Wax, Facts, and Snacks

05/10/2025

Today at 3:10pm, we lost one of the sweetest, gentlest souls we’ll ever know. …this one hurts.

The idiopathic chylothorax ran its course and took its toll on Ruby’s lungs. While we are lucky we got almost four years more with her after the initial surgery, it was never going to be enough time together…

Ruby was a friend to people, dogs, and cats alike. She was our little diplomat where the cats were concerned and even recently helped welcome Reilly and Jonesy into the fold once we started introducing them to the dogs.
When at UW for surgery or treatment, she rarely spent any time in a kennel because the staff always loved her so much.
She always had an upbeat demeanor and calming presence. She helped guide Loki’s transition into the family when he joined us, but would always keep him in line if he caused trouble. Despite all that Ruby battled through and dealt with in terms of health issues, you would’ve never known anything was wrong. She was a model patient and conquered every challenge with the strength and courage of a warrior.

To say she will be missed is an understatement larger than any other that ever has or ever will exist.
We know Tater and Luna met her on the other side of the rainbow bridge, and she met Maddie and Niko and is running and playing with them all…

We love you, Ru.

05/10/2025

So… a quick little update because I realized I never filled y’all in: after giving some time/space for awhile, I reached out to the card shop owner I was working with a year and a half ago… turns out he closed up shop. I didn’t really get any details on how things played out, but I’m sure I wouldn’t want to rehash the demise of my shop if I had one. I think it’s pretty safe to say I won’t be compensated for the 200+ hours I worked while he was dealing with his rock bottom moment. When I’d last talked to him several months ago, he said his intention was to still come up with something to compensate me with… I guess that became a moot point when he closed up shop. The last text conversation we had was friendly, but open-ended as he never replied to my last text. I take that to mean he’s done and has moved on. I guess I’ll chalk the whole experience up to trying to be a decent human being and when that’s exactly what someone needed. While I gave up hope and moved on long ago, I guess it’s closure on that storyline…
It’s otherwise been a challenging year full of health issues for my wife and I. As you can imagine, that leaves little disposable income for buying cards— thus the lack of videos.
Some of you see my story shares periodically, and I still Like posts and try to be supportive of others still thriving in the hobby, but for now anyway, it’ll be a bit until I can return to opening packs and sharing my love of collecting sports cards.

27/04/2025

My return to legit game action was a year ago. Was just a weekend tournament, and I’ve been playing regularly for ever since. They had a hardest shot competition (which I won😁), thus the videos of me shooting.

25/03/2025

As much as I hate to say it, I believe this account is all but dead… I was in the hospital nearly two weeks ago for possible heart issues. The good news is my heart checked out fine after the stress test. The bad news is they only have a theory about what caused the abnormal bloodwork (which soon returned to normal after a few days). They think it was costochondritis, which I’ve had before, but never that intense or widespread. Long story short, medical bills will be a thing for the foreseeable future (as I’ve got follow up appointments on top of the two day hospital stay).
While it brings me joy to open packs and search for cards for my personal collection, it’s just too expensive a hobby to justify (likely for the rest of the year). While I’m well aware that life with multiple chronic illnesses is no fun (been living this reality since 2010), health issues have thoroughly killed any hobbies that are even remotely expensive.

I hope you’re all doing well and in good health. I’ll likely still interact with this account, but new content isn’t likely to happen anytime soon while there are medical bills to pay.

23/03/2025

HOW ABOUT THEM BADGERS!!!

THE BADGERS ARE NATTY CHAMPS ONCE AGAIN! 🏆🦡

Wisconsin Women's Hockey defeats Ohio State, 4-3, to win the 2025 NC Women's Ice Hockey National Championship.