Anti-Collecting

OK, 1st: I am very Pro-Collecting.

But some of my smaller collections are not compiled, often ever so slowly, because I love the cards involved. Sometimes, I want a baseball card that I can attach to some facet of the history of the game — & sometimes, that can be a facet I definitely don't like.

Recently, a few cards that arrived in a package from the Night Owl fit this profile. He didn't know this when he sent them; he picked them out because he knew I collected certain cards, not that some of those certain cards would fit in one of my few "Anti" collections. I was very glad to receive them.

I almost titled this one "A Disturbance in the Force" because the cards were probably sent a day or so before I posted for the first time in quite a long while, seeking trading partners for the 2019 Archives set. They then arrived a day or two later, with a nice little pile of 2019 Archives cards included, several of which made my Tigers Best-of-2019 post a few days ago. They also came at a great time to be absorbing new cards as work things were kind of like the ole Sid Vicious quote from when someone asked him why he liked to bang his head against a brick wall for seemingly no reason: "Because it feels so good when I stop."

So, yeah, lately my 3.5 x 2.5 cardboard heroes have been an extra handy refuge from the ridiculousness of contracting for a government agency full of, well, nothing to do with baseball cards.

Maybe there would be a more deft way to work gov't employee misadventures into the subject of this first card if I pondered it long enough, but let's get on with the show. I like Manager cards:

Now today would be perhaps a better day to illustrate this collection with an AJ Hinch card, something I still want to acquire to go with this one, rather than the other random Manager cards I stumble across.

For my Managers collection, I don't really care what card it is - a real Manager card the likes of which haven't been created by Topps in several years now, or any card from their playing days, or even a prospect card, like this one. I don't think I have ever had a Manager's prospect card, because until just recently, prospect cards for crusty old baseball Managers weren't an old enough concept. Nowadays, we have shifty young baseball Managers.

I had not thought to assemble a special page of Houston Asterisks cards, though I guess if an AJ Hinch card turns up, and I have a few random Carlos Beltran cards that don't fit anywhere, and I have this Alex Cora card now ... maybe I will assemble such a page now that I think about it. I have been routinely dumping any random Alex Bregman minor 'pulls' I pull for a while now but he still falls out of my packs all the time anyway; I also have some nifty shiny stuff from 2011 Update for Jose Altuve that has probably totally crashed in value now. So, maybe some of those cards will need a home too I guess.

As for my thoughts on the whole scandal, they are incomplete. The big press event today at the opening of Spring Training was rather anti-climactic, in my opinion. I think like many controversial things in baseball, only time will tell. A lot more of the real story will come in the future, though probably a little faster in the everyone's-a-publisher Social Media Age than it would have in the 20th Century, when we wouldn't hear much about it all until a few key people retired and maybe wrote a book. 

I think the rather wooden and trite things coming from the mouths of the Houston stars still trace back to the "everybody else was doing it" defense that Beltran has pointed back to some. That is a slippery slope in human affairs; it is far easier to do something wrong when you first convince yourself that other people are doing it too. The next thought is "They made me do it." 

What all was happening around the League at the time perhaps remains to be seen. The report on what the Red Sox (and the guy pictured above) were up to in the 2018 season is still in the breathless media @BoringSpringTraining future. I figure that might crash the value of my randomly (packs, man, all the Trout packs I could find) assembled stash of JD Martinez Rookie Cards, including some more shiny goodness.

All that be as it may, or all that as may it be, I now have a baseball card to connect me to Alex Cora, a person who is now far more permanently a part of baseball history than he was six months ago.

Now Night Owl's package had the seeds of another Anti-Collection in it too, but these aren't the funnest of topics so let's check out the fun cards he sent, like this one:

From way downtown!

I haven't blogged about my totally random Octavio Dotel collection in many years. It is not one I go out and work on all that purposely. I discussed it once in a post called Bring Me The Arm of Octavio Dotel, cuz sometimes I think you could carefully photoshop his right arm onto an Andre Dawson card and it might kinda fit. The above card certainly gives that impression. I also wanted his cards because he held the record for playing for the most teams in MLB:

Maybe I should just build a collection of his cards from around the AL Central. But then if I do that, I would probably have to do the same for Joakim Soria, and he always just looked shifty to me. I like Octavio quite a bit better, even though his record has been broken by Edwin Jackson now. I will probably collect his cards right along with Dotel's, but with a simple focus for each: I want a binder page of one player, in 9 different uniforms. 

