Whirlwind of a Week

This past week has been filled with surprises of all varieties that are best broken down into the following categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good:  Surprise Road Trip

Last Sunday my friend invited me to join her and her mom down in Pismo Beach for a short vacation along the Central Coast of California.  My lower back was feeling good for the first time in weeks, so I couldn't pass up this opportunity.

We spent a total of three days and two nights there and the weather was perfect for walking on the beach, doing a little shopping, eating delicious meals, and hanging out by the fire pit.

Here are a few photographs from our trip:

Tashi & Me

Wallet Card @ the Fire Pit

In a few days, it'll be eleven years since Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown inspired collectors to pick a card in their collection that they enjoy and start carrying it around in their wallets.  I don't go on too many vacations, but when I do... I'll pull it out.  

Wallet Card @ the Beach

In honor of Gavin, I made sure to take a photo of my wallet card in the wet sand.  He usually takes things a step further by allowing his card to take a dip in the water, but mine isn't quite ready to swim.

Another thing I like to do when writing about trips is research famous athletes who were raised in the area.  Unfortunately Pismo Beach's population isn't very high, so I couldn't find any notable athletes that I was familiar with from the area.

Ribeye @ Jocko's

However on Monday night, my friend took us out for a delicious ribeye steak at a restaurant in the small town of Nipomo.

2019 Topps Clear Travel #CP-53

Jeff McNeil went to high school in Nipomo and ironically, the New York Mets traded him to the Sacramento A's on the day of our dinner.

The next day we woke up, packed, ate a yummy breakfast then rushed back to the Bay Area in an effort to beat the rain, wind, and predicted flooding.  Thankfully we got home safe and sound, but this was going to be just a quick stop for me.

The Bad:  Under the Weather

My brother met me at my house and the next morning we drove to Roseville and spent Christmas with our brother's family.  We lucked out and avoided any holiday traffic, because we left at 5am.  But we did hit some rain which made it hard to see the roads at times.  Thankfully, my bro got us there in one piece.

Christmas Eve was pretty relaxing.  We watched some movies and ate a delicious miso salmon dinner.  However, I started to feel a little congested.

We all woke up early on Christmas morning, ate fried rice for breakfast, and opened presents.  At around 10am, my head was throbbing so bad from the nasal congestion that I took some Mucinex and laid down.  I kept hoping I'd feel better, but by the afternoon I had quarantined myself from the everyone.

It rained off and on throughout Christmas Day.  There's a creek that runs behind my brother's property that was slowly rising.  It peaked sometime around 9pm and ended up flooding half of the backyard, but thankfully the water had receded by the next morning.

The Ugly:  Worst Headache in Years

The day after Christmas, we came home.  I loaded up on over the counter cold meds, orange juice, and chicken noodle soup and hoped the road to recovery would begin.  It didn't.

Friday and Saturday were rough.  Every time I coughed, I'd feel a sharp pain in my head.  My main sources of relief were sleeping and taking hot showers.  Fortunately, I woke up this morning feeling a little better.  I still have a cough with phlegm, but the headache is tolerable.

I'm planning on resting one more day to help my body fight whatever it is I'm dealing with.  

Hopefully I'll finally ship out the holiday care packages I've been putting together either tomorrow or Tuesday.

In the meantime, I wanted to recap the highlights from my 2025 Topps Holiday Advent Calendar.  Several other bloggers have covered the day by day contents of their calendars, so I figured I'd just show my favorites...

2025 Topps Holiday Buyback: 1997 Topps #410

The two buybacks were the main reason I purchased one of these advent calendars.  To pull one of my all-time favorite baseball player was a dream come true.

The other card I was really hoping to pull was a Nick Kurtz rookie:

2025 Topps Holiday #H40

The Green Plaid parallels pair perfectly with any of the A's players.  I was fortunate to pull one:

2025 Topps Holiday Green Plaid #H32

It seems like The Nice List inserts were a hit with collectors.  I don't love them or hate them.  I just wish Topps made them a little tougher to pull.

2025 Topps Holiday Making The Nice List #MNL-2

Overall I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this product's design.  My buddy opened a couple of blasters and told me I could have his duplicates.  If I have a reasonable percentage of the set, I might just purchase a blaster and attempt to build it.

Well that's about all the energy I can muster right now for a blog post.  I hope all of you are enjoying your holidays.  As soon as I can ship out all of those care packages (hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday), I will write another post.

Until then...

Happy Sunday and sayonara!