The beer: Firestone Walker Reserve Porter
The commentary: Snore! Pretty forgettable football weekend for the first round of the playoffs. I didn’t watch any of the games too closely, just sort of had them on in the background while I did things around the house, but that was enough. I’m glad we have the big boys to watch today.

A. and I each took Friday off to try to organize (that is, get rid of) a lot of the stuff in our closets and in the basement. Odds are we’ll be moving sometime this year and we wanted to get a head start on that annoying process (we’re generally good about not hanging on to things we don’t need anyway). After almost four years we’re still without a table in the dining room (ridiculous) so that means the bulk of the sorting went on in that room—A. protests a bit because she’s embarrassed about it being empty but why not take advantage of the free space, right? Step one was taking down the Christmas tree, which had the room to itself along with our CDs (next project: selling all but a handful of those). That’s always a little sad. Anyway, with bins everywhere we pretty quickly decided what to keep, what to try to sell and what to donate. We picked at the stuff a little more over the weekend but those three piles are basically intact and haven’t moved. There’s work left to do but it feels good to have started the process.

We earned some evening relaxation time and therefore took advantage of the bye week to adopt a new show, Homeland. Every September I call Verizon to add Showtime to our Fios package (usually at a discount) in order to watch Dexter and then I cancel once it’s over. Except… this year, a lot of our favorites (Dexter, Project Runway and Survivor) wrapped up all at once before the winter shows (Psych, White Collar, more Survivor and more of the real Project Runway, since Also-Rans isn’t nearly as good) have started up. We’re so goddamn tired every night, so rather than read and act out The Complete Works of Shakespeare during this programming lull, I suggested watching both seasons (twenty-four episodes) of Homeland. An action-packed serial drama has been missing from our lives since 24 and Lost went the way of Green Acres and I figured this might fill the void. I also secretly hoped that, as with 24, A. would latch on with enough vigor that, if anything, she would want to watch episode after episode even more quickly than me. Like if I fall asleep halfway through an episode tomorrow night? I want her to finish it without me. Maybe even start another! The only way we’re going to get through twenty-four episodes in, say, three weeks is if I’m the one slowing her down, not the other way around, and so far it’s going pretty well. G. and her pretty regular bedtime of 8:00 are even cooperating.

That’s what goes on during January bye weeks in New England. You run errands, do chores, catch up on non-football television. Spend time with family. What you don’t do is waste time worrying about who your next head coach is going to be, what’s going to come of that top-five draft pick in April or, god forbid, whether your team is going to move to Los Angeles. Since writing this beer-and-football thing I’ve had a running joke (is it really a running joke if it’s only been used twice?) where I refer to the current season as “2012” because “2012/2013” is too complicated. It looks and reads silly so I abbreviate, which mildly bothers me because it’s not entirely accurate. The thing is, who would even worry about this designation aside from over-officious fans of teams who make the playoffs every season? Every season! Bills fans? Raiders fans? Browns fans? For a decade or more their string of games have ended—excepting flukey calendars that ask week seventeen to spill into January—the same calendar year as they began. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be burdened with such… losing. When Brady went down in 2008/2009, the Pats managed to win eleven games against a pretty weak schedule and barely missed the playoffs. It was exciting down the stretch and then it was over, without even an opportunity to get blown out in the first round. (You can still hear the collective exhalation from relieved towel-wavers in western Pennsylvania.) It sucked, just like it sucked for twenty teams whose fans had nothing to root for last weekend.

It certainly doesn’t suck around here though. It’s January and there are games left on the schedule, maybe even three of them. I like being a Patriots fan.

Up next: JJ Watt secures the Defensive Player of the Regular Season award as the home team rolls on to round three. Cheers!