Things are turning around

 It seems like a few weeks ago things were kind of crazy, but things have turned for the better I believe, and I feel like things are going to stay on the good side for a while. 

As you know, my car had been giving me issues with stalling out and no engine power when I ran the AC. I was finally able to get it fixed at the repair shop (with the shop replacing engine coils and spark plugs), and although I probably came out 400 bucks in the negative by getting it done there instead of waiting for Kia to approve the warranty for the coils, I still feel good about it because it really needed to be fixed, and in the long run, I screwed Kia out of 100 bucks or so for the spark plug replacement, so with all of the crap they have given us in the past year or so, I'll take that as a win. The car is running fine now. 

We had our water heater stop giving us hot water a few weeks back, and that should be fixed in the next day or so. We had planned on going to Lowe's anyways this Saturday to do a craft thing with Kyler and a friend of his, so we'll probably look at the water heater while we are there, and a co-worker of Karen's might be able to install it that night perhaps. On a side note, the tubing from my insulin pump is about 2 feet long and always catches on our cabinet handles, so we will probably look at replacement ones while we are there as well, and that will probably make me more giddy than it should. 

I have also been sorting all of the cards that John from Johnny's Trading Spot hooked me up with a few months back, as well as the cards I have gotten over the past year or so, and I have finally got all of them into moster boxes today. They are sorted by teams, and for the most part, I believe there are no doubles in them. I still have to input my Topps cards into TCDB for a few of the teams (Angels, Twins, Athletics, Mariners, Rangers, Blue Jays, Yankees, and Team USA), and as I go through the boxes with those teams, I will also be going through my binders and I will be picking out the dupes, so perhaps there will be a tad more room in the boxes. All in all, there are 6 monster boxes worth of cards for the basic NL/AL teams. 

And another 2 smaller ones for Rays, Tigers, favorite players, rookie cards, sunset cards, highlight cards, game-used cards, and refractors/shiny/parallel cards. 

With the binders that came with John's lot, I have around 23 various sized binders with pages in them. Don't know if that will be enough for 6-8 monster boxes worth of cards, but we'll find out in a few months when I think I'll be ready to start putting the cards into my binders. 

The sorting makes me feel like a big project is off of my plate, and gets me ones step closer to being able to make true want lists for each Topps set. It was nice to finally get them organized today. Watch. Tomorrow, I will end up getting a pack or a blaster and have to dig through the boxes to put the new ones in, but hey, it's a good problem to have. 

While I don't have any new cards to show off, I don't really get too excited for posts with no cards in them, so I dug out some of the 2022 Prizm cards I got the day that I got my car repaired. 

Nothing too fancy, a few Reds rookies, a rookie of Rays breakout centerfielder Jose Siri, a Tiger rookie who is probably off of the roster, a basic Prizm card of Kevin Gausman, and a Red, White and Blue one of Yuli Gurriel. 

With all of life's ebbs and flows, it is nice to know that the bad won't last long and that you have to keep swimming and it will be better again. I'm hoping that's the case with the Rays and that they can sweep the Rat-Birds and take back the East crown. No matter where the Rat-Birds land, I'm sure they won't make much noise in the playoffs. Seattle is a sleeping giant, Houston could win the AL, Tampa should've been the World Series favorite if not for 3/5 of the pitching staff going down, but they could go on a run with a still adequate staff of Eflin, Glasnow, Civale, Littel, maybe Taj Bradley, and a finally healthy bullpen that seems to be peaking at the right time. The NL also has some great teams with Atlanta and LA. The Cubs could also cause some damage, but I don't see them getting past the NLCS. Bottom line, the Rat-Birds are going to flop in the postseason, the Astros will win the AL over the Rays, Atlanta will beat the Dodgers in the NL, and I can see them beating the Astros in a 6-game World Series. I hope I'm wrong and that Tampa can ride their pitchers to that elusive World Series crown, but I'm a realist. We'll see, though.  Rays up!!

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy