10 years ago today...

 10 years ago today was pretty much the worst day of my life. It's the day I came literally 5 minutes away from dying. I had become diabetic but didn't know it, and it had turned into ketoacidosis, which is when your body shuts down and basically starts burning your insides in a last ditch effort to keep running...if you don't treat it, you don't survive it, and I didn't treat it for a full week....you see, I started feeling terrible a week before, at the NNL East model car show, when I drank a Mountain Dew, something I did only once a year, there. I had assumed that the Dew had been tainted, so I felt like that I just had to wait out the food poisoning I was sure I had...but I was very, very wrong. 

I got worse and worse but steadfastly refused to go to a doctor. I don't really trust doctors, which goes back to when I was in 6th grade and my health problems manifested...I went through so many tests, so much poking and prodding, all of which was inconclusive and told me nothing...the mental trauma it gave me is still affecting me all these years later. 

Finally, on the morning of April 26th, my Mom said (paraphrasing, because I was essentially unconscious- not sleeping, passed out/comatose) "the heck with what you say, I'm calling an ambulance" and I'm very glad she did. The ER doctor told her that five minutes later and I would not have made it. That is not hyperbole, it was really that close. They told her and my brother to say their final goodbye. 

I was actually pretty much unconscious the whole day. I remember seeing, of all things, Buffalo Wild Wings out the window of the ambulance and the next thing I remember is when I came to in the hospital many hours later, after they had gotten me to the point where I was going to survive. 

It's unknown what my blood sugar was...it was so high that the hospital machines couldn't read it - but they estimated around 1200 if I remember correctly. It's supposed to be around 70...yeah, it was that bad. 

But, I survived. You wouldn't be reading this if I hadn't, of course. I spent a week in the hospital and every year since then I celebrate "Glad I'm Not Dead Day" on May 1st, the first day of my second chance at life. 

However, since today is the 10th anniversary of my ordeal, I'm celebrating today...because I'm glad to be alive. Yes, I can be pretty miserable sometimes, a byproduct of my health problems mostly, but deep down, I'm glad to be here. There's so much I want to see, and do, that even though I struggle to do stuff, I am not going to stop trying.

So, I thought I would go through my photo archive, and choose my 10 Favorite photos I've taken over the past 10 years! I tried to limit myself to 1 photo from each basic topic, although it was an extremely hard choice to pick just 10 photos, out of literally nearly 100,000 I've taken since 2013. As it turns out, none from 2013 through 2016 made the cut. 

I am sharing the photos in chronological order of when I took them, which is kind of a neat byproduct of how I label each photo to keep them in order on my website. 

The earliest photo is from September of 2017, which was a prototype adventure of sorts. My brother, realizing I was very depressed, wanted to get me out and doing stuff, and my doctor literally prescribed me to get out of the house and walk, so my brother set out to do that in the most fun way possible. 7 of the 10 photos that cracked the top 10 are from our Adventures. 

This is Lake George, NY, my favorite place in the world, taken from Prospect Mountain. This was the first time we had ever gone up Prospect Mountain despite visiting Lake George almost every year of my life, missing only 2013-15. 

The next photo is from our first "official" adventure, which was the Fordham Museum of Ancient Art & Artifacts in the Bronx, NY. I have been a big fan of ancient history for quite a while now, and I got to see some amazing things there, including the oldest man-made artifact I've ever seen in my life. This is an ancient Greek amphorae. This was taken in October 2018.

I really, really love aquariums, and this was taken at the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. I love the face this fish is making! This was taken in January 2019.

Another photo from 2019, this is an F-22 Raptor (I think) doing a flyby at the New York Airshow, which had been moved to Newburgh for a couple of years. I also saw the Blue Angels practicing for about an hour but this was the best photo I took that day, and I really couldn't resist making this one of the top 10. 

2019 was the most populous year in the top 10 favorite photos, with 3 images making the cut. This one is one of my favorite car photos I've taken, with the pink tree making a nice backdrop to the black car. I wish the hood was down, and I wish the cruise in this was taken at still happened, but this photo just sticks in my memory...I almost used a photo of our Edge in front of Devil's Tower but I had to go with this one. 

I love to take pictures of the road, and I love to take pictures of the landscape, and this one has both. Taken on I-84 in Port Jervis NY, we were actually up higher than the small airplane that I circled in the photo. This was taken on March 1st, 2020, just days before the pandemic shut everything down. This one is the one I was least "sold" on putting into my Top 10 list, but I really like this photo.

