I've got some free time on my lunch break here at work so I thought that I'd throw some thoughts and updates up here.
Things have been ridiculously busy for the past couple of months. Once I was recovered from my kidney surgery, things started to get hectic at work. Paternity leave and illness reduced my team of four to a team of two for three weeks. That led to a lot of late nights and then crashing on the couch right after eating dinner.
My wife recently underwent spinal surgery and is recovering form that so I've been spending a lot of time with her. When I have had some time to sit at the computer, some recent knee problems have made me limit the time sitting at the desk to retreat back to the comfort of the sofa recliners and elevated legs.
Did you know that Google Reader stops counting how many unread posts you have when it reaches 1,000? I do. From that point on it just displays 1,000+. Boy will I be happy when Gint-A-Cuffs is over. So, I'm behind on reading a lot of blog postings.
Then there's my current indifference towards the hobby especially when it comes to new releases. Ginter's great, but I've yet to finish a set and the meaningless short prints always end up frustrating me. I stopped buying basketball boxes when they made the rookies short prints. Sure, it was great if you hit the right one, but more times than not you didn't. Now you were chasing the regular hits plus the rookie cards as well and sets were almost out of the question. No fun to me.
I love the Lineage inserts, but loathe the base cards. The boxes are ridiculously overpriced at the moment. So, I went in on a Community Gum case break for a little more than the third of the cost of a box. Even though I only got one "hit," I couldn't be happier. I've got 3D cards, cloth stickers, stand-ups, chrome cards, a box topper, Venezuelan backs and lots of minis. Awesome. I'll probably pick up the rest of the Red Sox minis at some point.
It's not all bad though. I do have a box of cards on the way from Blowout. It's a little treat to myself for busting ass for a month. I can't say that I've been the biggest fan of Panini's releases since they took over basketball, but Totally Certified caught my attention. It's not full out Dufex (or Nufex as Panini is calling it now), but it's a close relative so I had to check it out. It's one of those hit-per-pack 6-pack-box releases that I normally stay away from, but this time I made an exception. Hopefully I have more luck with this than I had with Basketball Hall of Fame and well, every single Panini product that I've opened. Wait, this was supposed to be the positive part of the post.
I got an awesome canvas print in the mail from EasyCanvasPrints.com that I need to wrote about. This thing looks beautiful and I can't wait to show it off.
So, what's been keeping me busy hobby-wise if trading cards haven't been doing the trick? I've really been enjoying the ObsessiveRec blog that Guy and TJ started up. Great stuff going on over there. I'm a huge comic book fan as well. I devoured two trades of Locke & Key while I was waiting during my wife's surgery. Superhero stuff is always fun, but it's the non-tradational stuff like The Maxx, Strangers in Paradise, Echo, Rachel Rising, Fables, Alias, Powers, Y the Last Man, and Ex Machina that I really get into.
So, I think that's about everything. There aren't many cards in the Totally Certified box so I may try and do a box break of that. If I pull an HRX card then I'll even video myself immediately posting the redemption card on eBay. There you go, sorry for the silence, but sometimes life just gets in the way of stuff like this.
5 comments:
Wow, when times are tough the tough get going.Hope things get straightened around for you, sounds like you have your hands full right now. Hang in there !!
Yeah, I've definitely stepped it up during this time, but free time doesn't exist, at least not free time where I want to use my brain. I may play a little Tiny Tower while vegging out on the sofa. I think it'll help me appreciate things a whole lot more when everything returns to normal (which can sometimes be so easy to take for granted).
Sorry to hear things are rough right now. It's sounds like you're handling it right, though.
That's awesome that you mention Echo and Ex Machina. I'm thinking of doing some recommendations on the blog about books people might not have read or even heard of before. Those two are at the top of this list and you know I'm going to have some Sam Kieth stuff in there, too. Thanks for the shout out, btw. I'm looking forward to the Totally Certified break. That's really the only card release in a while that's interested me.
Terry Moore was here in Boston a few months ago and he revealed some cool info about the upcoming Echo movie. My wife and I met due to our mutual love of Strangers in Paradise so Terry Moore will always be one of my favorites. Rachel Rising looks very interesting. The only bad thing is the 6 weeks between issues of Terry's books.
Y: The Last Man is what made me a huge Brian K Vaughn fanboy, but Ex Machina keep that fandom going strong. Lost took a giant leap in quality when he was hired to the writing team and Runaways is one of my all-time favorite books. If you haven't read it, definitely check out Pride of Baghdad. It's a great story paired with absolutely beautiful art. Huge fan of Vaughn's writing.
I still have a pile of My Inner Bimbo issues that I haven't read. I missed an issue and keep forgetting to track it down so I haven't read the end of the series. I haven't seen it locally and balk at paying $5 to ship a $3 comic book.
The most recent issue of Hero Initiative reunited the team from Sandman #1 for a new story which is pretty cool. There's also a story drawn by Kieth using the emails between the three when the project was coming together. I would have picked it up anyway, but the fact that it was for charity made it a no-brainer.
It's good to hear that you're getting better. But damn man. Kidney surgery and spinal surgery just sound scary.
I understand card apathy. I'm a stage 2 apathetic at this point.
And thanks for the little comic blog plug. We're enjoying it too.
Seriously, hope you and the wife get better. And more importantly, that you're able to STAY better. That's the key.
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