Nine Years

The company I work for recently got a new CEO. I had only recently started when the prior CEO took over, so it's weird to think I'm entering my 3rd leadership era at the company. I'm also now the longest-tenured member of my manager's team, which is crazy because feels like I was the "new guy" just a little while ago.

As my blog hits 9 years running, it's a similar feeling of looking up and realizing I've been around for a few big changes on the cardblogging scene.. though for the most part, I'm still just doing my thing in the corner, weathering some ups and downs, keepin' on keepin' on the best I can.

But yeah, glad I've been able to reach 9 years as an active blogger. Let's hope I make it another 365 days and hit a full decade on the cardsphere. That'd be cool.

"Yeah, yeah, what about a contest?"

This post here isn't a contest, but I'm happy to announce that we'll be celebrating all summer with a string of little contest/giveaways, aided by a revamped Prize Pool open for business and restocked with potentially interesting cards available to be claimed by lucky winners.

Doubling as an effort to up my frequency of posts during these often overwhelming times for me, I'm starting a weekly series of posts called Refractor Fridays. It'll be a simple post each Friday where I show off a cool refractor and say a little something about it, easy-peasy. And then at the bottom of all (most?) of those posts will be a simple "guess the serial number" contest. The first person to correctly guess the number gets to pick 4 cards from the prize pool for a nice 4-card PWE mailed to the US-based address of their choice. If no one has won by, say, the following Thursday, that contest could end without a winner, but then that following (Refractor) Friday's post would have another contest, and they'd get progressively easier (more hints as to the winning number) to make sure we get plenty of winners, but I will not be doing "closest answer wins" because I refuse to do any math. Only your first guess counts, but again, you can probably play again the next week.

So that's the plan, and hopefully it gets a good response and we can have some fun and I can spread around some cool cards in celebration of 9 years blogging. It might not be as ambitious as recent blog anniversary blowouts by the likes of Dime Boxes or Night Owl Cards where they gave-away big stacks of cards to several lucky winners... but hey, give me credit for at least trying to send out a few free PWEs to brighten my readers' day! Haha. I'm not exactly sure how many of these I'll do, but since it's anniversary #9, I'll aim for (at least) nine weekly contests.

Check back Friday when we kick off the festivities!

p.s. Some of you may want to comment well-wishes on this post-- Thanks in advance for any kind words! I'm very appreciative of you readers, especially the ones who comment sometimes. I know I'm not great about replying to comments, but they sure are appreciated and I wouldn't have stuck with this blog so long without this great community of fine folks who've come and gone over the years. The hobby can get gross and bad sometimes, but stick to the blogs and it's really not too hard to keep having fun. At least that's been my experience!

p.p.s. Oh, here's a question that you might also be kind enough to answer in the comments. If you've taken a look at the current prize pool, please let me know if you have any constructive feedback. Does the variety look ok? What type of cards would you like to see more options of? If you check out the current options and think to yourself "nothing for me here", perhaps give me an idea of the type of realistic PWE-caliber cards I could try to add to the pool to interest you.