Due to my health problems we didn't do much in 2020, but sometimes the photos came to me. I LOVE squirrels, as is well known, and this is such a fun photo I've even used this as my profile picture on some message boards. 

The only image from 2021 to make the list, the New York City skyline is just spectacular! I actually took this from New Jersey, where we had gone to see a NASCAR show car. This was actually taken September 11th, 2021, 20 years to the day after the terrorist attacks that shook the city and country to it's core. 

Taken in May 2022, this is my best photo of Mount Rushmore. I have always wanted to see Mt Rushmore, it was one of the top things on my "bucket list"...and last year we made it happen. I still can't believe we were able to make that happen...that I was able to do it! 

This photo, from September 2022, represents the greatest day of my life, when I visited the NASCAR Hall of Fame. It's actually hard to get a good photo like this, because the Hall is too large to fit in one photo, but this was the one I liked the best that I took. I also set my record that day- I took over 3000 photos in the Hall of Fame. (And I still missed stuff!)

Just for fun, I also picked out my Top 10 favorite photos of myself taken in the last 10 years. 9 out of 10 I used as my profile photo on Facebook. 

In 2015, I got dressed in a Halloween costume for the first time since 1997ish, maybe earlier, as a Roman Senator. 

This photo was taken at the Rhinebeck Car Show vendor area. all these neon signs were for sale. I love neon and I love car stuff, so this was doubly cool.

This one is from the Fordham Museum as well, and is the only one that didn't make it to be a Facebook profile picture. That little square is a cuneiform tablet from ancient Babylon, the earliest readable language in the world.

From January 2019, this was taken at Madison Square Garden, holding a game used stick of my favorite player in the NHL, Henrik Lundqvist. 

Also taken in 2019, this was taken at the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Manhattan. 

Another image from 2019...I realize making this post that 2019 was my best year, lol, This was taken at the Norwalk Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut. This ray is in the "touch a fish section" and swam right up to me. He wouldn't swim away until I reached down and pet him, and then he was happy. 

Another from 2019, at the Adirondack Nationals. I'm not really a big celebrity person, but Faye and Bogi of All Girls Garage were really cool. They seem fun on TV, and they were even more engaging in person. 

Last one from 2019...but it's a big one! I used to attend the NNL Nationals model car show in Toledo, but it got to be too expensive and too difficult to do with my health problems and my mom's health problems, but when they announced that 2019 was going to be the last show we had to go back. While we were there, we took a day trip to Illinois and ended up on Route 66! Route 66 is an icon of America and car culture, and driving on it (riding, actually, as my health does not allow me to drive) was high on my Bucket List...higher than Mount Rushmore even. The funny thing is that getting on it was completely an accident, as we were looking for a restroom, and it's not labeled as Route 66 anymore. Due to my knowledge of it, I was able to figure it out while we were still on it and I took this photo of myself with Route 66 in the background. This was in Joliet, Illinois, and was only about a month after the photo with Bogi and Faye. This is the only selfie of the top 10.

I just really like this photo. It was taken in Yonkers, NY, at the Untermayer Park & Gardens. 

Me on the big screen at the NASCAR Hall of Fame...nothing more needs to be said there!

On to the next 10 years...

Which Finest is Finest?

I've been working on the chrome style cards that I scanned back in 2018, and as I have been working on them I keep having the thought..."Which Finest is finest?", and I knew I had to explore it in a post. In this post, I will do a countdown of the NBA Finest sets, starting with my least favorite and moving to my favorite. This is entirely subjective- based on my personal likes and dislikes and also a bit of nostalgia factored in as well. 

The Finest brand was produced in the NBA from the 1993-94 season through 2000-01 and then again from 2002-03 to 2007-08, 14 years. 

#14. 2006-07 Finest

This set looks like an eyeball, and frankly it's disturbing. The other colors of the Refractor borders don't help it much. 

#13. 2007-08 Finest

Of all the Finest sets this is the one I have the least of. It's ranked low because of that and the fact that the design just isn't all that good. My collection is limited to a single base card (this one) and a single Refractor. 

#12. 1998-99 Finest

I've never really warmed up to this set, and I don't really know why. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, it just doesn't do much for me. This is the thickest Finest set- when I'm handling them, I keep checking to make sure I didn't pick up two cards by mistake, they are that thick. Because of the thickness they are one of the few Finest sets that doesn't curve. Series 1 had the player names in Chrome while series 2 had them in white. 

