Night Owl Cards

    I haven't had much money to spend on cards the last three or four months. In fact, there's a card show this weekend and I ain't going. It's quite the contrast to earlier in the year when I was throwing money at 1956 Topps all-stars. But there are a couple new bills to pay and if I'm going to unearth some cash on cards it's certainly not going to be the new stuff. A few weeks ago I started to feel like I should live up to my name as a collector and see what the baseballcardstore had in stock. Even someone on a strict budget can afford to throw a few dimes at some cards. I was surprised to find that the dimebox store has become a nickelbox store. In order to compensate for the crazy shipping costs, the site's owners have moved to tiered shipping prices, and although those are higher than what was once on the site, they've knocked back the price on their cards to a NICKEL. By the time I added up the cards I bought and the new shipping price, it was no ...

Fellow Supertrader Junior Junkie fired off one last post office salvo before disappearing into the world of first-time parenthood recently. I completely understand why he did -- who knows when he'd be able to send out packages again? Those babies are harsh taskmasters. Anytime anyone has a child for the first time, it reminds me of when my daughter was born, and all of the things that went along with it. Sure, there was uncertainty and wonder and endless diaper changing. I always figured that the diaper-changing would be the worst part of new parenthood. But you end up changing diapers so frequently during a single day that it becomes as mundane as anything else you do multiple times a day. No, it's not the diapering that I remember the most. It's the lack of sleep. I have never been so tired -- and there are a lot of times when I have been exhausted in a lot of different situations -- than when I was the daddy to a newborn child. You know going in that it's...

A few weeks ago, my wife came home with this knick knack of an owl, pronounced that she loved it, and promptly stuck it on top of my card desk. Now, she knows I'm a night owl, and has known it ever since she met me. She also knows that I run a blog called "Night Owl Cards". But I have no idea whether she placed it on my desk for that reason. I could ask but, you know, we're both very, very busy people. I prefer to think of it as a blog accessory, whether it is or not. I like the idea of accessories. Every once in awhile, when I see that a blogger has made up a business card for their blog, I think "I wish I could get things together and make my own business card." It'd be a nice extension of the blog. But I don't have to do that right now because I've got something more handy: The blog now has its own mug. This arrived from Baseball Dad . He and I think it's pretty appropriate. If you are hard of seeing it's an owl ...