eBay fishing...

Went a little eBay fishing the other night and look what I caght!

a very sweet Jim Thome 2003 Topps Gallery Game Used Bat Card

$4 shipped! And it turns out the seller is a neighbor too! Mailed from the same zip code.

thanks for reading.
Have a GReat (and short) work-week everybody!
Dawgbones

"Woes" the second Lil' brown box

So, I get home Monday and there's a second Lil' brown box on my doorstop. This one had :

The New York Giants. Got this one from Sam's promo and give-away. Gonna give this one to a big Giants fan for Christmas.
Thanks for the contest Sam! I know my buddy is going to love this.
Thanks for reading.
Have a GReat weekend!
Dawgbones

"Woes" conclusion, part 2, the Lil' Brown bubbler...

So, here are some of the highlights from Ryan's 2nd attempt at an affordable group break. Which I think was very affordable, as well as a complete success!

The scanner just does not do justice to those first two cards! The Ruth is very nicely balanced with a muted fall leaves background, a semi-glossy black and white portrait of the babe in the middle, with a nice, shiny foil lettered foreground in the lower right corner. While Mr. October's Autumn Excellence card is all over shiny foiled goodness! And a few shiny Phillies never hurt any die-hard Phils fan at all!

The Buchanan card probably qualifies for the funniest card in the break. Wonder what's going through his mind?? Yep, that's a bat! while the look on Nomar 's face could go either way. "Man, I really CRUSHED that one!" or "Damn, that one went the WRONG WAY!"

and I really like both the Mag Moments cards and the Sports Illustrated World Series covers cards.

Thanks for a GReat group break there Ryan! Looking forward to any others you may put on in the future!
And that concludes the weekend from hell...                     ...or does it?

Thanks for reading.
Have a GReat weekend!
Dawgbones

"Woes" conclusion, part 1, the Lil' Brown box...

After having survived the calamitous weekend that was! I finally got around to opening the Lil' brown box that was on my doorstop.

A Lil' while back, Ross, over at Sports Card Info, had a contest attached to a product review. I entered and was randomized a winner.

The product review was for the Lil' Teammates new line of football figure sets. It features a quarterback, running back, and lineman from most of your favorite NFL teams. As I am still boycotting my favorite team (the one featured in both Ross' and Sam's promo for the product) I chose the Vikings as my wife is from Minnesota, and her sister is a big fan of the home team.

I figured I might give them to my sister-in-law for Christmas, and even cleared a spot for them at work if I decided to be greedy, but they didn't stand a chance!

The first round of texts from my wife for the morning,

her:"Where did the little Vikings dudes go?"

me: "Here at work"

her: "R U keeping them?"

me: "Why?"

her: "Cause I want them..."

me: "What do you want them for?"

her: Because I wan them, I have been looking for them for a while. Couldn't ever find any and if I did they cost a fortune. Why? Did you give them away?"

me: "No." "Where you keeping them at the house?"

her: "I was going to open them and put them in the curio cabinet is all..."

me: "!!" (and thinking, so much for "keeping all the sports crap at your desk at work!")

me: "I can bring them back home..."

so, now they are wrapped and will be presented to her first thing Sunday morning as Sunday is her birthday!
Thanks for the neat contest Ross! I guess I figured out something to do with them after all!! And I'll post pictures of the other set that Sam random-ed me with when it arrives!

Thanks for reading,
Have a GReat weekend!
Dawgbones

"Woes", part 2

   Thanks for the kind thoughts Fuji. All is good, and getting better. Went by my folks house last night to get my mom's winter clothes down out of the attic for her. My dad, though not out of the woods per say, is looking a lot more chipper.

   Back to last Thursday, the trip to the post office out of the way, my shirt exchanged, and making sure my parents didn't need anything at the hospital. I head home to relax, maybe put this day behind me, call my sisters and update them on dad, and feed my girls dinner.

   I manage to pull in my driveway about 15 minutes ahead of my wife. Check the mailbox, cool, a bright spot, or should I say brown, as in bubbler!!

