I’ve been to some more public events this year, but this week I went to my first full-on sporting event that I can remember. While I did the Mason Madness event in September, this was the first game I went to and keeping with that theme it was of course a George Mason men’s basketball game and damn was it fun.
I think I’ve talked about my Mason fandom before, but it’s definitely a somewhat recent thing in my life. I didn’t go to Mason and since I am more of a UConn fan, you would think I would have something against Mason because the Patriots beat the Huskies in their famous run to the Final Four in 2006 (a year in which I think the Huskies had a pretty darn good chance to win it all). But there are a few reasons why I’ve become a Patriots fan…
- My wife works there so I have a new connection to the school and that’s had some perks
- It’s about 10-15 minutes away and the game experience is really easy to do
- It’s not a small school but they are a bit of a David / Underdog in the grand scheme and I’m always down for that
- The Green Machine pep band is absolutely amazing… in fact it’s a bit of a goal to play with them at some point (which some local community folks have done over the years – honk if you know Tuby Guy!)
- The new coach, Kim English, is a really inspiring and uplifting person and I really like the path he has the program on
I think that’s pretty much the order of how I was drawn in.
And the game was amazing. They are 2-0 so far and yes, it’s not like they’ve been the most big-time opponents just yet, but it’s nice to see them playing well. The student section was pretty much packed which was great to see. It was a great Friday night game and we had some great seats near the Green Machine to watch it which is always a plus. Hopefully they will keep on winning, but I’ll be rooting no matter what.
Stay safe out there!
The Review
Here’s what happened on the blog last week:
- Monday: Ron Gant
- Tuesday: Don Money, Cecil Cooper
- Wednesday: Storm Davis
- Thursday: Jay Howell, Card Thoughts: 1990-91 Topps Hockey: Yay Hockey!
- Friday: Gary Allenson
- Saturday: Mike Fischlin
- Sunday: Ed Lynch
Last week’s #twofortuesday theme was all for the #BrewCrew. I hope any Brewers fans out there got what they wanted out of that day. Otherwise I was still catching up on my oldest cards in the backlog. I got another Hockey-related Card Thoughts post out there too. I’ve actually been doing pretty well getting those out lately.
The Preview
Here’s what I have coming up for this week:
- Monday: The Thrill…
- Tuesday: Double Dubs…
- Tuesday: Famous for toothpicks…
- Wednesday: Soderholms & Gardens…
- Thursday: I’ll Meacham you in the middle…
- Friday: Parents just don’t understand…
- Saturday: This one is Dusty…
- Sunday: The Barber…
The #twofortuesday this week is going to be pretty Royal to say the least. I’m still doing catch up on my oldest posts and I plan to get another hockey Card Thoughts post out as well.
Other Notes
For some reason I was back down to way more normal week with 18 total returns. That’s what I was seeing a few months ago before things blew up. I’m not sure the reason for that. I don’t know if it’s related to what I’ve been sending out or maybe to the fact that there was a holiday in the middle of the week. Lately when we’ve seen a holiday I tend to have an explosion right after and that didn’t happen this time around. Still, 18 ain’t bad at all.
There was only one major straggler this week and that was Nick Kingham at 289 days. The next closest was John Martin at 159 days. I did score a few individual cards pretty high this week from Zane Smith, Bob MacDonald, and Pat Leahy. Also, I got a white whale of mine back from Archie Manning who I always tend to either not get back or get failures back from.
This week I also added a new menu item to the blog to get you to a new page – Recent TTM Success. Since I tend to post from my backlog of successes I wanted to have a way to better share my latest returns. I’m going to try to keep it interesting and change the lists up a little bit. I put some themed lists so maybe you’ll find a specific team, sport or some other team listed there. I’m going to do my best to update that list on Sundays every week if I can. I hope it helps you out!
Have a great week!