Something else to worry about...

As if having Hurricane Ike in the Gulf aimed at Texas wasn't enough to worry about I've got something else that's going to keep me away from blogging for at least a few days. At least it looks like Ike isn't coming my way. I know I don't have a large readership for this blog but I also know that most of the readers come back time and again. For that I thank you (you know who you are).

Sometimes real life intervenes in the exciting world of baseball and baseball card collecting. I had a stress test yesterday and they found a blockage in my heart. This is about as real life as you can get. They don't know how bad so I'm going in tomorrow for a cardiac catheterazation. In the best case they can fix the problem with a stent and I go home on Friday. In the worst case I'll need surgery. In the best case I hoe to make a post on Friday with one of my favorite baseball cards. Otherwise, I might be away for a while. I appreciate my readers checking back once in awhile to see if I'm back. In the meanwhile, Go Phillies.

Hurricane Ike

In the Houston paper this morning the headline said people were getting storm warning fatigue. Early this morning they had Hurricane Ike heading right for Houston, making landfall sometime on Saturday. As of 5 PM today, they have it making landfall at Corpus Christi Texas which is about 100 miles from here. We'll probably still get a good blow here but I wouldn't expect to evacuate. But we're going to be on pins and needles until probably Wednesday. By then the storm will be 3 days out and predictions from that point on a pretty good.

As a consequence of all this, my blog will probably be dark for a few days. I'll try to make a quick post if we have to bug out. Please keep everyone on the Texas coast in your prayers. It my not hit my town, it's going to hit somebody's. And of course don't forget about the folks in Cuba and Haiti who are and already have been hit pretty bad.

Song of the Week - Stars and Boulevards by Augustana

I have 5,517 songs on my iTunes. This is one of them.

Apple's iTunes Music Store gives away a free song every week. The songs are usually new and upcoming artists. For me, its a great way to get introduced to new bands since I don't listen to the radio. You get to listen to a 30 second clip of the song before you download it. Sometimes I download songs that I hate after I hear the whole thing, but usually if I I like the 30 second clip, I like the whole song. This is one I like. It's from an EP called "You'll Disappear". I never heard of the band. Wikipedia is sparce on information. Wikipedia describes them as a California piano rock band'. The song was originally released in 2005, but was released on this EP when another song of there's called Boston was played on a TV show called "One Tree Hill" in 2006. They have a recent EP called "Can't Love Can't Hurt" which has been featured on iTunes.

Phillies 3 Mets 0

If ever there was a high pressure late season series, this is it. The Phillies, going into tonight's game were 3 games back. They've got to win at least two. Every game is important now. The Phillies scored a run in the first, but then Greg Dobbs hits a 2-run homer in the 7th.
Meanwhile, Myers is pitching an excellent game. Never in trouble, he pitches 8 innings giving up 3 hits, 2 balls and strikes out 10 to win the game.
"Lights out" Lidge comes in for the save. He gets into some 1 out trouble giving up a ground-rule double to Wright and a single to Delgado, with Wright only moving to third. Beltran hits a fly ball but not deep enough to score Wright. Then Church flies out to end the game. Lidge gets his 34th save in 34 chances.

The game was not available on TV down here in Texas and I'm not willing to pay the fee to listen to the game on the Internet. So I have to resort to Yahoo Stattracker to follow the game. Here is a screen shot I took during the game. I love baseball but will freely admit that there can be boring stretches in a game. Following a game on Yahoo can be really dull. They give you a pitch-by-pitch account but sometimes there are long stretches where nothing seems to be happening. And sometimes the service freezes and you have to reload the page. That happened during Howard's at bat in the 9th. After watching a count of 0-2 for about 10 minutes, I reloaded the page to find the Mets up with 2 on and 1 out. Yikes.

Movie of the Week - Babylon AD

We saw the trailers for this movie a couple of times. It looked like a sci-fi thriller and we're just suckers for science fiction. I did not recognize anything in the trailer that indicated that this movie was based on a book I'd read 2 years ago called Babylon Babies. Before we went to the movies I looked the movie up on imdb.com and read the synopsis. It immediately rang a bell. The book was a hard read. It concerned a war-weary mercenary named Toorop (played by Diesel in the film) in a future war-weary world. Toorop is hired to bring a young woman from Central Aisa to Montreal (New York in the movie). The girl is harboring some secret A killer virus is suspected through most of the book but in fact she's carrying genetically modified twins (that's the babies part of the title, I never did figure out the Babylon part). Along the way, Toorop perhaps gets some sort of salvation while protecting the girl, loosing the girl and finding her again. And there is lots of psuedo religion mixed in for good measure. The movie is more a straight forward action movie with basically the same plot but minus most of the deeper and confusing aspects of the book (and I still don't understand the Babylon part of the title, and the AD makes no sense either). The movie was not pre-screened for critics which is usually a bad sign. I looked up reviews on rottentomatoes.com and most were bad. We actually thought it was entertaining but I won't recommend it. It's not bad like I thought Hellboy II was bad or like I thought the new Mummy was bad. Those movies I actually didn't enjoy much. I won't recommend Babylon AD because the movie was completely pointless. Lots of entertaining (by which I mean action scenes, things blowing up, fights, etc) but you're never quite clear why. And the movie has one of the worst endings I've ever seen.

And one more thing. When I'm putting together these little movie reviews, I like to go to the official movie web site to get a picture. Usually these sites have wallpaper for download. This movie's web site was about the worst I've seen. All I could figure out to do on it was to watch one of three trailers.

Nice Card File - Nomar Garciaparra

This is a 2003 E-X Emerald Essentials Jersey card numbered to 250.

It's got everything going for it:

Silver foil lettering on the front
Die cut
Game-worn jersey patch
Serial numbered
Heavy glossy finish
It's a parallel card (there are similar cards numbered to 345, 175, 60 and 15)
It features a probably future Hall of Famer

And I only paid $3.99, including $2 shipping for it on eBay. That's nuts. Beckett lists the card at $18.

It's outer dimensions are the same as a regular card, but a lot of its been cut away.

The dark spots on the jersey piece are loose threads. My sewing expert daughter thinks it looks like something had been sewed on and thread hadn't been fully removed.

Coincidence or what?

Does this ever happen to you?

I've been collecting baseball cards since 1985. I've got a lot of cards and I spend a lot of time organizing them. I've had them in some sort of computer database since, well, almost since I started collecting. In the past few years, I've started scanning cards and putting the scans in the database. For my readers who don't collect cards, thanks for reading, but I'm a bit crazy. My card collecting readers will understand.

Card collecting time always increases during baseball season and I like to listen to a ball game (Astros now, Phillies before I moved) while I'm working with my collection.

The other day, while I was scanning this Ty Wigginton card and listening to the Astros on the radio, Wiggy (as the announcers like to call him), hits into a fielder's choice and is safe at 1st in a close play.

I've lost track of how many times this has happened. I'll be working on a card (scanning it, putting it into the database, putting it into a binder, whatever), and the player on the card is involved in a play on the radio. And it's not always Astros (or Phillies). It happens with players on the other team. This happened a few days before with the Hunter Pence card I got in trade. Afterward, I thought that I could make a post out of the experience the next time it happened. I didn't have to wait for long.