A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

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Saturday sucked

OK, maybe not the whole day, but part of it.

I didn’t get to sleep too early as I worked Friday night. Was up at about 6:15 a.m. and on the road to take the GRE. Yeah, that was fun. Or not.

You are supposed to be there around four hours. I can’t figure out how that adds up. But I digress. I ended up being there a little over three hours.

Let me explain the GRE.

Four sections. Two essay. A verbal. A math. And then a surprise fifth — likely a verbal or math. And you don’t know which of them will count, but one won’t.

The two essays were first. Thought I did well on those. We’ll see when they are “graded.” You get 45 minutes for the one and 30 minutes for the other. I think I had about 5 minutes left in each one. Then you’re offered a 10-minute break. So I took it, went to the can, got a drink and went back in after about five minutes.

Math was next. Goodie. You get 45 minutes. The math problems, for the most part, looked Greek to me. All these Xs and Ys and fractions and algebra and Xy=16-4x etc. I struggled. hard. So, I did the best I could. Problems I had somewhat of an idea, I tried to work out on the scratch paper. Others, I guessed.

Verbal was next. Thought I did OK, though the score wasn’t anything better than average (I found out at the end).

Then the surprise one. Yay! Another math!

I was seeing everything fuzzy. Had no clue. Didn’t know what to do. I basically zoomed through it. Worked out as much as I could. I have a feeling, with the score I got on it, that was the one that got counted. Which is bull.

I did all the ending things. Had it sent where it needed to go and called it good. In all, I think it was a waste of $140. I don’t agree with standardized testing. Look at my grades at college — that should be a bigger value than some BS test that does nothing but show you that some people can study for a stupid standardized test and others can’t. Has nothing to do with work ethic or how yo do in school. Nothing.

The rest of the day wasn’t too bad.

Went from the GRE to Target to grab a couple packs of cards, then for some lunch (Spiedies!) before heading to the wrestling tournament.

After the tournament, grabbed some dinner with my brother and Dylan. Unfortunately, the damn dinner took three days to get served to us after it took three other days to even order. Ugh. Then off to head home.

The funniest thing happened on the way home as we went through the little dump of Guilford. Two kids were on a side-street mooning cars that went by. Dylan and I got a good laugh out of it. I was just amazed that they wanted to show their bare asses in that cold weather. Ahhh, small-town fun.

Anyway, time to finish up this story before heading to work. More later.

Card show fun

Went to a big card show today in White Plains with Marc. Had a sweet time. There were a bunch of autograph chances, but I wasn’t willing to pay and didn’t want to wait in a line, anyway. Sean Landeta (former Giants punter) was available for free, but, again, didn’t want to wait in line.

Anyway, we spent a few hours in there, but alas I didn’t add one card to my player collections. Talk about hard trying to find these cards because it seems if you are looking for commons, the following comes into play:

  • You have to look through boxes and boxes of cards, none of which are in any sort of order or year.
  • You have to look team-by-team (which I did that several times), but usually they don’t have what you need.
  • For older cards, they seem to jack up the prices too much. Though they claim they’ll accept offers, nobody seemed too willing to accept anything I wanted to offer.
  • If you are looking for specific people, bring card numbers, not names. I’ve learned this for next time.

This was a pretty sweet trip, however. Being I’ve just got back into card collecting like three years ago, I haven’t really hit up many shows. I’ve hit one or two small ones, but they don’t work well. This was the first major one and intend on hitting again. They have shows lined up for March 28-30; May 16-18 and Aug. 14-18. I don’t want to hit it every time, but the May show might be something I might consider. For more information on card shows this company runs, click here.

The day wasn’t a waste by any means. Five minutes in, I’m looking at some cards and see a Cole Hamels auto card. There was a pile of them and upon more questions, found out that was the only Hamels, but many other autos. So, I ended up (for $5) with a Scott Sizemore auto card — one which I had been looking for and attempting to get. It’s a 2007 Bowman Heritage and Sizemore is a player I’ve covered.

Other autos I ended up with today included:

I also ran across a table that had a few boxes full of Bowman Chromes — specifically the minor leaguers. I got a bunch of guys I’ve covered as well as some Phillies players. I also landed some basic Phils cards for a pretty cheap price, which was cool and will be good for my personal collection.

I passed on several cards, unfortunately. I want a Joe Savery auto, but didn’t feel like dropping $10-$13 on the card. If I go back again, I’ll plan that. I had a couple of Chase Utley/Cole Hamels/Ryan Howard cards in my view, but held off. One in particular – a Cole Hamels/Chase Utley auto, numbered to 25, really caught my eye. Unfortunately, $100 wasn’t something I could justify paying for that card at that time.

We were getting ready to leave and I still hadn’t purchased any packs and neither did Marc. So we were looking and came across a place that had decent prices. I was looking at the 4-for-$10 2007 Bowman Heritage as they were hobby packs (From Wikipedia: items sold mainly to collectors, through stores that deal exclusively in collectible cards. Usually contains some items not included in the retail offerings.)

In the end, we found out we could buy a full, untouched box for $50. Being that we were each looking to spend about $20 on packs, we ended up going for the hobby box:

bowman.jpg

We were guaranteed two hits, so we figured we’d split them and see what happened from there. I opened 12 packs, as did Marc (I should have snapped a few photos!).

I ended up with two hits (Robinson Cano jersey/Jeff Locke auto). However, I already got the Locke photo before, so that went to Marc. He also got some hits, well, I’d call it 1 1/2. His first was a Grady Sizemore jersey and the second was a Nick Markakis black border, numbered 25/25.

I ended up with the Cano (numbered 24/52) and the Markakis.

The beauty came with the packs I opened as I had some strong Phils hits. I got the following: Michael Bourn thick; Pat Burrell, Chase Utley (x2), Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer. I flipped the second Utley to Marc for Jimmy “MVP” Rollins. I also opened a Brennan Boesch card (I covered him) and Jeff Samardzija (Go Irish!) Also made a couple small trades with Marc where I ended up with a Hunter Pence rookie and Homer Bailey thick.

All in all a good day. And if you are still with me, you either really like the writing, me or are a baseball card collector! 🙂

Anyway, more later!