Nothing special to report on this milestone post. I’ll spend the day at the baseball card shop, hoping to reduce the inventory that I just added to yesterday. It’s definitely an addiction, opening packs of cards, sorting them by teams or players, and hoping for the Holy Grail. It’s just as bad as gambling, but at the end of the day after playing slots, there’s usually little to show for it. With baseball cards, I have binders that grow in size and number. Today, I’m looking for buyers and have a table to show off my stock. In fact, my sole exercise will be lugging these binders from my office shelves to my car and then to the table and back. Will they get any lighter at the end of the day?

I finally used some gift certificates that my wife gave me at a Sarasota restaurant, Michael’s on East. I’ll always remember the time my son surprised me by buying a pricy dinner there. My wife and I always claim to be celebrating an anniversary in “fancy” restaurants, and usually earn a free desert. We eat out at least once a week and there’s always something to celebrate – birthdays, wedding or first date anniversaries, pet memories, adoption, and simply days together. Our neighbors across the street are headed out for their 50th wedding anniversary. I can say the same thing, but it’s taken two marriages to get there for me. 

The Beatle’s song, “Day in the Life,” comes to mind. “Got up, got out of bed, and dragged a comb across my head.” The painful part of my morning is over now that my sciatica has diminished in intensity until tomorrow, so I tend to routine maintenance – my seven morning pills (some only halves), shaving, and brushing my teeth. The dogs slept in a bit, so I was able to sit for a while with an icepack on my leg while solving another Wordle. It’s a football Sunday, but I’ll be out in the hot sun hawking baseball cards. I’m honestly still somewhat in shock, after the I.U. football drubbing of U.C.L.A. last night. I stayed up late to watch the second-half action from the famed Rose Bowl. I’m used to being on the other side of a lop-sided score, like helpless Purdue’s loss to Notre Dame in the afternoon. It’s good to wake up a big winner!