#11. 1993-94 Finest

The first Finest set, this one is held back by the fact that many of them have turned green, as you can see this one is doing as well. This is one of the more colorful sets and without the greening would probably rank much higher- at least by two or three spots. 

#10. 1995-96 Finest

This was likely the first Finest set I ever saw, but it's one of the weaker Finest sets, and one of the weaker releases of 1995-96 as a whole as well. The background of each card is clipboard style drawing that comes in a variety of colors- green, red, blue and purple. For a time, the Kevin Garnett card from this set was my most wanted card, but I eventually secured one. This example shown actually in an uncorrected error, or UER. His name was Predrag, not Pedrag. He was also the only rookie to get the blue border of veterans instead of the orange border for rookies. 

#9. 2005-06 Finest

A very blue set, all base cards had the blue background. That's not just team colored, although it does match the T-Wolves of the era well. The set has a few colored Refractor parallels which are really nice, the Green being my favorite (no surprise). I only have a handful of cards from this set, I did only one pack of it when new. 

#8. 2000-01 Finest

The only Finest set to NOT have a Refractor parallel, the 2000-01 set ranks as highly as it does because it's fully team color coded, something I like a lot. This set was never common in repacks, and I didn't get a single rookie card from my hobby box! 

#7 1994-95 Finest

Although I'm sure I saw the 1995-96 set first, this is the set I have more memories of from when I was beginning to collect, and that propelled it higher in the countdown than I expected when I was rough drafting it in my head. I still have some of the scratched up cards I traded with my 5th grade classmates to get in my collection, I have not upgraded them in all this time. All cards in the set have the gray front border and a purple back theme. At 331 cards this is the largest Finest set and was the first to feature the peelable protective coating. Some of the photography choices in this set are...bizarrely chosen, as seen here. 

#6 1996-97 Finest

1996-97 was the first of two years where there was not one Finest base design, but several. I loved that concept when it was new, and honestly, I still sort of do! Maestros, Gladiators and Apprentices were exclusive to Series 1, while Mainstays, Heirs and Foundations were in series 2 only. Sterling was in both series. Common cards have bronze borders, Uncommon silver and Rare gold. The rare cards make this set pretty much incompletable...because one of them is a Kobe rookie. When I was rough drafting this post I actually expected this set to rank higher, but looking over the scans changed my mind...if I ever revisit this list I can't say they would rank as low as 6th again. 

#5. 2002-03 Finest

The nostalgia factor absolutely plays a role here, because the design is not as good as some of the years I ranked lower...but I have so many memories of this set. The 2002-03 season holds a lot of memories for me in particular, and seeing cards from this set just makes me inherently happy to see them. That alone was enough for the set to crack the top 5. This was also the first Finest set that included redemptions for the 2003-04 rookies- meaning this set has actual XRCs in it. This was also the first Finest set to have autographs and relic cards as part of the base set.

#4. 2004-05 Finest

I shouldn't like this set as much as I do, but...I really do like it a lot. There's a LOT of border here, and the gray and black areas don't have the traditional Finest chrome affect. One thing I do like about this set is that it's got the second closest to real photos you'll see on a Finest card. Most Finest sets are just a cutout of the player over a digitally created background, something I generally don't like. This set features actual photos, just with a layer of texture over them that makes them shine. Another thing I like about this set is that it's actually easy to scan...most Chrome cards are a pain in the butt to pull a good scan off of. Not this one. This was the first Finest set to feature colored parallels, and once again the Green is my favorite. This was the last Finest set I opened a box of. 

#3. 1997-98 Finest

The second and final year of multiple base designs, I actually had this ranked lower in my mental rough draft until I looked at my collection scan folder and realized this is actually the superior set to the 1996-97 release by a wide margin. There are also more designs, 10 of them this year! Finishers, Catalysts, Ballhawks, Force and Debuts are from Series 1, while Showstoppers, Defenders, Arrivals and Creators are from Series 2. Masters appears in both series. This set is exceptionally earth toned. The cards are pretty much all on the orange to brown spectrum, almost overwhelmingly so, but basketballs themselves have been on the orange to brown spectrum for generations so I guess it works. 

