America Weeps

All across America, and even the world, people are weeping over the evil Patriots victory, which completed a perfect regular season for Satan's team.

Beginning tomorrow, America will begin a week of morning over the tragic events which unfolded on Saturday night: the New England Patriots completed a perfect regular season - 16 wins, 0 losses. The Desch family encourages everyone to wear black for the next week, and set your hope on the fast-approaching demise of the Patriots, which will occur when the Colts beat them in the AFC championship game in Foxboro, New England's home turf. Please do not lose hope everyone, good will triumph over evil, if not in this life then in the next.

Merry Christmas from P-Town!

Josh, Betsy and Howie here, wishing you a very Merry Christmas from Peoria, IL, home of the . . . of . . . home Caterpillar Inc.! And, of course, most importantly home to Betsy's wonderful family. We had a great Christmas, filled with thoughtful meditation on the reason for the season (kudos to mr. gar pappy), good family fun and presents, to boot. Betsy got me an indy colts hat for Christmas. I am so excited, I'm the biggest NFL fan ever and I love the Colts and yet I did not own any Colts paraphenilia until this hat. The hat is just like the one below except it is grey with a blue horseshoe. I got Betsy some cookbooks. And now for some fun memories.On Christmas Eve a lot of us played the Wheel of Fortune board game, and Carrie offered to play the part of Vanna. Carrie, however, quickly became weary of how long it was taking the teams to solve the puzzles and so she started saying things like, "you're not going to solve it! just pick an "m" or something so we can move on!" Quickly she became known as "Surly Vanna." Toward the end of our game, during one particularly difficult puzzle, Surly Vanna suddenly figured out the puzzle for herself and blurted out "its (the puzzle) 'Little Joe Cartwright, I quit." We sat in stunned silence for a half a second and then started laughing really hard. Can you imagine the real Vanna solving the puzzle for the contestants because she got frustrated with the pace of the game? Moving on to Christmas day. It is a P-Town tradition for Bets' parents to make beef slips, so we ate beef slips for dinner along with the Uncle Glenn, Aunt Martha, John, Jen, Adam, Uncle Monte, Tammy, Lesley, and the Grandmas. Some memorable gifts-just to name a few-were charm braclets for Bets and Emily, necklaces numbered 1 to 5 for each of the sisters (from Marnie) and the board game version of Deal or No Deal for Josh (from Mr. and Mrs. H). We tried out the game last night and it was fun. I got a chance to be Howie and say, with my hands together, "open the case!". Also, the cousins, Howie and John, got to see each other last night.

More Christmas stories and pictures to come. We will also be posting pictures from our Christmas celebration in Augusta with my family. Currently, our Christmas tree-named Peyton naturally-is probably dead as a doornail in our apartment. I am including a picture of the "spider-pig" scene from the Simpson's movie because that song is really, really funny, and Betsy and I sing it all the time. Merry Christmas to all!

Official French Press Users

Well, I got an early morning (5:37, to be exact) wake-up call from the sweetest little alarm clock ever. As I stumbled into the kitchen to get our little rooster out of his crib a few minutes later once it was clear that he was wide awake and ready to play, I thought two things.

1. Josh is not going to be happy that Howie is getting us up this early.
2. We need coffee.

Many a morning Josh is not too excited about the time that our early riser chooses to wake up, but when he sees that sweet little face of our boy who is so happy to be awake, time (albeit an hour which is better slept-through) becomes unimportant.

This morning was no exception. If he's honest Josh would tell you that he would prefer that I get Howie out of bed and immediately feed him, since that process obviously does not involve him and he can keep sleeping. But since Howie is nearing 6 months I've learned how to involve Papa in the morning. The best way is to put Howie right on his chest and let him squawk right in Josh's face. Then he has no option but to wake up and be excited about our sweet little baby, even if it is early.

