Fall....That's All!
Author’s Note: If you are busy, you might consider skipping over this one, as it is unusually light. The problem is that I had such a good weekend, there just wasn’t anything pissing me off enough to write about when I sat down. Sorry bout that.
Understanding The Calendar
Summer ended a little over a week ago. Fall, or autumn, is what we are in from October 1 to November 1. And then from November 1 to December 26, we are in “The Christmas Season”. Then we pick up with winter, spring, summer, repeat. It is known.
The Hallmark Channel gets things started a TAD early, what with the Christmas lineup dominating things from October 21st on. But November 1st is the start of the traditional Christmas Season as we all know. Thanksgiving—my absolute favorite stand-alone holiday—is the capstone event in the November portion of the Christmas season, but any suggestion that Christmas should be suppressed until after Thanksgiving is just unfounded.
And so, we now have a month of autumn; pumpkin spice coffees, lots of football, progressively more chilly mornings combatted with progressively more layers. Never fear, our friends at Hallmark have a treasure trove of romances that are fall-themed to keep us satisfied until later in the month.
My Own Worst Enemy
As is my custom, I have overscheduled myself. From Labor day until the third week of December is an absolute mess of work, work travel, family obligations, personal travel, and UVA sports related travel. The eight days in Mexico with The Kitten SEEMED like a great idea a few months ago when I blocked it off, but now it will be (as many of my “vacations” turn out to be) a “hybrid” of work and play (thanks Zoom!) UVA Football has made it easier to be choosy about which games to attend from here on out (see below), which offers some relief, but UVA Basketball is playing in a tourney in Vegas the weekend before Thanksgiving that I simply couldn’t pass up. Work travel is the bulk of the issue, and thirteen years into this consulting hustle, I am now scheduling trips that hit multiple objectives in several locations. Bottom line, I’m busy.
There are worse things to be, especially in this economy. Like everyone else with retirement accounts, mine have been hammered mercilessly over the past 10 months, to the point where my stated goal of retiring to my vine and fig tree on my sixtieth birthday (999 days from writing these words) grows more remote with each passing day. I have dramatically increased my saving this year, but it is hard not to see things as pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. That said, eventually the hole will close back over and I will hopefully have bought cheap. We’ll see how all that turns out.
Some Thoughts On UVA Football
UVA got punched in the mouth by Duke yesterday, a team also playing its first season under a new coach. Unlike UVA however, they seem to have righted the ship after a few years of frustration. UVA’s much ballyhooed quarterback and receiving corps have together laid an awful egg this year, and the team is making mistake after mistake. Helpful UVA fans like to remind us that the last coach went 2-10 in his first season. At this point, the Wahoos are 2-3, with yesterday’s loss being the only game didn’t call earlier in the season, predicting they would go 7-4:
Richmond (W)
at Illinois (L)
Old Dominion (W)
at Syracuse (L)
at Duke (W) (L)
Louisville (W)
at Ga Tech (W)
Miami (L)
UNC (W)
Pittsburgh (L)
Coastal Carolina (W)
at Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University (L)
Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m revising my picks (see strike-throughs above) to result in a 3-8 season. Way too many mistakes, and the offense either doesn’t understand what the coach has installed or just isn’t good enough to execute it. There seems to be a lot of latitude on social media with respect to criticizing the coaching staff, but because I didn’t expect a lot out of a first year program, I’m not going to get too down on them. What is less acceptable is to criticize “the kids” (God, I hate how patronizing that term is when used about college athletes). I have no patience for those self-appointed protectors of the children who bray about others criticizing the players. Poppycock. These are not “kids”, and they are not (just) “student athletes”. They are PROFESSIONALS, able now to make money off of their NIL (name, image, likeness), and so when they do not do their jobs—as we are witnessing on the UVA team, they are fair game for criticism.