Another Long and Winding Road and Another Post About 1978 Topps!!!

I am pretty sure that everyone is thoroughly sick of hearing about my 1978 Topps set, but I am gonna keep on posting about it till it’s done, so bear with me…
Today was not a good day for the Troll. It started after class at around 1 PM. I have a very busy day tomorrow-there is a charity event called “Empty Bowls” that I will be attending and posting about, but that will keep me tied up until its time to go to work. Anyway, I had three trades scanned and ready to go, notes written on paper and I was going to finally get close to caught up on my trade posts. I filled my coffee, popped some vitamin C and grabbed my prescription bottle-I take Crestor for a cholesterol issue… The bottle was empty. I guess this makes sense, I remember looking at it on Monday and thinking that I really needed to get to the pharmacy, but I didn’t think I was out. Oh well, Target Pharmacy had left me a voice mail on Friday saying my refill was ready, so I walked the dog, temporarily turned the computer off and made the trip to Target. I got there, said my spheel and they told me the prescription got put back because it had been more than three days since it was ready. They could have it refilled in about twenty minutes. Oh well, not a huge deal, I could kill some time drooling around the baseball card aisle anyway, plus the dog needed food (again) and I had to pick up some other stuff, too. Anyway, when I returned to the counter twenty minutes later, they said that I was out of refills. How is this possible if they had filled this for earlier in the week? It didn’t make sense and they couldn’t answer the question, but I was out of luck. I left my cart filled with dog food, coffee, shampoo and a blaster of Goodwin’s

(that I really shouldn’t be buying anyway!) Champions and got on the phone with my doctor. Initially the receptionist said there were no appointments till next week, but she is a roller derby fan and made an exception for me-thanks Jaime!!!! I wasn’t planning on waiting at the doctor’s office today, but I did. For about thirty minutes, then I saw him, he wrote me a scrip, I paid my $20. co pay and was out of there. Twenty bucks for him to scribble a drug name on a pad seems pretty outlandish, but I am glad I have insurance because otherwise that scribble would have set me back a hundred! Anyway, I refused to go back to Target after that (I keep on swearing off stores, but I always go back-eventually) so I went to Walgreens. They were busy, as always, but said that it would be ready within a half hour. My day was pretty much shot already, what damage will another thirty minutes do? I waited. I hit the magazine aisle and read the library copy of Sports Illustrated for a while then went back to the counter to check on my scrip. After waiting in line till it was my turn (about ten more minutes) the clerk said “Your doctor put Friday’s date on it, I can’t fill it until then”. Fudge!!! “Well, I really need to take it today, this is regulatory medication that I must take daily, can you call them?” I pleaded. It was 3:15 at this point and the doctor’s office was open for another 45 minutes. She agreed, but said she was really busy and it would take a while. I told her I would be back in thirty minutes and she promised it would be ready. The card shop is pretty close to Walgreens, so I made a quick stop over there. I had put my ’78 Topps set into a binder, or at least started to. I was halfway through the 400s when I ran out of pages. That’s an excuse to go to the card shop if ever there was one! So I got there and I just happened to have my list of the 21 cards that I still needed to finish off my 1978 Topps set. I have gotten 4 packages in the past two weeks and I am so close I can feel it! I know I won’t be able to afford the Eddie Murray or Paul Molitor rookies for a while, but I still wanna finish off what I can… I count out 30 Ultra Pro pages and pay the 3 bucks for those and grab one of his boxes of ’78 Topps. He has two 5,000 count boxes full of ‘78s, but for some reason I have never had any luck at all finding cards I need in them. I searched and searched and managed to find 4 cards out of 10,000. I showed him my list and he said he hadn’t had a Murray rookie in a while for sale. He builds sets himself and used them all for his own sets. Oh well, I only had 5 bucks to spend anyway… He did spot one card off of my list that he had in the display case, though. I explained the 5 dollar situation to him and was still able to work it out-thanks for the hook-up my friend!! For 5 dollars I leave the card shop with 5 more cards crossed off of the list and enough pages to house the entire set. I am now the proud owner of a George Brett card that isn’t a reprint and I am 16 cards away from completion!!! Sweet. Back to Walgreens. After waiting in the prescription line again, Dotty informed me that she had in fact got in touch with my doctor’s office. Awesome! But, that she just called and more people had moved ahead of me, so it would be a while. I was really glad that I went to the Post Office yesterday to ship and today was just to pick-up because its gonna be after 4:30 by the time I’m done and I started my medication mission at 12:30. Incidentally, yesterday packages went out to GSNHoF, CCC, MPT…ILI!, ROtB, HBCoSG, HTM and INaWLITBS blogs, plus some stuff to traders who don’t have cool abbreviations. Anyway, I went back to the magazine library aisle to waste some more time. I priced the dog food here, but they only 6 lb. bags which is like a single serving for Emma, so that is another trip I will have to make. I had already planned on blowing off homework this