Madison: The Land of Beer & Cubs Cards

My wife and went north to Madison this weekend to attend the wedding of one of her Air Force friends from back in the day. I remember Madison being a longer drive, but it only took a little over three hours to find our way there.

Honestly, it felt like forever because I set up a time to meet Beau, he of the One Million Cubs Project, before the wedding. You know how the clock doesn't move when you keep looking at it? Oh yeah, it was one of those kind of road trips. I had about 900 Cubs cards that were doubles (and triples and quadruples) to my collection from the past year. Even though they'd be a small drop in his bucket I thought they would be better in Beau's possession than mine. I even had two 5000-count monster boxes I wanted to donate to his cause that were leftover from my recent purge of cardboard. 

Side note: I'm so happy to have someone to take all my repeat Cubs off my hand that is within driving distance! We have relatives in Madison and this will save a bunch on postage while helping a very cool Cub fan out.

How cool?  Check out this shirt:

Yeah. Beau was wearing this shirt when we met. Glorious! Baez has been playing out of his mind of late and was awarded Player of the Week honors today. If you're a Cub fan interested in purchasing such a shirt here's a link to the website. I'm seriously considering if for no other reason to my Cardinal friend, who doubles as a chemistry teacher, groan.

I'm not sure how most of you guys are when it comes to value, but I think I have a different take on cardboard value. If I have a card (or 900 cards in this case) that doesn't fit in my collection then I don't see any monetary signs attached to it. Especially in this situation, because who else is going to want oodles of Cubs cards from the Junk Wax Era? Simply stated, I was happy to help someone out and was expecting nothing in return.

Beau wouldn't have it and had a team bag of Cubs cards ready for me.

 You're probably bored with Heritage by now, but I needed all these cards for my collection except the Quintana. And actually, I'll probably save that just in case I have the off chance of getting it autographed. Cards with smiling baseball players seem to fairly rare these days.

 The Chicago Clubbers card wasn't even on my radar and that All-Star card is so beautiful!

This is my second copy of this card, but I also have a mini Dillon Maples collection that was in need.

Gosh, I love me some Cubs prospects!

 The big downside to my loving prospects is that Bowman seems to be the way to go if you're a collector looking for the next big thing. In general, I'm not, but those darn Ohtani chasers certainly know how to drive the price of a pack through the roof. So yeah, I need all the Bowman cards, too.

 A smiling Rizzo! Very nice!  FYI, every time I see a picture of an off-balance Bryant throw my mind instantly flashes to the last play of the 2016 playoffs. Funny how the brain works.

I've been quite negligent of recent releases so these cards really made me smile!  Thanks, Beau.

Wait, that's not all. Beau did his homework and used his resources to surprise me. What resources might those be?  Well, he lives in Wisconsin, which unofficially is the Land of Craft Beer.

He gave me a pick-a-six craft beer present, on ice, in a styrofoam cooler!  Whoa!

I've only had the opportunity to try one so far, but it was darned good.

I usually save stouts for the winter, but I was feeling it the other night and this Vanilla Stout from Stone Arch went down much quicker than I'm used to. Smooth and quite flavorful.

Here's the rest of the lineup:

 Velveteen Habit sports a picture of a scary pumpkin-esque rabbit on the front. I'm not a big IPA fan, but we'll give it a try.  A Mosaic Pale Ale?  I'm not familiar with that genre and I'm looking forward to trying it out.

 New Glarus.

Maybe you've heard of their Spotted Cow offering?  It seems to be pretty popular in my circle of friends. This would be my first attempt at something different from this popular brewery. Cool!

Here's the last two I'm most excited about:

Cow on a surfboard? Sold.
And I mentioned I'm not really an IPA guy, but this is a strawberry smoothie milkshake IPA! My favorite milkshake is a strawberry milkshake! This should be fun!

These are great, Beau!  Thank you so much for the cold brews!

After the wedding we spent the night at our relatives' house. They left for Chicago earlier in the day, but were kind enough to give us access to their guest room and let us play with their two cats.

My wife crafted some catnip toys. Clive, a long haired cat, apparently is a very big fan. He was in full on cat nip mode when I snapped this photo with my phone. I wish I had a better shot, because I can't even figure out where his face is in this picture not to mention the location of the catnip toy. Cats can sure be crazy.

Lastly, on the way home we stopped at Ikea in the Chicago suburbs. We had lunch first and I enjoyed the Swedish meatballs. I am half Swedish after all. Afterwards my wife made a few purchases and I purchased four bookcases for my man room overhaul. Yep, that's happening.

The previous week I spent some time creating a scale diagram and planning the future layout of the room. The four bookcases are shown at the top of the diagram.

It's been ten years since I first settled into my current room and it's time to get more organized and a more fresh look. I started today by taking down all the wall hangings and spackling all the holes. I'm hoping to start with a fresh coat of paint tomorrow. Then I have to assemble the four bookcases. Yikes!

It's going to be a project, but it should be a fun one!  Wish me luck!