Up in Flames

 

No, thankfully, we did not suffer a fire at house.  Well, not one that we didn't control, at least.

For the Fourth of July, my wife and I decided to throw a party. We had about 25 pounds of pork shoulder that we cooked up in our cool contraption called "La Caja China". La Caja China (the "Chinese Box") is essentially an aluminum-lined wood box in which you can cook large amounts of meat -- say, a 50-pound pig -- in 4 hours or less.  It's basically a pressure cooker.

Here's a photo of it:

You can see our set up there in the garage and in our back driveway.  The meat goes inside the box.  You add charcoal -- as cheap a charcoal as you want -- every hour or so. You never open the box until the cooking is nearly complete. At that point, you turn the meat to get the other side of the meat a bit browner and toasty.  It's a great, low-impact way of doing things, though it puts out a ton of heat near the box.

With it being July 4th, though, and with the fact that Junior Junkie hit the #WalletCard so far out of the park in March that no one could ever catch up, I decided it was time to cut ties with #WalletCard Robert Edwards.  

This year has been one in which I just haven't travelled much or, for that matter, done much of anything outside of trying to establish my new business.  Robert has been stuck in my wallet with no place to go for the great majority of 2015.  

It just wasn't fair to Robert to go through another boring 6 months stuck next to my health insurance card and my car registration.

So, instead, he went out in a blaze of glory.

And, his helping get this fire going meant he went down for a good cause -- feeding the hungry masses in my neighborhood. 

Goodbye, Wallet Card Robert -- maybe next year, we can do this again.

#WalletCard Went to Boca

It's been a while since Robert Edwards The Wallet Card got to see the light of day.  To be fair, that's entirely on me.  I sometimes forget he is there.  Other times, I decide to keep Robert in my pocket rather than unleash his magnetism and power on an unsuspecting populace.  More to the point, though, I just haven't done anything terribly cool or fun or different than just going to work, coming home, or going to yet another networking event.

But, two weeks ago, I got a reprieve from the every day.  I went to Boca Raton for a week for a meeting.  It sort of reminded me of this:

Sort of.

Robert Edwards The Wallet Card made it clear that he needed to be freed from the dark confines of my wallet.  I swear I heard the card muttering about the insurance cards making fun of him and telling him he needed to get a check up.  So, I got Robert out in the airport:

Robert then started making comments about how the couple on the wall look like they stepped out of American Gothic, just dressed up for the 2010s...I can see that.  

Thankfully, the pitchfork was left at home.

Boca Raton -- and the resort at which I stayed -- is a very upscale, old-person-type place. The resort where I stayed is pretty fancy.  My room was just okay, though, and the view out my window, well, it left something to be desired:

From that view, it looks like I was staying at the zoo, or in a tropical rainforest.  And I suppose I was.

The first full day I was at the resort was the only day during which I did not have a lunch included in the price of my seminar.  My wife does not like sushi -- she has very few flaws, but that is one of them -- so I took the opportunity to get some sushi.  The hotel/resort has a famous chef sushi restaurant.

If you don't know who Morimoto is, perhaps you have heard of Iron Chef America?

I love that clip above for having fellow UGA grad Alton Brown in a parka for his commenting role on the show.

Anyway, the sushi at Morimoto's restaurant at the resort was very good and not so terribly priced as to cause me too much consternation when I got the bill.  Robert said he'd pick up the check, but then remembered that he had forgotten his wallet.

Later that afternoon, it was meeting time for me.  I spent the afternoon in a planning session for the subgroup within my organization where I spend most of my time and effort.  After a very productive three hours, a few of us decided to head out to a local brew pub called The Funky Buddha Lounge and Brewery.  I didn't get a photo of it myself, so I'm borrowing one from another website:

The food was decent, and the beers were excellent.  Right, Robert?

The beers there were very good.  If you find yourself in Boca Raton, you should check it out. I mean, if you are a beer drinker, check out their list of beers here...some crazy flavors and combinations there.

I didn't bore Robert -- and I won't bore you -- with photos from the rest of my time at the seminar.  The only time I should have taken him out of my wallet was on our catamaran ride.  

But then again, does this view require a baseball card to be enjoyed?

Thanks for reading.  May your favorite NFL team draft well tonight, but not as well as Green Bay does!

#WalletCard Goes to Court

Like many bloggers, I jumped on board the "Wallet Card Frenzy" [(c) Breakdown Cards, All Rights Reserved. Void where prohibited by law] in January.  I did it in hope that it would provide me with some blog fuel for times when I needed it.  