Jackson even appeared seemingly out of nowhere in Detroit (for a 2nd stint as a Tiger, or 3rd, I forget) starting last August, and kind of refuses to announce his retirement right now despite putting up an ERA > 9 with the Tigers for the 2 months. Not surprisingly, no baseball cards resulted. Also not surprisingly, Topps actually did manage to create a few cards for him over the last two years, but since one was a limited Topps Now card and the other was a fairly rare insert in 2019 Big League (I pulled the Ohtani card instead, which is both more valuable, but wanted less, by me at least), Jackson's final 2 cards are hella expensive, from my perspective, considering that very very few people actually want them to celebrate the career of Edwin Jackson. So it goes in this crazy hobby.

Another card the Night Owl sent nicely ticked off an entry on my long neglected Want List over to your right. I did just update it. Way back in 2013, I decided to attempt my first "Master Set." I am still attempting it, but I am in no rush. The COMC card cemetery-warehouse will hold the cards I need in it forever and ever, amen, until I get around to rescuing one of the 19 copies of each still available.

I decided to primarily finish off this set in the "foil" versions because I liked seeing all the Hall of Famers on a bit of shiny for a change. I also appreciated that this design didn't waste so much space where the priceless Relic was supposed to go (in that little area where the cap logo can be seen) as on so many other after-thought insert sets. This one scanned particularly nice:

I liked adding this card to my collection so much I figured I should share the back of it with you too, as it has the perfect baseball detail ending:

Now that is a great insert card. It perfectly celebrates a bit of baseball history in a nicely themed insert set.

As I was cracking the right binder open for it, I decided to re-visit the set and see how Topps did with it as a whole, compared to the above gem. I will complete it eventually and enjoy absorbing the best cards in it, like the above. The other week or so I was pissing and moaning about Topps adding Fernando Tatis Jr. to the "Greatest Players" inserts in 2019 Topps Baseball. But that was not some new Rookie Card mania development:

Bundy was a Hot Rookie back in 2013 when these cards were inserted in packs of Topps Baseball. As a recent first round pick, collectors were impatient to get their hands on their newest retirement plan portfolio. Of course back then, the cards weren't so handily identified with the RC logo outside of the base cards, though it was starting to sneak on to some 'other' cards, like the '71 minis in 2013 Update.

But Topps would do whatever it had to do to make more Hot Rookie cards; this Bundy insert would include an autographed version. What did it have to do for an extra young Rookie to Chase History?

Yup in the same set where I learned that Nolan Ryan's 5,000th Strikeout victim was Rickey Henderson, I learned that Dylan Bundy didn't give up a run in his first 30 innings in class A level Minor League play.

It's that type of thing that leads me to collect just 9 cards from a Topps effort sometimes.

Ahh well, that was a detour from the wonderful package of cards in the mail. It also held several of these:

Most of the rest were posted the other day, but I am glad to include this one. Red+Blue makes for a great '75 card, mostly pleasing to look at. But it does remind me of something really dumb I wrote on here when I first discovered these cards: "it seems like Topps skipped using any kind of weird filter to recreate weird old analog photo and printing technology like they have done on some recent retro releases."

That has got to be the Most Wrong thing I have ever written on this blog.

Even on this simplistic, yet incredibly repetitive back-ground for a Tigers card, Topps deployed one of the worst filters I have seen since the "Raccoon Eyes" filter that obliterated card after card in their most recent attempt at re-creating 1960 style cards in 2017 Archives (which now that I think about it, includes a perfectly horrible Alex Bregman card to pair with that Alex Cora card at the top of this post). 

As for the background on the Greene card seen here, that is something Topps has been using for a good 15 years or so. The Tigers players are walked outside to some certain spot at their Spring Training complex in Lakeland (soon to happen again, this year) and asked to stand in front of this lush Florida vegetation, kind of seen behind Greene there. Some years, it kind of looks like a jungle. And the player standing in front of it is a Tiger. Knock me down with a hammer already. Ironically, if they hadn't used the crazy time filter they went with for these in-authentic takes on 1975, it might have been a nice double visual pun to put Greene in front of all that green. Sigh.

