Opening this year's presents
All work and no play makes Tom a dull boy
This season was supposed to be magical! For the first time ever, the Gold Package (old Milwaukee ticket package) season ticket-holders were getting three regular season games!
More than that, we were getting the three division games: Vikings, Lion, and Bears (oh my!).
What could be better and better justify the long drive from Ohio to Lambeau x3?
Then the Vikes went up 28-0 in the first half. We stormed back but still lost.
Then the Lions did just about the same damn thing!
Now, my hopes are left clinging to the forever underperforming Bears (thank God!), because if we drop all three games, I am going to lose it — like end-up-in-the-drunk-tank/gameday-arrest-report lose it!
Or maybe I will just mumble to myself the whole drive home (more believable).
But here’s the bigger picture: knowing I had that date in January in Green Bay, and feeling — until recently — that Green Bay was the answer for our planned move back to the Upper Midwest, I figured, why not drive up a 26-foot Penske full of household goods to place in storage and thereby make the ultimate later move all that much easier (another 26-foot truck)?
So that became the plan … until my spouse and I red-teamed the decision (a favorite exercise of ours) in a long conversation and realized Green Bay worked (okay) for me but far less so for my spouse and two youngest, all of whom greatly preferred the general Twin Cities area in Minnesota (nice).
So now, the big planned truck drive becomes the family tour!
I drive the truck to the Twins, staying with one brother along the way and a sister once unloaded. Then my fourth child and I drive on to another uncle/brother’s place in upper WI, then the game on Sunday and another night with mein Bruder, and then returning home after dropping my current college kid back at school.
All fun stuff, particularly for someone for whom hotels lost their luster many years ago.
That effort, plus all the packing up prior, drove me to seek a break from Substack posting. That break starts now and lasts through Monday, 6 January.
Fear not, I have posts lined up for each day and all of them comprise presents of past writing that I choose to share here now.
Either very generous of me or very lazy, or one from Column A and one from Column B.
Because I do need a break from writing a post everyday for 14 months in a row.
Plus I got 5 of 6 kids home for Xmas and you all simply don’t rank.
Plus I have old stuff not before shared online so why not repurpose and call it (almost) a fortnight?
Now, some of you have already anticipated reading some summary of mine of the crazy year that was 2024. For that I apologize even as I feel like I’ve been killing it since the election with big-picture material.
Other long-time readers remember that I usually spin out a top-ten wish list for the new year on 1 January (something I began doing while a syndicated columnist for Scripps back in the day. Frankly, with all the caveats one has to offer right now with Trump 2.0 looming, that just struck me as a frustratingly empty effort to make, so I, with genuine relief, passed on that as well.
So … the presents start tomorrow, with a deleted scene from my 2009 book Great Powers. It is really out there, which is why it never made it into the book.
On Xmas, I will share a TV pilot script I did for fun (with the help of two of my kids — both big fan fiction writers — about 15 years ago when I was just coming off some “world building” or “series doctoring” work for STARZ (alas, none of it made it out of development hell but I got paid).
After that, I’m going to share, in a serialized fashion, the first volume of my five-volume ebook memoir/diary/blog-before-they-were-called-blogs of my firstborn’s lengthy fight through a Stage IV pediatric cancer (spoiler alert: she just turned 33, so this is sort of a 30th anniversary edition!).
That will take you through the 6th — all of it free to all subscribers (a Christmas bonus!).
I will return all fresh and newly herniated on the 7th, perhaps with a mug shot.
GUARDIAN: ‘He kept going until he couldn’t’: why do boomer men refuse to slow down? Those born in the baby boomer generation are entering the longest phase of elderhood in history, full of potential but also fraught with challenges
And if that doesn’t guilt you (and yes, I include my kids in this) …
I have overwhelmingly eschewed the daily PLEA(!) for paid subscriptions, leaving just the boilerplate language with the subscribe button up front, but here, at year’s end, I do ask you to consider a paid subscription. I put a decent effort into this Substack while keeping the vast majority of it free for all. Still, as I contemplate retirement sometime before 80 (I am 62), I would like to see this effort grow into more than beer money (okay, high-end vodka money … okay, more money than I can possibly drink without liver damage), so anything you can manage will be greatly appreciated.
There, now I feel like the waste management guy out on the curb in the freezing snow holding my hand out for a Christmas tip, which reminds me …
Happy holidays to all and safe travels to any on the road like myself and daughter Vonne Mei and son Kevin.
And have a blessed new year … REALLY … we’re all going to need one.