Well, I have plenty of things I can be writing about right now, but I have hardly done anything with Robert Edwards The Wallet Card.  That's mainly because I really haven't gone anywhere that interesting, and otherwise I've gone places where taking a card out of my wallet and snapping a photo would have been a bit odd.  

Yeah, that's no excuse, but it was time that RETWC got a run out.  This week, I had a hearing in Federal Court here in Atlanta.  The day prior, I went to the courthouse to get an ID card so that I could take my phone into the building with me. So, I thought it would be a prime day to get RETWC out of the dark and back into the light

And there he is.  Robert's looking worse for the wear already -- corners are peeling back, edges are wearing away, creases are forming. But, he's still got his Georgia G intact and on a brilliant red helmet.

In the background is the Richard B. Russell Federal Building.  It's the location for the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, and it's right around the corner from where the new Falcons Stadium is being built. Thankfully, it has been decent weather-wise here lately -- though overcast, it has been consistently between 65 and 75 degrees.  It could be a lot worse.

Thanks for reading, y'all, and I promise that I'll get around to some more posts about bubble mailers and boxes and card show trips that I've made recently.

#WalletCard: Robert Goes to Dinner

Tonight, my wife and I joined our next door neighbors for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants near where we live. The restaurant is a burger joint, but that does not really do justice to it.

It's called Farm Burger, and their "thing" is that all the burgers are from locally raised, grass-fed beef that is dry-aged and ground fresh on site. Here, let me get you hungry (if you like burgers):

My wife was confused when I pulled a card out of my wallet and took a photo of it on the placemat next to the Farm Burger Dunwoody Logo. Y'all will understand, though.  Here's Robert Edwards, looking ready to have a burger himself:

It's been a hectic week here for me, but thankfully #walletcard makes this one an easy post.  And my burger -- which was a build-it-yourself with fresh jalapenos, swiss cheese, homemade mayonnaise, and red onions -- was fantastic.

Invigorated...and #walletcard sits down to type

Things are almost getting back to normal for me after my job change. I'm starting to work a fairly regular schedule again -- as opposed to over the holidays, when I would sit and sort cards all day since there was no point in my going into the office. I'm working a fair amount at trying to develop business, which at this point is being accomplished by contacting people I've worked with in the past.

I'm still not all the way back on blogging, though. My 1982 Topps blog has lagged severely in the past two months as I've been getting ready for my job change. I had a ton of pretty important things I had to do -- set up a limited liability company, set up two bank accounts, get my cell phone number transferred to me by my firm, get a new phone to replace the BlackBerry I had, get a new computer to be my work computer (and, since it's an Apple, that has been a heck of a learning experience), getting health insurance set up, and get all the technology talking to each other properly so that I can actually get my work e-mail on my smartphone.

Just remembering everything I needed to do was a chore. Getting all of it done...well, I'm getting there.  It's a tricky process to walk that line between being respectful to the job I had and making preparations for the job I was going to have.

All of that is just a further explanation as to why I'm still a little behind on blogging.

Last night, though, injected some life back in to my collecting and blogging. My wife organized a neighborhood party and made two crock pots of chili for it. We had a bunch of people over, including one family whom I know somewhat but not very well. They brought their 8-year-old son and their 9-year-old daughter along, and one task for the night was to entertain them. The boy dug right in when I turned on my Playstation for him and he started playing one of the EA Sports NCAA football games as the Georgia Bulldogs, which made me smile.  

About midway through the night, though, my wife was talking to the boy's mother. His mom told my wife that her son (and her husband) both love baseball and that her son collects baseball cards. That led to the boy, the mom, the dad, the mom's sister, and the daughter all coming into my baseball card room to see my collection. They didn't believe me when I estimated that I have about 70,000 cards or more...now they do.

The dad is a big Cincinnati Reds fan, and he was very proud of the fact that they had found that a former Reds player from the 1910s is a third- or fourth-cousin of theirs. I happened to have a Reds franchise history book on my shelf that I got about 12 years ago when I was buying a lot of baseball books. I pulled out my Reds cards, and the boy started looking through them. 

Suddenly, half the party came upstairs to my card room. People were telling stories about the Big Red Machine in the 1970s, how Davey Concepcion should be in the Hall of Fame, what players they remembered meeting, who was nice, who was not -- just as if they were the 8-year-old kids again. So, I pulled out a card that any Reds fan and nearly any baseball fan would have to appreciate -- a 1981 Donruss Johnny Bench autographed card that I got back in about 1982. I think the dad was more excited by that than the boy was.

