Happy Patriot's Day

Patriot's Day is a quasi-holiday that's only celebrated in the city of Boston. The reason? Today is Marathon Monday. The Red Sox play early, many streets are blocked off and most people end up working even if they are in Boston.

I'm home today, but it's for a completely different reason. Today is day 3 of my recovery from hernia surgery. It's nothing major, but will still be 2 weeks until I'm able to return to work and even then it will be a while before I'm lifting any MacPros.

One good thing is that there will be a span of a week or so where I'll be able to get around alright, but just won't be able to lift anything. That's when I plan on catching up on the three trades that have been sitting on my desk. I have to tally up the points for the Red Sox Frankenset entries and get the return packages ready to go.

It seems like exclusives are killing my interest in the hobby. I don't want to buy anything basketball and since I'm not going anywhere near the majority of the high end sets, most of the year there's nothing that interests me. Luckily there's a ton of great non-sports releases out there. I busted a box of Big Bang Theory and while I paid a little more for it than I would have liked, the fact that I ripped open the packs with my wife made it invaluable. We weren't lucky enough to pull one of the main cast autos, but it was still a fun break. It's crazy what the autos are going for from this set and it makes me think there's currently a lot more money to be made in non-sports releases of the top licenses out there than there is in sports cards. The sports card industry needs a complete overhaul.

Speaking on non-sports, this weekend is the Boston ComicCon. This is a real comic book convention and not a pop culture convention masquerading as a comic book show. The guests are all comic book professionals including legends such as Al Jaffe. (Sergio Araggones was scheduled to attend, but cancelled.) I'm especially excited about this Con since I'll be picking up some original art at the show. My wife and I got a painting of Neil Gaiman's Death commissioned by Stephanie Buscema. I've seen a picture of it and it is absolutely gorgeous. Neil Gaiman tweeted the picture to all of his followers and it made it's way all over the Internet. I'm also picking up a mini painting and a sketch card from Katie Cook. Those will be some very cool additions to the collection.

I did have one very cool thing happen. A couple of years ago, my wife won a contest where the grand prize was Alice in Chains tickets, a meet and greet and a gold record of their latest album. Time has passed and I really don't have anywhere to hang the award and don't really have a connection to this version of the band without Layne fronting them. So, I listed the album on eBay and it ended up selling for $500 which is a lot more than what I thought it would go far after looking at comparable gold records. I'll be sharing the loot with the wife since she's the one that originally won the contest, but it's still a lot more fun money than I thought I would have.

On the sports front, the Red Sox are having an open house at Fenway Park this Thursday to celebrate the 100th anniversary. Supposedly, they are allowing people to look inside the Green Monster which never happens and other rarely seen parts of the park will be accessible as well. So, I just might spend the whole day there and take a few hundred pictures. It's great seeing baseball back and I'm extremely excited about the rejuvenated Celtics who look like they can beat everyone in the East except the Bulls. If Rose can't heal up then it's anyone's series to win.

So, there's my update. Hopefully I heal up quickly so that I can get back to putting actual content on here.