Voila! There is our 2016 Christmas card. This year as I was addressing them, I thought it would be fun to put all of the addresses on a map. I used the mapping feature of Excel to do it in case you’re curious.
Elijah’s Favorite Songs
Elijah loves music and regularly bursts out in song when you least expect it. If you’re shopping at Safeway at the same time as us, you might hear Jesus Loves Me or Jingle Bells (at any time of the year.)
I thought it would be fun to look back on these songs when he’s older so here’s a list of what I think are his top songs right now. The first three are from the Cars soundtrack.
- Chuck Berry – Route 66
- Rascal Flatts – Life is a Highway
- The Chords – Sh-Boom
- Peter, Paul and Marry – Puff the Magic Dragon
- Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside
- Away in the Manger
- Jingle Bells
- Now Thank We All Our God
- A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
- Little Drummer Boy
I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton more but this is a pretty good start.
Fantasy Football – Week 15
There are two different Seahawks teams that show up to play. This week it was the good one and they won solidly over the terrible team that always beats them: the Rams. The Rams were in quite a bit of disarray after the firing of their coach but they kept up their streak of ridiculous trick plays. I loved Pete Carrol’s fake punt when it was totally pointless and unexpected. That’s about 100 trick plays for the Rams to 1 for the Seahawks. Kick ’em while they’re down. I support it… except for the ending of that play with Ryan unable to run and carry a ball at the same time and then ending up in the hospital. This team is goofy this year. This article does a good job of summing it up.
In our league, Logan beat me and Austin beat Andy. I know that this happens to everyone, but I literally made a last minute roster change that lost me the game. AUGH. Every time I do that, I think “This is dumb. I always regret it.” But then I go on to convince myself that this time is different. I need to write a bot that automatically undoes my last roster change. But I’m not bitter.
Austin and Logan will face off for the championship. Sound familiar? It’s a repeat of last year’s championship game. That time, Austin edged out Logan for the win. The power rankings say that Logan has the advantage, but we’ll see who comes out on top this year.
1. Logan
2. Austin
3. Ben
4. Andy
| This Week | Season | All-Time | |
| Highest Team Score | Tim had 132.32 | Logan had 170.69 (Week 5) | Tim 200.51 (2015) |
| Lowest Team Score | Luke had 96.26 | Dad had 65.22 (Week 14) | Andy had 41.29 (2015) |
| Biggest Blowout | Tim beat Dad by 33.12 | Logan beat Tim by 79.46 (Week 5) | Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010) |
| Closest Win | Logan beat Ben by 3.24 | Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (Week 9) | Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (2016) |
| Highest Scoring Player | Drew Brees had 37.36 for Austin | Le’Veon Bell had 49.80 for Austin. (Week 14) | Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015) |
| Longest Active Winning Streak | Logan has a 5 game winning streak | Was Andy has a 5 game winning streak (Week 12) | Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak |
| Longest Active Losing Streak | Dad has an 8 game losing streak | Was Dad has a 7 game losing streak (Week 13) | Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011) |
Shop Paper Dispenser
I’m loving the outfeed/assembly table that i built a while back. I don’t take great care to keep it nice. It’s a work surface. When it gets too bad to use, I can just screw off the top piece, flip it over and screw it back down. That being said, there are some really messy activities where I do still put down paper.
We have a 4 foot long roll of brown paper that gets used both in the shop and for Elijah’s craft projects. It doesn’t have a good home so it usually ends up in a corner of the house or in a closet. I’ve seen various YouTube woodworkers mount it to their assembly table. Tim was over at the house for an afternoon so we decided to give this project a shot.
We made a quick run to Home Depot for some 1/2″ threaded rod. That’s what supports the heavy roll. The interior hole is only about 3/4″ so I needed something thin and strong. We cut out a couple holders for the rod just using some scrap 3/4″ plywood. Those got screwed onto the sides of the table and the project was done! It’s one of those projects where I think “Why didn’t I do that months ago?”
Smart Home
I’ve dabbled in the past with a few smart home devices like some Wemo light switches and the ecobee thermostat. One of the problems with home automation is that lots of different manufacturers are making cool devices, but they don’t all work together. There are some companies out there trying to bridge the gaps and one of them is Samsung with their SmartThings hub.
I’ve had that hub on my CamelCamelCamel price watch list for a while and one day I got a notice that it was half price so I jumped on it.
The device sits in your house and abstracts away some of the differences between the various devices. When you go through the hub, you get simplified functionality, but it’s consistent. For example, if it’s a light switch, the hub knows it can turn it off and on but it doesn’t know how to get your specific light switch hooked up to WiFi. You can kind of think of it like a universal remote.
The default setup is already useful. There are pre-loaded apps and routines to let you do things like “when you see motion on this device, turn this other device on”. That’s good but of course I wanted to dig in more and one of the reasons I picked this device is because they have a pretty good developer API.
You develop apps for the hub through a web interface in a language called Groovy. I wrote an app that logs events from my house (light switches on and off, etc) and another app that turns lights on and off in relation to sunrise/sunset with some randomness built in. It took me a while to figure out the available commands and learn the Groovy language, but it’s quite the interesting toolset once you get the hang of it.