   Yay, my group break stuff has arrived from Ryan's 2nd attempt. But wait, what's that? up by the front door? a little brown box?

   Now what has my wife ordered? No, it's addressed to me?! What the hell did I order? Nope, it hits me, that's the first package I'm expecting from the Party Animals company! You know, the makers of the Lil' Teammates sports figures. Too cool, a nice surprise for a semi-dreary afternoon!

   Pop into the house, let the girls out, fix their bowls, get them fed and good to go right before the wife get's home. She walks in, and heads for the back of the house to change. Wow, she must have had a rough day as well? Then I hear, "What the ...!!, Why is the bathroom floor wet?" Yep, water heater is busted and half flooded the laundry room and bathroom!!

   Okey dokey, brief moment of panic before my mechanical mind kicks into gear... Shut the inlet valve off... no more water going in... quick trip outside to the utility shed, cut the breaker off... water heater still has power??!! fricking previous homeowner moron labeled all the breakers, WRONG! OK, no problem, big ticket items in the house have dual breakers, first set wasn't it, second set... dryer's out now!! 3rd set?? there we go, that's the ticket! Apparently, they re-did some of the breakers when they built the stand alone garage out back, breaker 3, labeled "water" now needs to be labeled, "garage"!

   OK, things are safe, water has stopped leaking from the heater. Couple quick measurements  assessment of the piping to the heater and we are off to home depot to buy a new water heater. Buy the heater with the same dimensions as the old, buy a pan to put under it, buy the fittings I think I'm going to have to replace to get the new heater in, and we are headed back home.

   At home, pop a hose on the drain, then get the torch going, pop three joints loose, unscrew the inlet, outlet, and relief fittings and have the old water heater laying out by the curb inside of 20 minutes for the trash morning scavengers to come get. And that, promptly, is where the easy shit ended!

    We are now about 15 minutes past closing time for the home improvement stores, and my dumb ass should have bought more fittings then I needed, cause even though the old heater and new heater are the same dimensions, the pipes are off just far enough that nothing will go back in the way it came out! I spent another 3+ hours fighting with it before giving up for the night in utter frustration!

   Get out the laptop, send an email to the boss, I'm not coming in tomorrow, I'm "Joe the Plumber" for the day!

   Head to bed, up bright and early Friday morning, HD opens a 6, we are there at 6:30. Buy more than enough elbows, couplings, tubing, and other fittings that I should be able to get this thing done. stop by Starbucks, then head home for more battle! get things sized up, few more measurements, cut out a bit more pipe, get the new run sized up, fluxed, and ready for soldering. Ten minutes later, everything is soldered, ready for the leak test, go to open the valve, and the stem just keeps turning with little or no tension at all!! GREAT, should have bought a new valve while I was at it!! All right, the wife packs up everything we didn't use while I cut off the main water to the house so I can cut the old valve out, and we are off, headed back to HD for a new valve. She returns the stuff we didn't need while I go find the valve. Back home, 10 minutes later, new valve in, cut the water back on, open the valve, water immediately starts leaking out of the bonnet on the valve, no problem, quick turn with a wrench and water stops leaking from the bonnet, and starts leaking from the stem!! Another quick turn tightens the stem packing. By this time, the new heater is full and now leaking at both the inlet and outlet pipes!

   Crap, drain the tank down enough to empty the inlet/outlet pipes, un-solder the elbow joints so I can tighten the fittings. My wife convinces me they are tight and is afraid I might break them, so I re-solder the elbows, cut the water on. Cool inlet side, no leaks, outlet side, still leaking!! No problem, un-solder the elbow, and proceed to crank that puppy down until I can't physically turn it any more. Re-solder the elbow, cut the water on, and watch water begin spraying from the other side of the elbow joint!! REALLY??

   No problem, let's just replace that elbow and all will be good. Right? WRONG!! we took all the elbows back when we got the valve!! OK, ask the wife to run to the local hardware store (in my neighborhood), get me one elbow and I'll have this ready when you get back...

