Thanksgiving Eve is packed.

Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald is leaving to be the police commissioner in Baltimore. Fitzgerald arrived in Fort Worth in 2015 after previous chief stints in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Missouri City, just outside Houston. Now, he’ll take over a department that needs a lot of help.

BPD has been looking for its next police commissioner since May, when Darryl De Sousa stepped down amid a federal investigation into his spending habits. He’d lasted only a couple of months; previous commissioner Kevin Davis was fired in January.

I like the Baltimore Sun’s lead:

In a flourish of bureaucratic understatement, the ad seeking candidates to become Baltimore’s next police commissioner described the job as “a challenging position.”

Vernon Wells—Major League Baseball journeyman, Arlington native, winery owner—now lives in Westlake, near Herschel Walker. His life sounds pretty normal, or at least as normal as it can be when you call Herschel Walker a neighbor. Wells makes his kids lunch. He coaches their football and basketball teams. He takes walks around his neighborhood. He doesn’t travel as much as he’d like, particularly to the vineyard he bought in Napa Valley with his partner, former teammate Chris Iannetta. All of this sounds theoretically familiar, if elevated a bit.

Tim interviewed Vernon for the January issue of the magazine, ostensibly about JACK Winery, which now has four wines available for sale on its website. (If you’re wondering why I keep capitalizing JACK, it’s because it is an acronym for their respective children: Jayce, Ashlyn, Christian, and Kylie.) It’s been well received. Robert Parker Wine Advocate magazine rates the wines in the mid-to-high 90s. Wine Spectator has given them solid marks too, all high 80s and low 90s, but it looks like they haven’t tried the newer releases that Parker liked so much. This second act for Wells began after he retired from the league; he and Iannetta bonded over wine when sidelined with injuries, and both decided to get into the game to make something that would be at home in a steakhouse.

Wells, whose $126 million contract with the Blue Jays in 2006 was the 13^th $100 million contract in major league history, retired in 2013 with 270 career home runs and nearly 1,000 RBIs. And he still thinks baseball is too slow. Show notes after the jump.

DA Elect John Creuzot Says Amber Guyger Should be Charged With Murder. Not manslaughter, which is what the former Dallas Police officer was arrested on in the shooting death of Botham Jean.

Cowboys Outlast Falcons. In what I’ve just decided to think about as battle between myself and my siblings, who both live or lived in Atlanta, the Cowboys won on a last-second field goal by their insanely average (at best) kicker, whose blown extra point necessitated the game-winning field goal. They’re now 5-5 which — siren emoji HOT TAKE ALERT three flame emojis siren emoji — I believe is the actual most signature Cowboys record in the Jason Garrett Era. I don’t know why exactly, it just feels more average than 8-8. OK, wait, let’s power rank mediocre records super fast. For me, it goes like this:

1. 5-5
2. 6-6
3. 8-8
4. 7-7
5. 7-9

UNT Dallas Student Shot on Campus. The 41-year-old was shot Saturday night over what police say was a child custody issue. He was taken to the hospital in stable condition. The suspect (not a student) fled in a vehicle which he subsequently crashed and was arrested.

Erica Richardson Will Be in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Carter High cheerleader will represent Dallas ISD.

Mavs Beat Defending Champion Warriors. OK, the Dubs were without Steph Curry and Draymond Green, but they still had Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson, not to mention Finals MVP Andre Iguodala. Luka Doncic came through the game winner and the defense came up very big. Your Mavericks are now on a three-game win streak, which includes a 50-point defenestration of the Jazz on Wednesday. Mavs eighth seed question mark?

Anyone keeping up with this ghost hunter mini-series (read Part 1 and Part 2) may have noticed there was a bit of a gap since I posted the last interview. A person reason: my husband was out of town and I could not bring myself to even think about, much less edit the story of, J.J. Jensen’s bone-chilling paranormal encounter that occurred when she was home alone with her son—an incident that drove her family out of their 1800s Victorian house. Jensen now helps people find peace in their homes with TexPart Paranormal, a team of paranormal investigators. Her group also leads ghost walks around the McKinney town square, which they have studied extensively. You’ll find that Jensen has a bit of a different take on the paranormal than others. In her experience, family dysfunction breeds spiritual mayhem.

D Magazine: So what did you think of The Haunting on Hill House?

J.J. Jensen: I think that in some ways it represents a haunting fairly well, of course, from a more theatrical perspective. But about 95 percent of our cases, people come in and say, “Yeah, I’ve got a haunting. I’m scared. I need your help.” What’s happened is, okay, they had something occur. And then they tried to self-diagnose. Got themselves scared, escalated the situation because now you have a lot of fear. Well, I used sage and I used this, and they’re trying to fix it themselves, and it’s just a mess. And then you’ve got the ones that are skeptical and don’t really believe that anything at all is going on, that makes the others mad. And what ends up happening is you’ve got more of a family haunting than a real haunting.

It’s never too early to start celebrating the holidays – in fact, you better get going if you don’t want to miss out on all the fun festivities Dallas has to offer this year. The city has an array of seasonal plays and concerts coming up: dozens of parades are planned throughout North Texas, the museums are decking their halls, the malls are bringing out Santa, and Grapevine is being typically extra in fulfilling its role as the “The Christmas Capital of Texas.” (Who said you have to rely on Mother Nature for the gift of a white Christmas? Not Grapevine, which imports millions of pounds of ice and manufactures snow flurries each year.)

Here’s a healthy sampling of North Texas’ best holiday wonders. You don’t have to do all 101-ish items on this list – but we recommend shooting for 90 or so. Merry Christmas!