More Catching Up

 I did something to my shoulder and cannot bring it full circle without the ibuprofen.  Even with the meds it still hurts a tad when I try perform some basic function that involves my left arm, like typing.  I have a lot of things I want and need to do around the house now that the weather is warming up, but I also know that if I overdo it, I will injure myself further.  So with great frustration, the great garage cleanout reorg is delayed again.

The Saturday after Martin Luther King's Birthday, a good part of the country, including our neck of the woods, was hit with a big ice storm.  We knew it was coming in the sense that it's not gonna pass us by, be mild, or be short-term.  We knew the kids would be home for at least a week.  

It turned out to be two weeks.  The first week was declared an emergency and doesn't need to be made up, but apparently, they are still figuring out the second week. The kids had to give up President's Day as the first make-up day, hopefully the only one

Sidenote: our county does this thing where if there is a holiday during the week (typically a Monday Holiday) garbage pickup is shifted one day.  This usually isn't a problem but remember that It's Definitely Coming Storm!  Everyone whose pickup is on Friday had to wait two weeks until theirs got picked up, as well as the rest of the county for the following week.

I get the Holiday Day Shift, but they ended up doing it again in the second week, so it would have been better to somehow get all the pre-storm garbage collected.  

Meanwhile, the storm allowed Nightingale to "help" the kids get their science fair projects completed.  They would have been due Jan 27 but were extended to February 11th and we used each weekend we were home to move the project forward instead of wait until the last minute.  Yay Nightingale.

Chicago Bears wrap up

I'm way overdue for writing this post.  So now that the SuperBowl is over, I will wrap up the Chicago Bears posts until next season.  Anyone who pays attention to football knows that the Bears not only went to the playoffs but won the Wild Card round against their archrival, the Green Bay Packers in overtime.  

Katness and I often text each other during Bears games, and for 3 quarters the messages can be summed up as "WTF?" followed by "how did they pull that off" when they win the 4th quarter.  Same with that crazy wild card game.

In the divisional round, they also forced overtime.  It really came down to one bad play that turned the momentum to the LA Rams, and our season ended.  

Had they won against LA, how would they do against the Seattle Seahawks?  No way of knowing.  We were playing with House Money on Borrowed Time.  This season seems to have been the Sam Darnold Renaissance story, so they might have held in but not won.  

And that also might be evidence that the NFL isn't fixed or rigged, or whatever. I'm not saying they aren't in bed with online gambling (the muffed extra point in the Houston - Steelers game), but I've said it before: if the NFL were rigged, NY, LA, Dallas, Chicago, and DC would be in the playoffs every year.

So what's next?  First, I have to get through 162 games of Cubs Baseball, of which I will only watch a fraction.  Then I have to see if this season was a fluke or if the Bears build on what they have.  Caleb Williams is a franchise QB.  I'm not skilled enough to know if our offensive line is fine or could use one more better player.  However, our defense, while showing flashes of brilliance, still needs some help.  

So we wait until the Draft and Free Agency 1.0 and 2.0 are over.