So we got out of bed at Howie's call, made sure he was fed and got a clean diaper, and headed into the kitchen for breakfast and to make that desperately-needed coffee. Our coffeemaker has been somewhat sporadic lately... the last few mornings it's spewed nothing but brown water tasting faintly like coffee. Josh's roommate Casselbuddy from Covenant gave us a French press for our wedding and we had yet to use it, although we had intended to several times. I guess it was just that the making coffee in a coffeemaker is really easy- it's coffee for dummies. The French press looked a little more challenging. But this morning seeing as we weren't really wanting that brown water, we decided to attempt the French press. Let me tell you, it was good. It was so good, in fact, that Josh even wanted some of the grounds in his cup to chew on. I'm not sure why he wanted to do this. Fatigue? Insanity setting in? Caffeine euphoria? Probably a little of each. Let that stand as proof that the French press gave us a seriously good cup of coffee. (Don't worry... Josh soon decided that the grounds are in the bottom of the press for a reason, that being that they're GROSS and not intended to be consumed.) So here's to you, Casselbuddy... you REALLY came through for us this morning!!!


Hope ya'll are having a wonderful Christmas season!

Post on the Run

Why We Hate the Patriots

In case you don't know, the New England Patriots are now 13-0, and closing in on only the second perfect season in NFL history, and the first since the regular season was extended to 16 games. The Patriots next two games are against two of the worst teams in the NFL, the Jets and the Dolphins. Interestingly enough, when the Patriots play the Dolphins in the second to last game of the season, the Patriots could be going for a perfect season and the Dolphins could be trying to win their first game of the season. As history would have it, the only undefeated team in NFL history was the '72 Dolphins. Anyone who knows us knows that we hate the Patriots and we love the Colts. I don't know what we have been cheering for more this season: the Patriots to lose a game or the Colts to win every game. I feel at this critical juncture of the NFL season we need to post our reasons for hating the Patriots (we just hate them in a football sense, they could be nice guys . . . but we doubt it).

1. They are from Boston: Boston is an arrogant city, second only in arrogance to New York in my judgment. Its the kind of arrogance that comes with being one of the first big cities in America, the kind of arrogance that says, "we had a really important tea party here before you were even a state." Its the kind of arrogance that says, "we have our own American accent, and we are known for talking faster than you." Its the kind of arrogance which says, "we are the city of the famed Red Soxs, of the legendary Celtics, and now, as if we needed anything else, we are also the city of a great NFL franchise. The city of the greatest football team of all time." Boston doesn't deserve to have a team as good as the Patriots, its not good for their pride. Why can't longsuffering Cleveland (no sports championships in many many years) or some other lesser known city have their NFL team on the way to an undefeated season? Further proof that in football, like in life, things are not always fair.

2. Bill Belickick: Its hard to decide who we dislike more, Bilickick or Tom Brady. Why do I write that you ask? First, Belickick always has a scowl on his face-I have never seen the man smile. Second, he is always wearing a hoody with the sleaves cut off. What kind of head coaching attire is that? More important, however, is the fact that he got caught blatantly cheating is did not give a real apology for it, or even acknowledge his guilt. He got caught filming the other team's coaches-clearly wrong-and he said, "my interpretation of the rules was wrong." Why can't you just say, "I messed up, I sinned, and I need the forgiveness of the whole NFL and all our fans."? I'll tell you my theory, because he is proud and thinks that he is better than everyone else. Since he got caught, how has he responded? He is clearly trying to stick it to the NFL for embarrassing him, so every chance he gets he runs up the score. He has earned a reputation as an evil football genius, the brilliant bad guy that you want someone to stop.

3. Tom Brady: The NFL's Mr. Playboy. He dates supermodels. He looks like a magazine model after every game at the press conference. He is an amazing quarterback (hey, if he wasn't any good, it wouldn't be any fun to hate him). He is the NFL's prettyboy. Even though I don't know him, I feel pretty confident in saying he is not living anything close to a Christian life whatsoever. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my quarterbacks to be more like Brett Farve. Here is a couple other things about Brady that I don't like. A) He beat my St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl a few years back. B) His high profile former girlfriend gave birth to his child after they had alread split up and Brady had moved onto another high profile girlfriend/model. I'm sure that goes on all the time in the sports world, but I still don't like it.

So there you have it folks. It really isn't personal. I hope the Patriots have many members of their team who are Christians. They might have more of a Christian atmosphere in their locker room than the Colts. Although with Tony Dungy in charge of the Colts, I doubt it. But on the football field, we will cheer against them with all our might. Here's hoping that someone beats the Patriots in the regular season, and that they don't win the Super Bowl either, that the proud would be humbled, and that the humbled would be lifted up.