Shaken not stirred

 

People from California reading this can probably skip the first few paragraphs. Because, for them, it will be a bit like someone coming up to me saying, "Hey, I just saw the 1974 Topps Traded Oscar Gamble card, it's so cool, you should check it out!"

Yeah, I know.

So, with that in mind, I experienced the strongest earthquake of my life Sunday.

Don't get excited. It was a magnitude 3.6. But we don't get earthquakes, or at least feel earthquakes, very often around here. For the first 20 years of my life, I never felt one.

The quake was centered just west of Adams Center, N.Y., which is a town 10 miles away from me. It felt like something exploded in the basement, then there was some brief rumbling. By the time I got outside -- where most of my neighbors now were -- it had stopped. They were rattled. "What was that?" they said.

I knew. It was an earthquake. I knew, because I felt one, centered at the same spot, 10 days earlier. It was a 2.6. It came at 2 in the morning, rather than the 2 in the afternoon quake Sunday. Just about everyone slept through that one. But I was awake, at my computer, and again, I thought something exploded in the basement. I even went down to check. So on Sunday, I had some experience. My wife was bothered. "I didn't like that," she said repeatedly. She was shaken. I was shaken but not stirred.

Maybe some around here found that experience scary (I can officially use all five fingers to count my lifetime quake experiences now). It was unsettling (is that where the word came from?).

 

But it wasn't scary scary.

Not like this:

These are the "Where Monsters Live" minis that I claimed from The Diamond King recently. He was giving away a variety of minis.

I don't normally collect Allen & Ginter mini insert sets, most of them aren't appealing enough for me to go through the effort. But some are kinda cool, like The Dudes and the Birds Of Prey and the Subways and Streetcars.

Thanks to this contribution, I now have the complete 2020 Monsters minis.

 

 

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Here are the other two that were already in my collection. I believe this is the first A&G mini insert set that I've completed.

I assume most of the scenarios for the Where Monsters Live came from movies. I don't watch scary movies, my own imagination is bad enough. But part of the reason that I was interested in these is some go back to childhood (collecting is all about my childhood). A few, I recall freaking me right out. The Under The Bed one -- probably the most alarming card here -- I definitely felt. Same with the attic and the closet.

Topps missed the major one though. As a kid mirrors spooked the ever-living f out of me. I remember being forced to take naps as a little kid and sometimes I'd be told to nap in my parents' room. My mom had one of those big three-panel mirrors that spanned the length of a wall atop a cabinet, so you could see yourself -- or the monster -- in triplicate. I don't think I've ever gotten over that.

 

OK, enough of alarming things, let's get to some good ol' friendly baseball cards from Kevin!

 

 

This is the mini offered up that I most wanted, a black border Corey Seager from 2018 A&G. Dodgers sure could use Seager these days.

 

Dee Strange-Gordon's birthday was just the other day. Most of my cards of him were when he was just "Gordon." This bat relic bit is more like a wood shaving.

I've been receiving a fair amount of Yasiel Puig cards in trades the last few months. I guess that's probably because he's not a young superstar in the majors anymore so folks are giving up on him in their collections. I just like shiny purple cards, it doesn't much matter who is on them.

More colorful parallels! I just love the aqua parallels from 2021 Chrome Platinum Anniversary. If I was less disciplined and had no cash limits, I'd try to collect the entire parallel set.

MOMENTOUS MATERIAL. Remember these over-the-top cards? These were a riot at the time. They still make me laugh a little. But it's a nicely constructed card, better than a couple of the other Giant Swatch cards I have.

The size of that patch probably could cover the entire area that felt the earthquake Sunday.

As you can see it was minor on the scale, but it still tops anything else I've felt. My first quake experience was in January 1986. I was on the third floor of the Buffalo State library and I didn't feel anything but I felt swaying. Same deal in the fall of 1990, I was in my apartment late at night with my girlfriend, turned toward the kitchen and saw the cabinets sway. Then, in the late '90s, on an early Saturday morning, I was woken out of bed by a little shaking.

Not enough to stir me. But I'm not moving to California, that's for sure. I know I don't want to get used to this. That might really shake and stir me.