Noobs

In a offseason flurry of pickups, I’ve brought my total of Twins players with certified autograph cards in my collection to 244, the latest being a 2010 Heritage Real One remake of Ralph Lumenti’s 1961 card. Besides the 2018 card of Aaron Slegers and this year’s Stadium Club autograph card of Willians Astudillo, the other new player cards were Bowman cards of minor leaguers (including recently deceased Ryan Costello), and there are still a few other elusive 2019 autograph cards out there. Good news: I have discovered that there are now Terry Steinbach Twins autograph cards…bad news: the only two I’ve seen are two different 1/1 Archive Signature cards.

clockwise, from top left: 2018 Topps 1983 35th Anniversary #83A-ASL Aaron Slegers (auto); 2010 Topps Heritage Real Ones #ROA-RL Ralph Lumenti (auto); 2019 Bowman Sterling #BSPA-TL Trevor Larnach (auto); 2019 Bowman Chrome Prospects #CPA-RC Ryan Costello (auto); 2019 Bowman Chrome Prospects #CPA-JA Jorge Alcala (auto); 2019 Bowman Chrome Draft #CDA-SST Spencer Steer (auto); 2019 Bowman Chrome Prospects #CPA-ABE Andrew Bechtold (auto); 2019 Bowman Sterling #BSPA-AB Akil Baddoo (auto)

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 58 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,700 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Feeding Thousands

For a second year, COS sponsored a weekend of Feed My Starving Children, a non-profit based in Minnesota that uses volunteer work and an incredible 94% of donations towards shipping healthy, life-sustaining food to those who most need it. Mo, K, and I were there for the opening shift on Friday, anxious to do our part again where we could help.

We got over the jokes about the white hair nets (everyone is required to wear them) by the time the orientation meeting is over, and then volunteers are split up between tables to get down to the work at hand. With jobs such as doling out the measured ingredients, checking meal weights, sealing packages, boxing the sealed packages, refilling ingredients tubs, hauling boxes, weighing boxes, stacking pallets, labelling packages, etc., there is enough going on that the two hour shift goes relatively quickly.

Here’s another box!

I decided to be a box jockey again this year, and haul the full boxes from the various tables over to the weighing table. Mo and K were busy at a table weighing packages, and K did some ingredients measuring as well.

Looks like they’re enjoying themselves!

Our shift filled boxes with 32,616 meals. Over the entire two days, we packaged and boxed enough for over 128,000 meals! That is a lot of lives touched.

If you get a chance to participate in one of these events, DO IT! If not, please donate at the Feed My Starving Children website.