Night Owl Cards

It's a good thing that we're in a new golden age of giveaways and contests on the blogs, because trading through this medium has slowed to a dribble. I totally get it. With the post office out as an option the last couple of months, I've relied on PWEs and the mailbox for any transacting. It's actually been a productive alternative, but there are limits and because of them I haven't been able to send cards to certain people. Hopefully, life will be more receptive to trades through the mail in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we have crazy generous contest giveaways like the Cardpocalypse going on right now on the blog ... uh ... Cardpocalypse (do I have that right -- the contest and the blog names are the same?). Tim has been running weekly contest giveaways since his return to blogging. Each giveaway launches on Sunday and is themed. Each week's winner is unable to participate in future giveaways until the Free-For-All (my phrase, not his) in Week ...

I haven't attended a Major League Baseball game in more than a decade. It's been even longer for an NFL game. Longer than that for an NHL game. An NBA game? Never. So what's my excuse as a sports fan, whose job is all about sports, whose first choice when flipping on the TV or internet is sports programming? I guess I have a few excuses. They're actually exactly that: excuses. If I really wanted to, I'd get on that MLB website, buy some tickets and head out tomorrow. But most days, the following excuses make total sense: Pro games have gotten way expensive, I live far from large cities, and traveling sounds less and less fun the older I get. (Every time I see one of those car signs that reads "I'd rather be hiking" or "It's always better when you're swimming," I think "I've got to get one of those that says, "I'd rather be home reading a book.'") Obviously, I've settled down. So, naturally...

Not a lot of cards have come to the house the last couple of weeks. It's that end-of-the-year busy time, and money is devoted to various holiday expenses instead of cards. As mentioned before, I don't get involved with the Black Friday hobby deals, because spending money on myself at this time is not recommended if I know what's good for me. I have just two cards on my desk that I have received that are waiting to be shown. Each arrived as a one-card package. Each has a tale to tell. The first is a jersey card of Jim Kelly sent to me by Matt of Bob Walk The Plank . It is my first jersey card of Kelly, and probably only my second or third jersey card of an NFL player ever. My NFL collecting is very limited. But if you're going to throw a jersey at me, make it of the quarterback when I covered the Bills back in the late 1980s. This card is from 2006 Donruss Elite. The back assures that this swatch was taken from an actual jersey worn by Jim Kelly in an offic...

Quite some time ago now, I received a card package from My Cardboard Mistress . In it, along with the usual things that I like, were some space cards from a set that I never knew existed. The above card was the coolest of the bunch, but not because I know anything about space travel or rocketry or formulas or random number/letter combinations. It's because of the orange smoke and giant machines, stupid. I know that Adam has some sort of high-tech job that involves sciencey stuff that is way beyond me. I've come to terms with things that are way beyond me, and unlike a lot of people who I come across in life and particularly online, I have no problems admitting that certain things are way beyond me. I'm human. I don't know everything. It's no big deal. In fact, there are things about people in general, right on this planet, that I don't understand and probably never will. It's all beyond me, here on earth. So let's explore that while I show some ...

For me, 2012 has been a year of scaling back. In life. On the blog. In case you haven't noticed I have posted about 100 or so fewer times than in each of the previous years on the blog. And in this past month, I have posted fewer times than in any single month since 2008. It's a product of priority shifting and a much busier life. But I'm obviously not pleased about it. To make up for it here on the blog, I had planned to publish a post for every hour in the day, as a great big 2012 send-off -- and to majorly jack up my December posting numbers. The scanner worked overtime last night, and the ideas were flying everywhere. I had just wrapped up scanning and determined I was able to pull the whole thing off. It was about 11:45 p.m. or so, and then it happened. I felt ill. In past years I would have plowed through. But not anymore. If there is one thing that 2012 taught me is your body has a mind of its own. Mind over matter, and all of that, is fine, for women's ...