Sorry about that.
I did not abandon my mission or anything like that, and as you know if you follow me elsewhere, I am still alive and as well as I was before the pandemic started, from what my doctors and I can tell, anyway.
It’s just been something of a weird time to put aside the world’s troubles and think solely of hobbies, even if I am still engaging with mine. I will say that I’m doing so tentatively, for a variety of reasons. I’ve made a handful of card deals (thanks to Madding, Night Owl, AJ, Vossbrink and Gavin, and I hope I got everyone there), but haven’t quite managed to get all the scans done that I want to.
To talk a little bit more of cards, I also picked up something really awesome that I want to feature here, but again, for a variety of reasons, I haven’t had the time or energy to do it justice yet. Until 5 minutes ago, I hadn’t even opened it, even though I got it in late June, and that’s a damned shame, because it’s amazing, it’s something I think a lot of you are going to want to get for yourselves, and I’m glad that writing this post got me off my ass to look through it. I know that not even telling y’all what I got is a big tease, but I wanted to let everyone know I was alive here, before I started scanning and writing at length. It’s gonna be a little while longer on this one, too, because I have a lot of card backs to read, and a lot of card fronts to look at more closely. Stay tuned, and your patience will hopefully be rewarded.
I haven’t just been doing things with cards, though. While I’ve tried to keep the number of transactions I’ve made for frivolous things to a minimum, mostly because I don’t want people to have too much unnecessary contact with one another, here and there, I’ve grabbed some things. A record or two, a few DVDs, a couple video games, some comics, that sort of thing. I’ve not been in a retail store of any “non-essential” kind since March 6th (thankfully, my local comic shop does both curbside pickup and delivery), and my local flea market did the difficult but sensible thing and never opened up this year, but some stuff still found its way to me, and I’ve caught up on some other stuff. I even completed a few comic book series I’ve been working on collecting for a very long time: New Teen Titans Vol. 1 and All-Star Squadron, with the last issue of Son of Satan on its way to me as well, thanks to that eBay coupon (and thanks to Grogg for alerting me to that, as well, because I didn’t get an email notification about it).
A lot of this stuff, I haven’t spent time with yet, though, because again, it can be hard to focus on fun things with a series of looming existential threats around us all. As I’m able to get past all that, in tiny chunks, I’ll be telling you about it.
In the meantime, I hope that you’ve all been well and safe, or recovered fully if that wasn’t the case. I also hope that you’re managing to keep yourself busy with fun things on occasion, too.
Glad you’re doing well. I miss doing big trades but avoiding the P.O. and only doing PWE trades. Since mid-March I went to the post office one time and my kids’ school one time, that’s it. In the meantime I’ve started a matchbook collection and already have almost 2,000. In lots they’re even cheaper than baseball cards these days.
I’ve seen you on the Twitter, so I knew that you were still above ground, but a new post from you is always a welcome site! Now if we could just get ’em a little more frequently…
*sight
Glad to hear from both of you as well.
Bo, you’ve gone full-on with grocery delivery? How’s that worked out so far? Also, matchbook collecting sounds really dangerous, and I’m not even talking about the flammable nature of the collection. There’s gotta be a just about limitless number out there, all kinds of cool artwork, and unlike most of our collections, they have a practical use beyond entertainment!
Jon, I’m workin’ on it. Have things in the works. Stay tuned!
Well, we’ve communicated here and there, so I knew you were at least functioning, in a card sort of way.
I’ve ventured out and about a bit, but in a much more limited way. We get our groceries delivered more often than not and I’ve been to Target 3 times since March (the card aisles, as you’ve heard, are ravaged), and whenever I was at Walmart last winter may have been the last time ever.
I’m not much of a social person and very much an introvert so working from home has practically made me giddy. But then that mostly ended and I’m back in the office and it’s very weird. I’m thinking of returning to the home gig if I can swing it. But I find I cope better than most and there’s probably no better example than that the blog is still clicking as smoothly as ever.
Can’t wait to see your new goodies.
I probably should’ve grabbed some Archives when I was at Target this week, but aside from the Mark Buehrle auto in the set (which is probably my most-wanted card of 2020 now, but there’s no way in hell I’m gonna nail that in one blaster), not much about what I saw preview images of interested me. Really, I’m pretty sure Topps has lost me on at least new “wax”, if not new product entirely, after this year (the one blaster of Big League I got underwhelmed the hell out of me, and I think the entire thing or close to it is available for trade if anyone’s working on the set), but I’ve said this before and gone back on it, so who knows?
We have enough food sensitivities/allergies in my house for grocery delivery to really not be practical (we can’t do substitutions, and places are being really unreliable about returns these days, at least around here), and we’re not in love with the idea of anyone else handling anything we bring in here, or we’d both have been out way less than we have (and I’ve had 2 19 day stretches so far where I didn’t leave my property at all, both records for me; the spouse has not been keeping track of their comings and goings like I have). I really wish it were done reliably and also ethically (another problem with it; we feel bad enough about using Amazon, but unfortunately, there’s stuff we can’t get without great difficulty in a small town without it right now), but it isn’t.
I would highly recommend trying to stick to the work-at-home stuff if possible. If operations at the paper are such that you never need to physically be there, and don’t have in-person contact with the other staff there that you’d consider to be essential, it’s just a much better deal to stay away from their ventilation systems and stay put.
I’ve been keeping up with the happenings over at your place (the blog, not the paper), and yeah, you’re pretty steady in light of all of this. I’m…getting there. Other projects have been moving forward, but this one’s seen some neglect. Some essential cleaning of my workspace is in progress and should be done today, at which point I can start thinking about scanning again.