I like to think I’m a good person.

I’m a considerate friend. A relatively appreciative son. Someone who doesn’t take the love in his life for granted, but based on my weekend diet DOES take life itself for granted.

Bottom line is I wake up every day and try to do my best to have a positive impact on the world and those around me.

And all I ask in return is for one day a week where I can enjoy watching a successful football team.

BC is a lost cause so Saturdays are a bust, but Sundays were always my safe haven. A day where the Patriots would come out and, win or lose, put forth a respectable effort.

But now that’s gone. I’m not going to discuss yesterday’s debacle, but suffice it to say the season is over and the team is in shambles. So since I don’t have the joy of football to fall back on, this week’s OTILTW is…

LITERALLY ANYTHING BUT FOOTBALL.

Ok, it’s been a few months since I needed anything to bring me joy besides football. What makes me happy? Touchdowns? Nope. Umm … limiting turnovers! Nope. Running the damn ball and playing for overtime! Nope.

Well this is going poorly.

That game really brought down my mood, huh? To make up for the monumental setback, I’m going to list two things that I loved from this past week. This ought to reset my chemistry:

#1. Chefing up

Surprisingly haven’t mentioned how much I love cooking on this blog. The pictures I post of myself demonstrate how much I love eating, but I’ve never shown myself grinding away in the kitchen.

Been too busy (hungover/tired) to cook a lot of nice dinners lately, but this week gave me two occasions.

1. Entertaining a lady friend

2. Hosting a Christmas party

For the former, I had a female guest over at my domicile to impress her with one of my 3 skills, cooking. (Other 2 are competitive eating and throwing remotes at televisions during playoff games).

As a showman and hopeless romantic, I obviously had to pull out all the stops for this first showcase of my culinary prowess. The result? This beauty:

Fresh gnocchi with peas, guanciale, aged parmesan, and a homemade brown butter sauce, all finished with a hint of lemon zest. I’m so good.

For the latter, my house was hosting a little Xmas party this week. Obviously I had to have a stunning centerpiece for the food table. I give you: cheesy bread Christmas tree brushed with sage butter:

Simply stunning.

#2. Spending time with my elders

Because my siblings and I are arguably the greatest grandkids ever, we made the 30-minute trek back home to the North Shore on Sunday to bring breakfast and a Christmas present to my grandmother. She’s on the Greek half of the family so we call her YiaYia, which either means grandmother or yo-yo in Greek. None of us speak the language — we’re just kind of taking her word for it.

What followed was a truly classic grandparent experience.

The meal got off to a roaring start when YiaYia, seemingly out of nowhere, started casually delving into her funeral requests. HER funeral. She’s not currently ill, and will, knock on wood, be with us for some time, but what a topic to come out of the gate with unprompted. Pretty sure my brother just finished explaining what his loan company does when she mentioned she wants a closed casket.

(She reads this blog and can verify all of this btw. Hi YiaYia! Love you.)

I wonder if planning your funeral when you’re older is like planning your wedding day when you’re younger. I guess either way you’re going to be the center of attention, dressed in your nicest clothes, and want it to be the perfect day. One is just significantly more morbid.

My plans for my own funeral are slightly less detailed than hers:

YiaYia mentioned she wants us to Greek dance around her closed casket, which I don’t think sends as positive a message as she intended. Also my father and I are physically incapable of rapid lateral movement due to pervasive knee issues.

She also asked my sister take this photo, on the spot, to have on one of those funeral photo boards. We have several very nice candid photos of her, but I suppose you need a few staged ones to fill out the board.

As breakfast was wrapping up we were presented with a list of chores that needed doing while we were in the house. It was an actual, written out list.

We were happy to at least attempt the ones we could help with, but my sibs and I are by and large useless as people so it wasn’t going to be many. Let’s break down our efforts:

✅ Fix Roku - We were dubious about this one as we suck at all things technology, but it turns out the Roku wasn’t actually broken. YiaYia was just pressing the power button on the remote instead of the home button to get to the Roku homepage. Now she can watch the Celtics games with ease.

⚠️ Fix my computer so I can send emails from my emails - Still not 100% sure what this means, but it doesn’t seem like something that actually needs to be fixed. YiaYia mentioned that our aunt was going to do that one, so we were off the hook there.

❌ Order inkjet - First real failure by the squad here. YiaYia was stunned to learn that none of us currently, nor have ever, owned a printer so we were actually less sure of this than her. Not wanting to order the wrong ink cartridges, we opted to also pawn this one off on our aunt.

⚠️ Get batteries for diabetes monitor + 2 boxes of chocolate - This one was also claimed by a relative prior to our arrival so it was not needed. Hoping the chocolates are a gift though given the first half of the request.

✅ Open Amazon box - And we are back on the board! My strong ass arms shredded that thing open like it was nothing. It was this fun board game:

⚠️ Go up and get my wedding album to the right inside glass cabinet door - A sweet and impressively detailed request. I did attempt it, but the album wasn’t actually in the cabinet nor anywhere else I looked so I couldn’t complete the task. I’ll make another go at it soon.

2/6? Not our worst tbh.

Following our mediocre choring efforts, YiaYia wanted a selfie of all of us. As resident longest arm guy, I was given the honor of taking it. Unfortunately I somehow caught myself off guard and didn’t smile in time.

Made up for it as I left though.

We also took another, more festive picture of YiaYia in front of her Christmas tree to “put on your blog.” YiaYia is one of the biggest supporters of the blog, so shoutout to her for all her kind words and encouraging me to use this as content.

Following the photo op, we sat down and chatted for a few minutes. YiaYia asked us all questions about our lives, then asked if we had any questions for her. A rare turning of the tables by a grandparent. Naturally I inquired what WWII was like, as she had lived through the tail end of it. Turns out they had regular blackouts to prevent against a German attack. I question the effectiveness of that plan, as bombs aren’t guided by light, but they also had “duck ‘n’ cover” drills where a school desk was supposed to stifle a bombing so clearly the thought process wasn’t all there back then.

Nonetheless, it was a good history lesson and a lovely visit to grandma’s house. Trips to a grandparent’s house can be perilous, as Little Red Riding Hood discovered all those years ago, so it’s always a nice surprise when your actual grandparent answers the door and not a large wolf haphazardly impersonating a small human woman.

YiaYia was nice to enough to come wave as we were driving away, which even my jaded, ironic, probably partially-blocked heart found to be a very sweet gesture.

Those are 2 things I love this week. I’m back at equilibrium now. Remember this week of work doesn’t count so do whatever. No one is actually trying, don’t be the exception.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good week!