I Hate Waiting

I've got a few things on order right now, and it seems like they are taking forever to get here. One is from Blowout, a couple are from Topps, and at any given time I've usually got something coming in from eBay Shipments from Topps are notoriously slow, as they use some FedEx/USPS hybrid that bounces around the East coast for a week before finally beginning to move west. My Blowout order was placed over the weekend, so it sat for a couple of days before they even started the process, and now I'm not sure if it will get here on Saturday or if I'll have to wait through another weekend to get it. Stuff from eBay can arrive quickly or slowly, depending on a variety of factors.

The other part of waiting that I hate is the draft queue on my blog. It is nice to have a lot of draft posts in the folder, but it gets complicated if I get something scanned in that is more relevant or exciting to me than the currently-planned post for a given day. I wind up rescheduling things and sometimes even rewriting posts that have fallen out of date. And after shuffling things around I will wind up with a list of filler posts that I just don't have a lot to say about. They might be cards that fit my collection well, but I find that I don't have much to say about them. I will usually write the posts anyway to keep the blog fresh, but there have been a few times that I just deleted a post entirely due to lack of interest.

But my current struggle is one of waiting for some inbound mail that I am excited about. It makes me wonder how I handled being a kid. When I was young I would always be sending off for stuff from cereal boxes or the back of magazines. I'd order stamps, toys, and all kinds of other junk. Most of the order forms and advertisements for those things said that delivery could take 6-12 weeks, and much of it did actually take that long. How on earth did I manage to wait 2-3 months for those things? I can barely wait a week these days without going nuts.

None of that has anything to do with today's card, a 2016 Allen & Ginter Black-Framed Autograph of Jen Welter, whose stint as an assistant linebackers coach with the Arizona Cardinals during the 2015 preseason made her the first female NFL coach. I got her relic card a while back, but her autograph eluded me. This parallel card came up and I won it at a lower price than the base version usually goes for, so that was pretty cool. It is numbered # 23 / 25. There are still a few autographs I am chasing from this set, but I don't know if I will track them down before I get distracted and move on to other things.

2016 Topps Allen & Ginter Relics

The baseball relics and autographs in Allen & Ginter don't usually capture much of my attention, but most years there are a few non-baseball subjects I will try to track down. Some years I am more successful at it than others. My collecting attention span can only stay in one place for so long, so I am often on to the next thing before I gather all of the things on a checklist that catch my eye. Here are a few of the cards I picked up from the 2016 Topps Allen & Ginter set.

I can't say I like George Lopez' acting, but he's done a few movies that my kids enjoy watching (The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D, Beverly Hills Chihuahua 1 and 2, Rio 1 and 2) and my wife and I kind of have a running joke about how his show was one big dad joke. But I still have a weird affinity for the guy, and that made me seek out his relic card. I'd like to get his autograph from the set, but the prices are higher than what I want to pay for one. For now the relic will have to do.

Missy Franklin's star dimmed a little in Rio, but she's still a world-class swimmer. Swimming is probably my favorite Olympic sport to watch, probably because it's easy to follow and moves pretty quickly. Some of the more subjective stuff is hard for me to follow (gymnastics, diving) and other events just take too much time (volleyball, basketball). Hers is another autograph I would like to get from this set, but again, it's a little out of my price range. Don't be fooled by the cheap listings on eBay. They are all digital cards from the Bunt app.

Finally, this is a relic from Jen Welter, who is probably most famous for being hired on as an assistant coach for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals for their 2015 training camp and preseason. As far as anyone can tell, she was the first female coach on an NFL team. She also played and coached for a men's indoor football team, in addition to having success on women's teams. Like the other folks in this post, she has an autograph out there but I haven't managed to get that yet.

I haven't been very active on my blog this week. I've been meaning to finish this post for a few days now. I think I mentioned that I took a 5-day weekend last weekend. I had plenty of good intentions, like scanning a bunch of cards and doing some work around the house and yard.

Unfortunately, I opened up the computer game Out of the Park 17 and got sucked into the black hole that is simulating life as an MLB GM. I started with the 2016 Houston Astros roster, but I was never able to gather enough talent to advance past the ALCS. The team was good enough each year for the first few seasons to get to the playoffs, but they couldn't quite close series' out. Then I reached a period where key players would go on the DL just long enough for the team to drop out of the playoff race. After a couple years of missing the playoffs, the team owner would start cutting the budget and I'd be trying to add enough cheap young talent to shore up a couple of overpaid veterans I'd signed to long-term deal because the owner made signing them to an extension part of my goals. It's an incredibly engaging game, but I never made the World Series and I will never get that weekend back.

I did manage to get some good yard work in, but not as much as I'd planned. The rest of the week has been largely uneventful for me, although the Denver Broncos have now lost two in a row and look like they just won't get it going on offense any time soon. Topps did what I was afraid of and released a UFC NOW card that is not attached to a numbered event. It's a card commemorating the recent announcement that Ronda Rousey will be coming back at UFC 207. I hope they don't make this kind of thing a habit, especially since a lot of things can happen between now and then. Fighters fail drug tests and get injured all the time, so there is a chance the fight doesn't even happen.