It’s weird how Christmas changes and you realize what makes it special. This year it hit me as we were driving home with the music of Chance the Rapper filling the front seat while the cutely annoying sounds of some plastic kids toy came from the back.

This year, like last, we have a tiny adorable baby in our family for Christmas. But my brothers are across the country and my sister is in Jamaica. And none of us are spending the night with my parents. My mom’s parents just moved into an assisted living home. And all of that hurts. It’s life and it’s what happens but it hurts and it’s weird. I want to watch Jingle All the Way with my siblings. I want to slink down to the basement where my little brother will surely be watching a bowl game or SportsCenter.

But there’s joy on the horizon. Barring any hitches, our next Christmas will be spent in our first home and that’s exciting. I look forward to filling that home with many fun memories. But right now I’m stuck in the nostalgia of what Christmas used to be. And nostalgia is the enemy of happiness.

Time for the second weekend of my super duper college football playoff.

The 12 team playoff saw maybe the biggest upset of the fake playoff era with Temple knocking off Bama in Tuscaloosa. While the 14 team playoff ended up with the exact same final four we have this year. Weird that the 12 team playoff has been full of upsets while the 14 team has been all chalk ¯\(ツ)/¯

Just got home from seeing Rogue One and I’m just so excited. That was probably my favorite Star Wars movie. I had incredibly high hopes for it and it delivered. Just a few thoughts while steering clear of spoilers.

• The character development they gave Cassian was what I so badly hoped they would give Finn in The Force Awakens. He was a flawed character with blood on his hands and you could see he was struggling with it. I know that’s how they wanted us to see Finn, but they didn’t show it. So it just didn’t land like it did for Cassian.

• I did not like the use of CGI people to try to match old characters. Just find similar looking actors or don’t use the characters. The CGI was impressive but incredibly distracting.

• Just ditch the Darth Vader scene in the middle. Too much unneeded exposition and UGH THAT PUN.

• The last 15 minutes was fantastic. I wasn’t super interested in trying too hard to connect this film to the original trilogy, but I mostly loved the way they handled it.

• K2-SO 👍👍👍

I loved it. Was on the verge of tears a few times. I laughed a lot. Enjoyed some incredible action. It felt like a Star Wars movie but also felt incredibly unique. I felt immersed in the universe. I can’t wait to see it again and I definitely recommend it.

Just like previous years, I thought I’d simulate the playoff round by round to see what it might look like. I’m using this website to simulate the games.

12 Team

The upsets abound in the first round of the 12 team playoff with 3 of the 4 lower seed teams winning. This is the sort of result that makes the playoff exciting to me. Can a team like Appalachian State or Wyoming make a run and beat some top teams.

14 Team

All chalk here. But on the bright side we get some really nice matchups; an Oklahoma-Clemson rematch from last years playoff and the Washington-Penn State play in game everyone would love to see this year.

Man I just had a total dad brain this evening.

Tennessee played at North Carolina in basketball tonight. I’ve been thinking about this game all week. I mean I had no expectation we’d beat a top 10 team on the road, but it’s still a big game to get excited about.

Anyways, we came home from a great time hanging out with some friends and Charlie and I were home alone. And I completely forgot about the game. I didn’t think about it once today. That was partly because I was enjoying some Secret Hitler with some of my favorite people. But it’s also because I got home and was stuck in some depression about how unsatisfied I am with those friendships and how little time I get to enjoy them (which is a shitty thing to feel when you’re spending time with your daughter).

All this to say, parenting changes the way your brain works. It’s freaking hard. It’s fun and joyous, but it’s hard. Particularly when you’re a selfish human like I am. A couple of years ago I would have obsessed about being able to watch this game in its entirety. To the point of it being annoying. Today, I completely forgot about it.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. for the Washington Post:

The same must be true of Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chair whom Trump tapped as his chief of staff. “When that 3 a.m. phone call comes, Americans deserve to have a president on the line who is not compromised by foreign donations,” Priebus said earnestly in a statement on Aug. 18.

Priebus, you would think, believes this even more strongly about a president whose enterprises might reap direct profits for himself or members of his family from foreign businesses or governments. Priebus must thus be hard at work right now on a plan for Trump to sell off his assets.