Fortunately, not all of the '75s in this year's Archives had that distracting faded background -

Now I hope you were paying attention to the previous card, so all the exciting artificial scarcity of this card gets you so excited you will want to whip out your wallet and buy some. Err, actually, I hope you will forget that silly notion completely.

What is different about this card? It is a parallel. What kind? The purple baseball parallel? Possibly. I have no idea how Topps may have tried to name these. The card also has a black image boundary/frame, rather than a white one. For many collectors, the key detail is actually on the back: 008/175. If it had been 006/175, I probably would have sent it back to Greg, because some nuttier collector than me would want to pay him extra for the super cool Uni # copy of this parallel.

But as it is, I was actually quite happy to receive this card, as I knew there would be parallels of the '75 style cards and really really wanted to see how that turned out. There would of course be a super easy way to make a parallel of a 1975 style Topps baseball card, given the colorful design. It wouldn't be totally historical however, as 1970s Topps didn't fool with such shenanigans.

May as it be, this card will also have a permanent home in my collection, on a binder page still under construction: Parallels Gone Bad.

Here is another one of it's future page-mates, also an All Time Great Face of the Franchise Hall of Famer like good 'ole Al:

Hmmm, what _could_ have been done for this card with a teeny tiny bit of thought and effort?

I think this particular Anti-Collection won't lack for contestants, sadly. Even one of the more iconic Topps parallels of all-time, the /#'d to the current year Golds, will supply a couple cards:

I call that one the Shards of Glass parallel. Looks painful.

And yes, I did just write "a couple", but I am going to wrap this one up and leave you deep in anticipation of all those bad parallels I will show you some day, but I think even for Anti-Collections like that one, the blog can do without re-living the 2018 Urinal Cake Golds more than is absolutely necessary.

I guess sometimes baseball cards results are like baseball results. Pitchers Balk, Hitters collapse on the ground after an epic 3rd Strike, and Fielders drop lazy pop-ups. And those still make the high, err, lowlight reels, just like the cards in my Anti-Collections.

1st cards in the mail in 37 years

When I was young, I traded baseball cards in the mail. Living in an isolated mountain town in West Virginia, I would have never been able to do this without having joined up with the Topps Sports Club. That had little ads from people who wanted to trade baseball cards.

The way I remember it, things were much like today - there were set collectors, and team collectors, and some people had player collections even when there was only one manufacturer. I think they used their collecting energies on making scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings and photos of their PC guys. And check this out - I think the majority of those folks were female. Trading was only part of the simple joy of having a Pen Pal to communicate with. Now we all have probably too many Pen Pals, or electronic "Friends" as they are called today.

I'm hoping to discover some old mementos of those days later this year, and share them with y'all. It was a different century back then.

Now we communicate without the mailman, though he still remains key to trading the actual baseball cards. And this year has been great to be able to simply trade baseball cards, without setting up financial accounts on various websites to do it. I silently babble my musings into this liquid crystal display, and days or weeks later the mailman puts baseball cards in my mailbox. Miraculous!

My first trade of the 21st Century came courtesy of Adam at the Thoughts and Sox blog. If you have any old sports pages with a photo of Bill Virdon yellowing away, I'm sure Adam would want to see them. I shipped some 2012 David Ortiz picture cards across the country and Adam sent along an insert card that proved to be the last card in an insert set I needed, even after continuing to way over purchase Series 1 cards due to my Parallel Problem.

I liked this small (15 card) insert set. I like the visual arts. So you would think I would be all over Allen & Ginter, but that set just don't interest me. Not sure why, but 15 hand-drawn cards a year are just about the right amount. Plus, Willie Stargell was in that set, and each card had an interesting player bio tidbit rather than the "Over ten games in late June last season..." dreck. I haven't typed up the card surplus list from this one yet, but I have plenty more of most of them except CC here.

So I guess for me the art of baseball cards is all in the design. So sometimes 1972 is the place I wanna be:

Green, blue & yellow. Nothing to do with Reds. I love it. Oh, I like it when team and card colors harmonize, but I also like it when they don't, though that walks a finer line. I also like how the night game feel survived shrinkage to mini card land. This one though, became yet more surplus cardboard by the time I was actually able to meet up with this trade package in 3D life a good 6 weeks after Adam sent it. Plenty of these '72 minis available too ... how about if you buy too many Series 2 packs, and I'll fill out your Series 1 needs of these (list typed in when else but 'soon', whatever that means). Maybe we can get on the same page just in time for Ultra-Pro to finally make us some binder pages to hold these little beauties. I'll be watching their website closely around the time of the National.

