Just Thinking Out Loud

It's really amazing how the decisions we make throughout our lives change a lot of things along the way.


Like, say for instance, we have two choices confronting us.  We make our choice and go on about our business.  But what would the outcome have been had we made the other choice instead?  How do we know we really made the right choice?


Life is all about decisions.  I don't know if I made all the right ones and had I made different decisions than the ones I actually made, where would I be today?


I am happy where I am at so I am going to convince myself I made all the correct choices.  Or did I?

A Lot Of Bears On My Hands

I can't recall just when it was I started collecting Beanie Babies, but once I started I bought almost every bear that came out.  As a result I now have scads of them.  And most of them were in their own plastic case made especially for them.  All the ear tags are encased in plastic as well.  Yes, I have those three above.  And the one below is one of my personal favorites.

 This is Libearty below.  To find it wasn't easy and when I did, it was quite expensive so I can say that I paid the most for it.  I also sent it away to be researched and documented to make sure it was worth what I paid for it.

When I lost my job back in June of 2005 I stopped buying them.  What a relief that was because collecting them was like an addiction.  And not only did I purchase the beanies stateside, I branched out to the ones around the world as well via eBay.  Needless to say I have quite a bit of money wrapped up in these once very highly collectible bears.

I used to line them up one on top of the other in their plastic cases in the living room, but that got to be too much so I put them all away in cardboard boxes and piled those up instead.  Last week I decided to do something about them since they were still parked in my living room...a room we rarely use; however, it is the first room entered when someone comes into our front door and therefore those boxes had become somewhat of an eyesore.

I took every bear out of its case and put them into two large totes.  The cases went back into the boxes they came out of minus the bears and went into the basement.  I still have other bears that never saw a case because I got tired of buying the cases so I put each one into its own zip lock bag.  In the next week or so I will go through those as well and write down the name of every bear (and a few other animals that I liked and bought along the way) and then they will be put into a space bag cube or two and compressed with the air vacuumed out. 

What was once a highly-demanded collectible is now nothing more than a simple toy.  Most of them were sold new for $5-6 and now one is lucky to be able to sell them at garage sales for $1-2.  What a shame because they will never be what they once were.  But I am not alone.  There are others out there in the same boat as I am.  The only difference is, I am reducing the space they were taking up.

Doing The Happy Dance

God bless Dale Earnhardt Jr. for enlightening my day!


He swept both Pocono races this year, meaning he won both of them including today's race.  Prior to this year he had never won a race at that track.  And up until four years ago he hated having to race at that track.  Somewhere along the line he came to terms with the track and today it became his best buddy so to speak.


He now has three wins this year out of 21 races, and is sitting on top of the points for the Chase which will start September 14th at the Chicagoland track.


Thank you, Dale Jr.


(I tried posting a photo here but Blogger is misbehaving).