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The Eagles lost, so the countdown to Phillies pitchers and catchers begins

The Eagles lost, so the countdown to Phillies pitchers and catchers begins

Published by Kevin McGuire on January 16, 2024

The past month of my football fandom has been pretty rough. Penn State didn’t belong on the same field as Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl and the Philadelphia Eagles saw a promising season that started 10-1 end with an abysmal 11-6 regular season record and a blowout loss in the wild card round on Monday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. To go from having the best record in the NFL to a wild card round exit on the road against a 9-win division champion is, in a word, gross. This figures to be a massive offseason for the Eagles, which got underway with the news that center Jason Kelce is retiring. I’ll have to share some thoughts on that later on.

But with the Eagles now officially entering the offseason far earlier than anticipated a couple of months ago, the countdown to the start of the baseball season is now officially on. The Phillies had their own rough postseason exit in the NLCS last October, which was an absolute bummer. And they haven’t really done a whole lot to change the team coming back in 2024 to move a needle, but the start of a new baseball season is always something I look forward to.

This is especially true a day after the Eagles were bounced from the playoffs and I spent the large majority of my day outside in the cold and snow and dreading another similar day tomorrow in temperatures that will struggle to rise above 20 degrees.

Oh yeah, that warms the heart a little bit today. The day pitchers and catchers report is on the calendar now, as is that London Series. I’ll be there! I cannot wait.

Oh, and by the way, Happy new year!

Yes, we are already halfway through the first month of the season but this just so happens to be the first post I am writing here in 2024. Every year I try making a resolution to get back in the personal blogging routine, because it truly is something I enjoy doing just for myself. It is therapeutic in a sense but it has become something I quickly learn time and time again that is just not as easy for me to keep up with as in years past in my so-called blogging prime. But hey, maybe this will be the year!

I have a lot to look forward to in 2024, and I would like to share some of my adventures and experiences with you in this digital written form.

The 2023 LEGO Winter Village

The 2023 LEGO Winter Village

Published by Kevin McGuire on December 30, 2023

It is amazing to see every year just how much my LEGO Winter Village has grown over the years. It was 15 years ago when my wife gave me a LEGO holiday train as a Christmas present after I had mentioned how much I always wanted a LEGO train as a kid but never got one. A year later I was gifted another LEGO winter village-themed set, as we learned a new set comes out every year. And with that, a tradition was born.

As the years went by, I would set up my small LEGO winter village collection on a sideboard or around the tree. But in 2020, I decided to pull out all of the stops and take over our entire dining room table. Only I didn’t stop there. I added a folding table. Now, that has become the standard when I set up the village, which only continues to grow.

This year I had to try a few new things with my setup, remove a few ideas I ran with in the past, and come up with some new ideas to incorporate more of what I had to work with. So I added a full ski resort area on one side of town, moved my food and carnival to the other side, and moved the concert stage to the middle of town (which led to removing the looping road previously used for a race track. I also only went with one train track this time.

But I always enjoy inserting some hidden references and tributes, and this was no exception. Unfortunately, I still feel like I left out a good amount of what I’d love to include in this year’s village. But I suppose they can always be implemented next year!

Here is a quick look at some of my LEGO Winter Village this year.

I shared a little bit more about a few details in this village on my Instagram account previously.

The most iconic photo in American history of my lifetime (so far)An old vintage camera with camera reel. What are the most iconic images in American history?

The most iconic photo in American history of my lifetime (so far)

Published by Kevin McGuire on August 25, 2023

The course of American history has seen a great number of truly iconic photos. When I thought about some of the top photos in American history, I started to realize that there may only be a few that happened in my lifetime. Perhaps that is an encouraging reminder that I am not that old just yet. To me, the images of the World Trade Center being attacked in 2001 will forever be etched in my memory, and there is no question the images of the explosion of the second plane flying into the World Trade Center will never leave my memory bank.

Reader’s Digest has a great collection of classic images and the backstories behind many of them. This photo archive from LIFE is absolutely worth a look too for some photos that are not necessarily iconic in nature, but brilliant portrayals of other facets of American history.

In thinking about the top images from American history, I went down a quick rabbit hole on the internet of a few lists of the top images to see how many I was actually alive for. That did bring a few images back to me like O.J. Simpson trying on the glove,

But this may just be the most historic image in American history of my lifetime…

Mugshot of Donald Trump by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s office mugshot of Donald Trump, released on Aug. 24, 2023.

No matter what you think about the man in this photo, a mugshot of a former President of the United States is unquestionably an historic moment for the nation. For the first time in the history of the country, a former United States president was forced to surrender himself to a sheriff’s office and pose for a mugshot. This is a photo that will be a part of history lessons forever moving forward. This is an image that will be used in textbooks, lectures, documentaries and more as long as state governments allow for it in the educational curriculum.

I do wish I was joking with that last sentence, but given the headlines I see from around the country, I do think it is a legitimate concern as we look to properly place these last few years in the appropriate historic context for all to understand for generations beyond ours.

But think about the legacy this image will forever carry, regardless of what happens next in the legal proceedings in Georgia or the other states in which Donald Trump has been indicted on similar and related charges. Mugshots never go away. They are forever attached to your public profile, and even more so when you are a noteworthy person. Trump has always been a notable person, even before he became president. But being the first president to have a mugshot is the ultimate stain for a one-term president who sat in the White House. And this is a man who has been impeached not once, but twice.

I fortunately will not need history classes to educate me on the legacy of Trump as president. I lived through it. This image will be in every lesson those who will learn about his rise to president and political downfall will see.