It was actually a teensy bit of a complicated trade with AdamE (thanks again!), as my second and virtually simultaneous trade was with another Adam, as in ARPSmith's Sports Card Obsession. But all players made their correct connecting flights and Mr. Smith helped me with a card I have really been looking forward to scan...

...which turned out pretty nicely, but I think these cards will photograph better. These cards are amazing - one second they're blue, the next they are neon-orange. I was glad to send out an extra card of Stan the Man for this one. Stan Musial cards shouldn't be stuck in some random box for all eternity. I'm getting close to finishing the Spring Fever set and when I do, I think I will celebrate with some full-sunlight shots of their foil goodness. Then I think I will hang them on a Christmas Tree to bask in some pretty lights.

My love of shiny happy people baseball crowds has lead me to collect the Chasing History set in the foil version, which made up the other half of this trade. I can't believe I actually traded for something as dull as an Adam Dunn card. None of us need to see that, now do we? His was almost another pointless acquisition as I have since pulled the not-old "relic" version, which includes an exciting pinstripe swatch. Riddle me this how I got a white pinstripe on a blue swatch for a member of the Chicago White Sox. Another complaint for another night.

'round about the time these trades completed, I finally lucked into one of those 'Silver Slate Wrapper Redemption' cards, courtesy of a friendly card shop that took pity on me and simply gave me one, since they knew from their 21st Century technology that it was likely my tardy self would never receive any. I ended up with Heath Bell. Then I saw that Colbey from Cardboard Collections was much more on-the-ball than I with a post of his redemption. His included a card in my first player collection that I have also really been looking forward to seeing from a scan:

Also better in real-life, though the old-timey television-channel-off-the-air look from the scanner is unique too. This could possibly be Dotel's final card as he has moved on to the 60-Day DL without any good prognosis to be optimistic about. Colbey and I finished a quick 1-for-1 PWE trade for what I thought might be my first attempt at a rainbow. I thought I would start with some easy low-hanging fruit, but then of course I fell far deeper into wanting a rainbow not just of one player, when I could kinda sorta rainbow out the whole set. Octavio is now proudly anchoring a page in the Parallel Project, and remains to this day the only Blue Sparkle I have from Series 1. I could use some more. Hint, hint.

By this time Opening Day had arrived at last, and I set up another trio of trades to complete all while living out of a crew-cab pick-up truck. Perfectly suited for this was a trade of some '13 Opening Day and '13 Topps Stickers with the ToddFather.

I like stickers, and stickers like me:

I can't get too many of this sticker. It will be appearing in a lot of places, such as in random locations inside a nice brewery where some friends work. They make the best beer ever - Two-Hearted Ale. And they love Brewers thingamabobs and thingamajigs like this. When I was a kid I always thought Bernie slid down the slide into a great big ole keg of actual beer. Please don't ever pop that bubble.

The rest of the trade involved glossier mascots, in bigger photos:

Ta-da! An essential entry in my Chase of the MLB mascots this year featuring one of baseball's quintessential mascots. Thanks Tim!

Opening Day provided the base for another great trade, with Jim at Garvey-Cey-Russel-Lopes. I know it was actually Cey-Russell-Lopes-Garvey around the horn after a strikeout, but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue quite as well. GCRL sent along yet another challenge for the scanner:

Methinks the Topps Voodoo is strong with this one. All blurry and such, the way they say Josh is seeing the ball this year. Perhaps the Angels didn't hire a very good opthamalogist for the pre-contract physical. And if I was getting paid that much for that little production, I'd hide my broken-down eyes under the brim of the cap a lot too.

As a bonus I received a card for yet another couple pages of cards this year:

You may see a gimmicky card of a jose-average National League outfielder with a blatant product placement contained therein. One could only hope Topps did take a payment for this card, in truckloads of product. I'm sure their Customer Service reps could use a little stress relief these days.

