Vaccine troubles, McKay's, and Harry Hulk Woman!

I've been meaning to get the rona vaccine for months now, but for one reason or another, just kept forgetting to do so.

Some may wonder how that was possible, and to that I'd say it was easy. A). I've been busy all summer, B). Goldfish brain, C). I rarely pay any attention to the "news", D). I kind of live in a bubble out here in the sticks, and E). I haven't been overly fearful of catching the rona.

Despite all that, I really did think that I should get it, not necessarily for my well being mind you, but I figure that in the long-run, it would be beneficial to society as a whole for me to get it (and I don't even care about the general public all that much!).

The original plan was to get the J&J jab, but apparently I waited too long, because when I finally went to get it back in August, I was told that that particular option was no longer available around here. I could get the Moderna locally, or drive to somewhere like Knoxville or Nashville for the J&J. I'm not a big fan of needles, so only having the two-shot option at my disposal was a tad disappointing, but I also didn't feel like driving for a couple of hours just to get stabbed by a faceless whitecoat. Despite my dislike of needles, I swallowed my disappointment and went with the local Moderna.

The first shot was fine, just a sore arm for a couple of days, and I was back to my usual plucky self. Having not read about any of the other potential side effects, I assumed that I was basically in for the same thing when I got my second shot last Thursday... and I couldn't have been more wrong!

The shot itself was okay, and I felt fine right afterwards. I had the day off, and thinking that only a sore arm was coming, I spent most of the day outside hauling wood. I felt fine after that too, not even a sore arm. It was almost exactly 8pm that night when things started to go to shit.

The first side effect to come on was the chills. I went from just a little shaky, to teeth chattering in less than an hour. I could tell I was gonna be in for a long night. Despite it being over 70° in the house, I turned off my ceiling fan for the first time this summer, and went to bed wearing sweats, socks, and a t-shirt. I was wearing all that and still needed multiple blankets to fall asleep (I usually just have a sheet on my bed during the summer). I fell asleep quicker than I thought I would, but woke up two hours later amid a nuclear meltdown. I was sweating profusely, and had acquired an incredible headache. I never did go back to sleep. When I finally got up in the morning, I did so despite the headache's increase. And let me tell you, even for someone who grew up with migraines, and still gets frequent headaches of varying degrees, this was a headache for the ages!

Friday was fucking miserable. I couldn't get the headache to go away, and spent the whole day either feverishly sweating, or trying to shake out of my skin from the chills. I tried to play through it and do some stuff around the house, but I couldn't stand confidently for any length of time, so very little ended up actually getting done. I ate as little for dinner as I can remember in recent memory, and then my whole upper arm started turning red. Apparently that's not uncommon, but was still a little off-putting. Being dead-ass tired, I went to bed at the unheard of hour or 8pm Friday night, fell asleep immediately again, and slept for eight straight hours, which is also unheard of for me. Saturday was considerably better, only a minor headache, and only one bout of sweating. At least I was able to finally to some stuff again. I really hate not being able to do things!

I was mostly back to normal on Sunday, but I'll come back to Sunday in a moment. First, I wanted to point out that I never planned on telling anyone publicly that I got vaccinated, that's not my kind of flex. I only decided to do so after I had so much difficulty with it. I think it's good for those that still haven't gotten vaccinated to know that this kind of reaction is possible, but you know what, as sucky as my experience was, I'm still alive, and if you by chance have as much difficulty with it as I did, it'll be sucky, but you'll live too! Normally I'm not one to tell people what they should and shouldn't do, but this is one instance where I think it's necessary: If you haven't been vaccinated yet, and are able to be vaccinated, STOP BEING A SELFISH PRICK... and go get that prick!

PSA over, now let's get to some fun stuff.

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As mentioned, I was mostly back to normal Sunday morning, which was good, because I had a thing I had to do in Knoxville on Sunday. It might've been able to be pushed back, but I didn't want to do that. So, since I knew I'd be able to drive, I went and did my thing. Knowing that I'd be in Knoxville, I knew I'd have to make time for a stop at McKay's (a Disneyland for lovers of physical media) while I was there too, and I did.

It's been a few months since I was last there, and I've never gone on the weekend before, so in terms of people, and potential finds, I didn't really know what to expect. My other thing didn't take too long, so I had almost three hours of time blocked off for searching.

Normally I like to save the best for last, but if your a sports card fan, and you read all of that opening jibber-jabber, I think you deserve to see what I'm pretty sure was the deal of the day first...

I'm not much of a Twitterer, and I rarely tweet about anything before it shows up on the blog, but I thought a few people might get a kick out of this, so I went ahead and mentioned on there Sunday night. Turns out, more than a few people got a kick out of it, as I think it might've been my most liked tweet ever, for whatever that's worth.

