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• The kids are having a couple of firsts this week, friends staying over for the night. DaughterGeeding’s friend will stay later this week but BoyGeeding’s friend was over last night. He was a polite and interesting kid, he liked to clean. As a matter of fact, he cleaned both of our kids’ rooms because he didn’t like clutter.
• This “extreme” cold weather has affected the ranged on our Nissan Leaf. During normal weather, it would display a range between 86 and 92 miles. With this cold weather, the range is displaying 74 miles.
  • My friend, Andy, recently wrote about his experience of owning a Nissan Leaf for a full year, the good, bad, and ugly. His leaf is a 2016 model with a larger battery while mine is a 2014 model. He’s experienced more battery denigration than I have but I’m guessing that’s because we have different driving habits. His commute to work requires highway travel and we may only use the highway a few times on the weekends, never on the weekday. I also don’t have the ability to use a rapid charge but I’m not sure if he does or if he’s utilized that feature often. Also, since he’s a reader of this blog, I’m killing a bird with two stones by posting this and not sending him an email since he doesn’t allow comments on his blog (darn spammers).
  • In case you are wondering, I butchered the “two birds one stone” idiom on purpose. I’m dumb, but not Tommy Callahan (Tommy Boy) dumb (language warning).
• I read the Dallas Observer‘s article on the 10 Most Fascinating People of Dallas. Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader trainer Kitty Carter made the list and in this March 2017 article she helps a Hardin-Simmons student prepare for an audition.
  • As the dancers are leaving, Carter stops the girl from Hardin-Simmons. She tells her her hair is awful and suggests she let her box coloring grow out and use plenty of conditioner before auditions. The dancer’s eyes begin to well up. “Are you about to cry?” Carter asks. The dancer assures her that isn’t the case, but Carter hugs her just to be sure.
• I miss that trend of girls wearing Keds with jeans.
• The Dallas Galleria is one of the more upscale malls in the area and I noticed a new Christian clothing store on the way to the ice rink – 3:16 is a Christian lifestyle brand specializing in sharing the cumulative message of salvation, not simply as an idea but as a lifestyle. We carry carefully curated apparel, jewelry, and gifts all inspired by the Word of God.
  • Here’s a bit more on the origin of the store from the “About Us” section of their website:
    • As far as humble beginnings go, we’ve held the title in spades. In 2009, our founder received the call to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ by witnessing to sinners and saints alike while actively witnessing this faith through christian apparel. With just the call and a set of car keys, Jaylen began designing t-shirts and distributing them from the trunk of his mother’s 1997 Nissan Maxima.
    • Humbly, he does not consider himself a CEO, instead he considers himself the CSV: Chief Steward/Visionary,  acknowledging that God owns everything and he is just the vessel chosen to carry out the vision.
• This girl’s dog is pretty protective.
  
• There’s talk of former Massachusettes Governor Mitt Romey running for the Utah Senate seat. I know there have been governors/senators who have governed and represented the same state in the Senate (such as Tim Kaine and Frank Murkowski), but off hand, I don’t know of anyone who has done both for different states.
  • In case you were wondering, no one person can serve as both governor and senator at the same time. Per Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution: “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”
• Only twice in U.S. history have both of a state’s U.S. Senate delegation members shared the same last name
  • The two Clayton cousins served alongside one another from March 4, 1845 through March 3, 1847. In other words, Delaware had two Senator Claytons for 730 days (two years).
  • Kingsley Taft took office the next day on November 6, 1946 and served alongside his distant relation, two-term Republican U.S. Senator Robert Taft (son of President William Howard Taft).

