A quartet of recent (and completely unrelated) finds

After taking another unplanned week off from the blog, I was actually really looking forward to writing today's post, so with that in mind, I'm just going to skip the normal long-winded intro and jump right in:

This first item is a bit of a cheat, as I've had it since last year, but I only recently "re-found" it while going through some picture/scan folders... plus I knew that I'd have to start with a baseball card in order to get some eyes on this post.

This Grover Alexander 1940 Play Ball was one of the better cards from last year's COMC accumulation, and you wouldn't of thought that I could forget about getting such a cool card... but I did.

While looking through the folder that this card was in, I realized that this year is nearly half over, and I've only shown a handful of the nearly 200 cards that were in my annual year end shipment. So in an attempt to rectify that, this Sunday, I will be starting a new weekly series called "COMC Sundays". Most of the posts will be probably end up being nothing more than a glorified photo/scan dump, but I'm hoping that by the time I get my shipment at the end of this year, I will have gotten caught up with all of last year's stuff (or at least all of the interesting stuff).

I found this guy (or gal) while I was out doing some yard work last weekend. This is only the second snake that I've come across this year so far. Some of you might remember the baby gray rat snake that I found a couple of months ago, and at the time, that was the only one of that species that I had ever seen in person... now I can say that I've seen two. This most recent snake was about 2 1/2 feet long, and like most non-venomous snakes, seemed very chill. I spent about ten minutes watching him before he went into a hole underneath the leaf pile.

For those that don't know, I live almost literally in the middle of nowhere -- which among other things -- mean's that this area doesn't have a trash pick-up route, so you have to take your garbage/recycling to a designated drop off area. When I first moved here three years ago, this was a major adjustment that I didn't particularly care for, especially since I had never known anything other than the normal city/suburbs garbage service. But now after a couple of years, I do actually enjoy going to the dump, although it's not a dump traditional sense, as it's more of just a bunch a big bins for the all the various kinds of garbage and recycling.

There's always a guy there to keep an eye on things, and to help any disabled/older people who might need some assistance with whatever it is that their dropping off. He's also there to dissuade from taking stuff out of the bins, which even though it's frowned upon, still happens anyway (stealth is essential), and yes... I'm one of those people!

I wouldn't even think of taking anything out of the actual garbage bin (yuck), but there are plenty of other non-gross bins to find stuff in. This past week was especially good, I found the flamingos above in the plastic recycling bin (they should've been donated to a thrift store), which I absolutely love, they need some new legs (easy fix), but other than that their in really great shape. I also found a couple of really cool bottles (sorry, no picture) in the glass bin, which happens on a fairly regular basis. I don't drink hard liquor, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate (and want) some of the interesting shaped bottles that it sometimes comes in.

Last week my mom took a mini vacation to Florida, while there, she found this issue of The Ring in an antique mall for me. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I should be able to this weekend. Being from 1949, I'm assuming that it should make for a fun read. And if it turns out to be really good, who knows... I might just do a follow-up post at some later date.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.