I Blame The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for My Lack of Posts!!!

Nine days.

NINE DAYS!!!

If you're wondering where I've been (isn't there anybody out there wondering where I've been??? Ego, hush), about a month or so ago, my brother-in-law gave us a few more Nintendo Gamecube games. Two of them. Super Mario Sunshine, and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

Let me give you a bit of background first.

Understand that my family (meaning me, my wife, and my kids) has always been technologically behind the rest of the world. We didn't get our first DVD player until 2003 or 2004. We don't have .MP3 players (well, we did have one, then we kinda destroyed it). So when it comes to video games, we have a Playstation (not 2 or PS3... has that even come out yet???) and a Nintendo GameCube.

And that's it.

This doesn't include the Nintendo DS my kids have...but even that supposedly is now out of date.

Anyway, up until now, we never had any role-playing games. We have the Mario Kart Double Dash and Mario Party 4, and a couple of sports games. Since we bought a disc to save our progress, my kids and I have been hitting the games during the weekends, and are now one car away (the gold one) from finishing the Mario Kart Double Dash (we've unlocked EVERYTHING ELSE) and are playing the story mode in Mario Party (we've unlocked the Bowser Board and every game possible).

But now we have The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I was never a fan of the Zelda games. Too much work, and I was never good at the games. However, thanks to the Internet, we found walkthroughs. For the video game challenged, walkthroughs are notes about how to play the game...IN FULL DETAIL. Where you should go, what weapons to use, where to find the treasures...it's all there. And my daughter and I have been following along on this game (which has really nice graphics), and now both of us are about a triforce away from facing the final villain of the story.

But the problem I have is that it's taken me away from this humble little blog. And I've been losing sleep because every time I play the game (whether it's on my profile or my daughter's...yes I play for her too as long as she's there), I wind up staying awake until 2:00 in the morning. And I wasn't even on the computer yet. So short of me risking my job and staying up all night. I go to bed, and then realize that I didn't even do anything for the blog.

And I say to myself...there's always this evening.

And I wind up playing the video game again.

And the cycle continues.

Well, now that the heavy part of the game is done, and all I'm doing now is just picking up maps and finding treasure chests (because that's what you do in this game when you're not beating the tar out of the monsters that are in the dungeons you explore), I will take a break from the all night gaming and come back to my blog and my dwindling readership.

So let's start off with a few things that I have been actually doing in between the gaming sessions.

If you follow me on twitter (@bdj610), you would know that I now have my master set of 2011 Topps Series 2. I just need eight more giveaway cards, and if Toys R Us is continuing their exclusive, the Purple Diamonds, I need those too. But I do have a complaint, which now that I have the full set, will be able to elaborate further on the blog.

I am also looking forward to the launch of the self proclaimed "Premier Sports Card Industry Blog." The thing is that they're supposed to be coming in July, 2011, and they've had this slogan since the site first appeared in March. All they've done since I've been aware of them is insult Gellman at SCU and then nothing for the last three months on twitter. I sent them an e-mail asking what they were about and have not gotten a response. And this was almost a month ago. So now, we wait. Will the meet or exceed the expectations they put upon themselves? Or will they crash and burn? July comes on Friday, folks. We shall wait and see.

Also this month, my daughter was in two dance shows. On consecutive Sundays, she performed in two shows (a noon matinee, and a five o'clock evening recital). Both Sundays, I was able to sneak off to Target and buy some Topps products from the local Target. On the second Sunday, I bought one of those four-pack hanger packs, with the bonus Diamond Giveaway card. The good news is that Topps has figured out a way to hide the back of the code card with an extra blank card so that you can't figure out the code on the back and thus nab a code for free without having to buy the product. In amongst the four pack of cards, included the following inserts:

• Two Diamond parallels (Justin Smoak and Juan Miranda)
• One Kimball Champion mini (Cal Ripken, Jr.)
• One 60 Years of Topps (Eddie Murray...the regular one, not the original back)
• One Topps Gold card (Sean Rodriguez)
• One Topps 60 Card (Roy Campanella)
• One ToppsTown Card (Carl Crawford...weren't these things supposed to be one per pack???)

And This!!!

2011 Topps Jim Palmer SP #393.

Tomorrow, we'll update the Sports Card Blogroll.  And welcome the first day of July with the return of the Random Topps Card of the Day.  On HOF Induction Day, we will also mark the return of the 2011 Topps Archives Project, starting with the newest inductee.

So my apologies for not posting in quite some time. Now it's off to Hyrule and sail the oceans once again.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama