"Post No. 620"

After about a week, I finally was able to complete my yearly weeding of my comics to either sell as a "lot" or put in my upcoming May yard sale. I didn't get as many as I'd hoped, simply because I've gone through the same boxes at least 3 times before, but still managed to come up with over 1,100 comics and adding that to the 200+ duplicates I already have will give me over 1,300. About 180 of these I put seperate to list in lots of 50 or more on eBay; humor types (Whitman/Gold Key, Archie, Spire, Harvey, etc.) as they always seem to sell. (And if by chance you'd like to see these listings, click HERE.)

Then I eliminated at least 50 old l.p.s (mostly country music) for the yard sale, too. After removing everything from their bags and backing boards I had way more than I needed to finish getting my unbagged/boarded books I've kept in order and cleaning up my collections a bit, removing these from my inventory lists, etc.

Managed as well to list 7 items this week on eBay. At first they weren't showing up on my listings, but it appears that eBay was doing some maintenance and alls okay now.

Finally got to watch the "Watchmen" movie. What a sweet flick that is! It's definately up there in my opinion of fine efforts of adapting comic book material to film as "Sin City" & "Ghost World". (Hope to get to see "Punisher:War Zone" soon.)

It's now been just a bit over a year since my father passed away and I've been dwelling on what's gone down since then. Mom had that surgery back last July and had to stay in the hospital for 2 weeks, then in the nursing home for 3 months. She's still using a walker and no longer drives, but otherwise, she's okay and still manages to get to church and various other social events.

My neighbor and I have had a guy with a Bobcat dozer clean out the back lot where I used to have the brush pile and it looks much better. We plan on having the pile of debree buried on the spot (due to the high cost of a burning permit in city limits and its restrictions) just as soon as we determine exactly where our boundry lines run on the properties, and then I'll be hauling in at least one dump truck full of dirt to level out the area before we sew new grass seed and I put up a chain link fence across the back. The problem is now that I have to figure out what to do with all the leaves come this Autumn???

The business where I work is still steady, and I'll be getting more hours than I want probably very soon as one of the seasonal workers plans on returning to her Summer occupation for a good three months. Even so I plan on taking my vacation the first week in May.

Speaking of May... I see that yet another increase will be put on cigarettes and other tobacco products then, on top of the one that's just recently been added. I'm sure that the increased prices will eventually cause a lot of smokers to simply quit, especially when you add in , what many have, as the current economic "situation". Personally, I think the best statement those who wish to smoke and can't afford it, IS to simply quit. If everyone quit, then the state couldn't get all of those millions of dollars in taxes from them. Tobacco companies would be forced to either stop production or lower their prices. The state wouldn't have anything to bitch about regarding health care costs from smoking. In fact, they'd probably be really hurting for money and then be forced to stop picking on tobacco users when they, in fact, still have an optional source for additional income IF they'd simply tax it more. i.e., the state lottery system. Of course, then the state would start crying over all the health costs caused from non-smokers becoming obese from substituting sugar and food for their nicotine habit. I see further taxing tobacco users as simply a scape goat for this state as well as the government at large. The United States doesn't really care if people are harmed by smoking. They still sell many millions (billions?) of dollars worth of tobacco to foreign countries every year. IF they really cared about it harming people, they'd stop doing that, but they won't. They just want to make it harder on the wallets of people here in poor economic times, and obtain even more money to further finance another senseless war somewhere. Let's face it. This government is broke. If they weren't they wouldn't be printing more and more money, which makes it worth less and less due to not having anything to physically back it up. I don't care how much gold they say's in Fort Knox, it isn't enough to cover all of the present goverment spending.

And...that's my twice a year rant for the moment.

And finally...

While out today checking on my wife's craft booth at a local misc.-type store, I found copies of Superman/Batman (DC) #'s 8 & 9, which are the firth two app.'s of the current version of Supergirl. I didn't have the #9, and the #8 was a Variant Sketch Cover Edition (which I didn't have as well).