2025 Bears Predication Update: Third Quarter Results

The NFL season is three-quarters over, with most of the teams completing their bye weeks and the Chicago Bears are 9-3.  I don't know whether to go with Wow or OMG.  

My pre-season predictions had them at 6-6 and I've never been happier to be so wrong.

and Swept Pennsylvania too

There are a lot of haters out there saying the Bears haven't played anyone.  Yet they just played a complete game against the Super Bowl Champion Eagles and beat them soundly.  

The thing is, we Bears fans just wanted a better season than the last few years.  They went 7 and 10 in 2023 and 5 and 12 in 2024.  That was literally the floor.  At the start of the season, we ambitiously hoped for 8-9 or miraculously 9-8 and a wild-card berth.  

That they are already at 9 and 3 with 5 more games to play is a Christmas Miracle.  It has been fun to watch them go from 0-2 to being in the Wild Card Hunt to leading the division and now, with the LA Rams losing to Carolina yesterday, being top of the NFC!

Can they keep it up?  Who knows.  

Per the self-inflicted rules,  I'm sticking with my predictions.  For their last five games, I predict the following:

If these predictions are correct, that would place them at 12-5, surely enough to get into the playoffs.  Will it be enough to win the division?  Unknown.  If New England and Denver can win 8, 9 games in a row, why not the Bears?

On Social Media, I've pointed out how this year seems like the magical 2001 year when they went 13-3, but then blew it in the playoffs against, ironically, Philadelphia.    In fact, on Friday we watched the first quarter of the game at a bar in Skokie while meeting up with former neighbors and it had 2001 vibes of when I had a group of people ever week meet at Donovan's to watch the game.

On a personal note, I have been able to watch 8 of the 12 Bears games so far.  However, one of those was because I was in Illinois at the time.  While driving up, I was streaming the game against Pittsburgh but missed most of the 4th quarter because my kids were using my hotspot and ran through my data.  Fortunately, we got to the hotel in time for me to run up to the room and see the last few minutes.  

The game against the Eagles was on Black Friday, so I would have been able to see it down here.  The game against the 49ers is on Sunday Night Football, so I can watch that one.  Since they flexed next week's game against the Packers to 3:15, I suspect I can watch that one too, though I cannot confirm until Wednesday afternoon.  

Update: Yes, the whole nation gets to watch the Bears play in Lambeau Field while Arizona and half of California, get to watch the Cardinals play spoiler to the LA Rams.  

The last game of the season against the Lions hasn't been set a time.  I suspect the NFL is waiting to see which games are playoff impacting, but it wouldn't surprise me if this game gets flexed to SNF, which means I get to watch that one too.

I guess my prediction last year that if I didn't pay to watch the games, the Bears would be good has come true.  I just hope it continues.  

The Morning Routine

With the exception of preparing their lunches, which Nightingale does, I am in charge of getting the kids ready and off to school.  Almost every day is a challenge, but different than the day before.  I get them up at 7 and ask what they want for breakfast.  They rarely, if ever, want the same thing.  

Once they are sitting and eating breakfast, I pick out Boris's clothes.  Natasha picks out her own, but left to his own devices, Boris would put on the worst mismatching clothes possible.

Then they brush their teeth and have some screen time.  Then it gets tricky.  Some days they are ready to go, other days I have to keep after them to finish getting ready.

I try to leave the driveway by 8:00 AM.  If I catch both traffic lights (small town, yo!), we get to school -- or prison, as they affectionately refer to it -- in exactly six minutes.  They call it prison because school hasn't been fun since the 3rd grade.  They are restricted on when they can talk among their peers.  They have a very short amount of time for lunch relative to everything else.  And they have to carry everything back and forth in their backpacks (11 lbs) because the school refuses to provide on-site storage like they did in previous years.  

Drop off takes exactly 1 minute, even with Boris dilly-dallying.  And I'm back home six minutes later.  

Pickup takes longer.  It took me over a year to realize that if I leave the house later (say 3 pm) then I don't have to wait in line so long because it does move quickly once they open the doors.  We generally get back around 3:30 pm and even earlier if I do get in line sooner.

*****

I'm a little giddy because the Bears are 6-3 and tied for first place in the division.  They are doing about how I predicted at this point, though not the way I thought.  Except for the game against the Cowboys, every win was close and could have easily gone the other way.  In a way they are looking like the 2001 team that went 13-3 but got exposed in the playoffs.  Heck, the last two games could be the equivalent of the 2001 Browns and 49ers games (whom they play later this season).

