Earlier this week I received a large cardboard folder filled with photos of my younger sister and myself. Among photos of past birthday cakes, t-ball uniforms, and embarrassing photos of me with a mullet (oh, the nineties), I found several photos of my sister and me excitedly ripping open presents on Christmas morning, our faces filled with joy. After all, we were out of school the week before Christmas, and despite not having to do homework, that week was always a drag. I don’t remember if either of us had calendars on our walls, but we did have chocolate-filled advent calendars (sometimes two if we could convince each parent to buy us one) that we used to count down the days Christmas.
Of course, New Year’s Day is only a few days later, another holiday that calls for an exciting countdown (and more chocolate). I was always dazzled by the gleaming ball as it lowered down to announce the arrival of a new year, and younger me used to dream of attending the ball drop in Times Square. Of course, now that I live in NYC, I avoid Times Square as much as humanly possible, and I wouldn’t wish attending that event on my worst enemy. Seriously, hours of standing in the freezing cold, surrounded by thousands of people, and a severe lack of public restrooms. No thanks!
December, then, seems to be a time of countdowns in expectation of big things, new adventures, and, for many collectors, baseball cards. The baseball season is less than 100 days away, I still have several days left of my vacation, and, hopefully, I will be picking up some baseball cards in just a few short hours.
Since I restarted the blog back in August, I’ve managed to buy only a handful of packs, a fact that definitely impacts my posting frequency here on the blog. An unfortunate lack of space and money to buys cards has definitely dragged that down (darn you, student loans!), though a lack of card access has also been a problem. It’s difficult to find cards at my local Targets, and I haven’t ponied up to buys packs or singles online. I’m really more of an impulse pack buyer more than anything, and I haven’t fully returned to the hobby yet, in my eyes.
I’ve attempted to fill the void with other projects, including my Greatest of Topps series, though each post in that series takes a ton of time, and I haven’t really been able to get that off the ground and moving as much as I would’ve liked. Oh well.
Despite these personal blogging woes, I have been quietly working on something in the background—a new blog location and redesign. I’ve decided to ditch the Blogspot platform in favor of Wordpress, despite the lack of true and free customization there. I’ve been working to get the redesign to my liking and importing my posts, media, etc, and I’ve finally reached its completion.
You can check out the new blog here: https://chavezravining.home.blog/
With the new blog, however, comes a shift in the blog’s focus. While I plan on explaining this in more detail at the new blog, I should mention that the blog will have a larger focus on the Dodgers. There will still be baseball card content (I promise!), but in an effort for more a more consistent posting schedule, I’ll also be sharing my thoughts on the Dodgers and the baseball landscape. Let’s just say I’ll be expanding my portfolio.
I’m excited to get started on this new step in my blogging career, and I’m happy to share more content with you moving forward. The entirety of this blog has been imported into WordPress, so you can always go back and check out old posts, images, and more.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you out there reading this. I can’t wait for 2019 to get started.