#2. 1999-00 Finest

I really expected this to be #1 when I was rough drafting the post, but it fell just short. This year's set has a solid design- a real photo, but with the chrome technology creating a wooden court pattern on the cards. The boxes by the team and Finest logos are color coordinated, as are the card numbers on the back, the only set I can think of that has that as a feature. This set actually has the least amount of border of any Finest set, too. It was the last to have two series, the last to have a peelable cover, the first to have serially numbered cards as part of the base set, and the last to have a real subset- a small section at the tail end of the set is set aside for the 2000 US Olympic basketball team, the only time non-NBA jerseys appear in a Finest set. 

#1. 2003-04 Finest

I just could not get past the colorful aspect of this set, when I was looking at all of them, it just won out. The large name, color coded to the team, the stripes that remind me of a race track, also team color coded, and even the player's jersey number being prominently featured...add that to the texture surrounding the name area and you just have a winner. 

Maybe I shouldn't have gone with a Celtics card for this set, which I admittedly chose because of the green, 

You really don't get the full appreciation of how colorful and vibrant this set is unless you see multiple cards from it. 

So, that's my list of which Finest is Finest. Which is your favorite?

My top 10 favorite Henrik Lundqvist cards in my collection

 Yesterday, Henrik Lundqvist retired. I kind of knew it was coming, what with the severe heart condition he has, but I wasn't looking forward to it, either. When I began watching the sport in late 2016, he quickly became my favorite player in the league, a role he has held ever since- even though he didn't play at all last year, and won't play going forward, he's still my favorite player. I'm sad I won't get to watch him play anymore, but I'm thrilled that I got the chance to see him play at all...becoming a fan of the sport so comparatively late I missed most of his career. I should add that it's because of him (and Mats Zuccarello, my favorite skater) that the Rangers became my favorite team. Most importantly, he will be able to spend time with his family now, always a plus. 

I thought I would take a look at my 10 favorite cards of the King. He's the only NHL person to clear the 100 card barrier in my collection, currently with 117 present. 

Please note that these cards are in chronological order- not ranked as #1-10. This is a tough choice but here we go:

2005-06 Power Play #148, his only rookie card in my collection. Drafted by the Rangers in the 7th round in 2000(! not first round is mind-baffling) he played in his native Sweden until the 2005-06 season. 

2011-12 Rookie Anthology Cyan Printing Plate #75. Not only my only 1/1 card of Henrik, the only 1/1 hockey card in my entire collection! 

2011-12 SP Game Used Authentic Fabrics Gold. The most I've paid for any card on this list, perhaps surprisingly, I saw this very card in a card shop in 2017 but balked at (or couldn't afford) the $50 asking price. When I went back to that shop, three hours away from home, in 2019, it was still there so I didn't walk away again, having regretted not getting it the first time I saw it. It's my only patch of his and one of three Rangers patches in my collection. 

2011-12 Upper Deck UD Canvas #C56 This is such an awesome photo! Taken from the camera in the net, this wide angle shot shows a great panorama of the World's Most Famous Arena, Madison Square Garden, the only building to host an NHL game I've ever been in, although it had the basketball court set up when I was there. This is probably my favorite photo in this post.

2012-13 Score #493. Holding the Vezina Trophy for being the best goaltender in the sport. Doesn't get much better than that if you're a goalie! 

2013-14 Panini Contenders #73. This was the very first card of him in my collection. The scan isn't so good, I didn't have as good a scanner when I got this card as I do now, I should really get it out and rescan it. 

2014-15 Upper Deck #132. Just a great photo! When I created my Alphabetical Directory of everyone in my collection, this was the card I chose for him. This iconic pose was seen many, many times after a Rangers victory. 

2015-16 Upper Deck #382. Another great photo taken at MSG, this one apparently taken in game, rather than post-game. It also looks like he's catching the Upper Deck logo, which is fun.

2018-19 The Cup Signature Renditions. I still can't believe I have his autograph in my collection! I didn't think I'd ever get any because they tend to sell for more than I can spend on a single card, but thanks to Kenny making me a great deal I was able to make it happen. 

2018-19 Upper Deck #374. Another great photo, and although he had one more UD flagship card after this one, this is a great "farewell" photo. I believe this is the only card in the list I pulled from a pack myself, possibly 2015-16 UD flagship. 

Like I said above, I'm really glad I got to see at least some of his career, my only real regret is that I didn't start watching the sport sooner. 

As an added bonus, when I visited MSG in January 2019, I actually got to hold one of his game used sticks for a photo shoot, still one of my favorite moments in adventuring. 

Although I have not been able to scan the last couple additions due to my arm injury that I've mentioned a few times, you can see most of my collection of his cards here: Henrik Lundqvist collection

Thanks for the memories!