Truth no longer matters. It’s all about your team. Priebus is on Trump’s team, as are the rest of these Republicans, so Trump is held to a different standard.

2016 College Football Playoff

In case you missed it last year, here is a summary of my college football playoff bracket. Here is the original version in a little more detail. But basically it goes like this, all conference champions get an automatic bid, and the rest of the field is filled in and then ranked by a selection committee similar to the one we have today. First couple of rounds are played on campus at higher seeds, and semifinals/finals are in bowls just as they are now.

Conference Champions

First things first, let’s look at who is getting the automatic bids into our tournament.

At Large Spots

So we’ve got 10 conference champions that leaves us 2 or 4 at large spots, depending on the playoff format.

Previously I’ve picked the at large teams myself, but in reality the playoff would have selection committee just like our current one. So I’ll just use their rankings to determine our at large teams.

1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Wisconsin
4. Southern Cal
5. Colorado
6. Florida State

So in the 12 team playoff, Ohio State and Michigan get in as at large teams. And in the 14 team playoff, Wisconsin and Southern Cal sneak in with Colorado and Florida State left on the outside looking in.

Ranking the Field

So that gives us our field of 12 to 16 teams. Let’s rank all 16 top to bottom. I’m just going to use the CFP rankings here and make determinations for bottom teams on my own.

The Brackets

Summary

Like last year, I still think I prefer the 12 team playoff. The bar for making it in as an at large team should be very high. Having a pair like Ohio State and Michigan is fantastic.

One of my favorite things about this season with Charlie is watching her play around in her crib in the mornings after she wakes up. There was a long period where if she was awake and there wasn’t a human holding her, she would be screaming. So seeing her playing alone with her stuffed animals (or just pointing at different things in her room) is such a cool thing to experience.

David Cain:

Human beings must have some deep-seated group-nurturing impulse that becomes suppressed in the civilized workaday world, where we can isolate ourselves with relative ease. We can self-medicate our bigger concerns away without actually addressing them, without reaching out to others or having anyone reach out to us. Wherever that impulse comes from, the format of the chautauqua allows this “No one left behind” ethos to come back to the surface.

This quote just assaulted me.

Recently my wife and I used a coupon to try out HelloFresh which, if you aren’t familiar with it, is one of those pre portioned meal services that seem to be the new hotness. While the experience was mostly positive, I found it way too expensive to keep using. A bit wasteful too - I had no idea what to do with all that refrigerated packaging.

But there was something I did really value about the experience. My wife and weren’t required to figure out what meals we were going to eat every week.

I don’t really like spending any large amount of time deciding what we should eat and what ingredients we will need. So we frequently just end up recycling the same meals, picking out something fast and unhealthy, or… ordering pizza. Or my wife spends hours finding recipes and planning meals because she’s awesome like that. But those are hours we just don’t have with a toddler.

So I set out to find something like HelloFresh that gave us that provided us with a healthy and adventurous meal plan, but allowed us to get ingredients from our local stores on our own schedule. And I found it in Cook Smarts.

Cook Smarts comes up with a four dinner meal plan every week for you. And if you don’t like the options or need to add another, you can choose from their archive of previous meals. You can customize how many people you’re prepping for, and whether you want a gluten free, paleo, or vegetarian version of the meal.

I just can’t gush enough about how awesome an experience this has been. We don’t have to have the dance the What are we going to eat this week dance anymore. Charlie and I get to the grocery store on mondays (Cook Smarts provides a nicely organized shopping list) and we’re set for the week. And most of the meals have been baby friendly enough for us to share them with Charlie if we get it ready early enough. The next weeks menu is sent out on Friday so you can actually shop and prep things over the weekend to save time during the week.

Beyond the convenience, it has encouraged us to try new things. The fact that these recipes are delivered to my inbox has a strong psychological effect and I’m more willing to give them a shot, whereas normally I wouldn’t have even sought them out. Through Cook Smarts, I’ve discovered the deliciousness of shallots. Coincidentally, baking a big cookie in a cast iron skillet frequently used to sautée shallots results in some weird flavors.

Cook Smarts is just $6/month if you pay yearly and $8/month if you pay monthly. You can try it out for a few weeks before you decide to sign up and pay.