The Devils - Joe Abercrombie Another book that appeared on multiple Best Of lists I scrolled through at the end of 2025. With good reason: it was one of the best books I’ve read in the past year or so. At its core this is your classic quest novel. A teenager is identified as the presumptive heir to a throne that could reunite two churches that have been split for ages.
A cold, snowy weekend that was pretty lazy when we weren’t braving the weather to clear our driveway. Weather The big event of the weekend was the massive winter storm that blew through the eastern half of the US. The snow started at our house around 4:00 Saturday afternoon and didn’t stop until nearly 6:00 Sunday night. Based on the maps I looked at, we were in the 11–12” range.
A different week around our house, leaving less time for music, but I still managed to put a little something together for you to listen to. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lWGQVRW1K3jR7dKPyaCNb?si=1a6fda3437564d34) “Long Live Love” - Sugar The second new song from Sugar dropped this week, along with the reveal of a full tour later this year. They come as close to me as Cincinnati. So if any of my brothers (or sisters) in music want to spend a Tuesday evening in October in the Queen City, let me know.
We are three weeks into the New Year and I’ve still not written about an important development that took place over the holidays. I mentioned last fall that we were looking to convert part of our unfinished basement into a workout room. S had an appropriately bougie plan that would fit the rest of our home’s design. We brought in a contractor that had done good work for some friends. It took a few weeks but eventually we got a quote that was reasonable.
We moved to Indiana in the summer of 2003. IU basketball was one year past an unexpected run to the national title game, where they lost to Maryland. It seemed like they were coming out of a lean period and would reclaim their place amongst the game’s elite. While not inevitable, it felt like the 2000s could bring another national title banner to Assembly Hall. Nearly 23 years later the Hoosiers haven’t sniffed a Final Four and are on their seventh coach over that span.
I was thinking about putting off the Weekend Notes until tomorrow, given that today is a holiday. Since tonight is kind of a big night for the state of Indiana, I figured it’s better to clear everything out so I can focus on another topic tomorrow. HS Hoops City champs again! For the third straight year we faced arch rivals BCHS in the City tournament championship game. Once again it was a tense, tight affair.
The new music really started flowing again this week. At one point my folder of songs to review was crammed with more than 40 tracks. Trying to work through those means a lot of songs got only one play instead of several. As I type this nothing is really planned out for where this playlist will go, so I guess we’ll find out together. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/55jdcLEh1oq83kKaV6Ne1u?si=d0209574cc7e496e) “DESIGNED TO LOSE” - The Twilight Sad
I started 2026 with two books that were recommended from a couple sources I trust. With mixed results. American Sky - James Grady This novel landed on the best non-fiction list of Steve Donoghue, a poster of tremendous and voluminous year end lists. Thus I was really excited to get to it, described as a muscular, coming-of-age story. It left me wanting. The story follows Luc, a young man growing up in Montana, from roughly 1963 to 1970.
A very good Tuesday night in our house. First, the Irish began the City tournament with an expectedly easy, 33-point win. Next, as a nice surprise, KU pounded previously unbeaten Iowa State. Can’t ask for a better evening than that. Rather than dive into those games, I’ll instead share a post I’ve been sitting on for nearly two weeks. I really should have posted it on a weekend, as most of it is rather out-of-date.
CFP My goodness! I expected IU to beat Oregon. But like that? A complete ass kicking, the type you expect Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State to put on some feel-good-story team that got a bunch of breaks and stumbled into the playoffs? No, no way could the Hoosiers do that to the Ducks, a team loaded with five star recruits and future NFL players. Yet they did. Without much effort, it seemed.
Every four weeks for the past four months I’ve shared some brief thoughts about the NFL season. The common theme was I had no idea what was going on, as teams took turns looking good for 2–3 games then looking terrible. Following that trend, as I look at the playoff bracket, I am befuddled. How the hell am I supposed to have confidence in anyone from this group of teams? There isn’t a single one that doesn’t have at least one major question.
[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1khaUmcFyoxiQgYpkKT6w2?si=e785712237c44101) “Gold Paint For Blue Skies” - Peter Matthew Bauer Former Walkmen lead singer Hamilton Leithauser released an excellent album almost exactly a year ago. Here his former bandmate’s latest sounds like it easily could have been a Walkmen song. I can’t help but wonder what it would sound like with Leithauser on vocals. “Rule 31” - Radio Free Alice I love this band’s name, harkening to clandestine shortwave stations of ages past.
A wild couple nights of basketball that included three extra periods to resolve two games. Because of that, a rare mash-up of college and high school notes. Jayhawk Talk From the verge of a disastrous 0–2 Big 12 start to an exhilarating win that didn’t really answer the questions thanks to a pretty amazing three minutes Tuesday night. KU’s defense completely fell apart in the second half, giving TCU layups and wide open 3’s, which the Frogs refused to miss.
My final four books of 2025, which ended up being my most prolific reading year on record. Appropriately, and I’m not making this up, I read 67 books last year. Honest to God! SIX SEVEN!!!! Cross, Sanctuary, The Devil - Ken Bruen Three more entries in Bruen’s brilliant Jack Taylor series, read over roughly a week. Somehow they are getting even darker, with a terrific twist in Taylor’s life thrown into this set.
A few more catch up posts I need to crank through before we officially turn our backs on the old year. The final quarter of 2025 ended up being my worst workout stretch of the year. Not a huge surprise, as the weather turned, I had a couple weeks of foot pain, I spent several days shuttling C back-and-forth as she battled her mystery illness,[1] and then the holidays hit. My longest stretch of not breaking a sweat before December was three days.
Shut down the blog for nearly two weeks and there’s a lot to catch up on. I’m sure none of you want to get back to work anyway, so consider this a public service on my part. Holiday Stuff It was your standard Christmas around our house. I spent nearly all Christmas Eve day prepping, making five casseroles for Christmas Day plus baked beans to take to our Christmas Eve gathering.
The Usual Suspects Elf Christmas Vacation A Christmas Story A+, A+, A+ Holiday Baking Championship Well, they did it. After how ever many years of watching these holiday baking shows - at least a decade - the Food Network finally drove me away. Following the semi-debacle that was this year’s Halloween Baking Championship, I was hoping things would return to normal for Christmas. Alas, based on the first episode it seemed like it had also been hammered into stupidity by the producers.
[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6tvtOhBpV86iwslJC9dDey?si=bf12d86559754283) “The New Year’s Resolution” - Spielbergs I made just one resolution this year, and I already broke it. Such is life. “Fighting Back” - Voxtrot Voxtrot had a little moment during the blog rock era in the 2000s. Next month they will release their first album in 19 years. On this lead single they sound like they haven’t missed a beat in their time away. “Day In The Sun (Gettin’ wit U)” - De La Soul, Q-Tip & Yummy
For my readers who have followed me here for years - thank you all! - you know my brain works in very linear/circular ways.[1] I’m very into the rhythms of the year: the flow from week-to-week, the changing of the seasons, when school begins and ends, etc. Something was ingrained in my brain when I was young, or perhaps I was just born that way. Regardless, the end of one calendar year and the beginning of the next has always struck me as an Event, even if we rarely actually celebrate the actual arrival of the New Year anymore.
Once again we have reached the end of a calendar year and one of the greatest days of the blogging year: the unveiling of my favorite songs of 2025. This year the process was as fun as I can recall. As you know, I keep a running list throughout the year, constantly shuffling songs in and out as they catch my fancy. When fall arrived this year I wasn’t really sure about the songs I had stashed away for the final evaluation.