Saturday, December 20, 2025
Time: 9:30 PM
Song: Better Man
Artist: Pearl Jam
Mode of Consumption: Listening to the radio on the way home from Gingerbread House decorating party.
Song link: https://open.spotify.com/track/2B98ljvzqpCVgt5reTHq28?si=381a5fc5715445cc
We left my Brother-in-Law’s (Andy) home a few minutes after the Packers had scored a long touchdown near the end of the third quarter against the Bears. The score put the Packers up by ten points at 13-3.
Andy lives near White Pines State Park, about a half hour from our place north of Sterling. We had spent the evening making and eating pizza, and then each of us decorated ginger bread houses. I always have an inexplicably difficult time assembling a house. We cheat, I suppose, by using hot glue to stick the house pieces together rather than using the frosting. Glue just speeds up the progress, for some at least. I always fumble around getting them to stick together, and tonight one of the pieces broke off and then tumbled to the kitchen floor where it shattered. Luckily, there was one extra piece.
Anyways, I decorated the house in orange and blues in honor of the Bears, who were trying to earn a rare win over their hated rivals from Green Bay.
After the decorating, we gathered in the living room, watching the game. I knew we couldn’t stay to the end, so we decided to leave after the Packers scored.
We had two stops on the way home, as we taxied Jodi’s mom and Andy’s mother-in-law to the party. I figured if things went like a normal NFL game, I could maybe make it home for the last few minutes, hoping it would be worth watching.
There was a time I would have been content to listen to it on the radio, but a few years ago the games stopped being played on AM 780, a reliable channel reception-wise in Northwest Illinois, and began being played on AM 1000 (ESPN), a channel that never comes in out here.
So, I had Jodi search a couple channels we thought might play the game, eventually landing on FM 95.7, which was playing this song. That was my white flag. I wouldn’t know what was happening until I got home.
After dropping both ladies off, one in Milledgeville and one west of Coleta, we arrived home at about 10:15.
I clicked on the TV just as the Bear were kicking off to the Packers to start overtime. The Bears made a fourth-down stand on defense, and a few plays later, Caleb Williams tossed a nearly fifty-yard bomb to D.J. Moore for the touchdown and the win.
So, it all worked out. Even my gingerbread house made it home without collapsing.
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