Instant Karma

The pack you see above provided me a couple of good karma rewards, but more on that later.

Today marked one of the rare weekend days where both my fiancee and I are free - working in retail means that she often gets stuck working at inconvenient times.  As such, we both feel like we have to make the most of the time that we have together.  Today, she got to choose how we spent our rarefied co-mingling hours.

We began the morning with the annual Independence Day parade... yes, I realize that it's only June 25th; but, for some strange reason that's how my community has always done it.  I was mostly indifferent on attending, however, she was surprisingly gung-ho on the idea.  From there, we went dress shopping at the local Burlington Coat Factory so that she could find a nice outfit for her friend's bridal shower tomorrow, in lieu of the car show I secretly wanted to attend.

I wasn't complaining though, it was just nice to spend a few casual hours together.  After finally settling on a nice little number, she actually decided that she'd like to go to the LCS in order to pick up some vintage Garbage Pail Kids.

Yup, that's right, she willingly opted to go card-hunting - I knew I picked a winner!

So, we rushed right on over there, before she could change her mind and luckily, they had a nice stash of old school GPK and Wacky Packages to keep her entertained.  Here are a few of the gems that she ended up walking away with:

The Ronald Reagan goofing was a no-brainer, seeing as she is all about political study.  Meanwhile, "Marc Spark" was selected, in her words, "in honor of the fourth of July."

Moving on, the Wacky Packages weren't exactly vintage; that said, she was still able to find a couple which struck her fancy:

My better half is a major Lady Gaga fan and about the most strong-willed feminist I've ever encountered (a label which I also wear proudly).   I always say, if you can't laugh at yourself, you shouldn't be laughing at anyone else; if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen and all that cliched jazz.

Also, that one on the right is obviously a parallel of some sort, but neither her nor I could possibly care any less about that fact.

Anyway, as you can see, it was a pretty fruitful afternoon for her - she got to take in a parade on a beautiful summer day, came away with a cute outfit with minimal struggle and found herself a few new treasured collectibles.  Combine that with the fact that we're finally going to see Finding Dory tonight and she was in a pretty damn good mood.

Of course, there was no way I was leaving that shop without grabbing a little something for myself, so I selected my very first pack of Series 2 from the gravity feeder at the counter and we were on our merry way.  This impulse purchase then promptly rewarded me for letting my fiancee select the day's festivities:

Hey - it's great to see that my favorite insert set from Series 1 has carried over into the second edition.  Bricks, ivy and the iconic Wrigley Field marquee make for an unequivocally beautiful design.  Not to mention, I love the uniqueness of press conference shots on baseball cards - they're infinitely better than crappy Photoshop/airbrushing monstrosities.

Hot damn - it's a Cubs hot-pack!  No base Northsider base cards; however, both of the "special cards" contained within were Boys in Blue flavored.  I'll certainly be marking this down as a win.

It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but that Cubs team card is some kind of rainbow foil parallel.  Now, I know I said I don't pay too much mind to parallels when discussing the Wacky Packs above, but this sure does look pretty.  The exuberant joy in the walk-off win celebration chosen for the photo sure doesn't hurt either.

So, there you have it - good karma immediately rewarded me for letting my fiancee take the reigns on our Saturday spent together.  That said, I think having a fiancee that willingly wanted to not only step into a card shop, but also wanted to do some shopping of her own is truly enough of a reward!