When the Bears win, I spend the week reading everything about them.  When they lose, I avoid the write-ups like the plague.  if the Bears play like they did in the last four games, they will lose this weekend because their luck has got to run out.

I have been able to watch at least half of the Bears games down here and will be able to watch at least three more that I know of, including this week's game against the Vikings.  This validates my decision not to invest money into being able to watch all the games.

*****

On 10/28, the recruiter for Big Bank called me.  He said they hired the person who got the contract job and wanted an additional member for the team, and asked if I was available.  I said I was, but big surprise I have not heard anything in the last 16 days,  I don't expect anything from that one anymore.  

Meanwhile a new recruiter has reached out to me about another contract role but I'm not holding my breath on this on either.  He reached out to me late Wednesday afternoon wanting to talk "today" and when we talked yesterday, he didn't really have a lot to ask.  He seems like he was just collecting resumes.  

Update from the future: He actually reached out late Friday via LinkedIn Messaging:

apologies for the delay in feedback. They are going to pass for now, but will circle back around for more functional roles open up! I will send you out to all our other Account Managers for openings!

Nightingale insists it's okay that I don't have a job and focus on being the primary child care person.  But I sense judgment from the family and a loss of power from not bringing in a paycheck.  While my kids refer to school as prison, I refer to Living in Mississippi as being in purgatory.  

Grill Deep Cleaning Time

 Last week, I finally got around to doing a really good deep cleaning of the grill my FIL gave us four years ago when we moved down here.

The reason is one part laziness and two parts, not doing it during the window when it’s not too hot and not too cold down here.  To be fair, I'm certain FIL never deep-cleaned it either. 

There was a lot of dirty, caked-up grease, charred food bits, ashes, and carbon.  

I watched a few YouTube videos on the best way to do this, and while most of them are fairly the same, there are some nuanced differences between content creators.

Some say it's okay to use an Easy Off-like product; others are purists and say to avoid chemicals.

I will note for next time that it is better to take the grill apart and work from the inside out instead of outside in, like in the videos.

Also, you are never going to get your grill to look like it did before you used it the first time, or even how it did the first month.  you have to decide how much effort you want to put into it and I decided six hours of scrubbing, scraping and brushing was sufficient to get me through another season.  I also opted to replace the rusted heat shields (or falvorizors as some call them).  

I will make an effort to deep clean more than once every four years, though.  Ideally, twice a year but since we don't really do as much grilling as we did back in Chicago, once a year might be enough.   

2025 Bears Predication Update: Second Quarter Results

The NFL season is about halfway over, and the Chicago Bears are a surprising 5-3, which is what I predicted them to be at this point of the season.  I'm 6 and 2 in my predictions.  The Bears could conceivably be 7-1 were it not for the meltdown in the season opener and the anemic offense against Baltimore.  They could also be a lot worse because three of those wins could have easily gone the other way.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

What's important is that after a 0-2 start, the Bears won four in a row, before choking against the Ravens.  Yesterday, they made it up with a nailbiter against the Bengals that should not have been that close.  

If the Bears can go .500 the rest of the season that would be 9-8 or even 10-7 which I think could earn them a Wild Card.  The division isn't off the table yet, but they probably need to win at least three of the four remaining division games and get a little help.  

For their next four games, I predicted the following:

Team        Record    Streak    Prediction

Giants              2-7        L-3            W

at Vikings        4-4        W-1            L

Pittsburgh        5-3        W-1            L

at Eagles          6-2        W-2             L

 

As always, I'm sticking with my predictions, but I'll be very happy to be wrong on two of these. These are not weak teams.  And the Giants won't want to lose a fourth game if they can help it.  The Bears' secondary has to get healthy fast.

It will depend on which Vikings team shows up in two weeks.  Hopefully it's the bad one.  

The Philadelphia teams are the strongest, but even they are showing some cracks in their armor. 

The Bears have played eight games, and I was able to watch 4 of them.  Three of the next four are Sunday nooners, with the Eagles game being on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  I should be in Illinois, headed toward Chicago, and be able to catch some of the game against the Steelers.  As for the Friday game, it's at 2 pm, which is prime in the middle of our last full day in town.  

Happy Halloween and October round out

A few things happened this month that I should have written about in real time but was busy with the things.  Or being lazy.  

Firstly, the weather finally became more bearable. In fact, early last week, I was able to turn off the AC.  Now it's cold in the mornings and warm in the afternoons and early evenings and chilly overnight.  I did put the heat on low a couple days ago but was able to turn it off again as it is oscillating back to warmer temperatures.

