"All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share"

Greetings on the day after Christmas. I hope your Christmas was peaceful and hassle-free.

I'm pleased to say it was delightfully relaxed here in the Night Owl nest. For the first time in years, we spent the day without any relatives, and it was a pleasant alternative to the general air of Persistent and Unrealistic Expectations that hovers over the situation.

I wish I could say I went into the gift-opening session with the same breezy attitude. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but hear the words of Sally Brown in my head.

Sally is one of my favorite Peanuts characters. She is amusingly blunt and perhaps a bit selfish. But she has a good heart, and she is sensitive to the injustices in life. She reminds me of my daughter in a lot of ways.

Like Sally, I merely wanted "my fair share," something off the Christmas list. For me, that was baseball cards. After last year's sock debacle, I set my expectations low. And about midway through the day, I began to think they weren't set low enough.

But then my dear wife came through, with three packs of Updates and Highlights. Bless you, sweetheart. Others may have received super-shiny-cards-with-bits-of-material-and-ink for Christmas, but these three packs are three packs more than I received last year and that means everything.

Here are the highlights of my Updates & Highlights:

An Awesome Scoreboard Card (or is it a Water Bottle Card?) of future Dodger Jon Garland.

A definite Red Sox theme to the three packs.

The "hit" of the three packs, a gold parallel of Tommy Hanson. Try to keep up with Mr. Kershaw there, Tommy boy.

The packs also included both Jonathan Broxton cards from the set (have them already), and the Manny propaganda card (got that, too).

Also on the card front, I received some desperately-needed pages.

I immediately brought out my stacks of 1993 Upper Deck cards, filed them in the pages, and housed those in the one available binder I have left. Tomorrow, I hope to get a better handle on just how many '93 UD cards I need to complete the set. The want list may need tweaking.

Oh, and I received some cash to spend how I see fit. This will require some careful documentation. I see lists, "pro-and-con" tables, and a series of pie-charts in my future. But all of it is for the greater good: the purchasing of cards.

Meanwhile, I received a Christmas card on Christmas eve. It was from The Collective Troll, who between all of his pack-ripping and double-shifting, found time to send out holiday greetings.

Inside was something that proves that if you read my blog, you know exactly what I want for Christmas. Back in September, when everyone was getting in on the 6-in-30 craze, I mentioned the Baseball Hall of Fame postcards. When I was younger, during one of my Hall of Fame visits, I grabbed every postcard that I could find of anyone who had played for the Dodgers.

I found most of them. But I mentioned on the post that I didn't get the Sandy Koufax postcard. I'm not sure why.

Now I have it. Thanks, Marck. See what happens when you pay attention to what people say throughout the year? You know just what they want for Christmas.