Anyway, I had never even heard of this book until everyone's favorite Owl blogged about a couple of weeks ago (sorry, I wasn't able to find the post to link up here?), but from the post itself, and all of the ensuing comments, I was able to gather that this book was kind of a big deal for a lot of people. Oh, and that it wasn't cheap on the secondary market either. It seemed somewhat interesting to me, but not enough for me to ever be shelling out big bucks for, so I basically just forgot about it -- that is until I was looking through the hobbies and collectibles section on Sunday, and noticed a massive book on one of the bottom shelves that said "Topps Baseball Cards" on the spine. I thought it might be the same book when I reached down to see the price, which by the way, going from Night Owl's post I thought would at least be $20. Turned out to be $2 (left the sticker so you could see it)! The dust jacket's seen better days, and a couple of the pages were dog-earred, but still, two bucks seemed like a pretty good deal (and the folks on Twitter agreed).

The one thing that I don't recall seeing mentioned in NO's post, was just how massive this book is, it's gotta weigh at least 10 pounds, and could easily be a murder weapon in Clue. I certainly got a workout lugging this thing around the store in one of those hand baskets for almost two hours.

I took a couple of pictures of the inside for someone on Twitter, and figured that I might as well show them here too, just in case I'm not the only one who hadn't been familiar with the book.

Anyway, I hadn't been seeking the book out, but it is kind of neat to have found a cheap copy. I have no doubt that it'll come in handy from time to time.

Everything else gotten was to appease my inner youth, and probably won't be of much interest to sports-only fans. Feel free to skip this next part.

I'm always on the lookout for cheap older film rags, and was fortunate enough to find a few this time.

This last issue here was the real prize, as I may be one of the bigger Captain Power fans you'll ever come across in the blogging world (I've got the entire toy line, all of the videos, and some other assorted paraphernalia). This issue had apparently been flying under my radar. And as a bonus, they're talking my episode of Star Trek as well.

The old 90's Marvel novels aren't cheap anywhere, and McKay's is no exception. The average price is in the $4-5 range, and as such, I rarely ever get any. I still look just in case though. Had some luck this time with one off condition book for $1.50, and...

... one nicer copy for $2.50. I'm very much looking forward to these!

It wouldn't be a trip to McKay's without bringing home at least one Christopher Pike. I've had the second book in this trilogy for a while now, but have been waiting to get the first before reading it. I started reading this last night, and am a tad surprised to find that it's kind of like I Know What you did Last Summer, ten years before that was a thing. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't think it would be along those lines.

It wouldn't be a trip to McKay's without getting at least one Bobby Stine as well.

At $3.50, this was my most expensive purchase. It's okay to splurge every now and then though, especially when paying with trade credit.

Overall, it was a good trip. The next one is gonna have some lofty standards to live up to!

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I received a fun PWE from, Greg, of Nine Pockets fame, earlier this week. I'm sure that most have already heard about it by now, but Greg has started a new business venture, and was doing a giveaway to celebrate (it may still be going on, I don't know, you'll have to check). Everyone got their choice of three of his recently printed customs, and for me it was an easy choice.

I'm a big fan of the Dirty Harry series (they're more relevant now than when they were originally released), so this was a no brainer. I never thought I'd see Harry Callahan on a baseball card, but here we are!

My scanner didn't do Greg's cards any favors, so if you haven't seen one in person yet, just take my word that they look way better than they do here. 

I grew up watching both of these series', in syndication of course. 

I only chose two cards, but Greg threw in a third...

CHiPs is one of a very select few shows from the "classic television" era that I've never seen a single episode of. I have seen Erik Estrada on quite a few other shows though, and do have his Adventure Time autograph, so now my Double E collection is two cards strong.

I really dig the '74 All-Star combos that Greg put together, and if he ever revisits the theme, I'm hoping for a Steve Austin/Jamie Summers pairing. I think that would be really neat.

Many thanks for the giveaway, Greg! Hopefully your new cards will sell like hotcakes, they're certainly gonna get enough publicity in the coming weeks to do so :)

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In other news, the COMC shipment that I requested back in April arrived last Friday. It actually wasn't that far off the original estimate. I thought it was gonna be considerably later though, given that the last time I looked at the counter, it said that there were something like 140,000 items still ahead of mine -- then I got an email two days later saying that my stuff had shipped. I've got 189 cards in here, and no idea when, or how, I might start showing any of them. 

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And one other thing of small note, I can never remember exactly when it is, and I don't feel like looking it up, but I do know that this blogs anniversary falls somewhere between September 15-19. I don't plan on posting anything else in the next couple of days, so I'm just gonna go ahead and congratulate myself now on being able to stick around for 6 years. I'm haven't been posting nearly as much as I used to do, but I'm still around, and I've outlasted a number of far superior blogs, so that's something, I guess?

