Christmas catch-up: Part 1

Since no one seemed to know exactly what last week's winter storm was gonna entail, I did the grocery shopping, and checked the PO Box on Thursday morning ahead of it's impending arrival. This was two days earlier than I had planned on doing them, but after seeing what it was like outside Friday morning, I'm glad that I went when I did. 

The only drawback from getting the mail on Thursday was that I would potentially be missing anything else that might've been arriving before Christmas, and as I found out this past Wednesday when I went to check the box again, I probably did, for there were three Christmas related envelopes, all from fellow bloggers, there waiting for me. Curse you storm... and the horse that you rode in on!

As for the contents of the three envelopes, well, they couldn't have been more different from each other. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that these three guys got together and planned it that way. But I do know better, and it was just happenstance that such a unique trio should arrive at the same time.

And I know that it's an acceptable blog practice to cover multiple received mailings in one post, but I like giving people that took the time to send me something their own post, so that's what I'm gonna do. I thought about trying to do them over three consecutive days, but that's a bit ambitious for me. Maybe three in four days, or five, that sounds a little more doable.

It was just last weekend that was I saying that I only got one Christmas card this year. Obviously that statement was a tad premature, as there was a second one waiting for me in the PO Box, and what a second one it was!

I saw a few of these Peanuts cards being shown on the blogs before (and on) Christmas, and if I'm being quite honest, secretly envied those who got one. And speaking of envy, it's funny how my mind works when it comes to that sort of thing -- You live in a ginormous house? "Neat". You got a new sports car? "I bet that'd be fun to drive". You just bought a graded '52 Topps Mickey Mantle? "Huh, that's something". You got sent a Peanuts themed Christmas card? "ARRRRRRGH! WHY DO YOU GET ONE OF THOSE, AND I DON'T? WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT YOU????????? LIFE IS SO UNFAIR!!!!!!!! [That may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much 😂.]

Turns out that there was no reason to fret though, because, Angus, he, not only of the great taste in greeting cards, but also the owner and operator of Dawg Day Cards, sent me one as well. It really is a wonderful card too, much nicer than it comes across in my scan (the cheery red foil was turned to a very unseasonable shade). 

Usually, Christmas cards would be taken down within the next few days, but since this was arrived so late, I think I'll give it a few more weeks, maybe leave it up until Valentine's Day.

I would've been content with just the greeting card, but as is often the case with bloggers, there were a few trading cards tucked inside as well...

If I'm not mistaken, these two cards just appeared in Angus' recap post from the show that he and Night Owl went to together. The Rocketeer was such a fun movie, and not surprising given when it was made, still holds up really well. The sticker on the left was new to me, and I now have two or three of the one on the right -- not that that's a problem though, one can never too many cards of Jennifer Connelly 😍. [Has any guy over 35 ever not had a crush on her at some point in their life -- I highly doubt it]

One of these acts isn't like the others

To some, this may just look like a random trio of MusiCards, and I guess you'd be correct to some degree if you though that, but to me, it represents someone taking note of something that I've said on the blog; which I've seen evidence of a couple of time lately, but is never less amazing than it was the time before. This instance might be a little more impressive than the others though if only because I didn't mention wanting these particular cards in an actual post, so much as I did down in the comments section of a post. And what's more, the comment wasn't even directed towards Angus, and yet, he saw it, and took it upon himself to send three out of the four cards that I mentioned. Pretty good of him, huh?

I'd like to start doing some posts that revolve around specific binder pages, and since all three of these cards are destined for specific pages, I think I'll wait until I get around to doing those posts to talk about why I wanted these. Nobody's gonna want to read the same stuff twice in possibly as many months. In the meantime though, it's always nice to be able to remove some cards from a want list.

Many thanks to Angus for sending one of his much coveted (by me) Christmas cards; now I can stop hating on everyone else that got one 😈. Thanks for the trading cards that were tucked inside as well. To me those were just a bonus, albeit a really nice bonus.

Merry Christmas!

I was going through some of my old (and I do mean old) sketch books earlier this year, and this loose bit of notebook paper fell out. I don't remember ever doing this one, but I'm thinking that it's a good 25+ years old. Since it seemed like it would be appropriate for a Christmas post, I went ahead and scanned it at the time, stuck the image in a folder, and now I'm showing it!

