Night Owl Cards

  March is dead again, you guys. Oh sure, it will come back to life, but today is a day to celebrate!   I often celebrate my least favorite month's demise with some sort of card order. A COMC or sportlots arrival or something like it. In fact I am welcoming various cards from a sportlots order right now, but they're not all here yet.   I can, however, take one of the cards that showed up and celebrate the completion of set -- because on the very day March took its last breath, I completed 1983 Donruss.     This Ron Jackson card was the last one I needed to finish the set. Jackson comes in three varieties. There's another one with a green border (which all of his Angels teammates have) and another one that reads "A's" in the glove instead of "Angels". I'd like the green border one someday but that's not important right now. What's important is THE SET IS COMPLETE!   Finishing the 1983 Donruss set was key because it's one of the last ma...

There is a well-known line of dialogue in the old "Mad Men" TV series in which the main character, Don Draper, is berated by his latest love interest, who says that he can never commit to anything because he "only likes the beginnings of things." Like the best of television shows, that line has stayed with me for a long time and has led to periodic self-cross-examination. However, I have also found that often -- maybe more often -- I like the ends of things. More importantly, I like the ends of things when I'm still around to see the end. Yep, what I'm saying is we've reached the end of my least favorite month again, and I'm celebrating because I'm still alive. Honestly, I don't know why we have to stuff every conceivable life activity into the third month of the year every year. The biggest sports tournament of the year. Holidays. High school sports championships of every stripe and color. Birthdays abounding. Mid-terms. Special...

It's the end of March. Every year at this time I look around, do a quick inventory, check myself in the mirror, and celebrate that, yes, I am still alive. The month didn't kill me. This year I had resolved at the start of the month that I would not let it get to me. And then a different firecracker went off in my face for the next 31 days. But that's over now. Here we are -- as this fiendish month draws its final breaths -- still going. I recognize that fact each year by acquiring a few celebratory cards. Just a few, because who has time to scope out a palette of cards in March ? The cards arrived the other day and you'll see them in several different posts, but right now I want to show the ones that most make me smile. Because March is dying, dammit, and I'm ready to smile. I decided to make an effort in my quest to complete the 2001 Upper Deck Decade '70s set. But except for the above absolutely amazing Dennis Eckersley card, I didn't end up pic...

I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see a month disappear. I always celebrate the end of March with a little party because it's annually the most taxing month of the year. But this month took even more out of me. Had I known what the third month of the year would be like, I would have stayed in college forever. College students seem to be the only people who have fun during March. Maybe I can go back and get a professor to remove a few of my credits. Anyway, since I know March is going to be like this every year, I plan for it. That includes planning the end-of-the-month celebration. This year's end-of-this-god-forsaken-month celebration is highlighted by a special purchase I made a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of beautiful, glorious, what-took-you-so-long March 31st. Yup, I got myself a bunch of minis. Mostly Topps Lineage minis to be exact. I've decided that I better attack this set as quickly as I can before people forget about thes...