But I see a key cornerstone of a powerful project: Purple Pirates! ARRRRRR! What better team and color to pair up than Pirates yellow and purple borders? OK, sure, the black border cards would look quite a bit sweeter. But Pirates bury their loot, they don't spend it on a project too farrrrr. Those black cards arrrrrrr tough to find, even for Pirates. And what better carrrrrrd than a Pirate to have some beer in the background? ArrrrRRRR. Pirates love beer, until they get a little cross-eyed:

The best part of that cardboard awesomeness is that this card isn't even the greatest piece of Pirate Parrot memorabilia I have received this year! Stay tuned, mateys.

For all that wonderful baseball card fun I was able to place some Dodger Blues in a good home full of Dodgers, and I was even able to send along a Turning Two card Jim didn't have yet - not easy to do. There were a few more portions of Opening Day ephemera in that multi-faceted trade, but there seem to be some Tigers chasing these Pirates to the scanner...

...courtesy of The Prowling Cat naturally. Along with a trade that had nothing to do with the Detroit Tigers, the 'Cat shipped along a whole litter of kitties:

I mean, what trader doesn't like bonus cards in a trade? Even when it is a Tiger in a funhouse mirror that I can't even remember playing in Detroit, as it turns out he got to supply the subject of the standard baseball announcer line "...spent parts of two seasons with Detroit before being....". Those were in 1995 & 1996, I was in a lot of shock those two summers. Nothing like a LAST NAME card to shake things up:

Who? TRAMMELL. Good thing Jim Walewander isn't in that set. That would be awkward. This might be my first-ever baseball card with just a player's last name, but perhaps not. I wouldn't think there would be too many sets with that feature. You'd have to ask Dime-Box Nick, he would know.

And the 'Cat didn't know it, but he sent along an entry on another new-set-to-complete-finally list, the 1984 Topps Detroit Tigers:

Sure, he only got round about 2 at-bats per game as a backup on the world dominating 1984 Detroit Tigers, but how many players are you going to find that can back up the Plate and the Hot Corner...and hit a 2 run Homer in the World Series? A collection is born. I was slack on the cards in 1984, surprisingly enough. Perhaps you don't need baseball cards as much when your team leads wire-to-wire.

There was so much roar restored in that package, I almost forgot the prime object of the trade in the first place. Everyone hold their breath:

That pop-up is drifting ... another of this year's Out-of-Bounds Short Prints, #5 on the year for me. Still a long way to go. #6 arrived a few days ago but will supply the beautiful imagery for some boring information about the excitement of trading baseball cards, when I will add another Braves card blog to my new traded with the Pros roster. I tried to round up as many Topps goodies as I could for the 'Cat (who also hooked me up with 2 more Spring Fever needs, but we've already seen one of those - you'll have to wait till Christmas for the rest); I hope I found enough to balance the scales here, but I don't think so. I have my eye on a few items...

Recently, we finally made it to Official Summer Time, and the end of my extra-busy time at work. So I have been able to swing some more complex trades across a number of insert sets in those complicated Archives releases.

Dislocated Padres fan Marcus rolled all the way to Texas where he hosts his All the Way to the Backstop blog. He meticulously picked through my somewhat new want list on my blog, which started out with my hopes and dreams and extras for the pieces of the last two years of Archives, and did he ever deliver with, yep, a scanner work-out:

Just a '77 style Verlander? Nope, that is a '77 Cloth Sticker Verlander. Sharp.

Marcus also went the bonus cards route with a bonus stack of 2009 O-Pee-Chee. I am going to enjoy working on this set for months to come, and supplying you with great card images like this one:

Light-towers. Storm-clouds. What's not to like? How much did I like this package? About this much:

But wait....there's more...well, not from the Backstop, but from another blogger trying to complete another very complicated Master Set: 2011 Lineage. That would be Nick from The Lost Cards File. I too am chasing parts of that set; much easier parts than Nick is. I sent along all I could that would help, including several of the '75 mini relics from my ceaseless hunt for those now-old blasters this winter. And in return I made beaucoup progress on my '11 Lineage '75-mini needs:

Yeah, so the Braves have never ever sported Padres colors, not even on your Throwback Nightmare night. Who cares? It's 1975, baby! I don't think they even had night cards hardly in 1975. I have to admit they did have much better card backs than the phoned-it-in snoozers the Lineage editors came up with. Which kept me from collecting some cards I really, really, really wanted when they came out. But that first set you bought much of when you are 8 years old — ahhh, you never forget your first one. And now I am in it to win. Hurry up, Ultra-Pro! Get-r-done! This set won't fit on the Christmas Tree. It needs binder pages.

