Return of the King

As far as the blogging world goes, there was much rejoicing during the early days of the Rona, obviously not because of the virus itself, no, we're not ghouls, but a lot of us were celebrating the fact that so many former bloggers started returning to the fold, as well as all of the new blogs that had begun to pop up.

Now that we're a good six months into this thing that looks like it's going to be with us for a very long time (and by "us", I mean the world, thanks CCP!), it seems like some of those who had returned, or had decided to start a blog, have already gone quiet again, or at least aren't posting with the same frequency that they had been at the beginning. There are of course many potential reasons for this drop-off, work, family, depression, etc.; after all, it's not as easy to maintain, and regularly post on, a blog, as some people would like to think. It takes much time, and quite a bit of effort to do so, and with the world being so topsy-turvy, it's completely understandable that some folks might not have that time, or want to put forth the effort, to post on a regular basis.

One of the people that returned, and thankfully has stuck around, is Kevin, aka The Diamond King. I wasn't around for Kevin's original run, but have since found out why so many people were glad to see him come back, which I would imagine by the way was nice for him, especially after being gone for so many years.

One thing that I think we can all agree on, is that Kevin certainly knows how to make a splashy return. He came back guns a-blazing with a bunch of free stuff posts - of which I've been able to claim a few cards from - as well as a variation of the tried-and-true, BFG.

It's been long enough now that I can't remember exactly how the game was played, I'm hoping that most people reading this do, but basically participants got X amount of Kevin Bucks, or was it Diamond Dollars? Oh well, no matter, you got some "money" to start out with, and then lots of cards were offered for the contestants to bid on.

I ended up being not the best of participants, as not much came up for me to bid on, and the two(?) lots did have a few things of interest to me in them, were wanted much more by some of the other players, so I wasn't about to go and try to take it from them -- that's just not my way.

So by the time the game concluded, I found myself with a wallet full of Kingbacks, which was okay, I had fun anyway. But, and it's a big BUT, Kevin wasn't having any of my walking away without a prize, and let me know that he'd be sending a consolation prize, which he did!

I had no idea what to expect from this consolation prize, whatever it was, would've been more than necessary, so imagine my surprise when a small package of mostly 90's basketball inserts arrived! But that wasn't all, there was also this...

... and these...

That's right, seven new Shawn Kemp rookies to add to the hoard, it doesn't get too much better than that! I've since forgotten the number, but these brought me to like 120 something copies. Nobody's ever sent me this many before, and likely never will again, so I can't state enough just how great it was to get them. Not that the other cards were bad either, I mean hell, they were all new to me, and all were keepers, so it's pretty hard not to me grateful to him for that.

I haven't spoken much with Kevin outside of the blogs, but I have learned three things about him: 1). He's very generous, 2). Depending on how long he's lived at his current address, we likely only lived a couple of miles apart some years ago, and 3). He's very patient. I owe him much, you'll see just how much after the next post, which will also showcase more of his generosity, and I've been very (very) slow to send him anything in return, and yet he hasn't said a single thing about it. That's patience personified. I do have a "Kevin pile" going, it's just being added to as quickly as I would've hoped, what with my not having much, or any, time to go through boxes of cards in recent months. So a return will be coming, I just don't know when.

Many thanks again to Kevin for these batches of cards, as well as the ginormous one that you'll all be seeing on Thursday, so until then...

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.