As it turned out, the boy is also a big Freddie Freeman fan (living in Atlanta and all). I happened to have a 2014 Allen & Ginter Freeman relic that came out in Gint-A-Cuffs last summer, so I gave him that and some 2013 Topps Stickers and, yes, I gave him the Johnny Bench autograph. 

It really reminded me what collecting is really about. It's about keeping what you want and what you like, and what you give away will put smiles on other people's faces.

Kind of like how #walletcard Robert Edwards makes me smile. It's why Robert joined me at my computer tonight.

For what it's worth, my computer background changes every 30 seconds to show another card I've scanned. It just happened to be Blue Jay Molitor this time.

Thanks for reading tonight -- some cards will appear tomorrow on this blog. I promise.

#WalletCard: Robert Goes to Work

This morning, it's absolutely freezing cold in Atlanta. It's not Chicago/Buffalo cold, but 11 degrees with a windchill of -1 is not warm anywhere.

That cold did not deter Robert Edwards The Wallet Card from accompanying me to work this morning. He did insist, however, on basking in the rays of the rising sun on my window:

I hope wherever you are that you are staying warm.

A PWE from P-Town Tom ... and I'll Join in the #WalletCard Hashtagging

A couple of weeks ago, I received a single card in the mail from P-Town Tom from Waiting 'til Next Year. It was a Christmas Card with a Christmas gift in it -- and it was an excellent addition to my Robin Yount collection:

Tom expressed joy in finding a Robin Yount card that I don't have. I definitely like it when people send me cards like that -- I know it's tough for me to find cards to send other people in trades a lot of times because either I don't know what they want/need or they have such large collections that they have everything I can contribute.

I definitely appreciated the Christmas joy from Peoria.  Thanks Tom!

#WalletCard

The other part of this post is joining in the pack. In various iterations, the idea of carrying cards around with you everywhere you go is one that I think is kind of fun. Defgav from Baseball Card Breakdown posted his idea to put a card in your wallet -- one that makes you smile when you see it, of course -- and to take photos of it when you go various places and do things.  

The idea caught fire rapidly among all of us bloggers and on Twitter -- so much so that even Cardboard Connection wrote up a story about it two days ago. Admittedly, I tend not to be a follower of trends. If I were, I wouldn't be a Brewers fan. But, this is a trend that I can get on board with.

So, I decided to choose a card that will be featured in an upcoming post as one received from the ever prolific JayBarkerFan. The strange thing is that it is not a baseball card at all. It doesn't even carry the picture of a professional athlete. And, it comes from a card issuer that just announced it is going out of business.  

Still, this card makes me smile:

This is a card of former Georgia Bulldogs and New England Patriots running back Robert Edwards. Edwards was injury prone -- never playing a complete season in Athens -- and then had his career basically destroyed when he completely annihilated one of his legs and knees in a rookie sand flag football game as part of the Pro Bowl festivities. I mean, the guy almost lost his leg in the incident...the damage was that bad.

I remember Robert Edwards for something else though. In my first game as a University of Georgia student (in law school), Georgia played against South Carolina. Because I was a member of the Vanderbilt Marching Band, I never experienced a college football game as purely a spectator before that day. Ray Goff was still coaching Georgia that day.

Lining up at quarterback for the Dawgs was sophomore quarterback -- and now Colorado State University head coach -- Mike Bobo. The Dawgs third leading receiver -- and also the quarterback with the most yards passing that season -- was future Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward. In the defensive backfield and the leading kickoff returner for the Dawgs that year was a freshman from Bainbridge, Georgia -- current Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart.

But the star of the show that game against South Carolina was Robert Edwards. He set a Georgia record by scoring 5 touchdowns in the game -- 4 rushing, 1 receiving -- and the Dawgs destroyed the Gamecocks 42-23. Edwards had been moved from defensive back to running back in spring practice, and his performance made Ray Goff look like a genius. If you remember those days of Georgia football, well, it was tough to make Goff look smart.

The next game Georgia played was at Tennessee, and the Dawgs lost 30-27. In that game, Edwards tore his ACL and missed the rest of the season. He just wasn't built to last through all that hitting.

This card, though, makes me recall my days as a 23-year-old law student. It was 20 years ago this year, so this card is the perfect card to bring a smile to my face.

And it's my wallet card.