Remember when I was bemoaning Washington’s sports teams a few weeks ago, and said it was surprising that the Capitals were in last place in their NHL division? Well, rest assured. The times, they’ve been a-changing. The Caps are now only 2 points out of the division lead.

The Commanders, however, have continued to lose week after week. Well, I guess that isn’t correct. They did not lose last week because they didn’t play. But they lost yesterday to a first place team, the Denver Broncos, by 1 point, in overtime. The thing is…they did not have to lose. They lost because they made the decision to risk a loss by trying a 2 point extra point. And they failed. I think that was the wrong move. I thought that even before they failed.

The game wasn’t over until after midnight. Edie thought I was nuts to stay up for a game that I (being honest) really didn’t care about. Of course, she was right. But what about those 65,000 fans who, after midnight, first left their seats and headed for their cars. I think, if they lived in our house, they would get here about 1:30.

It’s cold here. 35 this morning. I guess that’s because it is December already, making 2025 the quickest year on record. I didn’t leave the house yesterday, except to pull out the trash.

I did make an ambitious move. I started to read William Taubman’s biography of Mikhail Gorbachev, all 700 pages of text. I am on page 50, and Misha has left his cold, impoverished small town home, having been accepted at Moscow State University, a move that will change his life, for sure.

I should also mention that I finished reading Dan Glickman’s memoir, which was both a fairly quick read, and surprisingly interesting. Who? Having grown up in the small Jewish community of Wichita with a father who owned a Cubs minor league affiliate, he went to the University of Michigan and then came to DC, where he attended the George Washington University Law School. He worked for two Republican Congressman before returning to Kansas as a Democrat.

Glickman served 9 terms in the House of Representatives, then as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture, head of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School and its Institute of Politics, and finally for 6  years he led the Motion Picture Association of America. A very interesting career.

On the screen, we finished watching Claire Danes’ The Beast in Me, an eight episode thriller teaching you never to trust your neighbors (a lesson to be learned not only by one neighbor, but by both). I recommend it for the complexity of the plot which is nevertheless comprehensible, as well as the acting. I also finished watching a Spanish film called A Widow’s Game, apparently a dramatization of a true story of a young woman who convinces a co-worker to kill her husband, and then proves not to be what he thinks she is. It’s pretty good, too, as a story of police work. Of course, the real star of the show is the City of Valencia. It has been my treadmill film.

Enough of this. Time to face the week.