I think a QB like Hurts has a chance for a long and productive career in the NFL?  Probably not, running QB’s like him have a lifespan closer to a running back than normal QB’s, just ask Cam Newton about that. It was a sad way to end the Eagles season, even though they have one game remaining.  Everyone is focused on what happens next as what they have now is clearly not working.

Today I plan to cruise around the house doing whatever I feel like attending to.  It works for me.