Slowly making progress

I'm about to start another 2 weeks of pretty much nonstop field work, but I can see the end of the tunnel.  Anyways I've been busy settling into the new house and finally was able to get a little storage built in the new man cave.  Work continues.  See you all in a few weeks.

Ode to the Man Cave

There's big news here at Collector's Crack world headquarters.  That news is that the wife and I are expecting our first child.  Sometime around mid-March.  A boy and I'm pretty excited about it.  What does that mean here at World Headquarters?  Well about 3 years ago we bought our first house.  A small 2 bedroom in a nice quite part of Anchorage.  I was excited about that since I was able to steal, err, use the second bedroom as my art studio man cave.  Well now that we have a little one on the way that room will soon be his room.  So I thought I'd take a moment and honor my awesome man cave.

I posted this photo way back in December of 2010 right after we started moving in.  I had all intentions of posting more photos of the room after I got stuff sorted out, but that never happened.  You can read that post from long ago here.

I had stuffed a lot of things in that room.  And with a little elbow grease and some thrift store furniture it's been a really cozy place to blog, scan stuff, sell stuff, sort stuff, break boxes, put sets together, and occasionally draw.  If you want to see some of my art work head on over to the 13 Tenets of Cynicalbuddism.

The book case holds sets in progress, player collections, Brewers and Packers team sets and other misc. stuff. The desk is a cheap thrift store buy, but it holds my large format scanner, printer and a ton of other stuff.

I built the bookshelf myself, even earthquake proofed it. Down on the bottom it's mostly extras from various years. The middle holds my Brewers team sets and small monster boxes with a few player collections and other various stuff. I also have a section of sets I'm actively putting together.

Up top we have my main player collections of Robin Yount and Brett Favre. There are also other team set binders and way up top we have some more set building boxes. I'm slowly working on finishing all the Topps sets from 1981 to 1993, I have most of my needs list up on the side bar under Help me Complete a set.

 The closet has completed sets up top, other miscellaneous boxes of cards, and below are some of my comic collection

I'm slowly boxing stuff up and moving it out to the shed.

 Here's a look at the drawing table. I bought this from a classified ad over 15 years ago.  Best hundred bucks I ever spent. All the fittings on table are cast iron and it's very solid.  It's also great for sorting cards.  You might be able to see a small work in progress for a friend who commissioned a design for a tattoo.  I have lots of people do that, then never get the tattoo.  But I love having a reason to draw.  Not that I need one, but having a purpose is a great motivator for me.

Here we have my wall of awesome. That's my complete 1975 Hostess box with my favorite player Mr. Robin Yount's rookie card on it. There is also a complete 1977 Burger Chef box, and of course my since I'm a proud shareholder of the Green Bay Packers my stock certificate.

I took this picture the other night, just to show how crowded the table can get.

Here are the shelves above my drawing table. Art supplies below. There is also a stack of old Beckett 4 sport magazines. I decided one year to try a subscription. I got a good deal on it and I'll be honest I do enjoy the articles, but the price guide is really less than useless for me.  I think their art issue is still one of my favorites every year.  Middle shelf is more supplies, bubble mailers, and envelopes for TTM's. Up top we have my minifigure collection and a box big box of doodles.

 Here's the view out the back window.  You can see my chicken coop out there. We have 5 laying hens and we get about 2 dozen eggs a week in the summer.  That's a lot of eggs. I have a lot of happy friends. You can check out the exploits of the chickens and our garden on my garden blog, Nunaka Valley Farm.

What will become of the Crack? Who knows, but I'll be around.

cb out

The jungle.

Did you ever have to read the The Jungle by Upton Sinclair?  Really?  It's a classic, it was all the rage back around the turn of the 20th century to muckrake, in depth investigative journalism.  I'm sure you read it. I was required to read it in high school.  But it was alright.  I mean it was gory and had all sorts of politically incorrect stuff in it, at least by modern day standards.  It laid bare the truths of the meat packing industry and gave way to stronger regulations and inspections on food production.  But I mean who doesn't want the extra protein of cockroaches?  What does this have to do with my post you ask?  Nothing. 

I finally got around to borrowing a camera from work to take a few photos of the new house so I could post them on Facebook for the family but I just thought I'd post one here so you can see a before shot of the "man-cave" and I'll post an after when I get it done.

And sadly this is with me cleaning and moving a ton of stuff out already.  And you can't even see all the shit around the corner. Wow do I have a lot of shit.  Anywho I finally got rid of my storage unit and now I'm going to finally do the final walk through on the old apartment so that'll be done and I can concentrate on getting the new house organized.

cb out