* It’s always strange going back through December posts. It’s clear that I started to really sour on the direction this country was taking in 2010, and reading on into 2011 it seems like we’ve been on track to get where we are now for quite some time – but I’m trying not to think about that. Instead, I look at things like how I finally splashed out on the Navy surplus peacoat in December 2010. I love it, it’s a big wearable horse blanket of a thing – but I don’t get a lot of chances to wear it. If I’m lucky, November through mid-February, and maybe two weeks in January if I’m not lucky. But it looks right on me somehow. It feels right on me somehow. It’s exactly the coat I needed back in the era of “wear big heavy coat to work, take it off because the heat is turned up to 76 in the office”.
* In 2008, Vanderbilt limped to the finish line of a 6-6 season by losing to UT and Wake. In 2011, they won their sixth game on the road against Wake to make a bowl happen. In 2012 and 2013, a bowl was locked up before time to slice the turkey. And way back in 2005, they beat UT on the road – but only to get to 5 wins. Something has shifted in the last decade or so with Vanderbilt; the baseline expectation has grown to 5 or 6 rather than 3 or 4. And it’s achievable; we’ve beaten UT 3 of the last 5 and gone to five bowls (counting this season) in the last decade after going to three in history before that. The bar has moved ever so slightly, and even if it’s only enough to get us to the Iowa State level, it’s a positive sign for the future of the program. Now’s the time to raise money and invest even more in it, because we have the existence proof that 6 wins is reproducible in a non-Brigadoon setting. Sustainable? Maybe, maybe not. More sustainable with stadium renovations and facility upgrades? Maybe.
* I’d like to welcome the rest of the country to the search for American manufacturing. It’s over here behind my new shipments of Flint & Tinder boxers and American Giants slubby black T-shirts and LC King Pointer Brand jeans. With the acquisition of the workout shorts and finding the two old short-sleeve button-ups to go with the polos and hula shirts, I daresay I’m just about set to possibly wear an all-American wardrobe at any time (so long as I stay in California with its standards of dress). I even have that Moto X, for as long as it lasts (not long, the way it performs, but still). I’ve had my money where my mouth is for longer than Google kept it there.
* I got the Kindle in 2010, I think, and the iPad mini was bought on Boxing Day 2013. The Kindle gave up the ghost a couple of months ago, but that iPad keeps chugging along just fine, able to run iOS 10 and perfectly suitable as a replacement for a personal laptop in every way that matters to me. Given that our corporate turnaround on hardware is three years, the notion that a tablet will do for three-plus is very reassuring – and because it’s a tablet, the battery is big enough that three years worth of wear and tear isn’t as crippling as it is on a smartphone (as that Moto hits three years old and groans under the load of a two year old Android version that doesn’t even get updates anymore).
*Every year at the holidays, I swear that this is the year I cut down on the soda, do more to exercise, try to unplug from the wider world and engage with my local reality rather than disappearing into social media or the like. I think in 2017, I’m going to have to do it for real. I’ve already killed my primary Twitter (and not really missed it at all), I’ve firewalled all the political stuff into a separate account that only gets looked at once every couple of days at most, I’ve trimmed the political RSS feeds down to almost nothing, I’ve started stockpiling lists of things to read and watch for distraction. More on this later. But there are other things I want to do in 2017. I’m going to actually try to develop a new hobby: saltwater fishing. (Stop laughing. I caught a lingcod off Davenport last weekend.) I’m thinking of forcing the issue on exercise by increasing my Vasper visits. I may even try to go back to taking the train (though I doubt that will last, just because driving to work when I can pull between 40 and 50 mpg is relaxing and convenient).
* If I could somehow bottle the feeling of beating Tennessee in football and putting on WIzzard’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” I would basically never need another pharmaceutical for the rest of my life.