   Butter that one up, quick solder it in place, and... YAY!!! no leaks. Wire it up, cut the breaker on and... why am I hungry? why do I feel as though I haven't eaten in days? It's 3:30!! no wonder! Let's go eat and we should have hot water when we get back home.

next, the conlusion...
thanks for reading.
Have a GReat day!
Dawgbones

"Woes" part 1

A follow-up to my Veteran's Day post.
I alluded to "woes" during my annual post. I am here first and foremost to say everything that occurred over the weekend is extremely minor in comparison to what our service members have to endure daily. That being said:

So, I leave work on Thursday afternoon to go take a package over to the post office and mail to a successful eBay bidder. I sold the stock mufflers off my Harley for a couple bucks. But first, I needed to swing by and grab the keys to my wife's uncle's van. My wife and I have been installing a new wood laminate floor at his house over the last few weeks. Having ripped the last of the carpet out, and Virginia Beach's stricter bulk waste pick-up rules (NO house hold construction debris, including carpet!) we offered to drop the stuff at our house, and have Chesapeake pick it up for us. We are only limited to a 4'x4'x4' stack and 12 bulk pick ups per calendar year.

I run by, grab the keys, head over to the house, grab the van, drive it over to our house (I'd forgotten how much "fun" it is to drive a 1982 Ford econoline van, 3-speed manual transmission, manual steering, with 60 series tires!) and neatly stack the carpet by our curb for friday morning. Head back over to his house, grab my Honda, and barely remember that I need to head over to the post office!

Ok, there is one close by, so I go and mail the package. It's off to Texas now, good, that's done! Back in the car, I then decide, since I'm half-way to the other Harley shop in town, I'd go by there and exchange a t-shirt that I'd bought the week before. Someone put an extra large in with the rest of the larges and I am not an extra-large person.

Before I could leave the parking lot, my phone goes off. "East bound and down"? that's mom and dad's  tone? Ok, they've got the results from dad's doctor visit. My mom had called on Monday to inform my sister that my dad had fallen over the weekend, twice.

I had gone by that afternoon and suggested that they go by and at least let the Dr. check out the dual-shiners that my pops was now sportin! Yep, dad's doctor had discovered an elevated heart rate, which she felt had contributed to his blacking out and falling. Wanting more testing, and knowing the quick way to accomplish this, she called E.M.S. and had them cart him over to the E.R.

Ok, I'll be there after the Harley shop and check on them. So much for a quiet afternoon at the house watching some TV!

Harley shop done, had to settle for a different shirt, the one I'd bought was the last one in, I got the 2nd one I'd looked at that day.

The shirt I wanted first.

The one I settled for now...

Quick easy exchange, $1.05 more for the newer shirt, and I'm off to the hospital. Mom and dad are waiting for the battery of tests to begin. They were also going to give him something to help slow his heart-rate as well as keep him over night for observation.

Long story short, they are back home, and now going to a cardiologist for follow up as they are still trying to figure out/regulate his heart rate in an attempt to keep him from blacking out again

more to follow...

thanks for reading,
have a GReat day!
Dawgbones

a Helluva weekend!!

More on my woes later. Cause they don't hold a fart's worth of wind against a hurricane!!

Happy Veteran's Day! Especially to my father, Richard H. Nebe Sr., Senior Chief Petty Ofiice retired, 28 year Navy Veteran. I am proud to be your son, Dad, thank you for your service, and thanks for taking care of us while he was taking care of business mom.

Today's my favorite holiday, cause it's the day I feel most connected with the rest of the civilian population. Watching everybody give thanks and praise to those who stand for us all is awesome. Today is the perfect day to start your very own tradition. Mine started some years back, when I made up my mind to thank any and all service members, Navy, Air Force, Army, Marines, Coasties, Police, Sheriffs, E.M.T.s, Firefighters any time I see them. They deserve so much more than I could ever give. I just hope they know how much I for one appreciate their service and sacrifice.

Thanks for all you do!


thanks for reading!
Have a GReat week!
Richard H. Nebe Jr. proud son of a Navy Veteran!