It's been almost six years since I posted here. I have far less time to post now than I ever did, yet my collecting life has been (dare I say it) better in the past year than it has ever been. So, what's been going on?
Well, let's see. My wife had a liver transplant in April of 2021. For many years, she drank to excess. In the process, she permanently scarred her liver to the point where she had cirrhosis at the age of 47. She had to have a liver transplant or she would die. That's how we spent our year in the pandemic--going to the hospital regularly for her to have fluid drained from her abdomen (ascites, it's called), for her to get treatment for the liver cancer she developed, and, eventually, for her to get her transplant. She is now a mentor for others in that same situation as she works to figure out how best to help. You can read her story here.
Once we got through those issues, things cleared up greatly. I got more help at work and now have two (and soon to be three) other attorneys working for me on cases that I bring in. That helps pay the bills, of course, and that also allows me the freedom to buy cards.
For example, this Gorman Thomas from 2019 Archives. It was a recent purchase on eBay for me. You see, I pretty much stopped collecting in 2019 as I stopped posting. Not until last year did I get back to going to card shows around here.
Last year was also a bit trying for me. I had to have my aortic valve and my aortic root replaced thanks to a birth defect in the valve that was causing an aneurysm to form in my aorta. Thankfully we caught it before anything catastrophic happened, but I now have a great big scar in the middle of my chest. That procedure cannot be done any other way than through open-heart surgery.
Yeah, that was one hell of an August.
I also got to appear as a legal commentator on a local news station a few times thanks to making friends with one of the anchors.
You'd almost think that I know what I'm talking about there.
I'm mostly finding myself hanging out on
Instagram a fair amount. My social media fix comes
from BlueSky rather than the Xesspool that is the artist formerly known as Twitter. If you stop by either place, please leave a message or a comment--it would be great to hear from you.
To close, I actually allowed myself to spend $65 on a single card recently. It's a beauty, though.