Secondly, a few Mondays back, I alluded to "some other news to share this week."  I am was employed again!  Alas, it didn't last and while I wrote up a draft about the adventure before my contract ended, I'm gonna whittle it done to the essentials.

And lastly, a couple of weeks ago we were in St Louis for Fall Break.  Fall Break down here occurs the week before Columbus/Indigenous Persons Day.  We left on Wednesday around 1 pm and got to the hotel just around 5:30 pm with one bathroom break.  We brought along our pseudo-3rd child, and the kids rotated sleeping on an air mattress.  Actually, Natasha found that it was so comfortable that she ended up sleeping on it most of the trip.

We visited the City Museum on Thursday and spent most of the day there.  City Museum is a great place to burn kids energy but you have to have a system because you will get separated from them.  Oh and the food is high-priced and terrible.  Best to pack a cooler and tailgate in the parking lot.

On Friday we did apple picking along with seeing the Arch, which was closed because of the government shutdown.  On Saturday we did Grant's Farm.  Every night was spent back at the hotel for pool time.  I was also able to met with Jewel on Saturday for dinner.  

Stray observations.  I'm glad I didn't cancel my participation in this trip for what turned out to be 8 days of employment with nothing to do (story to come later).  If I could do this over, I would have met Jewel for dinner earlier in the trip.  We had good food at the restaurant she found and the leftovers would have made good lunches.  Instead, we ended up dumping them because we were leaving and didn't have good options to keep them cold.

I think we did a lot and had fun but we overloaded the kids' batteries.  While kids are resilient, they didn't have enough time to recover from Day One to fully enjoy Day Two and then Day Three.

Grants Farm is a fine place to visit, especially in October when it is decorated for Halloween.  But be warned:  While admission is free, everything there is to do comes at a cost, some outrageously high.  I will say the food at the Bauernhof Courtyard is decent proportions at reasonable post-pandemic prices.  

3rd Child was also starting to get on my nerves.  She is better behaved than my douche nuggets, but her "grandparents" spoil her, and it was bleeding over into our trip.  Case in point, we ordered lunch, which came with a side.  She said she didn't want a side, so I said "Since it comes with one, order something and someone else can eat it".  She was about to order a side no one wanted, but I put an end to that.

All in all, it was a lovely trip but if we do it again we have to do things in a different order and allow more recovery time.  

Chicago Baseball in October: Over and Done

After losing two games against the Brewers, the Chicago Cubs did a rare thing since the playoff format changed some time ago: they forced a Game 5.  I did not expect that to happen and actually had a reasonable belief they might be able to pull it off.

Alas, they did not.  Milwaukee won and moved on.  But I'm grateful that the Cubs gave us fans 8 more games beyond the regular season.   Next Year.

Meanwhile, I was able to watch the Bears on MNF and they similarly beat the Commanders to how the Commanders beat them last year.

I'm beyond annoyed that I cannot watch this week's game against the New Orleans Saints.  New Orleans is closer to Olive Branch/Memphis than either Philadelphia or Minneapolis.  But the networks are forcing us to watch that game.

Bathroom Renovation Project Finished

The long renovation project is completed.  Demolition began on July 28th, and the final touches were completed on September 17th.  There was some idle time in between because it took longer than anticipated to receive the tile, the vanity, the shower door, and other items.  Some of that was supple chain issues.  Some of it was our own, sitting on our butt instead of making a decision.

Nightingale basically let me manage this project though I did consult her for most of the aesthetics.  I wanted a kick ass shower with a pleasing bathroom attached to it and I believe we achieved that.  We scoped two extra items:  first, we moved the toilet to where the old shower was and made it a de facto water closet (no door, but still).  And I had them install some updated lighting in the living room.  All in this project came to about $25K.

The hardest part of this, besides the money, was the decision-making.  Moving the shower to the old tub and the toilet to the old shower was easy.  But where do you want towel racks?  Where do you want new outlets?  Where do you want shower heads?  It can be nerve-racking because some of these decisions are irreversible.  

As far as contractors go, the crew at All Around Renovation were great.  They cleaned up every day (as best one can during demo and construction) and they did their best to keep me apprised of things like when they were turning off the water.  The fact that my frady cat Elsa didn't shy away from them tells you that they are good people.  

That's not to say things were flawless.  my contractor was rather annoyed that we didn't have our tile and everything else picked out when the project began.  Not the worst scenario by far.  You can see the before pictures here.