Press Play to Resume

You may remember a while back that I stated I was going to hit the pause button on the blog for a while due to the impending birth of our son.

Well, that happened on December 5th, a wild and crazy morning that I will never forget for sure. My wife couldn't sleep the whole night and about 6:30 in the morning woke me up saying she was in horrible pain. We decided to head to the hospital to at least get her checked out. We get there, after hitting every red light on the way, get checked in at labor & delivery and come to find out the baby was ready to come at any minute. About 10:05 that morning, Thomas Daniel Sanders arrived.

The baby has arrived! Hello world! pic.twitter.com/GeUvIXihlO

— Cardboard Clubhouse (@bbcardclubhouse) December 5, 2017

Mom and baby are completely healthy and it's been a whirlwind number of weeks since then including work, late night baby feedings and diaper changes, and also keeping my four-year-old entertained. 

However, I've since gotten the itch to start writing again. I had planned to start writing and posting again somewhere around Groundhog Day but I just can't wait that long as posting and writing and getting back into the blogging community is an itch I just need to scratch, plus it'll probably help me retain the little bit of sanity I have left.

Therefore, I'm glad to announce that I've decided to hit the proverbial play button on the blog and get things rolling again! I could turn this into some long winded song and dance about how I'm glad to be back and all that sort of thing, but as Dr. Seuss once put it, "The writer who breeds more words than he needs makes a chore for the reader who reads". With that being said so succinctly, I'll try to be brief so as not to irritate the good Doctor.

A few things:

1. A number of people sent me stuff while I was away and for that I am most appreciative. There were too many to name who I received care packages and PWEs from so at the risk of leaving someone out, I'll just issue a general thank you to those who took the time to mail me stuff. You know who you are.

2. I finally got my collection about 98% organized. I won't say 100% organized as I still need to go through and weed out some dupes and page up a few hand collated sets I acquired at the community yard sales last year but for all intents and purposes, it's organized. It was quite the task as well but I'll speak more about that in an upcoming post.

3. While I was away and when I wasn't being consumed with changing diapers and what not, I took some time to come up with some fresh ideas, one of which I'm very excited about that I'm calling "Multi-Player Mayhem", where I take a card with multiple players on it (a league leaders card, top prospects card, etc) and review the careers of each player depicted on the card. That should be a lot of fun and help everyone discover info about some perhaps forgotten players along the way. 

4. One thing I've fallen into a trap of is reviewing nothing but store bought items. I got a pretty nice loot of cards my birthday and Christmas including repacks, blasters, and some loose packs from local retail establishments. After I get through those, I'm going to try to be less reliant on store bought items as I need to watch my spending. I received a few items in the mail over the holidays (including my Secret Santa package) that I'll be sharing as well.

5. I also took the time to update my want list to be more varied. While I still enjoy getting cards of the Reds and Indians in the mail, I've added a bit more depth to the player collections and also split the list up into three easy to read pages ... baseball, hockey, and everything else. Feel free to check out the updated lists.

I'm going to ease back into a decent posting schedule and most everything that you'll see after this is scheduled every 3-4 days so I don't have to scurry around getting posts written and looking for content. When posts are scheduled, they'll usually go up right around 7:00 PM. My writing time at home is pretty much nonexistent so I have to write when and where I can, that includes my lunch breaks at work and pretty much any other time I can sit down and dedicate an hour or so to researching and writing. 

I hope everyone enjoys what I've got in store in the coming weeks and months.

Now, let's press that play button and get going.