My favorite use case right now uses the fact that our hub recognizes our Android phones as location sensors. So when Tyla and I are both out of the house, our thermostat automatically turns down a few degrees and when we get close to the house, it turns the thermostat back up. I think that one is actually going to save us money because we regularly forget to do that ourselves.
If you like to tinker with home automation, I recommend the hub. If you’re just a user who’s not going to write code, it’s probably worthwhile too, but honestly, if you’re not willing to tinker with your setup, then home automation probably isn’t your thing yet. We’re getting a lot closer, but the technology still has a way to go.
Snow Day
Seattle is a very mild climate. The ocean and the sound keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. That being said, every once in a while, cold weather aligns with wet weather and we get snow. It hasn’t happened in a few years, but if we get enough to cover the roads, it usually shuts everything down. I made fun of people for this when I moved here, but quickly learned that it really is hazardous. The roads usually start wet, then freeze, then get covered in snow. There are hills everywhere and oh yeah, there are only a handful of plows to cover the entire area. Thankfully a few years ago they changed the laws to allow the use of salt on the roads.
Anyway, we finally got a good snow the other day and it was perfect timing for Elijah to play in it. He has seen snow a few times before, but never at our house. We headed straight out as soon as we were up and he played in the snow with Tyla from 7:30 until noon with only a short break to warm up and change clothes. We had a couple sleds in the garage and those were a big hit. There were some roads in the neighborhood that were steep enough for sledding. All of the neighbor lawns were quickly covered in snowmen. Elijah had a lot of fun telling me about his big snow day!
Graham Cracker Brownies
My mom always made a bunch of delicious Christmas cookies, but my favorite were graham cracker brownies. They’re so good! The recipe is really simple but it’s a good arm workout because of how thick and gooey the batter is. And the fun isn’t done after you pull them out of the oven. Getting them cut and removed from the pan is a workout too! But when you’re done… mmm…. a friend at our recent party said, “What is in these crack brownie things?!?!” Enjoy!
Ingredients
- 4 cups finely crushed graham cracker crumbs. (it is about 1 package of graham crackers from a box. Or you can buy already crushed graham crackers. You usually find them in the baking section by the graham cracker pie crusts.)
- 1 package of chocolate chips
- 2 cans sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk) (found in the baking aisle.)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
Directions
Mix all together. Bake in a 9×13 pan for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees. It’s easier to remove the bars if you use a glass pan. You’ll want to let them cool a bit before removing them from the pan because they will probably be too gooey at first.
Other versions of this recipe have you had baking powder which would probably make it a little fluffier when it’s done, but I really like the dense result.
Fantasy Football – Week 14
Luckily for me, I had my house full of Packer fans on Sunday. That made the disastrous game even more fun to watch. But seriously, I think we can stop entertaining notions of any Super Bowl run. It’s not going to happen. My prediction is Dallas vs. New England.
Our league had, by far, it’s lowest output of the season. Three teams set their individual low scores for the season. It was close too. Two games were decided by less than 0.7 points! Logan and Austin seem to be peaking at just the right time. Logan is on a four game winning streak and this is the first week that Austin has had either the high or low score of the week. The playoffs will feature Andy vs Austin and Logan vs me. The consolation bracket features Tim vs Dad and Luke vs Jim.
Here are the power rankings at the end of the regular season:
1. Logan (+1)
2. Austin (+2)
3. Ben (-2)
4. Andy (-1)
| This Week | Season | All-Time | |
| Highest Team Score | Austin had 125.76 | Logan had 170.69 (Week 5) | Tim 200.51 (2015) |
| Lowest Team Score | Dad had 65.22 | Was Tim had 67.79 (Week 8) | Andy had 41.29 (2015) |
| Biggest Blowout | Logan beat Dad by 59.11 | Logan beat Tim by 79.46 (Week 5) | Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010) |
| Closest Win | Jim beat Ben by 0.22. | Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (Week 9) | Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (2016) |
| Highest Scoring Player | Le’Veon Bell had 49.80 for Austin. | Ben Roethlisberger had 43.90 for Andy (Week 4) | Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015) |
| Longest Active Winning Streak | Logan has a 4 game winning streak | Andy has a 5 game winning streak (Week 12) | Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak |
| Longest Active Losing Streak | Dad has a 7 game losing streak | Was Dad has a 6 game losing streak (Week 13) | Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011) |
Check Yourself
It’s time for another Public Service Announcement post: go get your skin checked by a dermatologist. I’ve been going regularly and I just had my third chunk of skin cut out of my body. That doesn’t count many more pieces that were just scraped off and sent in for testing.
This latest piece was “severely abnormal.” On their scale it’s one small step before that terrible m word “melanoma”. Healing up after they take a 5cm by 1cm slice out of your shoulder and add 9 stitches isn’t pleasant, but it’s a lot better than some of the alternatives. I asked the doctor what would have happened if I hadn’t removed it and he said “Not many people volunteer for a study to see if they get cancer if we don’t do anything.” Maybe it would have been nothing or maybe it would have been cancer in a few months. While I’d rather not have the problem at all, I feel a lot better having it removed.
Even if you don’t want to commit to a regular skin check schedule, at least go in to find out what risk category you’re in and learn what you should be looking for.
Merry Christmas
THE BIRTH OF JESUS
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.