If I come into any sort of windfall in the next couple of months, I might try to do a belated contest of some sort, but in the meantime, this'll have to do for now. 

I think I've gone on long enough for one post, and I've got about a weeks worth of blog reading to catch up on, so until next time...

Sick mail

I realize that I'm starting off today's post with a statement that everyone knows to be true, one that doesn't need to be uttered by another living being, ever, but I'm gonna do so anyway... being sick really sucks!

Though finally on the road to recovery as of this writing, I've had a cold for the last week and change. I felt something coming on two weeks ago, and after a couple of days of minor symptoms, thought that I had successfully fought it off, but if I did, it didn't stay gone for very long, because it, or another virus, came on strong shortly thereafter -- and decided to stay for the week.

My mom has been sick too, so I don't know who gave it who, for blog purposes though, I'm gonna say that she gave it to me. Her symptoms were worse than mine, but she too is starting to get better, thankfully! 

My memory is such that I can't really remember past colds, so every time I get one, which isn't often (this is only my second one in the last 10 years), it always seems/feels worse than it probably actually is. So feel free to take everything I'm saying with a grain (or two) of salt. I don't recall ever having a cold during the summer though, it's a weird juxtaposition. I'm not sure if it's necessarily a good thing or not, but even as un-fun as they can be, it's kind of comforting to know that the common cold hasn't been eradicated by the Rona. I mean, if you gotta catch one or the other...

We also had the hurricane/tropical storm remnants roll in late Monday, and not leave until early Wednesday. Much doom and gloom was predicted ahead of it's arrival, but most of it, at least around here, ended up being more hype than not. We did get a couple of inches of rain, but that could just as easily have happened on a random day in March, so it really wasn't worth getting worked up over.

Two pieces of fun mail arrived this week, the first coming courtesy of the King of Diamonds. Kevin recently had himself a show for the ages, and amongst his swag, was an extra copy of each of these two fellas. I inquired about them in the post, but didn't know they were coming, so it made for a nice surprise. I'll talk about it at some later date, but I recently started working on small card project, and need a couple of cards from both of these guys (and those of similar ilk). I've never had very many 1984 Topps, and have never owned any 1984 OPC, so these work well, as they're something "new" for me to look at. Thanks again, Kevin! 

Speaking of bloggers, I'm sure that everyone has seen by now that Chris is trying to leave us. This announcement wasn't unexpected, but is still the shits. I have exchanged more cards with Chris than anyone else over the last few years, and he's been one of my favorite people to interact with, so his absence will be felt. The good news is though, Chris is a blogger at heart, so I fully expect him to be back doing so in some form or another after his initial respite -- even if it does manifest itself into an emo music blog for current, and former, pre-teen girls 😂.

My other piece of mail this week comes from a small Sportlots purchase:

I can't remember exactly when it was, but some weeks ago I got to wondering what Alan Autry had been up to lately, so I did a quick Google search, which then directly led me to buying this card. You see, I didn't realize that Alan, who despite his numerous roles, will always be (to me) Bubba Skinner from the In the Heat of the Night television series, had played pro football. Once I found this out it was only natural to go see if he ever had any cards produced, and he did, there's his 1977 Topps rookie here, and then he's got an uber-difficult to find 1977 Topps Mexican rookie as well. The COMC and eBay asking prices for this card are stupid, seriously, don't even bother looking. Thankfully though, Sportlots came through, and I was able to get this one for less than a buck (which is still probably multiple times higher then it would sell for at a show).

A funny thing happened too while I was waiting for this to arrive, I happened upon a Twitter discussion from some people who had also just found out about the cards existence. I didn't participate in it myself, but did find the timing to be interesting. In typical me fashion, I already have another one on the way, but am thinking that that one might get used for a TTM attempt. I haven't done so yet, but I'll have to see if he signs stuff for folks.

Since I mentioned Twitter, I might as well mention that I happened upon a weekly vintage baseball open sales thread last week, and in a completely impromptu move, put something up, and sold it within minutes. This prompted me to try again a few nights ago with two small lots and one single. It took a little longer this time, but by the next morning all had sold. Normally I don't even bother looking at the myriad of sales threads on Twitter, mostly because of the obscene prices, but clicked on this one for some reason, and am now glad that I did. I don't have a lot more unwanted baseball items to sell, but it has been nice to move a few things and not have to pay eBay fees. It's not a paid endorsement, but if you have anything you want to sell, or even if you're looking to buy (there's lots of graded cards if you're into that sort of thing), this guy runs the thread every Wednesday night. I will say that there does seem to be a lot of expensive items being listed, but unlike most open sales threads, cards actually sell. In fact, most of them seem to sell. It's probably not for everyone, but I thought it was worth throwing out there for those that might be interested.