Puzzle 12 - The Color of Money

Still a bit under the weather, so I dug up an older puzzle that was basically ready to go. For whatever reason, having a hard time getting in a cluing mindset, so that's the big logjam in my process. Hope this is a nice breezy solve for those of you who are worn out by the holidays!

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Puzzle 11 - Themeless #8

Christmas is exhausting. Been hard to find time to write the clues for this one. I think this will be fairly tough. Enjoy :)

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• The nonfat to whole milk yogurt ratio is way out of whack. There are approximately 700 options for nonfat vs. 4 whole. Which is asinine, nonfat just replaces fat (which is good for you) with sugar (which is awful for you). Weekly source of frustration for us.
• I got a flat tire on Monday. There was a big ass rock in my lane & a car in the lane next to me :/. Kind of a pain in the butt to have my wife come pick me up, end up having to get it towed, go back to the shop the next day to get a new tire, be out $100, yadda yadda yadda.
• Basically I'm excited for a few years from now when the kids are out of daycare when we can go down to a one car family, and I can just bike/walk to work.
• If you celebrate, hope you have a wonderful Christmas! Come back on the 28th!

Puzzle 10 - Themeless #7

Woohoo! Made it to double-digits! Fingers crossed for triple digits in a few years!

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I might be here in a few months!

• There's a chance my wife will have a conference in DC in the spring - if she does we're gonna try to swing a little kid-free vacation there when she's all done. I've never been & have spent the past weeks planning a hypothetical vacation. It's probably not going to happen now that I've got my hopes up.
• I freaking love vacation planning.
• Totally bragging here but a couple years ago I surprised Morgan for her birthday with a little 3 day trip to Colorado. I told her we were picking up my cousin - she had no idea til we got to the airport that it was a trip for just us! And I packed her bag & everything...the only thing I forgot were socks. Counting that as a win.
• 9 letter entries might be the sweet spot in terms of colorfulness per space taken up in a grid. All else equal (which of course is never the case), I'd rather spread 45 letters out through 5 9 letter entries than 3 grid-spanning 15s. That said, this puzzle has a whopping two 9ers, though the next one has...a lot of them.
• Funnily enough, 28-Across showed up in a NYT a few weeks ago for the first time in forever, right after I put it in here. Anyways, it stinks, you know it, I know it, let's just move on. Who brought it up, anyways?
• 22-Down showed up as a LearnedLeague answer Friday. I'm right on the edge of the promotion zone (hopefully back up to D, I'm not very good), we'll see what happens in the next couple weeks!
• Probably enough yammering from me, come back for another themeless next time!