Toby Andy, Legend

No regrets.

I have such a love/hate relationship with this card.

Love because it was the first gold card I owned and was for a while the only among my playgroup.

Hate because I traded a couple duals and other stuff I wasn’t playing with for it, having no idea what I was giving away for a trash card.

I was playing a white-blue counter weenie surprise deck that consistently cranked out turn 2 Serras thanks to a couple Mana Vault. The gold framed Tobias looked like a good fit to 1994 Jason.

I rotated those bareback Vaults and Tundras and slapped that bad boy Toby onto the concrete like I was about to end the game, and the ooohs and aahhhhs because a mythical Legends card hit the field was music to my ears.

“It’s like a fifth Serra Angel!” some would say.

And they’d be wrong. Oh so wrong. With “WAIT FOR ME!” as a rallying cry, Toby would sit on the battlefield like a lukewarm turd, maybe good for blocking, but otherwise just for show, a waste of a turn and a Vault now ticking away at my precious life.

I’d win. Usually. I’d picked up the art of “playing more than just one of any given card” and “trying to stick to a couple colors instead of three or four” and someone said something about a curve? Yeah, I’d read a Scrye or two.

But Tobias. Useless, golden Tobias.

So yeah, picking up a graded one is kinda a holy grail for me. And it’s only fitting that my first Legends and gold frame card is also my first graded card.

Dr. Richard Moriarty, Creator of ‘Mr. Yuk,’ Has Died

Dr. Richard Moriarty, founder of the Pittsburgh Poison Center and creator of the familiar Mr. Yuk icon, died yesterday at the age of 83. His death comes a little more than a month after I wrote about a beer league hockey team in Pittsburgh called — with Moriarty’s blessing — the Mighty Yuks.

Link

Parisian Booksellers Have Lined the Seine for Centuries. Now, They’re Fighting to Stay

The booksellers whose rickety green stands dot the River Seine have been a Paris staple for hundreds of years. Through the censorship of kings and Nazi occupiers, through the Covid-19 pandemic and frequent protests, the bouquinistes have remained.

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22 years of notes

On living the dream

Yesterday this ol’ blog turned 22. Sure, it’s ignored most of the time and is a little dusty and rusty and maybe its best days are behind it, but it’s a reflection of me and my life in so many ways so it’s still special.

Not sure what about life happens to get in the way of things like writing. Yes, events, family, work, kids, etc etc. But it’s odd how I have the least amount of time to write during the years I’m going to want to remember the most.

All the stuff before, the first 8-10 years of J’s Notes, they’re not nothing but they certainly don’t reflect the life of a guy truly living a life beyond his wildest dreams. Two amazing kids, a good job, a nice house, more animals than I know what do do with, an incredible wife because, dang, y’all, I married up!

Life is good. Maybe I can just say I’m focusing on living it instead of focusing on journaling it, the memories will count. Not just mine but those of my boys, my best friend and rock and partner, my family.

It’s a good place to be. But it’s nice to make note of it once in a while.