Thursday, April 7, 2011

My MCG cards have arrived!

I got an email a couple days ago that my MCG cards were on the way, and today, they arrived.  It really brightened an otherwise crappy day.  You see, I am headed to San Francisco tomorrow morning for a training class and conference that starts Saturday.  Since I am a gov't employee, I am sitting around stressing over the lack of Congressional action concerning the budget.  If there is no budget, I go on furlough starting tomorrow night at midnight.  That means I don't go to the class or conference and I can either try to fly back asap, or stay in San Fran on my own dime until next Friday.  Since my wife is joining me for the trip, and we have paid for her plane ticket, among other things, we are already in the hole for this trip a little.  We plan on staying there for the week.  Sounds good, right, I don't have to work and I'm in San Fran.  Wrong. You see, in a furlough, I don't get paid.  When the gov't shutdown ends, Congress has to vote whether I get paid for that time or not.  So, in the event of a shutdown, I'm in San Fran looking for a place to stay on my own dime while on mandatory unpaid furlough. Super.  I didn't exactly have unpaid vacation time in one of the most expensive places in the US written into my budget for this year. 

On a high note, though, my wife and I are going to the Giants/Dodgers game on Tuesday, and Lincecum is the projected starter.  Ok, that's my rant; back to the cards.  I got 32 cards shipped, and I left 2 unclaimed.

The random cards I had shipped, really for no particular reason other than they are somewhat old, are:

1970 Jack Baldschun
1973 Jim McGlothlin
1974 John Boccabella
1976 Steve Braun
1979 Ted Cox
1979 Doug Bair
1979 Moose Haas
1979 Jim Barr
1982 Dwayne Murphy











And the oldest of all:

1968 Grady Hatton MGR
- This one will probably be headed to the Dimwit if he needs it.









I also knocked a ton of the cards off of my Topps #3 want list:

2009 Andy Marte
2008 Jeff Suppan
2006 Garrett Atkins
2004 Mark Kotsay
2002 Brad Penny
2001 Roger Cedeno
1997 Terrell Wade
1992 Jeff Reardon RB
1989 Gary Carter RB










1988 Mark McGwire RB
1985 Dwight Gooden RB
1984 Dan Quisenberry HL
1983 Greg Minton RB
1982 Tim Raines HL
1980 Manny Mota HL
1979 RBI Leaders (Rice/Foster)
1977 RBI Leaders (May/Foster)
1970 Darrel Chaney











The Topps #3 cards became my trade target after I gave up on some of my other goals.  I was able to trade a semi-old card for a ton of '79s, and I turned those into most of the cards above.  I was pretty happy overall to turn a mid-to-late '60s into 18 cards I wanted.  I also snagged some of the Michael Cuddyer cards I didn't have:

2009
2008
2007
2005
















All in all, for less than the price of a blaster, I knocked off several cards I wanted.  If you want any of the first nine cards shown above, let me know.

Let's hope the gov't avoids a shutdown so I can avoid going completely broke.  I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be doing in the next week, but I'll at least try to post a picture or two from the Giants/Dodgers game. 

3 comments:

The Dimwit said...

Well yessiree bob I do need that Grady Hatton... I'm sorry, any mention of a person named Grady, and I feel the need to speak country lingo... I would definitely appreciate it if you'd set that one aside for me! I'll round something up for you!

Dawgbones said...

Good luck with the whole budget issue. Thankfully, my job/contract is already paid for. Hope you guys have a fun time and I hope you get paid. Oh, damn, I almost forgot, thanks for the cards, I had three packages in the old snailbox today!!

Ryan G said...

I too wish the best of luck. As far as SF goes, I hope you have your tickets already, otherwise you might need to get on StubHub. And don't wear anything Dodgers - after the incident in LA last week who knows how those crazy SF fans will be. I'd like to think we're a little more civilized than to retaliate like that, but I went to a Giants-A's preseason game and wow, those fans are brutal.

Aside from that, you can do a lot to save money in the city. I'm not sure how much experience you have here, so I'm going to assume none (it's easier that way). If you can find a significantly cheaper hotel along BART, if they exist, you could save some lodging money, at the tradeoff of "commuting" to vacation and using some time getting to the city. And use the bus system and streetcars - get one of those weekly passes. And there are plenty of good relatively inexpensive places to eat if you use Yelp, all located along a bus or streetcar route. If you have any city questions, drop me a line, I know this place like the back of my foot.