The 43

I've been off work all week, having taken PTO in between the holidays. We initially had hoped to visit my mom in Texas this week, but airfare proved to be too expensive, and with Omicron raging, not traveling right now is probably for the best. I've mostly been uninspired all week, and it's felt good -- I need an extended break, and used only four PTO days (and I have a bunch to spare) to get a 10-day respite. I did want do something non-lazy this week, and Lori wasn't going to mind if I got both boys out of the house. We had such a video game Christmas that a little road trip to Clearfield and Ogden to look for used video games seemed like a good adventure for a Thursday. Snow wasn't expected until the evening, and we left at about 12:30 and headed north on Interstate 15. We were in the HOV lane just south of Layton Parkway when Ben heard something from the underneath the car. I heard it, too, but figured it was just a piece of ice that had been encrusted on the ca

(I may have blogged about this previous Christmas before, but I'm not in the mood to look and see if I did. Stories are allowed to be retold ...) When Lori and I moved to Madison in 1995, it was the farthest I had lived from Chicago in my life. While in Milwaukee, I made it home for Christmas every year. My first two years at Marquette, I lived in the dorms, which closed for the break anyway, but after that the trip back was a bus or train ride or a 90-minute drive.  Madison not only added an extra hour to the trip (without any easy alternate transportation options), but also a funky work schedule. Although I worked for an afternoon newspaper, on holidays, we were a morning paper and had to produce the section the night before. With a small staff, if I worked Christmas Eve night, we couldn't leave for Chicago until the morning. Then, I would need to be back for the early-morning shift on Dec. 26. In 1995, that was the case -- I worked really late on Christmas Eve (Lori and I ex

The NFL is in Week 14, which means there's not much left to the regular season and Christmas is coming up. Seemingly every September, I watch Week 1 games, with its accompanying highlights and enthusiasm, and think to myself, "There's so many weeks of this left." Inevitably, I get to this part of the season and am surprised it went so quickly. This isn't a recent phenomenon -- I've felt this since the 1980s, then watched it amplify once I began working as a sports journalist. December football isn't just about the passage of time -- it has a distinct vibe compared with the rest of the season. With college football mostly over (except for the bowl games), the NFL invades Saturdays with one or two games on a couple Saturdays during the month. I can remember times out Christmas shopping or out and about for the holiday and settling in somewhere for lunch and watching a Saturday NFL game. Furthermore, the NFL regular season is such a fall occurrence that in De