Nick also collects more high-end cards than I, so he too could send along some extra sweet bonus cards for me as easy as rolling off a log. I did say I love those sparkles:

This one is tuned to two different off-the-air TV channels - the blue one, and the green one. I have definitely learned how to pick which Blue Sparklers I want. What TV has those channels? Why the baseball card television known as my trusty mailbox. This card makes a fitting end to tonight's broadcast....tune in tomorrow when we celebrate Canada Day. Eh.

Bring me the Arm of Octavio Dotel

Or at least his baseball cards. Hurry, before that Arm realizes It's Alive! and simply clonks poor Octavio on his noggin and begins a reign of terror.

I love the digital photography era. There is frequently such great separation of subject and background. (Comerica Park on the above card....I'll be starting a Frankenset for it I think).

But sometimes the separation of the elements in the photo can get a little nutty. And then Dotel has a funky motion that makes me think his Arm is actually a separate creature. Just try and name another player with a larger fore-arm than bi-cep. And it surely ain't natural to have one's arm going on it's own special journey back there:

I have those two cards by the way. And his '11 Topps Blue Jays card, and most likely his '12 Topps Tigers card.

I really doubt the following image is on a card, because except on the sad subset of All-Star cards these days, 99% of baseball cards show the player's face. And here his fore-arm seems as one from a normal human, but this shot makes my shoulder hurt:

I swear that Arm is a quasi-independent creature Dotel has cut a deal with to throw baseballs for him.

Whoa. Did you just hear that sound in the closet? I think it's Dotel's Arm, recently escaped from an old Rat Fink card of some sort, and it wants out. It's got a baseball in it's grip, and it's gonna throw it. At you.

Surprisingly, I have resisted all temptation to post images of Dotel making a Funny Pitching Expression Face. His is a good one — he sticks his tongue out at the batter it appears. But the vast majority of pitchers on baseball cards make a Funny Pitching Expression Face. That idea just gets too old and overwhelmed too quickly when you have a pile of baseball cards to paw through.

So I didn't expect to ever do this, but I am launching a Player Collection. My very first one.

I doubt I will have much competition for all those rare short-printed Octavio Dotel auto-relic refractor cards, will I? Too bad the serial #/d cards for him won't have enough demand to merit a press run to ever match his uni #. That sucks.

I am only partially intrigued by the Arm. I have also always been interested in the players who play for the most teams. I think at 13 teams, Octavio holds the current record, which is good because he has absolutely zero League Leader in Italics on the backs of his cards. And the All-Time Record, I believe. So yeah, a PC for a player holding an All-Time Record. Makes sense I think. What about baseball card collecting makes sense?

Plus, 'ole Dotel is currently a Tiger, and probably likely to retire as a Tiger, though his Arm looks eternal to me. Not very rubbery, but not ready to quit yet either.

Another former Tiger also intrigues me as a frequent club-house hopper, starting pitcher Edwin Jackson. What is the deal with him?

Why do some players end up on so many teams? For Dotel, it's probably the nature of being a situational reliever. Surprisingly, he is not a lefty; I would think they would bounce around the leagues the most. But probably southpaws stay put more often than righties 'cuz there's never enough lefties to go around.

Other times though, you have to wonder. Does the player just simply fart in the clubhouse too much? Baseball does a pretty good job of keeping what happens in the clubhouse, in the clubhouse. All pro sports teams try to do that, with varying degrees of success. I think MLB does it the best. So I will probably never know why Edwin Jackson gets traded so much.

So in the months to come when you all finally get to see my wants/needs/desires and the pile of bait I am accumulating to obtain them, you can always offer in any Octavio Dotel card you might have. Any manufacturer, any team, any year. It will be neat to see who got his team right the most times, and whether he gets a card for all 13 teams, which I kinda doubt, or for all 15 seasons he has played on an MLB team. And who simply banished him to the Relievers Set, or the Update Set as it's described on the packs.

But I am still a month out from being reunited with my main collection of baseball cards, and 6~7 weeks out from enough time to type up lists of them, etc. I just came off a job without access to baseball cards......err, I mean the Internet, and all you fine folks. The other day, a Reaper flew over me. I thought maybe I should try to take a picture of it, but then it might lock on to me. Such is life working next door to a bombing range. Thankfully, they weren't practicing sorting their night cards.