• Welcome back, folks. May we all have a better year than last, and let’s not forget our choice of attitude and mindset about how we respond to what happens. I often tell my kids, it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you decide to respond to what happens to you.
• My holiday vacation started on the afternoon of the 21st of December. My favorite day of that period was the one in which all I did was complete various tasks and choirs I’ve been meaning to get to for the past ten months or so. Just little things like cleaning the garage and bagging and mulching leaves. It was also the same day all Christmas decorations were taken down and stored away.
• If I recall correctly, there’s a BoN reader who starts the new year by throwing away all his old socks and replacing them with new ones.
• I was happy and a little of envious of LiberallyLean and his wife’s trip to NYC to spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square. That’s something I’d like to experience. But I’ll be honest, and I know I’m letting the terrorist get the best of me, but I’d be fearful of going to a celebration like that because of safety concerns. In another effort to be honest, it bummed me out they didn’t tweet much from their week in NYC, but I’m more happy they have their priorities in line not having to document everything via social media and just appreciating the moment.
• @darrenrovell – Amazing: 51 players on this year’s UCF team were on the team that went winless in 2015 (0-12). Two years later, they finish a perfect 13-0.
• Andy Dalton gets Bills into the playoffs, and #BillsMafia pays it forward
  • After Sunday’s games, “donations flowed into the Andy and Jordan Dalton Foundation (www.andydalton.org) in $17 increments, a buck for each year of the playoff drought.
• Death comes knocking – Sears didn’t air a single TV ad during the holiday season
  • There was a small Sears store in Mineral Wells. Back in the day, I thought it was so cool you could order anything from the catalog and it would be delivered at the store for pickup. Per their website, that store is still open, which is a bit surprising.
• I get a kick out of the “Beef Bowl” the local Lowry’s Prime Rib puts on for the two Cotton Bowl opponents each year but didn’t notice any coverage of it this year. Here’s an old story on how the Beef Bowl came to be.
• Since a handful of lawyers read this blog – Mike Leach: 5 Thoughts that Have Nothing to Do with Football
  • Before I ever got into coaching, I got my law degree at Pepperdine. I think the legal profession is getting somewhat corrupted. When it comes to lawyers, I think it’s kind of a Catch-22. On one hand, there’s so much process, procedure and mess caused by the legal profession. But on the other hand, the only way to sort through all that process, procedure and mess is through the legal profession. That’s why I think lawyers are both very destructive and very necessary. It’s like if you have guys coming after you with a sword, well, you better have a sword too. It’s a shame though. We definitely don’t observe the Constitution like we once did. Now we treat it as more of a suggestion — but that’s a whole other conversation.
• Is Leach still a practicing Mormon?
• About a decade ago we installed energy-efficient windows in our living room. Yesterday when the outside temperature was 22-degrees, my temperature gun provided a temperature of 65-degrees. The adjacent kitchen windows along the same walls had a temperature of 56-degrees.
• I had no idea the protected u-turn lane was a Texas invention and not as popular in other states. It was also neat to learn why we have so many frontage roads. – Investigating The Mysteriously Feel-good Texas Turnaround
  • Yet Texas law guarantees property owners access to roads that abut their land, and that includes highways. Greer wasn’t about to build on and off ramps according to property ownership, so instead lined every mile of highway with frontage roads that connected directly to all adjacent private property. And—bolstered by a 1946 amendment to the state’s constitution that directed three quarters of all special road taxes to be used on highways—he built them wide. “As far as I know, Texas is the only state with continuous frontage roads along all interstate highways,” says Polson. “It’s brilliant, and expensive, but it made landowners happy.”
  • But the frontage roads didn’t solve all the access issues. Due to space constraints in urban areas, many frontages run in one direction. That satisfied the law, but people who want to get from one side of the freeway to the other would have to drive to an under- or overpass, then make two left turns through intersections. “Left turns are the most complicated and time-consuming of any intersection activity,” says Marcus Brewer, a research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute. They hold up traffic and disproportionately endanger both pedestrians and oncoming drivers. So, because urban frontage roads handle large volumes of traffic, even a small number of folks using those left turn lanes to flip their U-ies can cause major congestion.
  • Despite this near-ubiquity, some Texas road contractors have started questioning whether turnarounds are worth the additional construction costs. Each U-turn lane can add a million dollars or more to the price of an interchange.

My family opened presents on Christmas Eve, I think Dad preferred not to wake up early unless he had to. You hear him chuckle.

Off camera you hear my grandma, who you tell was a smoker. I love how she responds with”Oh…” You also hear my mother, she was the one with an Asian accent (duh).

Merry Christmas, folks. Go out there and make some memories of your own.