Tonight is the seventh night of Hannukah. There's one more night left, after tonight.

Bo Belinsky, who was newly unlocked and placed in my Million Card Giveaway account by the Transmogifier, wishes you a Happy Hannukah. He also wants to know which Hollywood starlet you've set him up with on a blind date.

I wonder how many offers of 1987 junk wax I'll get for Bo. I may have to borrow Dayf's schtick. No you can't have my Bo!

Well, not completely, but I don't have any more comments to write, just edit the corrections that my principal makes. I can now devote my writing time to this blog.

Expect some e-mails from me regarding trade proposals. I also found out my new address so things are proceeding nicely. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have three remaining packs of Masterpieces to open...

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...Boy was that fun! A little something for everyone in that pack, including one of the two hits which, while I'm nonplussed about, I know some people who read this blog will definitely be interested in. Don't worry, though, there's plenty of stuff for me to show off. Tomorrow I'll post the hits, the parallels, the short prints and the duplicates that are available for trade.

But until then, here's two cards from the same pack. In fact, not only were they in the same pack, they were back-to-back:

It's a Double Ryno!

I also opened one of my jumbo packs of Topps Update. With approximately 3,274 Stephen Strasburg cards in the 330-card set, I figured my odds were pretty good of getting my first card of the Baseball Jesus. Let's see...

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...DENIED! However, I did pull this card:


Luke Hughes, if you didn't know, is from Perth. So I'm sitting here in Western Australia and I pulled the baseball card of a WA boy. He was supposed to play winter ball (even though it's summer) here in Perth but the Twins screwed over the Perth Heat and sent him to Venezuela instead.

His biggest claim to fame so far (besides being from Perth) is that he hit a home run in his first major league at-bat.

The first page of 2008 Masterpieces that I've completed. One Hall-of-Famer, two sure-fire future HOFers, and a fourth person who will certainly be heading to Cooperstown if he keeps pitching the way he has in his first four seasons.

I love seeing Tony Gwynn in his 80's-style Padres uniform. Also, how skinny he looks. Poor Luke Hochevar sticks out like a sore thumb. I wonder why Upper Deck was so desperate to work him in to all the 2008 sets? He has a card in the Heroes set as well - and it's the exact same picture! It looks like the headshot that they make everybody take in spring training so they can use it in the media guide.

By the way, Ichiro was the last card I needed to finish off this page.

Because everything in a card collector's life tends to be though of in terms of percentage until completion, I don't mind telling you that I have 69 of 92 comments written. I'll leave that up to you to figure out the math.

I'm sure there's some of you out there who are thinking - it's been a week, why aren't you finished? A couple of reasons - I'm pretty sure I spend too much time on each comment making sure it's just so. For the English comments (the largest of the bunch at 10-12 lines), we're talking about 20 minutes per comment.

Another reason is that I need to be inspired. Often times, it's the mental image of my principal breathing down my neck wondering where the comments are that provides all the inspiration I need. But sometimes, nothing I can do will snap me back into writer mode. It's the same reason that this blog had one post in the month of October - there just wasn't anything I could do to get me to want to write. Thankfully, I haven't had that much. The image of the principal seems to be doing the trick.

Yes, I am more than two-thirds of the way to completion, so that's good. And yes, I have opened six of my packs of Masterpieces and will open a seventh as soon as I write one more English comment. When all the report cards have been written, and all the packs have been opened, I'll post the hits, short prints and cards I have available for trade. But for now, let me just say that I have found one of the two promised hits. And, hoo hoo hoo, boy is it a good one.

Post your guesses in the comments, please.

If you have sent me an e-mail about a potential trade, there are two good reasons you haven't heard back from me yet:

1. My mind has been focused on finishing my report cards (I'm a little bit more than halfway finished!)
2. I don't know what address to tell you to send the cards to yet

There is a package on the way from Mr. Colbey Flywheels, and one from eBay. Those were sent on Monday. Anything else sent to me from this point on, I'm afraid, will probably not make it in time before my (next) move (yes, I know I just moved six months ago).

I am definitely interested in trading, and hope to resume negociations with people next week. Until then, I thank you all for your patience. I haven't forgotten anyone, it's just easier for me to post this one time on my blog rather than send out a bunch of e-mails.

Hopefully the cards that have been sent will get here in time so I can show them off!

Well, the incentive plan came into place today. I finished my math comments, which earned me two packs of Masterpieces to open. Unfortunately, it's too late for me to write a big post about what was inside. In fact, due to the whole writing reports thing, my writing juices will be pretty well sapped for the rest of the week.

But before I go into a mini-hiatus, I need some help. This whole missing hit thing with my box of A Piece of History is driving me crazy. Everywhere I've looked, it talks about four hits per box, yet I only got three. What can/should I do now? I managed to save all the wrappers (by virtue of not emptying the waste basket) and put them all in the empty box. What else might I need?

Anybody else have experience with Upper Deck boxes and missing hits? What is their policy and procedure? How did they make good? Is it even worth pursuing? This hasn't happened to me before, so any and all advice is welcome. Thanks!

The Incentive: One box of 2008 Upper Deck Masterpiece

The Task: I have to complete my report card comments for my students. I have to write comments on four subjects for each student. These comments should all be six lines long. It is not my favorite part about being a teacher.

So here's the plan. For every ten comments that I write, I treat myself to a pack of Masterpiece. With 23 students, that's a total of 92 comments I need to write. I hope to have this all done by the end of the week. Then I can spend the last two weeks of school, if not relaxing, at least not worrying about report cards anymore.

So far, I have written seven comments. But that was last Thursday, so those don't count. Maybe I will open two packs after I have written 13 comments tonight (13 + 7 = 20).