Whether celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, or even those of you who are just the "happy holidays" sort, I hope each and every one of you have an awesome day today!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

A quick recap of Christmas

Over the last couple of years I've made it a habit of recapping Christmases, namely the gifts that were received, since I'm assuming that's what most people want to see. This year's recap will be slightly different in that I'm not going to be showing everything, nor will I be going into any great details about any of the particular items. There's no real reason for this, other than I just didn't want this to be one of my usual unintentionally long rambly posts, hopefully it'll still be worth a scroll though.

This year was pretty much identical to the previous two year's, open presents/celebrate my mom's birthday in the morning, have lunch, and then go for a hike in the afternoon. After many of years of doing things on different schedules, this recent trend has really been quite nice, and in my mind, has made for the perfect way to celebrate my mom's birthday/Christmas.

If you've been with me for the last couple of years, seeing that I got a new pair of slippers for Christmas shouldn't be too surprising, this is a tradition that has been going on for the last fifteen years or so... one that I hope never ends! Slippers and I seem to have a love/hate relationship, I love them, and they reward my love by starting to fall apart sometime during the summer, and this year was no exception:

Usually by the time Christmas rolls around both slippers are being held together by duct tape, this year though was a bit of an anomaly, in that the left slipper was able to stay intact (mostly). The right slipper however, did what they always do, thank goodness for the tape, otherwise I would've been walking around for the last couple of months with about 1/3 of the bottom missing :)

I have an awful lot of Peanuts ornaments, most, if not all of them, have been given to me by my mom. Every time I think that there can't possibly be anymore out there, she finds another one -- and full disclosure, this was the third different one that she has gotten me this year, I was given the other two about a month ago.

I may be an old man, but I still get plenty of toys for Christmas (although this is the only one that I took a picture of).

Since my picture kind of sucks, and I haven't taken him out of the box yet (I will), here's a picture of the Mutant Spawn that I swiped from Google.

Even as a kid I rarely got cards for Christmas, I mean I probably could have got some had I asked for them, but I never did, my Christmas lists were always made up of nothing but toys and video games. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've started receiving cards, usually just in the form of a single or two, which is alright, but even as an adult I still don't really want any cards for Christmas -- that being said, this rack pack of 2015 Prizm football should be a fun open.

This is like fifth year in a row now that my mom has been able to add to my very humble little library of airship books. It'll probably be awhile before I get to it, but this should make for a very good read. As a slightly extra added bonus, this copy is signed by the author, which doesn't matter too much to me, but I guess it's still kind of neat.

I don't know if anyone not named Billy will care or not, but here's the synopsis anyway.

The presents were great, but it's the Christmas hike that I was looking forward to the most, and it did not disappoint... not that I thought it would though.

Three Christmases ago, right after opening presents, my mom just out of the blue suggested going for a hike later in the afternoon, seeing as how it is her birthday -- and I'm almost always up for romping around in the woods -- I certainly wasn't going to say no. Whether she knew it or not at the time, a new tradition was being started, another one that I hope never ends!

We never go anywhere fancy, sure, it would be nice to go somewhere with breathtaking views and all that, but neither me nor my mom is interested in driving in hour or two to get to such a location, so we keep it local.

It was about 40 degrees with sun and blue sky, s maybe other than it being few degrees warmer, we really couldn't have asked for a better day to be out.

My young inner self is was trying to convince me to climb up on the downed trees and walk across them, older real me had to be the voice of reason and remind young me that we still have broken toe that hasn't fully healed after almost three months, and that if something got broke were we (me and my inner self) to fall off of said tree, who knows if it'' ever properly heal.

This is why I don't need to travel anywhere fancy to hike, because I can be impressed, and awed by nature things just about anywhere. It's kind of hard to tell, but that little bit of white showing on the bottom lower right of this stone is a tiny piece of quartz. I thought that the moss pattern was pretty neat too. I'm not gonna lie, I wanted to take this home, but it probably weighed around twenty pounds, and I didn't want to have to carry it around for the rest of the afternoon (we weren't even halfway done yet).

Here's what happens when you try to take a picture with the sun shining practically right in your face. The picture didn't turn out as I had hoped, but I still kind of like it.

Remember what I said about being impressed by nature things just about anywhere? Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about, this elm has pushed up, and around, a fairly large piece of stone (it's all one piece), and it was pretty darn cool to see.

Overall we spent 2 1/2 hours traversing I don't know how many miles, saw some neat stuff, got plenty of fresh air, and got plenty of exercise, one can't really ask for too much more than that on any given day, let alone Christmas day. I very much hope that everyone else had as good of a day as I did, and got to spend some quality time with their family... as I certainly did!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.