afternoon in favor of blogging, now I don’t think I can do either. My name finally got called and I shelled out even more money for my prescription. I started the day with 50 bucks and I ended it with about enough change to grab a newspaper that I probably won’t have time to read. Four hours later, I finally have my scrip, so I don’t have to worry about a heart attack today! I was close by to my wife’s bank (yes, she is a banker) and it was about time for her shift to be over, so I scooted on over and stalked her (waited for her) in the parking lot. We don’t get to see each other very often since we work opposite shifts, so it was a treat to get a mid-day kiss before she sped off to go to school. With my kiss completed, I finally headed home to walk the dog, finally eat and take my medicine. Here I am, it is now 7 o’clock and I am finally here for a few minutes. The reason it took so long to arrive at the computer is, after the walking of the puppy, we both drove out to the post office and I am SO glad I did. I opened my box to find a key. The key is great because it means the stuff that I was going to get was too big for my normal box. The key is an awesome sign. There were 5 packages in the larger box and a few of them were unexpected, too. 3 of the packages-when I finally opened them while driving-very nearly caused me to drive right off the road! I should have learned my lesson with the first one, but they just kept on getting better! It started with an amazing package from fellow Tampa Bay resident Justin from ITaWL?NITNS-I will post this one up very soon. It continued with a mind-blowing and surprise package from Mike of JDs Wild Cardz fame. I was expecting a couple of cards from him, but nothing like this! Probably won’t post this till next week, but then you will be totally understand why I was driving off the road. The last of the three came from my good friend Alfredo of My Past Time…I Love It! This one very nearly caused my early death and I am so glad that it didn’t because I have been waiting a very long time for what he sent (not waiting for him, waiting in general) in this amazing surprise package. The other two packages were just as cool, but not quite as shocking. One of them actually came at precisely the right time. It was filled, well not quite filled, but had a bunch more 1978 cards in it! This set has been gathering dust for a long, long time, but suddenly everyone in the blog-o-sphere is hooking it up! With this package I am officially down to needing only seven more cards to complete this set. The other package was pretty great, too. It has a complete D-Rays team set from 2004 and short print cards from 2008 and 2009 Topps Heritage. Normally I would be jumping up and down and screaming for a package like that. This should tell you how great the other 3 envelopes were. I will show you the highlights of the 4th envelope that I opened. It had some rad Rays cards in it, but I will skip over those for the time being and get to the ‘78s. First off, the much anticipated Nolan Ryan card.Then, we have the baddest mother trucker alive, George Foster in all his mutton chopped glory. His stats on the back of the card will make your jaw drop even in the steroid era; in 1977 Foster’s line was .320 with 52 homers and 149 runs batted in. Yes, he did win MVP that year. He also led the league with 124 runs scored and had a slugging percentage of .631 and he had 388 total bases, which was 50 more than Dave Parker in second place. Wow. He had 85 extra base hits and he homered once every 11th time at bat. He led the league in pretty much every offensive category, but missed the Triple Crown as he was 4th in batting average. Dave Parker paced the league with a .338 BA. There were a few cards that he included that weren’t actually on my want list, but served as upgrades. I seriously don’t remember what I had against poor Jim Spencer as a kid, but I gave him a moustache for some reason and wrote all over the back of his card. He also included Lou Piniella as a player, Joe Torre as a manager (of the Mets) and the second year card of a slugger that totally belongs in the Hall of Fame-Mr. Andre “Hawk” Dawson. Those are pretty big names to cross off of my list and some good upgrades too. He also took a chunk out of some common cards as well, not that anyone would consider Bob Boone to be a common card…Well, it is now 8:30 PM and I still have yet to crack open a book or do homework or housework of any kind. In 2 hours the Wife will be home from Derby practice and I think I would like to be able to actually hang out with her, so for now, I will sign off. I promise there will be one, perhaps 2, but no more than that, posts about my quest for 1978 completion. This ride has taken me over 30 years and it’s really starting to get fun-I appreciate everyone’s patience with me. I promise that the trades I got in the mail today will fresh, new and awesome cards to look at, with potentially more interesting stories than Troll goes to the pharmacy. For the sake of breaking up text, many of the cards that I just mentioned were shown earlier in the post than they appeared in word form. Sorry for the confusion. Tomorrow afternoon will fill empty bowls and will also reveal the contents of the super package from my friend, Wicked Ortega. Stay tuned. In the event that anyone wants to continue seeing more and more 1978 Topps cards, please check out my new venture, brought to you by popular demand-http://1978topps.blogspot.com/. It won't officially start till next week, but check it out, make yourself at home and feel free to follow... Now, bring on the Yankees, bring on the Phils! Go West Coast teams!!! Go Bombers!!!! Troll out.